Alex's Fashionably Late Top 10 of 2008 pt. 2

The home stretch!

5. Cut Copy, "In Ghost Colours"
No better album has come out in this flavor since the groundwork was laid out in the late eighties by New Order and the Happy Mondays. Far from limply replicating the work of those bands, CC expertly incorporate the intervening twenty years of indie rock and the rise, fall and institutionaliation of house music. Which would be impressive enough, if it wasn't easy to just ignore that stuff and get sweaty on the dancefloor or in your bedroom like it's not even a basic thing whenever you hear "Hearts on Fire" or "Lights and Music". Dance music and rock music needn't have ever had an artificial wall erected between them, and listening to these mop topped Australians do their thing, it's kind of hard to imagine there ever was such a division.

4. Portishead, "Third"
"So we haven't put out a record in eleven years or so. I was thinking that instead of what made us massively popular in the nineties, what we might do instead is jettison any traces of trip-hop (which was kind of a made up genre anyway) and reinvent ourselves as a weird, seventies Krautrock band. And instead of our meticulous studio sound, let's dirty things up a lot, have lots of loose ends and oddball choices and generally make a record that sounds like we kinda jammed it out direct to tape. Oh and the first single will be an abrasive sea change on the order of Radiohead's 'Idioteque'*, and will be fucking genius. Does that sound like fun guys? It does? Okay good, you set up the echoplex and the Moog, I'll get Beth on the phone."

* Music writers of previous generations would likely have used Dylan plugging in as their point of reference here. You have permission to stab me to death and bury me in a shallow grave if I ever reference that largely aprocryphal nonsense.

3. Disfear, "Live the Storm"
I would give anything to live in a world where the meeting of Heavy Metal and Punk Fucking Rock sounded like this and not like hardcore, which is largely BORING. This record is a monster, it sounds like the greasy biker album that Lycanthropic Motorhead would make in between burning down your village, pillaging your livestock and drinking all the whiskey available to them regardless of vintage, pick sliding and basement show chanting all the way. Actually, regular Motorhead might do that stuff, but you get the idea. Featuring At the Gates vocalist Tomas Lindberg and production work from Converge's Kurt Ballou (him again!), "Live the Storm" can't be bargained with, can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and it absolutely will not stop. It is the most energizing album I have heard in ages and is the perfect soundtrack to basically any violently anti-social activity imaginable.

2. Fuck Buttons, "Street Horrrsing"
I'm sure somebody must have tried to do a pop noise record before, but chances are it was someone like the Boredoms and kind of sucked. Not so this gem, which happily marries the seemingly disparate worlds of fun catchy loop based music electronic music and hard, unforgiving white noise. Toss in some Portion Control style industrial and the occasional touch of oozy ambience and you have the album that I have returned to most over the past year, the one which demands constantly to be put on in any context, and to be listened to for it's entirety. I have hard time putting a finger on what makes it so compelling, devoid as it is of quaint ideas like songwriting and even "songs" themselves. Maybe it's the idea that pop music needn't be burdened with those concepts or silly qualities like accessibility or approachability. Maybe I just like having some british guy shout at me through a children's toy such that his voice distorts, while his buddy plays a toy piano through a fuzz pedal. Maybe I won't even understand. A number one record any other year if not for....

1. m83, "Saturdays = Youth"
Well would you look at that, Bruce I agree on the number one for the first time ever. I am way too personally invested in this album to EVER be able to be objective about it. I was listening to it at the exact moment my life fell apart in 2008. I was listening to it at the exact moment I finally realized that no matter what I was going to be okay. It has been a companion to me this year, the feelings I have for it are akin to those you might have for a beloved pet. I am incapable of not viewing it through that lens, so I tend to get gushy and sentimental when discussing it. It's hard to think of where to begin given that. It's a big record, open and warm, enveloping without smothering. It's atmosphere is omnipresent, whether you're hearing it loud over a PA or in tinny headphones. It sound like an album you know back to front from the first moment you hear it, I swear I knew the choruses to before getting thirty seconds into any given song. It sparkles like distant stars, soft and immeasurably far away. It's a timeless fantasy of what the eighties were, a platonic representation of what someone who might have never heard Kate Bush, This Mortal Coil and the Cure might imagine them to sound like. It's the sound of the first time you ever thought you were in love. It's the score to the moment when you realized that life is hard and confusing but mostly eventually turns out okay. It's a friend you haven't met yet.

I don't have anything to say about 'Saturdays = Youth' that will convince you of why it's the best album of 2008. I guess a lot of people don't feel the way I do about it. That's okay.

It's something special.

A brief interlude

Okay, I got like half a dozen half-written posts and still haven't put up the second half of my best of 2008 (12 more hours before the 15th yo!) but seriously, you gotta peep the new single from my personal pick for biggest crossover potential in first quarter 2009:

White Lies, "To Lose My Life"


Their catalogue is only three singles deep, but I effing love everything I've heard and the full length is due next week. Very exciting! I've described them as The Killers from an alternate reality where they ape Echo & the Bunnymen instead of New Order, and I think that's pretty god damn apt personally.

Alex's Fashionably Late Top 10 of 2008 pt. 1

As always, I am late to the party, holding a bottle of cheap fortified wine and bringing with me uninvited guests of dubious character. In all fairness, I am abiding by my rule that the Top 10 of the previous year can be posted any time up to the middle of January, or the release of the first great album of the following year. And since I haven't heard anything yet so far in 2009, I'm fucking golden.

As always, these opinions overlap somewhat with those of my colleagues, after all if we didn't share a sensibility we likely wouldn't be writing a music blog together. Also, my opinions are clearly always correct and dissenting opinions will be dealt with swiftly and in the most harsh fashion possible.

10. Nine Inch Nails, "Ghosts I-IV"
I remember hating on the noodly instrumental bits on "The Fragile" when it was released some 10 years ago now. As history has gradually shown that record to be flawed but much more substantial then my young brain was willing to accept, I've come to appreciate Trent's skill with short pieces of incidental music, little soundtracks divorced from his still occasionally adolescent lyrical themes. Ghosts is a pretty pure expression of that side of his work, marrying the man's undeniable ear for a catchy riff or synth patch with his studio virtuosity. Of course it's not much of a listen from beginning to end as it lacks continuity or album craft, but there are more than enough gems spread across two disks or one download to make it a memorable and notable release.

9. Genghis Tron, "Board up the House"
A testament to the spirit of experimentation that seems to have sprung up in the traditionally conservative world of metal. The fact that a group consisting of guitar, vocals, keyboards and drum programming can make one of the most blistering and dynamic metal records this year would certainly seem to suggest that the winds of change have not passed over that most brutal of genres without effect. Nominally a post-metal/IDM (that's "Intelligent Dance Music" a term which is almost as meaningless as it is dumb, natch) crossover, 'The Tron' have managed to marry the spastic energy of their previous releases with a newfound sense of structure and songwriting chops I wouldn't have expected from them. Perhaps it's the influence of producer Kurt Ballou of Converge fame, who's track record for 2008 is pretty impressive. Regardless, I don't own any records that sound like "Board up the House" which is notable in and of itself. It's the best and likely only sonic outing of it's kind in 2008.

8. Memmaker, "How to Enlist in a Robot Uprising"
A side project from Iszoloscope mainman Yann, Memmaker is way less complex Ant Zen noise, and way more banging club techno/electro with an ear for a bit of dancefloor distortion. Although there's plenty of DJ candy on the album, it's the breakdowns and less dancey pieces that really highlight the attention to craft that went into making the record. Big leads, more complex then you might expect beats and cute sample work make for a memorable and substantial album for the dancefloor, the headphones and even for a little high energy housework.

7. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!"
For the last couple of years I was starting to suspect that as a fan of Nick Cave I was likely occupy that special hell reserved for fans of once great artists, the circle where you don't actually enjoy any of their latter day output but still buy it and struggle to derive some kind of value from it. That's probably why "Dig Lazarus, Dig" is such a welcome surprise. Allegedly revitalized by the departure of Blixa Bargeld who vehemently opposed the writing or performance of anything lighthearted, fun, or rock n' roll like (or so Cave would have us believe in numerous toss-Blixa-under-a-bus type interviews) DGD is everything I want from a Bad Seeds album. Upbeat and blackly humorous, weird and atmospheric and stuffed with gutter intellective, it offers the strongest songwriting from Nick and company since "Murder Ballads". If he can keep the momentum from this and his Grinderman project rolling, we might have a string of good records from everyone's favorite Evil Elvis.

6. The Presets, "Apocalypso"
I don't have much to offer on this one that my fellow contributors haven't already covered, and better than I would have to boot. So suffice to say that "Apocalypso" is the sound of a band obliterating the softmore slump barrier and delivering on all the potential and expectations promised by their debut. "This Boy's In Love", "My People" and "Talk Like That" are amongst the greatest club bangers of the year in any genre, but the album is listenable and enjoyable in any context.

Numbers 5-10 tomorrow!

The Return of The Return of the Durutti Column

Vini Reilly of The Durutti Column's never been a showboat, either in his musical style or in the promotion of his craft. Remaining loyal to Factory long after Bernard and the gang had jumped ship, and even returning to the fold for Tony Wilson's brief revival of the brand as Factory Too, Reilly seems to have always taken the path of least resistance, even if it's cost him sales-wise. Durutti Column releases seem to have been directed by a sense of willful obtuseness: low circulation, reissues quickly going out of print. Debut album (cheekily titled "The Return of the Durutti Column") came in a sandpaper sleeve, forcing the buyer to keep it separate from their collection lest other covers get scratched. Obviously a label like Factory attracted those motivated by a desire for unlimited expression, not exposure, but if I'd written the lion's share of an album as well known and loved as "Viva Hate" I'd be reminding people of that constantly while promoting my own material, not to mention putting the smooth on girls in the disco by pointing out that they're dancing to my guitar playing whenever "Suedehead" gets spun.

If I may wax a tad romantic, for me the Durutti Column's music has always been inextricably connected with images of Reilly's face, which has become a favourite subject of Natalie Curtis' photography (yes, that Natalie Curtis). Always gaunt, always topped by an unmanageable mop, Reilly seems the sort who wants nothing more than to be left in peace and to make his music. And his music itself is so free, so expressive, so content to simply explore whatever pastoral soundscapes it comes across (cheap comparison: The Durutti Column sounds like what would've happened if Erik Satie had been born in 1950s Manchester and had picked up a guitar and echo pedal) that it seems a shame that so few have had the chance to hear it, when it's so inviting, unassuming and rewarding.

All of this has been a preamble to reporting that, prompted by the rediscovery of a cache of old master tapes, a box set consisting of the first four Durutti Column albums with two bonus discs to boot will be seeing the light of day sometime this year. This is fantastic news for die-hard Factory heads like yours truly, as well as young'uns just beginning to look beyond the Joy Division/New Order monolith and discover what was so special about that time, that label, that city.

The Durutti Column, "Sketch For Summer"

Ice MC, "Scream"

When I was about ten a (rather well off) friend of mine went on an exchange trip to Germany. When he came back he played me a few mix tapes he'd made by recording songs off the local pop radio stations. Given the time period and the location, it's no surprise that the majority of the tunes were eurodance, although I certainly had never heard of the term at the time. I remember hours of D&D sessions which used those tapes as a soundtrack, but what sticks in my mind more than anything is a track by a British bloke named Ice MC. While Ice MC never made much impact on this side of the pond until his "Think About The Way" was featured in Trainspotting (it's the BONG-DIGGY-DIGGY-DIGGY-BONG-DIGGY-BONG" cut in case you need a refresher), he won my ten year-old heart with a bit of horror-themed silliness called "Scream". See if you can figure out the reason why:



No idea? Wind it back to 2:46. The man breaks the track full-stop to announce that the terror inspired by simply listing a ream of horror movie characters has been sufficient cause for him to lose control of his bowels. The sheer nerve of this, coupled with the inherent hilarity of the word "plopping" to a ten year-old (plus the cutting of the word immediately afterward), was enough to send my friend and I into unstoppable paroxysms of laughter. That small portion of the mix tape was rewound and replayed ad nauseum. Neither of our parents could get us to stop insisting at the dinner table that we, too, were plopping in our pants.

I hadn't thought about the song for years until just now. Was it still as hysterical as I remembered, I wondered? Was the idea of a eurodance song which prominently featured the word "plopping" still the funniest thing I could ever imagine? Yes. Yes it was.

Slept On: Vampire Rodents

In this and further Slept On installments, we'll be shouting out bands past and present (but mostly the former) who never received their due.

Vampire Rodents were a sample-based outfit who released five albums over the course of the 90s. A far cry from the quirky synth-gurgles of fellow sample-fiends Severed Heads, core members Daniel Vahnke and Victor Wulf (50 points for not needing stage names to sound industrial as fuck) turned to musique concrete and other abrasive forms of recent classical music for their inspiration, while their DIY ethic (pictured at left: custom notation for sample orchestration) led them to collaborate with Dan Gatto of Babyland infamy on several tracks. Jarring string sections were thickly layered overtop of rackety, Foetus-like percussion, with occasional forays into funk and disco breaks. It's what we wanky critics like to call "difficult" music, and chronic problems with record labels prevented much more than a cult following from ever emerging. I can't help but think that had Nettwerk maintained its initial commitment to legitimately underground music (rather than selling short their foundational artists once Sarah McLachlan broke in the US), they could've helped turn Skinny Puppy's fanbase on to Vampire Rodents.

Items of interest:

-Official MySpace page with unreleased archival pieces.
-An entertaining and caustic interview from 1996 in which Vahnke holds forth on sampling, the record industry and the like.
-The eBay account where Vahnke sells old VR records from time to time, although contacting him through MySpace might be a better gamble.

Vampire Rodents, "Trilobite"

Evilyn's Top 5 albums of '08

In no particular order, here are a few of my favourite CDs from this year that you should check out.

MSI - “If”
Not only does this band put on an entertaining live show but they also actually make music worth paying for, which I know, has become so passé this decade. This is usually the part of the review where I tell you which songs on the CD to check out and why they rock, however with this particular album ALL OF THE SONGS RULE, so just get this CD and TURN IT THE FUCK UP!

Bloc Party- “Intimacy”
The first track on this CD is going to remind you of the Chemical Brothers “Setting Sun” because of the way the song opens and the drum beats that follow. This is another CD that you can pretty much listen to front to back; it has a great mixture of sound, from slow songs to fast dancey tunes that make you wanna shake yo’ moneymaker.

The Killers- “Day & Age”
It wasn’t quite what I expected from the Killers this time around, a little less dance-floor friendly, but nonetheless an excellent CD filled with a wicked selection of tunes. The track “Spaceman” is so awesome it’s even featured on Rockband 2, so you can pretend you are Brandon Flowers, and who doesn’t dress up like the people they impersonate in Rockband anyway?

Cut Copy- “In Ghost Colours”
As I mentioned in a previous post on Def In June, this CD pretty much rules, and after seeing them perform a live show at the Commodore it only reassured my love for this band. Get out your keffiyeh and your skin tight tapered pants and dance like a queer to this album, its worth it.

The Raveonettes- “Lust Lust Lust”
The combo of doo-wop and pop rock that this band creates make you want to wear a poodle skirt and a bouffant, only the poodle skirt will be of a skeleton dog and your hair will be pink. A few of my favourite tracks on this CD are “You want the Candy” and “Dead Sound”