In the grace of your love / I see you shining inside / In the grace of your love / No one can ever die

“In the Grace of Your Love” by the Rapture seems to be another album that slipped under (my) the radar in 2011 from another very well-known band of some repute. Will we look back at 2011 and think of its amazing richness of music as a landmark year? Sometimes I think not because there was just too much going on…

I know The Rapture best from the title track of their 2003 album “Echoes”.  I’m a massive fan of Misfits and can listen to that song ad nauseum. “Pieces of the People We Love”, their album after that, I know was lauded amongst some of my friends as one of the albums of the decade. Yet I didn’t/couldn’t really get it into it.

Seems a good time to try and rectify the Rapture balance by giving ITGOYL a good listening to (they’re fans of long album titles aren’t they?).

The album opens with the disco-punk stylings of “Sail Away” which is Magazine meets Donna Summer – I can see why people like them, they blend the best of different genres and come up with something totally fresh. It’s pretty meteoric in scale and it’s certainly a statement of intent, as album openers go. The only thing that slightly annoys is the tone of his voice, he does have a slight shrieking quality in his voice from time to time (and not only in this song). However, with the last minute to go it slips into something that sounds like a Turkish piece of music or perhaps an homage to Phillip Glass imitating the music of the sea. It’s almost as if the band is saying “Yes we’re a pop group, but we’re also something more and something avant-garde.”

“Miss You” and the crazy Russian-punk-disco (that’s the beats and accordion) “Come Back to Me” signal a lovelorn theme to the album, not dissimilar to The Walkmen’s Lisbon. However, the lyrics in “Miss You” seem to suggest that while the narrator misses the person they love, but “broken dreams and broken faces/I've run all the darkest races” suggests that there has been a toxicity or destructive quality to the relationship. “In the Grace of Your Love” and “Never Die Again” continue the lovelorn feeling – all of these songs point to this being a struggle with God and with Death, rather than a lover who has left.

I love the falsetto in “Blue Bird” – the song definitely has a Beach Boys feel to it (well, Beach Boys crossed with The Only Ones). It’s the surfing song of the album, the repeated line “I’ll see you on the other side” (as if it’s the other side of the wave), compelling us to look at the album cover in its 60s black and white glory.

“Children” is definitely a crowd-pleaser – and comes pretty close to a pop song. Is he saying that he and his girlfriend should have kids together? Nice way to win over the girl. Indeed, most of the songs are beat-heavy and head-nod-worthy, until you get to the final song “It Takes Time to Be A Man”. It’s almost like a coda: the song has a rockabilly feel to it, perhaps it’s the piano and guitar, but the drums are muted and quiet and then there’s the choir at the end, complete with hallelujah’s, taking you upwards.

“How Deep Is Your Love” is the best song on the album (no doubt it’s the first single). The piano is bombastic and the beats as good as any house tune out there. You get the feeling (redolent in other songs) that there’s almost a religious feeling to the song – it’s incredibly joyful and hands in the air. “Give me what I need to live/Let me come to you”.

On the whole this is an album I shake my head at – and wonder why I didn’t pick up on it earlier. It’s foot-stamping good fun, yet there is a depth and quality to it too that makes me question; the lyrics are enough to make me wonder, what does he mean? Is there something more? There’s a definite dance versus punk feeling going on as good as any LCD Soundsystem album. As Pitchfork say it so well: “This album is about sustained, earned love, as well as the forgiveness inherent in it.”

The Rapture @ Wikipedia

In the Grace of Your Love @ Metacritic

Pitchfork Review

Guardian Review

Think it's not what you say, what you say is way too complicated / For a minute though I couldn't tell how to fall out

I first heard Birdy on a mixtape at the 8 tracks website. It was her cover of Phoenix’ “1901”, a song I knew but not very well (despite friends who are so connected to Phoenix it’s almost like the band is a life support machine).  I liked it very much – her voice was like glass, delicate but strong, shattering and crystal-clear.

So I thought I better investigate the rest of her album, self-titled and released last year.

A covers album rests on the choice of songs (are they so well-known so that they can’t be covered? Or, on the other hand, does it become like a Saturday night at the karaoke bar?) and how they are interpreted (is it possible to be fooled into thinking it’s an original piece of music because it’s so different?) For example, a man covering a typically female song or vice versa, like Travis’ startling cover of Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time” or James Blake’s reinterpretation of Feist’s “Limit To Your Love”; or artists from different genres taking older songs and making them new, like Run DMC andAerosmith’s “Walk This Way”.

Now is a dangerous but also interesting time to be releasing covers records, depending on your perspective. With X-Factors, Pop Idols and various other talent shows blocking out our weekend schedules, she is either making a fantastic commercial decision. Or aligning herself with these 3-minute famers and selling out. But which is it?

It’s also interesting that it’s her first album… on the final song, an astonishing cover of Mew’s “Comforting Sounds”, she sings “nothing is pure anymore”.

Her approach is a little bit Adele, a little bit underground, a little bit indie, a little bit haunting as she seems to be described most – so she’s either doing some reverse psychology on us by getting us to think she’s cool, but really going for the lowest (laziest?) common denominator or she’s trying to bring back the cover song into the auspices of cool. Hmmmm.

It often depends on your perspective, or your emotional connection to the original song; Fleet Foxes’ “White Winter Hymnal” loses its Apalachian folk feel and becomes something close to mainstream female pop. Do you love the original too much to appreciate her version? Has she destroyed the feeling and/or authenticity of the song? “Skinny Love” doesn’t have the damaged delicacy of Bon Iver’s original version. Is this integral to the song? In some ways she brings something different to the National’s “Terrible Love” because the song is a strong female voice, rather than a gruff, gravelly man’s, and the song is sped up in tempo so becomes more a lighters-in-the-air number (complete with climactic end with layer upon layer upon layer of sound) rather than a quiet, introspective look at love gone wrong. What does the song suit best?

Some of the songs are very listenable and stand out in bright lights. They would make interesting excursions on mix-tapes or if you want to impress someone by putting on her cover of “Shelter” or “1901”. But the nagging feeling is that there is no cohesiveness. What brings the album together?

Her version of The Postal Service's “The District Sleeps Along Tonight” is ace though (interesting she didn’t cover the oft-covered “Such Great Heights” but the far more ‘difficult’ TDSAT) – it’s the rounds of voices and the way she chooses to approach the song that make it memorable. There was an element of unapproachability about the original – Birdy gives it a warmth and depth that didn’t come through in the original. That felt more stretched, more threadbare – hers is richer and perhaps more compelling, because it is so different, so far from the original.

Her version of The XX’s “Shelter” as well is pretty damn cool. Or is it the song making her cool? It’s still far from the original – but it has its breathy, ethereal feel. But again it sounds like something you’d hear on BBC Radio 2, rather than walking in Hoxton.

In many ways, a covers album has to work harder to impress you; you may like it more instantly, but in order for it to stick it has to do more than just be good. Birdy’s album is interesting and developed and makes me ask lots of questions of her interpretations and the songs – but I can’t help thinking she’d be saying more about herself and her outlook and her thoughts on music by releasing some original material. You don’t really want it to go all Joss Stone on her…

Birdy @ Wikipedia

Birdy @ Metacritic

BBC Review

Guardian Review

You may have the body / But do you have the song? / Let's make this happen

From one album that went a bit under the radar, to one that was much lauded and applauded around – today it’s Metronomy’s “The English Riviera”.

This album is the true heir of David Bowie’s “Hunky Dory” with large lashings of Gary Numan, the Specials, the Cure and a bit of English folk thrown in. Whilst listening to it, it had this amazing quality that I could picture both the English seaside, in a pastoral way, and the suburban ennui of living in an English seaside town with not very much to do.

I think, as well, it’s an album that proves that guitar music (with help from keyboards and drums/beats) can very much be a dance album. In fact, the way instruments are used on this album is very innovative – I felt like there were exclamations of excitement going off in my head each time an instrumental started in a song. The single “The Look” contains such luscious sounding keyboards, complimented with beats, that make you want to boogie. “Trouble” has multiple instrumental parts, sparkling guitars and an innovative use of voice sounding more like a computer (through a vocoder or voice distorter).  This song, most noticeably, allows the instruments to speak as if they were the vocals – each with equal measure of importance.

“We Broke Free” has a reigned-in feeling to it, as everything is tense and just on the edge. I felt like it would be a great song to accompany a scene from “Brighton Rock”, riding around town on vespas. The blasts of crazy sounding guitars against moments of quiet were also really interesting.

“Everything Goes My Way” sounds like Metronomy’s answer to the question ‘What is English salsa?’. It’s nice to hear a proper duet toward the end of the song where the female vocalist’s plight of returning love is reinforced by an answer from the male singer:

“But now you've got me back,
You know I'll never up and run
Yeah I'll stay in here, I stay right here”

You do get a slight feeling of insecurity, however, that all is not quite right because at the end of the song there is so much repetition “Love, I’m in love again”, as if to reinforce as well as impress upon the listener and the vocalist that she really is in love. Ok, we get it. “She Wants” also uses a lot of repetition, but this time it’s about being sleep-deprived “The hours come”. This song reminded me of the gloom of The Specials’ “Ghost Town”, and it’s a nice amplification: the gloom of the song against the gloom of sleeplessness.

“The Bay” and “Loving Arm” are synth heroes, straight out of the Gary Numan way of doing things. “The Bay” is probably the best dance track, awesome keyboard and bass combination and the guitar proving that guitars can dance too. It’s an amusing song lyrically as the bay is described as being all the places it’s not (Paris, London, Berlin, Hong Kong and Tokyo). Despite this, it’s still a place to go back to - I guess there's no place like home. “Loving Arm” uses even more amazing keyboards/synths/even a moog? to sound something akin to the theme tune of Doctor Who.  It also contains the spectacular lyric “I’m flying down the coast to love”.

“Corinne” (nodding vigorously to early Cure) and “Some Written” (genuflecting toward Rick Wakemen/Revolver era Beatles) have amazing keyboard solos – in fact, in the latter song the keyboards almost sound like a ukulele. “Corinne” is the lovelorn song “Oh Corinne I’ve got a pain in my heart for you” while “Some Written” tells the tragedy of getting someone’s number, but missing off one important digit.

It’s the perfect album length (like Laura Marling’s) without too much bulge (although the last two tracks almost feel like a coda rather than adding anything significant) but on the whole the album invigorates the English tradition of dancing to guitar music (with large lashings of keyboards that sound like everything except keyboards!). An ace album.

Metronomy @ Wikipedia 

The English Riviera @ Metacritic

Ptichfork Review

Guardian 2011 Review

Now all my rage been gone/I'd leave my rage to the sea and the sun

So from one faith-filled album to another … Part of the reason of this blog is examining albums that are gathering dust on my hard-drive/shelf/under the bed and pondering why I don’t listen to them. Laura Marling’s “A Creature I Don’t Know” is a perfect example. 

I loved, loved, loved her first two albums “Alas I Cannot Swim” and “I Speak Because I Can” yet somehow it feels like this 3^rd album faded into the background; I can’t remember hearing much about its release or seeing anyone rave about it at the end of the year.

When I first heard “Sophia” it was premiered on the radio and I was driving out of Glasgow on the way to a Hebridean adventure. It literally gave me goose bumps, it was that good.

However, today is the first day I’ve actually listened to the album the whole way through. Crazy.

And I sort of worry (in the way that you do about artists you love with something close to physical pain) that maybe it’s because it’s not as good as previous efforts. It starts to gain rhythm and momentum and genuine concern at “Sophia” and the last 2 songs have me gripped. Woe.

Although upon listening several times, the album bends its way into my subconscious more and more – it’s definitely not an instant grower, or at least not easily accessible until the last few songs.

There are the songs on this album with high production values, a depth to the music and a variety of instruments and voices: “The Muse”, “I Was Just a Card”, “Salinas” and “Rest in Bed” and then there are the traditional Laura Marling songs, where it’s just her and her guitar and the depth of feeling from her voice “Don’t Ask Me Why”, “My Friends” and “Sophia”.

As well she seems to be carrying a theme of the beast versus the muse through (“The Muse” and “The Beast” are the two songs vying against each other; from “the Beast” “Calling Sophia Goddess of Power, instead I got the beast”) which seems to fade away once we head to the last four tracks. I’m not sure, as well, why she is pleading with the muse in the first track when she’s released three albums in four years…

There are also songs which could easily be about her – “Night after Night” tells of a love that has been lost (perhaps through sickness) and “My Friends” tells of a love that supersedes all friends, previous lovers, family. This could relate to her faith, of course. And then there are the songs which tells stories, in the folk tradition – there is the same world-weary quality of her voice from previous albums which adds such weight to the stories she crafts, particularly on “Salinas”.

“Don’t Ask Me Why” feels like it could be the song of the terrible year that was 2011 – supporting us through recession:

“Those of us who are lost and low

We know how you feel

We know it's not right but it's real

But it's real.”

There doesn’t feel like a lot of development from her last album to this – it’s still brave and interesting and her voice is something different, she sounds like no-one else, and her lyrics are both intricate and delicate things – but it’s not like she has broken out the electronic or dubstep album. Perhaps that is why there hasn’t been a huge amount of fanfare surrounding “A Creature I Don’t Know”. For a while, it felt like an album I didn’t know … but it took some time, and I slowly warmed to it. 

Laura Marling @ Wikipedia

A Creature I Don't Know @ Metacritic

Pitchfork Review 

Guardian Review 

You can build a better future when you join the winning team / If you desire a bright tomorrow, you must build a brighter dream / Dare to let your dreams reach beyond you / Know that history holds more than it seems

Common’s mindblowing ninth studio album, “The Dreamer/The Believer” was released in 2011. Although I knew of him before 2011, I expect his claim to fame in that year (for all the wrong *and* right reasons) was his appearance at an evening of poetry at the White House as one the guests (and guest performers) of Michelle Obama.

This album is bookended by poetry;  the opening song “The Dreamer” ends with an inspirational piece from Maya Angelou urging us (well, more specifically Americans) to look back at our forebears and admire their sense of belief in their dreams that enabled them to travel from Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia to reach the promised land. “Pops Belief” closes the album with Common in a relaxed mood, praising God and the benefits He has shown Common in his life, choosing poetry rather than rapping to express this, and the belief he has in himself and his faith.
It is such a different way to embrace poetry – and how cool to open a rap album with Maya Angelou. It is so uplifting and so interesting. (Although ... sidenote .. who knows what's the truth)
Indeed, when Common raps it is at breakneck speed – it is so fast and furious that it requires all your concentration. When he's good, he's exceptional and it doesn’t feel lazy or trite; where possible Common claims to rap for the common person in the street about issues of socio-economic and racial importance. His rapping, particularly on “Gold” and “The Believer (featuring John Legend)" is so fast, it’s invigorating.
But it’s an album of two halves – there is the aspirational, inspirational, uplifting anthems to encourage, drive the listener on to make something better of their lives – to take courage from the past and aim for a better future.
“Blue Sky” is about aiming as high as you can to realise your dreams – using all aspects of your personality and tools at your disposal (intelligence, money, history, faith, family). “I'm the cum lauda, top of the class / Black Wall Street so my stock will never crash”. He wants the best for his family and his community. (Maybe it’s because I’m British, but some of this aiming goes beyond aspiring into the realm of hubris. Can he really compare his acting skills to Oscar winner Denzel Washington?)
In “Gold” he aims for the better things in life, but he takes the image of the arrival of the Magi in the here and now (well, at his own birth) as if to suggest that through belief and firm commitment, that the Lord has not forsaken us and that He can be amongst us, even the poorest of the poor.
“Cloth” is a beautiful song dedicated to a woman who doesn’t know her own beauty, but is beautiful from the inside out. “Like raindrops we fall in love” is a beautiful image of harmony and two rights coming together.
On the other side of the relationship line, “Lovin’ I Lost” is a painful, but realistic take on why people fall out of love. It’s heartfelt because it feels real, as if it’s not a pose but a memory that is being redressed in the song. “Rumors leaving tumors on my heart now / We fell in love huh just to fall apart now”.
My problem, as a listener, comes in the other half of the album, where Common is adopting this heavy-handed machismo pose so that he outdoes anyone who seeks to suggest he’s not the man, the rapper, the gangster that he is. Predictably, I suppose, this becomes pretty anti-women and rather violent. On “Raw (How You Like It)” he threatens to bottle (as in smash a bottle over someone’s head) another guy simply for suggesting he comes from Hollywood rather than Chicago. On “Ghetto Dreams” ‘his woman’ aspires only to owning shoes and frying pancakes in the nude, and that’s as far as she gets other than fucking and fighting with Common.
“Sweet” is perhaps the nadir of this pose (I’ve read online it’s a riposte to something Drake said about him):
“Yeah, man, y’all niggas man, you soft muthfuckers
Yeah my man, muthafcker
Then come around my crib
You know where I’m from
Some hoes ass niggas
Singing all around me man, lalala"
This is lazy and it’s derivative, and I get it’s what a certain element of his audience expect – but for me, no matter what else he says on the rest of the album, I just cannot find my way into his music if this is what his music is about.
So which Common do we believe? Which does he believe? One of these sides of him becomes inauthentic, therefore, because the other is so completely contradictory.  It’s a hollow pose, and somehow I can’t believe what he’s saying – if he contradicts himself so strongly from one song to another. For instance, he talks with great pride about his daughter and her being the hope of the next generation – yet are his hopes for her (from “Ghetto Dreams”) to “use her ass like a weapon”?

It seems incredulous. And ever so slightly disappointing because there is so much amazingness elsewhere to enjoy.

Common @ Wikipedia

The Dreamer/The Believer @ Metacritic

Paste Magazine Review

Guardian Synopsis

The only thing about a living a lie/Is just wondering when they’ll find out

It feels a bit serendipitous to move from Sun Ra to tUnE-yArDs’ "w h o k i l l", an album that floated about my peripheral vision until it shouted from the top of just about everyone’s best albums of 2011 list. 

It’s an album that owes a debt to free jazz (“Es-So” and “Riotriot” most pointedly), but as there's a lot more musical of history between 1965 and 2011 – also David Bowie, RnB, soul, reggae and American Indie.

It also feels a very political album, dealing with sexual, gender, socio-economic politics as well as familial relationships and politics on a national scale. I don’t know if it’s because whilst listening to this album, I was reading and absorbing the very excellent "Divine Magnetic Lands" by Timothy O’Grady, but the album is also a state of the nation address, what it is to be an American in 2011. That’s how the album begins and erupts into our ears with “My Country”.

What I also like about the album is that it’s a very androgynous album – from one song to the next, the vocalist sounds either male (albeit a kind of Black Kids-falsetto male voice) or female, the topics that are discussed are about boys and girls. In Verse 2 of “Gangsta” we’re asked “What's a boy to do if he'll never be a rasta?/ Singing from his heart, but he'll never be a rockstar”, but by verse three the boy has become a girl.

Added to that, it does a lot for caps lock and punctuation too.

The album is eclectic with a capital E. It veers from sensual seduction on ”Powa” to pop-sheen on the lead single “Bizness” to creepy Angela Carter-esque nursery rhyme on “Wooly Wolly Gong”. “Doorstep” is an almost brutal indictment of the police force, and random acts of violence whereas the next song “You Yes You” opens with “Now that everything is going to be ok”. “Es-so, potentially dealing with familial incest, ends on a police siren which is then incorporated into the refrain on the next song, “Gangsta”. Sirens also recall those ethereal beings that sang to Odysseus in The Odyssey, which feeds into the seductiveness of “Powa” - indeed who has the power on that song?  “Riotriot” begins like a teenage crush “I dreamt of making love to you”, except that the source of the crush is the man that put the narrator’s brother in handcuffs.  “Bizness” is upbeat and instantly catchy, with the pleading refrain “Please don’t take my life away”. “You Yes You” reverts and distorts sight and listening, so that the narrator wonders if she’ll ever see sound and hear light – though ‘sound’ and ‘light’ are also antonyms for understanding and right-ness.

Everything on a global scale seems to be refracted and reflected through the personal; issues of love, racial politics, women’s rights over their bodies painted on large scales enter small places like bedrooms and neighbourhoods – on “My Country” : “My country, 'tis of thee / Sweet land of liberty /How come I cannot see my future within your arms”.

It’s an unsettling album that asks the listener a lot of questions – not just in the challenging lyrics but in the change of style from song to song. Each song powers through as quick as possible until you get to the sleepy “Wooly Wolly Gong”. Samples of found music, sounds, voices are peppered through the album, and from song to song it’s difficult to wrap my mind around whether tUnE-yArDs is a multi-vocal group or just one person singing and twiddling knobs – certainly when I read her biography on Wikipedia, it was *not* what I expected!

The album grows and grows with each listen, it challenges and divides but it also delivers just the right amount of pop, punch and power without growing bloated and bilious. It rightly deserves to be one of the best albums of 2011.

tUnE-yArDs @ Wikipedia

w h o k i l l @ Metacritic

Pitchfork Review

Guardian Review

Words are falling down/Frozen on the ground/I’m trying to stop the light

One of my life goals is to spend time living in a Scandinavian country for at least a year, which hopefully I will get closer to in 2012 – so in honour of this ebullient goal, today’s album is “Oh Land” by Oh Land (or Nanna Øland Fabricius as she is known to her friends and family). 2011 was a fairly big year for Scandinavian ladies of pop (check out this nice link of the best Swedish videos of 2011) – with both Björk and Lykke Li releasing albums, and Robyn still storming her way through American hearts and minds.

Oh Land’s album follows in this Nordic tradition – there’s the kookiness and peppiness found on a Peter, Björn and John or Acid House Kings album, mixed with the endearing way she pronounces words with her Danish accent (most obvious when there’s a ‘s’ or ‘z’ in the word).  Early on, “Son of a Gun” is probably the closest thing to a traditional pop tune, and the opening few bars owe quite a debt to American R n B as well as the too-perfect-for-words rhyme on “Perfection”:

“I will follow you, you will be my main direction

I study you until I will get your

Everything you do is a gem in my collection

I follow you until I will get your perfection”

Or is it the definitive, pounding beat vying with the swooping, ethereal chorus making that song so right?

Despite the sweetness of Oh Land’s vocals and melodies, there’s something slightly spooky about each of the songs on the album – which reaches a peak once we’ve arrived at “Voodoo” with its shift from pop to electro-pop and on into the Bond-theme-esque grandiosity of “Lean”, the mythical, magical “Wolf and I” and “Human” and the swirling, sweeping, dream-remembering “White Nights”. There’s a feeling of otherworldliness in these songs, or at least a space without time – as if the boundaries of each have been elasticated beyond the horizon.  For you are the wolf, and I am the moon…

It’s the mixture of light and shade that she does very well – the music is sweet but the lyrics and themes are bitter or scary or there’s a sense of something unknown (sometimes fascinating, sometimes tragic, all kismet-heavy) approaching from just outside our consciousness. “And I feel like running, and I feel no pain/ I feel like running / When I'm lost within my frame” and “I am walking in my sleep/Living in a state between” which then reaches a resolution on “Helicopter” with Oh Land chasing after her dreams, her hopes and fate from within a helicopter.

We come back to earth on “We Turn It Up” – following our floating about the ether, we’ve managed to find ourselves on a bedroom-dancefloor with our hands pushing the ceiling and making ‘big box-little box’. The couple of times I’ve heard this song it’s reminded me of Sia’s “Clap Your Hands” from her 2010 album “We Are Born” (sidenote: it was interesting to read Oh Land has opened for Sia on her US tour in 2011.)

The album’s final track is “Rainbow” – there’s a definite Radiohead feeling to this song, and that's not just from the Stephen Hawking-like opening vocal – which is a nice way to end the album; it seems to sum up the previous contrariness of the album “nothing’s fast or slow” . It’s both a song where Oh Land is seducing a lover, as well as making a stand on her own, leaving us with more questions than answers – almost like a rainbow which never seems to end, and always offering us the elusive hope of gold.

The nice thing about this album - despite the fact that if someone sat me in a room and played this to me for the first time with no internet or album art to consult, I would reach the conclusion that Oh Land came from a Northern European country of long, open summer days and curious, dark, interminable winter nights – is that each song stands on its own, each song encompasses something different and unique to capture the imagination.

Oh Land @ Wikipedia 

Oh Land @ Metacritic

Guardian - Oh Land Interview