New channel, same great taste.

Hi all - some bonkers person decided to let me rant on a slightly bigger stage.  

Henceforth, please have a look at the Daily Music Guide for Suburbanhusswife takes.

Most recently, Glasto: http://www.dailymusicguide.com/Features/glastonbury-dinosaur-or-dynamo-25042010-1527.aspx

Pants on fire - Liars; JJ; We Have Band

Sisterworld (Deluxe version and Rough Trade bonus tracks) - Liars

Back in December, my husband and I went to the Barbican’s Twisted Christmas mainly, if I’m being honest, to see Richard Hawley do something haunted and beautiful with a Christmas carol neither of us would otherwise have heard before.  And while dear Dickie didn’t disappoint, the rest of the evening was far more challenging than I was expecting. My husband is no big fan of Christmas tradition so I had thought that TC was going to be a happy middle ground for us to share.  I thought indie artists and perhaps a Rachel Unthank type would be covering God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and that would be it.  It ended up being more a manifesto on atheism and death and I wasn’t very into it as a result.  And Liars – well, for similar reasons, I’m not so sure on this one. 

I’ve had Sisterworld for weeks and have found it very hard to reach a verdict. Liars are one of those bands that you hear and think for the entire length of the album that you must be listening to a Beck album you somehow missed.  And you’re drinking at some friend of a friend’s house and you’re too embarrassed to admit you have no idea what you’re listening to.  This is the way of the poser.  In fact, I had to fight with myself to prevent me from writing that I knew their earlier albums; I didn’t until an hour ago. 

I read a review on the BBC about these guys and I have to say, I think the writer was swept away by the folklore.  He/she rightly mentions the dark shadows present on the album but attributes these to genius whereas I see self-indulgence.

Apparently there were shootings and drug deals gone wrong and a move to Berlin all to prove they were so over the LA thing.  I find this a little funny as once again this is simply artist raging against the roots; they were born there.  Over the years, my accent has gone a bit funny, but I’m still a New Yorker and I always will be . Their spin on why they felt compelled to write this thing is foggy, all platitudes and moods wrapped up in poetry but it doesn’t really say a damned thing.  And hey, if denial is your thing, I think they do it relatively well.  But once again, it’s dismembered dollparts meets Jesca Hoop – you can take the band out of LA but you can’t take LA out of the band.

The best bits of this deluxe version of the album are the remixes at the end – Atlas Sound’s version of “Here Comes All the People” is wonderful and “Scarecrows On A Killer Slant” by Tunde Adebimpe is also great.  The best mainline track is the simple and aching “Too Much Too Much” bringing to mind Peter Gabriel in his early years.  Just lovely.  And I don’t know – it’s possible that this will grow on me but for the most part it just seems like a bunch of arthouse snobbies pretending to be in a Brooklyn gallery instead of a stripmall on Sunset. Anyway. ***

jj n° 3 

Now here we go – pretentious?  Yes, a bit.  But I really believe that these guys come up with the goods.  Like a soundtrack to a late 80s movie no one remembers or a moment in time out of the shop Instant Karma where I used to go to buy crystals during my New Age phase when I was 14 (go ahead and laugh - I am).  Beautiful vocals.  Beautiful plinky plonk organs and techo with a depth that you can’t quite identify. 

“Let Go” has had a bit of radio play but you can’t find any real singles on this album.  Still the entire thing is hugely listenable and oddly calming.  There’s nothing showy or rash about it.  What I hear is a band who just makes music because they want to and the fact that it is this good is a strange, unintended side-effect.  They also seem to have a proclivity for writing biography in verse but unlike Liars, these guys are actually eccentrics from Sweden.  For this reason alone, I will allow them their quirks.  ****1/2

iTunes free single - We Have Band

We Have Band is the free iTunes download this week and as it happens, it is also part of my Rough Trade package this month so I’m going to look at the whole album instead of just the single.  The fact that I adore it only makes my job a bit more enjoyable.

This is really good.  Full-on dance music that you swear you should have heard before.  It’s not that the album is samey, it’s that the flavours throughout are very familiar.  With Gareth Jones of DM producing, that’s no accident.  The band’s own glib statement says that they’re aware of their similarities to Hot Chip, the Rapture etc but I think they’re selling themselves short. 

While they are definitely of an ilk, that doesn’t mean that they don’t do it really well.  You know when “Blue Monday” starts because everyone instantly knows it and are ready to go.  Go where?  It doesn’t matter – the power of that intro just propels people.  I think WHB has a similar (albeit greener) power.  They will only get better and this album is freaking great.  ****