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.  ****

Who's Bad? TNPS, Delphic, Vampire Weekend

Back from the states and badder than ever.  Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmakuh and New Year and that the easing into 2010 hasn’t been entirely painful.  We did the east coast for three weeks, celebrating everything from births (word up Patrick and Gracie) through to an 80^th birthday in Florida.  I’m entirely exhausted and that wasn’t aided by the violent bout of food poisoning I dealt with from 4am yesterday, but I’m pleased to be home and yes, pleased to be back to a normal weight even if it took a Moroccan parasite to get me there.

Now on to the important stuff – what has everyone been listening to all month?  I’m way behind in my bellyaching so I think the time has come to get my finger out.  Please send me some shout-outs for new music.  I’m running out of fantastic suggestions and need some more.

These New Puritans – Hidden

What starts out with a Salvation Army band song and leads directly into Aphex Twin?  Must be These New Puritans.  And the Bartnett twins have released their second effort, Hidden, at a good time if you consider how well their fellow Southend-on-Sea scenesters, The Horrors, are doing at the moment.  But TNPS is a different kind of band altogether.  Or are they?

Like their compatriots, TNPS grew up out of the Experimental Circle Club (ECC) which grew out of the edgier Junkclub, mother of Essex’ Southend Scene, both vehicles for sub-mainstream clubby music.  It’s a good idea at its core:  a floating club night devoted to bringing a different sound to a select group who really want to hear it.  And of course if you’ve got the right people making the music and the right people listening to it, it’s also a venture which proves fairly lucrative.

The NME had a lot of good stuff to say about TNPS last album, Beat Pyramid, ultimately saying that they were surprised by “a singularity of vision that just shouldn't happen to 20-year-olds.”  But, let me ask you, when else in life does one truly have a singularity of vision?  Before all the passion gets subdued by dayjobs and middle-management, that’s when.  And that’s 20, pure and simple.  I always want to laugh at people who are so surprised by the standard of art produced by adolescents.  Teenagers feel everything as if it was their last emotion, as if this is the one that is going to kill them or save them or at least get them laid which is tantamount to the same thing.  As we all get older, we lose that desperation.  It’s there beneath layers of responsibility and carrying on, but it’s quelled enough that we just don’t run out as frequently at age 40 to make ground-breaking music.  We don’t even go out to listen to it.  And no, I'm not 40.  I just feel like I'm 80.

But back to our lovely boys.  Now listen – some of this is pretty self-indulgent.  There are flutes for christsake.  Flutes!  But - and this is a big but – it’s very interesting.  I have to say, it’s not interesting enough to make it onto my greatest albums of all time list, but I am glad I listened to it.  It makes me feel like I have a soul buried somewhere in there.  I have a vague recollection of listening to similar sounds when I was 20 and I’m glad they reminded me of that.  ****

ITune free download – “This Momentary” Delphic

Acolyte is finally out.  Hurray!  For those of you (I think there are one or two… seriously) who have been reading this from the beginning, you’ll know that Gills suggested Delphic way back in October.  Well the new album is as great as the EP for “This Momentary” was when we first listened to it.  Run run run to listen to Acolyte.  As I said before, this is getting ready to go out music.  Remember when it was as much fun to get ready as it was to go out?  So much promise.  So much alcohol.  Ah.  Those were the days.  ****1/2

Recommendation from ME - Contra – Vampire Weekend

Don’t you feel like “Horchata” has been out for years?  I think it has been.  And although no one recommended that I listen to them, I’m going to recommend Vampire Weekend to you.  Yeah I know, you all already know.  If you like that, you should try Radiohead and while you’re at it, there’s this great new band, the Rolling Stones.  Har-dee-har.  I don’t care what you say, Contra is fan-freekin-tastic stuff.  No adjustment time to listen to this album.  Surf-rocky and ska-ey and lovely lovely lovely.  And what the hell is Horchata anyway?  I’ll tell you.  According to Wikipedia, “Horchata or orxata is the name for several kinds of traditional beverages, made of ground almonds, sesame seeds, rice, barley, or tigernuts (chufas).”  There.  Now you know.  ****1/2