This, Chromatics’ fourth album, opens with a cool, detached cover of Neil Young’s “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” and with this song it’s immediately apparent that Kill For Love is an entirely different prospect from their last album, 2007’s Night Drive.  That record featured a cover of Kate Bush’s “Hounds of Love”, albeit filtered through Chromatics’ distinctive disco- and dream pop-influenced new wave aesthetic, but with Bush’s eccentric pop sensibility retained.  Chromatics’ choice of source material is indeed indicative of the ambition and tone of the albums to which they belong, and as signalled by “Hey Hey, My My”, Kill For Love explores the downtempo, textured, melancholy, and reflective end of their work.  Chromatics, who hail from Portland, are comprised of singer Ruth Radelet, guitarist Adam Miller, drummer Nat Walker, and multi-instrumentalist, producer, and glam rock throwback Johnny Jewel, who obviously wears his influences on his, er…moniker.  Radelet’s disconnected delivery is framed perfectly from the start: her voice bears an honest and world weary weight, yet her detachment emphasizes the isolation of the lyrics and the chilly instrumentation of the music enveloping it.  It is she who makes “Hey Hey, My My” such a success (surprising though it is at first) and sets the tone for the remainder of the next 90 minutes.  Jewel has acknowledged that the band considered releasing Kill For Love as a double album proper, and it’s true that the 16 tracks chosen for inclusion here lead to a sprawling and attention span-challenging single listen of a record, but Kill For Love is truly at its best like this, as a cohesive package, offering musical as well as emotional highs and lows befitting its dramatic and ambitious proportions.

The title track, “Kill For Love” closes the statement of intent that “Hey Hey, My My” opened with the lyrics “Everyone’s got a secret to hide/Everyone is slipping backwards/I can’t remember if I like what I said/I can’t remember it went straight to my head/But I killed for love.”  Shimmering synths and swirling, multitracked guitars offer an emotional counterpart to these thoughts, the music seemingly shifting between past and present in its reverence for the synthy eighties and simultaneous concern for remembering hazy past deeds.  “The Page” is as addictive as any dark, gothy retro synthpop, fusing the literary imagery of ink, writing, and books with the alienation of a dark and dripping cityscape.  The combination of melody, words, and atmosphere culminate intoxicatingly, illustrating perfectly the sadness of nostalgia, comforting and wistfully beautiful in its familiarity.  “Lady” opens with a shuffling synth pulse and is soon filled out with a stuttering counterbeat.  Radelet softly intones gender-defamiliarizing lines like “If I could only call you my lady/Baby I could be your man” while dynamic contrasts and increasing numbers of steadily pulsing percussion, electronics, and a good measure of analogue-reminiscent fuzz round out the mid-tempo groove of this song.

That slightly scratchy quality is carried over into the next track, “These Streets Will Never Look the Same”, but here an alienating processed vocal is featured, making the dystopian lyrics even more sinister.  The words “Spent my life inside this room/And disappeared some more each day/I get so lonely all the time/I try to find my way back home” offer a glimpse into an electronic, highly controlled environment in which nostalgia isn’t an answer but a curse.  The repetitive refrain of “The screen stayed flashing in my mind” and several lengthy seconds of disconnected feedback close the song on an outright menacing note.  “Broken Mirrors” is an example of the textural subtleties Chromatics achieve on their instrumental numbers, in this case the slow burn of layered synths and sheer swatches of guitar creating a gratifyingly long buildup that does sound remarkably like wandering through the city on a sodden, depressed night.

“The Eleventh Hour” is a slight reprieve from the more percussive, beat-driven tracks featured on Kill For Love, offering an austere string-like introduction and melting away into silence before introducing a dark, barely audible pulse that flickers and then fades.  Finally, “The Eleventh Hour” counts down into next song “Running From the Sun”, itself offering the juxtaposition of two piano chords and that processed vocal again.  The bareness of the verses is augmented with drums for the refrain and then makes way for a giddily retro electronic break.  It succeeds in giving this moody, textural piece some welcome humour as well as stylistic reference points.  The simplistic opening figure of “Birds of Paradise” is carried through the song, taking turns with Radelet’s vocal line.  She sings “In the setting sun we flew away/To a broken kind of paradise” while alternating piano and buzzing synthesizers accompany her into that unlikely mixture of reality and utopia.  “A Matter of Time” is not nearly so optimistic, with the words “Cry yourself to sleep again/The past is your only friend tonight/Your life is only a dream tonight/We all cry alone” further cementing the theme of painful reality taking over from dreamlike past.  “At Your Door” offers more harshness: “It’s like we’re all frozen now/Just like ice in a glass.”  This time, though, human companionship does offer some comfort in the form of hope, even though it’s not a solution for the ennui and isolation facing us: “You know love never turns out the way we all plan/But the door is still open so give me your hand.”

A voicemail message is at the literal and metaphorical centre of “There’s a Light Out on the Horizon” and it’s an absolutely haunting reminder of the space and circumstances that separate people, despite the constant connections we make.  It seems to be suggesting that no matter how many people are split up and for whatever reasons, we will continually forge human connections of infinite variety to try and make meaning out of our lives.  At the same time, meaningful connections and relationships are made from endless coincidences and chance encounters.  “The River” closes Kill For Love on an appropriate note: the anonymity, missed encounters, and loneliness of the city are given their full and final due.  As maudlin as these words are, there’s some hope in the final couplet of “The river’s thirst is so unkind/But I’m still here waiting for you.”  An immensely satisfying treatise on the connections between isolation, media, urban landscapes, nostalgia, and lost connections, Kill For Love depicts Chromatics at perhaps the height of their career and most certainly their most powerful and evocative work yet.

—

“It’s me.  Just wondering if you got my text.  Anyway.  I’m gonna go to bed pretty soon.  I hope you’re okay out there…wherever you are.  Goodnight.  I love you.”

Chromatics – The Page

Chromatics – These Streets Will Never Look the Same

Chromatics – Birds of Paradise

Late, late, for an important date…I know, this mix is late.

As a belated tribute to Record Store Day a couple of weeks ago, I want to feature some independence for this mix. Instead of independent record shops, which are hugely important to the indie music fan ecosystem, I will be putting a spotlight on some fantastic independent record labels. During the 70s and 80s there was a boom in independent labels, birthing such legends as Rough Trade, Postcard, Stiff, Sub Pop, Cherry Red, Dischord, Sarah, Mute, Heavenly, Slumberland, and 4AD. Alex Ogg documents the British side of this story in Independence Days: The Story of UK Independent Record Labels (not the most fluidly written book, but a useful resource nonetheless). The freedom and immediacy of DIY allowed for releases that likely would not have been available otherwise. A lack of resources and knowledge can often be the catalyst for intense creativity. Providing an alternative to major label acts was an exhilarating development fraught with the conflict between idealistic art and realistic finances. Sometimes it meant “selling out” more than cashing in. As one Audio Antihero tagline proclaims, independent labels are often “Specialists in Commercial Suicide,” but the key word is “specialists.” Like independent record shops, these small, specific labels, founded by fans and musicians, are carefully created and curated, serving the consummate music lovers who can’t find what they need in the mainstream and who long for a bit of serendipity in their musical experiences.

At this time of global hyper-acceleration, independent bands and their labels can be particularly ephemeral, and ultimately, I suppose quite collectible. They can pop up online for a couple of years only to disappear in a cloud of cache. These days, a music blog can often lead to a sideline in the DIY record industry (17 Seconds and Song, by Toad spring to mind). New business models abound. Swedish indie label Labrador functions as a labour of love whose owners hold day jobs, and The Indelicates-founded Corporate Records is the ultimate DIY model, where the non-profit label is really a facilitator rather than a company. In this age of digital distribution, Soundcloud, and Bandcamp, independent labels have become more available than ever, but have also often become even more innovative about how they present the physical versions of their music. Many twee labels have opted for the cute, crafty, and diminutive aesthetic, selling 3” compact discs or wrapping their discs in soft fabrics and glitter glue. From plush toy ghosts sold by Sways Records in Salford, to werewolf brooches and wooly socks from Antique Beat in London, music has found a home in an ever-expanding universe of tangible contexts. In the case of Fika Recordings, the label plays off its name, the Swedish word for “coffee break,” and includes a tea bag and cake recipe with each purchase. Gerry Loves Records, a Scottish label which releases vinyl and cassettes, pays such close attention to aesthetic detail I’m often afraid to open the handmade record sleeves. These are not so much cynical marketing ploys (with these kinds of negligible profit margins, would you really bother hand-stitching toys and knitting socks if not for other, more creative, purposes?), but instead, as accents to the worlds these labels create. These small, fan-led aesthetics become unique, self-contained ways of being that co-habit with the styles of music being released. Web designers, graphic artists, writers, club promoters, crafters, flash game designers, and filmmakers can all join forces with musicians (or be musicians themselves) to create cultural enclaves where music is just one of their many dimensions. The Indelicates are an outstanding case study. They strike me as highly talented people who cannot stop being creative; whether designing necklaces, making fudge, or writing picture books, they act on ventures as the ideas occur to them: adventure capitalism, perhaps.

Incidentally, Gerry Loves Records also demonstrates another aspect of independent labels that I enjoy so much: the personal interaction. I received a hand-written thank-you letter from Andy Lobban, who co-runs the tiny Edinburgh-based label and who also happens to have been born in my hometown Winnipeg. This genial kind of gesture has become common practice among indie labels; whether a handwritten postcard from Matthew Young at Song, By Toad Records, or a personal message scrawled by Keith TOTP across the outside of the padded envelope, they are gracious acts that make you smile.

Independent labels featured in this mix:

Audio Antihero
Bleeding Gold Records
But is it Art?
Cloudberry Records
Corporate Records
Fika
Filthy Little Angels
Fortuna Pop
Gerry Loves Records
Hello Thor Records
Labrador Records
Odd Box Records
Riot Factory
Stroboscopic Records
Song, By Toad Records

If you like what you hear, support these labels, and reach out to those as-yet-undiscovered, strange, little cul-de-sacs of cyberspace to keep discovering the intriguing stuff. Welcome to the impractical, wonderful domain of split-singles, vinyl EPs, fanzines, and cassette-only releases.

Download Myxomatosis #5 here.

The Same Rules Always Apply – Captain Polaroid
Dinosaur – Sarandon
Pearshaped – Milky Wimpshake
Agnostic Nightmare – Slottet
I Hate Your Band – Keith TOTP
The End of the Affair – Friday Bridge
UR Road – Sameblod
Emitter – Miaoux Miaoux
Wojtek the Bear – Fighting Kites
Like a Bird Pulling Up at a Worm – We Show Up on Radar
Intercity Baby – The Kensingtons
Optimism is Disappointing – Hehfu
Walking on Eggshells – King Post Kitsch
This World – stanleylucasrevolution
What You Don’t Have – Meursault
12 000 Sentinels – Benjamin Shaw
French Magazines – Rock Stone
Towerblock – Trapped in Kansas
Why Do Today What You Can Put Off Until Tomorrow? – Pelle Carlberg
Nothing Much to Say – The Librarians
Feral Fanzine Frenzy – Falling & Laughing

This year’s Record Store Day at Into the Music turned out to be a rather notable one. Though I harboured some absurd hope that I may find a copy of the RSD 7” release of Go-Kart Mozart’s “New World in the Morning,” I soon discovered that the best I was going to do in the middle of the RSD melee was a vinyl copy of McLusky’s McLusky Do Dallas and a 7” copy of “Kick Out the Jams” on vinyl the colour of raspberry cheesecake. However, in a twist of fate perhaps even more absurd than my wish for “New World in the Morning,” the find that made me weak in the knees was a used vinyl copy of The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories. So weak, in fact, I managed to miss the second Felt album in the bin, which Laura duly purchased. These are the first signs of Lawrence that I’ve ever seen in this record shop in the ten years I’ve been a customer. It was a happy and strange coincidence considering the resurgence of interest in Lawrence in the past couple of years. It used to be difficult just to track down copies of Felt CDs – at least where I live. Nine years ago, Cherry Red Records decided to reissue the Felt albums on CD; they were a rather Spartan affair without nostalgic liner notes and without much beyond the cardboard sleeve designed by Paul Kelly. I began to collect them several years back. Then last year, Californian duo Girls released a limited edition heart-shaped piece of vinyl entitled “Lawrence,” an aptly woozy instrumental tribute to the reclusive frontman of Felt, Denim, and Go-Kart Mozart. Then came Kelly’s documentary film, Lawrence of Belgravia, which originally screened at the British Film Institute last year and is currently making its way across select UK cinemas. Having heard Lawrence talk about it on radio shows and having read numerous articles about it, I’m desperate to see the film; however, I suppose I have to wait just as I seemingly have to wait to purchase even a digital version of “New World in the Morning” (the odd limitations of copyright and distribution in the international iTunes system). Lawrence began giving more interviews on radio and online, and even hosted his own Domino Radio show. Even Tim Burgess expressed his love for Lawrence—something I found a bit odd until I noticed Burgess’s Lawrence-inflected intonation on part of the chorus in The Charlatans’ “North Country Boy” when it came on the radio a couple of weeks ago. Another more recent development concerning Lawrence, perhaps to build on the recent interest, was the limited edition of 1000 books of Felt photographs, quite simply entitled Felt: The Book.

This book, published by Fabrice Couillerot, Lora Findlay, and Paul Kelly with First Third Books, and signed by Lawrence, is a fitting tribute to the band, somehow exclusive and luxurious whilst plain, clean, and unassuming. The greyish covers complement the many black-and-white images inside; the simple word “felt,” in elegant, light sans-serif, is engraved in the front cover, a shadow melting into the general greyness, a half-impression, an indentation begging to be discovered. In fact, the few colour photographs that do appear in the book seem exceptionally lurid and startling, as though they’re encroaching on the soft, monochromatic world of Felt’s vintage timelessness. Bob Stanley writes the foreword, and is suitably enthusiastic in the way music fanatics often are, assigning life-changing properties to purchasing Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads to Death. He highlights Felt’s gauziness, mystery, and lack of commercial success, the latter being the most common narrative when discussing Lawrence generally. It is a narrative that Lawrence perpetuates himself – the first photo in the collection, which is of three-year-old Lawrence looking on in distress as his older sister holds the toy she’s taken from him, is accompanied by his text: “A portentous snap – so prescient. The prize has been swiped and he stands alone – miserable.” Stanley ends his foreword with his first meeting of Lawrence in 1989, a meeting he is glad took place at the end of the Felt run because it preserved the romantic enigma of the band for him yet allowed him access to the Denim years. The Saint Etienne, Kevin Pearce, Heavenly, and Lawrence connection forms one big, blurry, beautiful mess. Paul Kelly, who used to play with Saint Etienne, directed Finisterre, a fascinating psychogeographic journey through London. It featured a Saint Etienne soundtrack, which, in turn, owed a debt to the likes of Felt’s Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads to Death. And of course, Finisterre also featured voiceovers from Lawrence. And a script largely written by Kevin Pearce. Theirs is a world of fanzines, cult successes, indie mythology, fervent fandom, modish style, and beauty in urban mundanity. It is world that was brilliantly rendered in the series of stills in Finisterre, and also in the stills of Felt: The Book.

Whether Lawrence intended it to be or not, the book is a document of his own narcissism and Type A personality. Of course the book is also indicative of the singular vision and divorcement from reality he writes of in his introductory paragraph in the book. Perhaps they are the same thing. They are attributes that made Felt both extraordinary and impossible. Lawrence openly writes about his frustration with his band members, and what he perceived to be a lack of seriousness and passion for the band. At the same time, he chooses band members according to how lustrous their hair is; he chooses guitars according to which one would look the best. He admits to his own paranoia about photographs of himself, asking to keep all negatives, so they wouldn’t end up in the wrong hands. To accompany a series of photographs of the band in his bedroom, Lawrence writes: “From day one I was reluctant to take photographs outdoors because I refused to be at the mercy of the elements. I think that was a particularly wise decision from one so young.” He outlines the importance of the band’s cohesive look, ostensibly one he created himself: the checked shirts to invoke Richard Lloyd on the cover of Marquee Moon and John McKay on the sleeve for Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “The Staircase (Mystery)”; thin Doc Marten soles; 50s-style peg trousers, a look which would later be pillaged by the pretentious S.C.U.M. (alarmingly, lead singer, Thomas Cohen, even seems to have stolen Lawrence’s “Primitive Painters” hat and the moody glare from beneath a dark fringe); and old leather jackets, which had to be different from the types of jackets worn by The Ramones.

In a striking two-page spread following Lawrence’s anecdote about touring Europe with his disinterested bandmates, Lawrence’s head appears in the bottom corner in front of Edvard Munch’s “The Worker on His Way Home”; he is dwarfed by the large nightmarish painting of hollow-eyed workers, who look like they are either dissolving or emanating from within flames. With his eyes downcast, Lawrence takes on a martyr-like pose in front of a strong indictment of industrial labour. He comes to embody both the cultivated apartness of many of the images and the text he provides for a different set of photographs: “Any activity that demanded effort was, in the end, left to me. Even acts of vanity.” A photo of Lawrence’s reflection in an ornate mirror, entitled “Me and my mirror in my room,” speaks to the essence of Lawrence on so many levels, it may as well be a tower block. The text beside the photo makes me more uncomfortable than most of the other pieces about his control issues. Lawrence recounts his time with a girlfriend named Vikki, who he convinced to steal a mirror from a hotel room: “Vikki was a great kid – I could get her to do anything.”

Another fascinating dimension of the book is found in the opening pages of each year/section organizing the groups of images from 1980 to 1989. Each year begins with a page of short lists of cultural texts, ranging from film titles to book titles, from album titles to live performances, from documentaries to music press articles. The implication is that these were important influences on Lawrence’s art and thought during these specific years. Just as meticulously curated as his photo archives, which he had kept organized and labelled and could present to Couillerot when the idea for this book came about, these lists present a highly specific construction of reality to accompany the carefully chosen representation by the photographs. Lawrence’s interests are perhaps both expected and unexpected. The post-punk indie favourites, like Joy Division, Sudden Sway, Echo and the Bunnymen, Win, Fire Engines, The Teardrop Explodes, and Orange Juice, in his lists seem natural as inspirations for his own DIY aesthetic. The Pop Art/Andy Warhol/Factory references and Beat Poets also seem to fit with the romance of the loner, the extreme control over one’s own microcosm and image, and the absorption with self-destructive fame. I can also understand Lawrence’s affinity for documents of deliberate isolation from society, including the two Edies of the Grey Gardens documentary and Marjorie Wallace’s coverage of “The Silent Twins,” June and Jennifer Gibbons (the latter also interestingly taken up by Nicky Wire in the lyrics of “Tsunami,” the Manic Street Preachers being yet another node on the Heavenly, Kevin Pearce, Saint Etienne network). Then there are films like Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now, which probe the darkness and corruption of humanity in the context of the Vietnam War, and obscure road movies like Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins. Additionally, Lawrence includes films that deal with ostensibly real street narratives about young people, including Pixote and Wir Kinder Vom Bahnhof Zoo. I suppose, in a sense, all of these texts are about being outside of society, whether through escape, rejection, revenge, or gritty voyeurism. These little lists without explanation are what you would imagine to be on Lawrence’s Facebook profile page if he were to have one.

Why the seemingly recent flurry of interest in Lawrence? Can it all be due to Lawrence of Belgravia? Or is the time finally right for an artist like him? The Internet nurtures the niche and the cult, and Lawrence has pretty much always been a cult. His mystique and power comes from being a timeless artist perpetually out of his time, and now time has become eternally present. Now everyone has become a solipsist in her/his private, yet public, corner of cyberspace. We can all follow our singular visions and realities, and cultivate and display very particular versions of ourselves, just as Lawrence always has. Lawrence also makes sense within the paradox of extreme intangibility and tangibility in the digital world; this duality of the current digital age both allows for increased disposability, mobility, and immediacy, but encourages an extreme sort of fetishism for the physical, material, and artisan, in ever more limited editions, in response to the immaterial of the digital. Lawrence thrives in the climate of exclusivity, limited editions, and limited engagements. He is a walking exhibit of archive fever, an aspect of culture that has only intensified in recent decades with the possibility of infinite archives and memory trumping history. Not only does Lawrence have an apparently encyclopaedic knowledge of indie culture, but he also owns a well-curated, enviable record collection. After playing Nightingales’ “Idiot Strength” during his Domino Radio stint, Lawrence makes the off-hand comment of “I haven’t heard that record in twenty years because my records have been in storage”; a world of subtext from the man who was living in London hostels for years due to lack of funds, but who managed to retain his extensive, eclectic vinyl collection. He embodies a false sense of mobility and minimalist living, a tension that could be definitive of these latter days of capitalism. Lawrence, the consummate contradiction, highlighting the contradictions inherent in society itself. Alan McGee once wrote that Lawrence “wanted to be renowned in the underground like Andy Warhol, but simultaneously felt he should be writing hits for Cliff Richards,” an artist in a liminal position of high and low, cult and superstardom. In a world where global superstars and major record labels are on their way to becoming obsolete, Lawrence seems to be vindicated, and he fits quite perfectly.

In Felt: The Book, Lawrence states, “I’m quite averse to renaissance men and dilettantes.” In quite ornery, contradictory fashion, he has experienced a rebirth of sorts, and in simultaneous projects. By relinquishing control and allowing himself to become the object rather than the subject in the last few years, Lawrence’s unbeaten path has finally converged with the more travelled networks across the wireless globe. The last photograph in the book is one by Donna Ranieri; it is of Lawrence holding Herbert Gold’s The Man Who Was Not With It, an image which, incidentally, was also used as cover art for Veronica Lake’s 7” named after the Gold book. As with many of the Felt photographs, the image works on several levels. There’s a certain mercy in Lawrence’s self-belief; other eccentric, but brilliant artists have been destroyed by self-doubt, cutting their work, and often their lives, short. Instead, Lawrence has bided his time, remaining stubbornly true to his own artistic instincts. His thought processes may be baffling, and sometimes maddening, but they are beguiling, too. And, in the process, he may just have become with it.

After seven years, the next, highly-anticipated Go-Kart Mozart album On the Hot Dogs Street will be released this June. I’ve already ordered my LP copy. Order yours here. On Gideon Coe’s radio show last week, Lawrence also talked about the release of a mini-album of electronic music, so keep a watch for that as well. Copies of Felt: The Book are still available – order here.

Declaration – Felt

Until the Fools Get Wise – Felt

Sunlight Strings – Felt

I realize this is territory already well-trod by Larissa on her previous blog, but I think it’s worth contributing a mixtape devoted to literature, poetry, and books in general relatively early in the life of From a High Horse.  It’s not a secret that we’re very influenced by books around here, and intertextuality in whatever guise it comes is always a treat to discover and rediscover.  The fact that pop songs are perfect vehicles for concise distillations of favourite books and stories has been put to use by many, many people…and I’m sure the list of songs inspired by literary works, whether explicitly or more obliquely indebted, would be nearly endless if one tried to catalogue them all.  Relatedly, this list is nowhere near exhaustive of my favourite songs with literary connections, but it’s nice to save some for another day and playlist.

My last mixtape was inspired by a favourite childhood book, and that’s caused me to reflect on some of my favourite things to read, past and present.  As a child I couldn’t get enough of stories featuring 19^th and 20^th century girls and their adventures – I adored the Betsy-Tacy series, almost everything related to Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, and I loved the work of Frances Hodgson Burnett and Louisa May Alcott.  Almost equally revered were fantasy books of all kinds: I loved Madeleine L’Engle, The Indian in the Cupboard series, The Phantom Tollbooth, Kit Pearson’s books but particularly Awake and Dreaming, and The Chronicles of Narnia.  I also desperately wanted to be Harriet the Spy, or at least Laura the Spy (sadly it doesn’t have the same ring).  Some children’s books I missed when I was actually a child and have read as an adult, leading to the pretty huge variety of literature I consume now, or try to consume (it’s often a source of frustration to me that my rather slow reading pace isn’t conducive to reading all the books I have yet to discover).  Having an English degree, some of my favourites have been introduced to me by past professors for literature classes, like Ali Smith’s Girl Meets Boy, Hiromi Goto’s The Kappa Child, and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things.  And of course, what I read isn’t always literature: I’ve read some amazing rock biographies, cultural histories, and occasionally travel books (Paul Theroux’s, anyway).  I’m not nearly as well-read as I’d like to be, but at least I have that essential requirement: an ongoing and unabated curiosity (as well as a sometimes manic compulsion to fill every available space with books.  Just their presence in my home soothes and thrills me).

It strikes me that a lot of works referenced here are modern and postmodern, which is definitely indicative of my reading tastes.  I’m certainly drawn to songs about books I’ve read and loved, like “The Crying of Lot G”, “Now My Heart is Full”, and “Patrick Bateman” (okay, love is definitely too strong a word and too simple an emotion for how I feel about American Psycho).  Anyway, when songwriters rehash the works they’ve been influenced by in their own words, it provides a usually very interesting and useful glimpse into someone else’s interpretation of a story.  For me, though, the most exciting thing about songs that reference books is their indication that these stories have as much impact on other people as they do me; that we’ve read the same words and been transformed by them.  As the character Hector says in The History Boys: “The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – that you’d thought special, particular to you.  And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead.  And it’s as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.”

Download Myxomatosis #4

David Bowie – 1984 (References George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four)

Morrissey – Now My Heart is Full (References Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock)

Barry Adamson – Something Wicked This Way Comes (References Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes)

Decemberists – Billy Liar (References Keith Waterhouse’s Billy Liar)

Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights (References Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights)

The Cure – Killing an Arab (References Albert Camus’s The Stranger)

The Divine Comedy – The Booklovers (References a huge chunk of influential writers and characters)

Mastodon – Blood and Thunder (References Herman Melville’s Moby Dick)

Momus – The Lady of Shalott (References Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott)

Manic Street Preachers – Patrick Bateman (References Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho)

The Field Mice – So Said Kay (References Jane Rule’s Desert of the Heart)

Ra Ra Riot – Each Year (References Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird)

The Hold Steady – Stuck Between Stations (References Jack Kerouac’s On The Road)

Patrick Wolf – To the Lighthouse (References Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse)

Rufus Wainwright – Grey Gardens (References Thomas Mann’s Death In Venice)

Joy Division – Colony (References Franz Kafka’s In The Penal Colony)

Yo La Tengo – The Crying of Lot G (References Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49)

Siouxsie and the Banshees – Something Wicked (References Shakespeare’s Macbeth)

Bang Bang Machine – Geek Love (References Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love)

The Gaslight Anthem – Great Expectations (References Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations)

It’s not an original sentiment, but I do admit to a pretty intense nostalgia for the 1990s.  As a relative latecomer to the worlds of music and culture that have largely occupied my life since the ‘90s, my obsession with that decade doesn’t have much to do with how I actually experienced it and more to do with the ‘90s culture I’ve discovered during the past twelve years.  The music of Sleater-Kinney, Dinosaur Jr, and in general the college rock of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s have all been discoveries of the last decade for me, which perhaps isn’t saying a lot as I’m 26 and, like I said, a bit of a pop culture late bloomer.  The punk-influenced do-it-yourself work ethic and raw sound central to the most compelling American underground music scenes is what’s kept me coming back to the work of my favourite ‘90s bands again and again, and this latest offering by New Brunswick, New Jersey’s Screaming Females incites the same kind of enthusiasm in me.  The trio, comprising Marissa Paternoster on guitar and vocals, King Mike on bass, and Jarrett Dougherty on drums, has a sound that’s undoubtedly reminiscent of some of those ‘90s music scenes and their bands, but in an unselfconscious, un-ironic way.  Basically, Screaming Females just rock really hard and really well, without sacrificing melodic sensibility or losing any (essential, in my opinion) personality-giving weirdness.

It’s this weirdness – I refuse to call it quirkiness – that could make their sound a bit polarising.  It primarily comes in the form of Paternoster’s voice, a strident thing that morphs from restrained and rather nasal to snarling growl to full-throated shriek in the space of a phrase.  I adore it, and I think it’s great that her vocals are featured more prominently on Ugly than on its predecessor, Castle Talk.  This is underpinned by some classic power trio musicianship that shows off Paternoster’s other awesome skill: her impressive guitar playing.  Seriously, her guitar work is amazing, but more importantly, it’s infectiously fun and energetic.  Rolling off deliciously catchy riffs as well as tons of powerful and expressive solos on song after song is no small feat, particularly on an album of this length (over 50 minutes).

Ugly opens with the awesome “It All Means Nothing.”  Paternoster’s captivating guitar work is apparent right from the get go, squealing and doing its own thing while she sneeringly and sarcastically goes on about a soured relationship.  It showcases the band’s strengths really well and as such makes a fitting opener.  What stands out for me about this track is that it satisfies my craving for heavier, guitar-led sounds and is still unabashedly sunny.  “Rotten Apple” has got a bit of manic bounce to its guitar lines and a giddy refrain in which Paternoster just repeats “I’m a rotten apple” in her charmingly nasal whine.  As do most of these tracks, it features a guitar solo, but this one in particular smacks of contagious fun.

“Expire” also stands out on this collection for its surf-inflected riff and ska-reminiscent laid back delivery.  The restraint of the verses is relieved by the all-in power of the refrain that’s counteracted yet again by an interval of soft ooohs while the guitar, bass, and drums work out a hypnotically rhythmic figure.  “Tell Me No” gets a bit messier, guitar-wise, and rattles along at a pretty breakneck speed.  It lets up slightly just before the halfway point for an austere interlude of unusual minor intervals before a haunting guitar solo, but then it’s right back to (admittedly, very well organized) chaos.  The slower groove of “Leave It All Up to Me” is satisfying, as is Paternoster’s voice multi-tracked and harmonizing with itself over steady stabs of guitar and drums.  In my opinion, the album’s highlight is the seven-and-a-half minute slab of stoner rock that is “Doom 84.”  Here Screamales get heavier than they do on the rest of Ugly and it suits them: the riffs are bigger and more memorable, they hit their groove with ferocity, and, perhaps most importantly, after several minutes of guitar noodling and a vocal bridge, at the point when they come back in again with that riff, the pure head-banging relief of it is dizzying.

“Something Ugly” begins with a guitar build-up that’s like a motor revving, giving way to perhaps their most punk-influenced song, complete with staccato guitar licks and flourished with fizzy bursts of cymbal.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, Paternoster’s alternating growl and exuberant yeah yeah yeahs work particularly well here against a backdrop of simultaneous snotty teenage disdain and insecurity.  “It’s Nice” closes the album on, depending on how you feel about the preceding thirteen songs and their unabated energy, either a much-needed sweet and slow note or a disappointingly saccharine let down.  I tend towards the former reaction, and I think Screamales do mellow acoustic pretty well.  Again, considering the length and constant exuberance of the rest of Ugly, it’s a treat to hear a different side of them.

It’s probably not a surprise that ‘90s alt-rock hero Steve Albini was on board for Ugly as producer.  This is their fifth album, after all, and with Screamales’ unique take on ‘90s-influenced, punk-inflected rock, they were probably both due for and highly deserving of a big name producer like that to help realize their sound.  The sound on Ugly isn’t a departure from that on their previous albums, but Screaming Females seem to have hit their stride here pretty perfectly, with melody balancing guitar histrionics, accessibility countering artistic integrity, and of course, a kind of raw and breathless beauty offsetting some occasional ugliness.

Screaming Females – It All Means Nothing

Screaming Females – Expire

Screaming Females – Doom 84

Ugly is out now and available on Don Giovanni Records.

As a fan of Earl Brutus, I was excited to hear that Jamie (Jim) Fry, Gordon King, Stuart Borman, and Shinya Hayashida, decided to form a new band, The Pre New, with Laurence Bray and Stuart Weldon. Their debut album, Music for People Who Hate Themselves, was released on April 2, and it covers an astounding amount of musical ground while remaining a cohesive, fascinating record. There’s an arty knowingness to their genre play and topical lyrical content that reminds me of other witty glam fans like Luke Haines and Lawrence (as much as Haines would likely loathe being compared to Lawrence). However, they also retain that trashier glam rock element that reminds me of a band like Sigue Sigue Sputnik. But perhaps due to their arty knowingness and trashy glam, the Pre New recall their earlier incarnation, Earl Brutus, most of all. The band’s description of themselves:

Imagine, for a moment, a modernist decadent block of flats from the 1950s, a work of art, utopian, a design for living. The building becomes rejected, vandalised and defecated in and is nearly ruined by the events and attitudes of the 1970s. Now in the first part of the 21st century it has now been fully refurbished into beautiful expensive designer apartments on sale in Foxtons in Shoreditch…That is what The Pre New is.

The focus may have shifted from Barratt Homes (see Earl Brutus’s “Blind Date”) to Foxtons, but the Pre New is still very much a continuation, hyper-conscious of its own self-reflexivity. According to Fry, the British Rail logo on the cover art acts as both a tribute to the late Earl Brutus vocalist/lyricist, Nick Sanderson, and as a symbol for the tension and dynamism of opposing forces, Newton’s third law of motion co-opted into the realm of musical pop art. While the colours used in the cover art could reference the Sex Pistols, Fry says they’re actually the colours used in this season of Polo Ralph Lauren. This ambiguity and possibility, this tension between past and future creates a pushmi-pullyu of musical and lyrical references. The record is threaded with the suspension of anticipation, the reminder of modernist impulses in limbo with unfulfilled futures. One of Earl Brutus’s most famous lines was “You are your own reaction” from “The SAS and the Glam That Goes With It.” In many ways, Music for People Who Hate Themselves uses reaction as both a response to past events and re-action as in action repeated. Incidentally, the entry for “reaction” in my Oxford thesaurus provides this example of usage: “a reaction against modernism is inevitable”; the Pre New appears to be the inevitable reaction against the post-modern reaction. It feels like they are reaching back to a time before the 90s buzzword “new.” The Pre New sits on the brittle chest of the whole hauntology music genre and pummels it with incendiary fervour.

The record roars into life with the snotty spitfire of “I, Rockstar,” exhorting you to burn down Foxtons. Halfway through its unhinged chaos, it breaks into a heavy dose of nasal sighing that recalls “(Curtsy)” from Earl Brutus’s Your Majesty…We Are Here. Foxtons appears for the second time in “Cathedral City Comedown,” which mocks “the perfect recipe” of bourgeois life and the “death of England.” Sneering, bashing rock drifts into a psychedelic detour before driving back with a vengeance, augmented by grungy banks of synth buzz. This railing against the significance of property ownership in conjunction with “civilization” status ends with Borman reciting poetry about roundabouts, pound shops, Letraset, the rotting ripeness of England, and of course, the burning of Foxtons. The humourous melancholy of contemporary society is lampooned again in the first single to precede the album, “Do You Like My New Hair?,” which I first heard when Jeremy Deller sat in for Jarvis Cocker on his Sunday Service show last year. Suffused with razor-sharp synths and plashy guitars, it’s the sunniest, most indie pop song on the album. Fry sings “Text me/SMS me…M and S me/S and M me/B and Q me,” conflating consumerism and communication culture. The Pre New return to the emptiness of real estate in the track “In the Perfect Place,” which features Sarah Cracknell. It’s an alternately snarling and glimmering Kraftwerkian track that provides a perfect balance between the dreamy Cracknell and the heavily vocodered Fry. Fry sings like a forlorn appliance while Cracknell, known for her breathy coolness on Saint Etienne tracks, sings details that an estate agent would likely point out to interested buyers. Though Cracknell is ostensibly the only human element to the song, she sounds like a shiny android agent. Fry’s vocodered pronouncements continue on “Albion (You’ve Done Nothing Wrong),” which was released as a single on Valentine’s Day this year. It sounds like a pile driver dirge and was supposedly originally intended to be chucked into Buckingham Palace’s backyard in time for the Royal Wedding. Instead, the song becomes an absurdist indictment of England as a whole. The country is satirized with appropriately shallow acronyms like “lol” and “omg.” In addition to the second appearance of the archaically modern Letraset, the Pre New deride the instant, superficial celebrity of Susan Boyle with the line, “I, too, dreamed the dream/Karaoke machine/Obviously.” The song concludes with haunting, almost robotic, lines from Samuel Beckett’s enigmatic, Beethoven-referencing television play The Ghost Trio. In a brilliant correspondence with Earl Brutus’s “You are your own reaction,” and this current band’s name, The Ghost Trio is divided into acts entitled “Pre-action,” “Action,” and “Re-action.” Beckett’s motifs of waiting and time provide the perfect shades of gray for this album’s themes.

The short interlude of “A Song for People Who Hate Themselves” is a sleazy saunter of a tune with drums banging away like the swinging hips of a cartoon femme fatale as Borman recites lines like “bring me the head of Susan Boyle” over top. It is a reply and extension to Earl Brutus’s “On Me Not In Me.” As he repeats a bitter “now what?,” he seems disappointed by the state of futuristic imaginings, but he is also daring you to attempt a response. His remark of “we slide this way/we slide that way” could be an acknowledgement of the band’s ambiguous flux and the album’s ongoing slippage between genres. “I Believe in Jackie” is a foray into surf-rock guitar twang, which melts into a pumping electronic groove, signaling the rock-dance dichotomy of following track, “A Night on Leather Mountain,” the DAF-referencing disco paean with camp macho vocals. Snarling guitars smash into 8-bit figures as Fry announces “I need disco/I need Berlin.” The song then transitions into an instrumental ambience with a woman speaking over top of ghostly German radio transmissions. She discusses the stagnated waiting of the Cold War, and ends with “It never kicked off,” which could just as well be applied to the hopes of modernism in general, before the track bursts into blistering, epic synthpop.

Stuttering electro and cabaret/vaudeville merge to create the next brief interlude “The New Black Hole.” Slinking ride cymbal accompanies visions of an apocalyptic Los Angeles, already referenced in earlier songs, and then the track swiftly expands into “The Pre New Anthem,” a modernist manifesto as rave anthem. Fry intones “This is a premix/This is a preview/We came before you /We were brand new/We are Pre New/This is what we do.” Earl Brutus crops up once again in the lyric “Action time/Satisfaction/You are your own reaction” along with further references to Pop Art, futurism, and the death drive. It ends with what sounds like the TARDIS, a machine for another cult time traveller, which is highly apt for what follows: the only song fully recovered and resuscitated from the last days of Earl Brutus, “Teenage Taliban.” It begins with a profanity-laden brawl, breaking glass, and car alarms, and then goes on to poke fun at the ridiculous rules and tyranny of adolescence with the freedom of middle-age perspective. The closing track, “Transfer,” is an ethereal wisp of a song that foregrounds the sound of measured exhalation, which now recalls both the opening track “I, Rockstar,” and in turn, “(Curtsy)”. It is literally the breathing room at the end of the record; with its flatline of synths, tendrils of glockenspiel, and minimalist drum machine beats, it ends up becoming nearer to a cathedral of ventilation. The sound of breath could be that of trepidation or meditation. Nearly four minutes into the song, it merges into an echoey swirl of Earl Brutus, eventually ending with “The SAS and the Glam That Goes With It.” It’s like hearing a song from another room. Or opening a stage door into the past. As the chant of “You are your own reaction” fades into oblivion, you’re left with a bittersweet sense of palimpsest. While it could have just been another reference to Letraset, “Transfer” instead becomes a poignant, out-of-time tribute.

There are specters on Music for People Who Hate Themselves: lost friends, lost futures. Nevertheless, there are also vibrant comments firmly grounded in the present, moving forward on an alternative trajectory. This album is a response to personal and collective pasts through an energetic repetition and refashioning. This band is an industrial project for the cyberspace age. Since unfortunately so few bands seem to have picked up the Earl Brutus torch, the Pre New had to step in. They are their own reaction.

You can stream and purchase Music for People Who Hate Themselves on Soundcloud.

Do You Like My New Hair? – The Pre New

A Song For People Who Hate Themselves – The Pre New

The SAS and the Glam That Goes With It – Earl Brutus

I’ve never paid much attention to London rapper Plan B, aka Ben Drew. He was that rapper/soul singer in a sharp suit, who I vaguely remember performing on the Brit Awards last year. Then Dorian Lynskey wrote this blog post for the Guardian, describing Plan B’s latest Shostakovich-sampling single, “Ill Manors,” as the greatest British protest song to hit the mainstream in years. I would tend to agree with Lynskey. Whether you’re a fan of Plan B’s music or not, and whether you see the “Ill Manors” music video as glorifying last summer’s riots or not, this single is the first real attempt in the realm of popular music to articulate the self-fulfilling pathology of this particular manifestation of class unrest. Question his intentions or method all you like, but at least you’re bothering to question the underlying issue at the same time.

Literally a week after I returned from London last summer, large parts of it were burning, and shops were being looted. Not being a Londoner or having lived there for any considerable amount of time, I didn’t know how to react to the ongoing news footage of the riots. As they spread to other cities around the country and as David Cameron made more speeches about coming down as heavily as possible on the perpetrators, I couldn’t help choking on the hypocrisy. No matter how ambiguous I feel towards the rioters and their seemingly futile actions, I can see that they were used as scapegoats by the government: “Look at how disgustingly materialistic these young poor people are…they rioted for nothing of value, just trainers and electronics. Thank goodness they lived up to violent stereotypes. We can’t imprison bankers, so we’ll make sure we punish the poor to make ourselves feel better, and we’ll feel even more in control in an otherwise uncontrollable situation if we become the noble brandishers of brooms.”

Granted, these seemingly sudden metropolitan revolts are complex and the result of many converging causes, but Owen Hatherley and China Miéville give me, at the very least, a different lens through which I can perceive them. Hatherley, as a socialist and an architectural critic, contends that these riots were inevitable due to the structure of London itself. He highlights the failure of “urban regeneration” and the parallel worlds created by this type of urban planning in which the powerful and powerless live cheek by jowl, the latter rendered invisible to the former. In many ways, Miéville, a writer of urban fantasy, has pointed to a similar unspoken dynamic in his 2009 novel The City & the City, and in this latest essay, “London’s Overthrow,” he traces the faultline of dissent and tension snaking through the English capital, an economic Molotov cocktail that is only exacerbated by the preparation for and arrival of the Olympics. He brings in strikes, council housing, grime music, and diaspora along the way, a chain of meditations on London’s undercurrent of chaos. It may be a bit of a stretch, but I would argue that the recent British television series Misfits expresses the anxieties felt about the young and poor, and in turn, mocks their demonization. In a satirical representation of middle class fear, superpowers are conferred upon the otherwise powerless ASBO bugbears; they then go on to commit ever more graphic, blackly comic acts of violence and chase each other through perpetually grey cityscapes dominated by Brutalist council housing and grim alleys. To push this hypothesis even further, I can hear the sonic similarity between the dystopian drone and harangue of Public Image Ltd.’s “Careering” and The Rapture’s “Echoes,” the theme song for Misfits. The English riots of last August and the ceaseless tensions around economic disparity in the UK are, of course, not the only indication of the enduring recession. They are the surface damage on a diseased ideology.

In the process of trying to figure out what has gone so terribly wrong, we create documentaries like the two-part The Party’s Over: How the West Went Bust on the BBC and the Canadian-produced Capitalism is the Crisis; however, this kind of analysis hasn’t done anything to ameliorate the issue. We know the system is broken, and we can even trace the reasons why, but we are at a complete loss at how to repair it or imagine life without it. Though Canada has ostensibly fared pretty well in the face of the financial meltdown of the Western world, it is by no means immune (it would be preposterous to think any country was safe in a globalized financial catastrophe), and with a Conservative government still in power and various Canadian industries going down with their US counterparts, I don’t feel confident. The last time we had a Conservative regime, we ended up with a massive deficit. This time we could also end up with environmental disaster due to colossal oil pipelines and ongoing support for the oil sands, and continued slashes to public services, the arts, and old-age pensions. All the while, we try to ignore our own parallel world set-up in which we never resolve the past and current mistreatment of Aboriginal people. We have had more regulation than other countries when it came to our banks, but we all know whose interests our Conservative government is protecting. As in England, many of us did not vote for this party. Both of our countries were kicked in the ass by first-past-the-post.

In terms of music, Plan B’s latest single wasn’t the only song to strike me as symptomatic of the seesaw of impending economic apocalypse and hopeless malaise, what Miéville refers to as “outrage-fatigue.” Around the same time, Akira the Don released his rather chipper “We Won’t Be Broke Forever, Baby,” which featured guest vocals from Gruff Rhys; though it doesn’t explicitly reference the current crisis, I can’t help but read it as a comment on the ostensibly never-ending recession. Then, I stumbled across Bernholz, aka Jez Berns, whose latest single is entitled “Austerity Boy.” It ends in a garbled sample of Madonna’s “Material Girl,” simultaneously retooling the greed-is-good, yuppie days of the 80s and recalling the more recent bizarre show of Occupy solidarity from Rufus Wainwright and Sean Lennon. These three songs then inspired the mix below. I’m angry, but I also feel impotent. Changing or improving on capitalism is attempting to reverse a tsunami of over four hundred years of ideology without any conception of or control over where the water could go.

Download Myxomatosis #3 here.

The Recession Song – The Indelicates featuring Mikey Art Brut, Nicky Biscuit, and Keith TOTP

Career Opportunities – The Clash

The Party’s Over – Jonny Cola and the A-Grades

Council Home – Denim

The Day That Thatcher Dies – Hefner

We Won’t Be Broke Forever, Baby – Akira the Don featuring Gruff Rhys

Wall Street – Johnny Boy

Credit in the Straight World – Young Marble Giants

Money (That’s What I Want) – The Flying Lizards

To Hell With Poverty! – Gang of Four

Rock for Sustainable Capitalism – Propagandhi

Mathematics of Chaos – Killing Joke

Ill Manors (The Prodigy Remix) – Plan B

No Future Shock – TV on the Radio

Volatile Times – IAMX

The Drinking Song of the Merchant Bankers – McCarthy

Austerity Boy – Bernholz

I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass – Luke Haines

Poverty – David Shane Smith

The New Improved Hypocrisy – The Radio Dept.

Over the course of a decade and a half long existence and decade of releasing albums, The Shins have become synonymous with perfectly crafted, seemingly simple pop songs that are simultaneously redolent of the quiet pleasures and the equally quiet pain of the everyday.  After a hiatus of five years, during which time record labels were switched and band lineups changed and changed again, James Mercer and a new crew of musicians are now back with Port of Morrow, another gem of a pop record to add to their already glittering crown.  Yes, musically it’s an amalgamation of the three albums that preceded it, but after an absence this long it feels triumphant to hear Mercer’s familiar voice again – the voice that practically became shorthand for the early ‘00s American indie music scene, and may I add deservedly so.

We here at From a High Horse are undeniable Shins enthusiasts, whether from their earlier days or their more recent incarnation.  Yes, the soft alt-country twang of “Gone for Good” from 2003’s brilliant Chutes Too Narrow still moves me, as does my identification with its apathetic lyrics.  We’ve only made five playlists so far, but already The Shins have featured on two of them.  So, we’re lucky enough to be able to offer our first contest/music giveaway and two copies of The Shins’ Port of Morrow. To enter to win one of those CDs, please email me (laura@fromahighhorse.com) with ‘Port of Morrow Giveaway’ in the subject line within the next two weeks.  After the contest closes at midnight on April 21^st, I will draw two winners and contact them for mailing details.  Good luck and happy Easter weekend!

The Shins – Simple Song

The Shins – No Way Down

While Blur continue to plumb the depths of their fans’ enthusiasm and nostalgia, reuniting this summer for the second time in three years to play a special one-off concert in Hyde Park to cap off London’s Olympic festivities along with The Specials and New Order (I’ll be honest – this did tempt me for more than a couple of seconds.  Happily good critical sense – as well as Larissa – intervened), guitarist Graham Coxon continues to evolve as an artist.  A+E, his eighth album in a solo career that began with 1998’s The Sky Is Too High, is unlike anything he’s ever done and it’s definitely not a stretch to say that his solo work has always been more interesting than that with the band that made him astronomically famous.  As fans will know, his albums are notable for not relying on the skills of session musicians, instead with Coxon calling on his own formidable musical talents to play most of the instruments himself.  He’s mastered countless guitar styles, not least of which is the finger-picking folk he used extensively on his last album, 2009’s The Spinning Top, an elegant, pastoral, sprawling concept album about a single man’s life, from cradle to grave.  And speaking of which, part of what pleases me so much about A+E is the wilful regression and contrast between the two albums.  Where The Spinning Top is lush and beautiful and peaceful, A+E is raucous, youthful, and angry.  Of course, sneering punk music is generally far more up my alley than folk, and Coxon’s self-imposed regression into the seemingly juvenile fascinates me, so it’s clear that I find this foray intriguing.

It’s also no secret that this is far from Coxon’s first dip into lo-fi punk and experimental guitar shenanigans.  His first four albums are all pretty rough, and as he was in Blur when he released all of these, it’s easy to assume and is probably mostly accurate that many of these noises were meant to distance himself from Blur and alienate himself from their sometimes teenybopper fanbase.  He was known then for his love of American college rock and indie punk bands in particular (that influence being a major reason why Blur switched styles between The Great Escape and Blur) and the influence of groups like Pavement, Hüsker Dü, and Dinosaur Jr. is as evident now as it was then.  On A+E, the departure from this style comes in the form of electronics and an undeniable krautrock feel.  In fact, the record is pretty much half-and-half loose, messy punk, and the driving motorik influence of krautrock, giving these songs a dark yet dancey feel that’s incredibly appealing.

We begin with “Advice”, a snotty punk number that is the antithesis of anything and everything that appeared on The Spinning Top.  His lyrical bile (“Just shut the point/ Tough break man, it’s not enough/ Completely tough, fucking enough”) is accompanied by a shambolic riff that breaks down even further at the end of each phrase into feedback and out of tune guitar squeaks.  Also, it’s fantastic.  Possibly the only advice necessary for this track is to play it LOUD.  “City Hall” plunges us headfirst into the drum machine-produced motorik beat that appears several more times on the record.  Its repetition is contrasted by well-placed jabs of guitar and horn honks alongside jazzier guitar figures and a subdued but equally repetitive lyric.  “What’ll It Take” is where the dance element is fully introduced in a heavily electronic, synthetic, spiraling way.  I realize that the point of much of this album is a kind of a ‘70s and ‘80s-influenced charming cheapness, but for me this track crosses the line into cheesy cheapness, the repetition here not quite coming off.  It may need more of a melodic sensibility to prop it up, or at least one or two more hook ideas, but the glaring simplicity on “What’ll It Take” makes it a pass for me.  That said, I do have some time for the ending, where he shouts “What’s wrong with me?” over increasingly frantic electronic noise.

Things pick up again, although not necessarily tempo-wise, on the droning “Meet and Drink and Pollinate.”  While the focus here is on the lower end of the guitar’s range, what stands out as a highlight is Coxon’s heavily processed voice with almost no variation in the notes.  This robotic romp is capped off with a sax solo that undercuts the midtempo droning effect, albeit played in the saxophone’s lower register.  Next up is album standout “The Truth”, a dark, post punk influenced, apocalyptic dirge with a monster riff.  The rhythm section is on display here, bass and drums enmeshing to create a wall of ominous sound that’s as dystopian as the words.  As Coxon sings “Slide into the dark, it’s taking shape around you/ Pretty soon it’s all that you will know” I’m reminded of Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks” if it were done in a different genre or Coxon’s own “You Never Will Be” from Crow Sit on Blood Tree.  There’s a menacing, looming guitar figure on top of all this sludge two-thirds of the way through, where it’s more evident that the bass is subdividing the beat, and a perfectly-fitted little hip shake is injected to intoxicating effect.

“Seven Naked Valleys” sounds positively lightweight in comparison (even though it’s not).  A groovy number that’s a vehicle for some deliciously raunchy sounding saxophone, it’s also got bizarre bleeping electronic noises, a woman’s sampled voice, squealing guitars, all on top of a reliably steady motorik beat.  These sounds converge at the end of each verse, and when Coxon ends his vocal phrase on a trio of ascending notes that are almost a strain, some extra noise is introduced too, and it sounds awesomely chaotic.  “Running For Your Life” is perhaps more unabashedly fun than anything else here, although no less gleefully boisterous.  Yes, it’s about escaping a gang of bullies, but between the hastily-delivered vocal lines and pop-punk riff that alternates with an all-out squall of noise, it reminds me a bit of the state of childhood: loud and busy and enthusiastic.  If cleaned up and prettified, this wouldn’t be out of place on an album like Happiness in Magazines or Love Travels at Illegal Speeds, but there’s something really addicting about the messy, lo-fi production that’s used to offset any commercial potential the melody may have.  The album ends on a mellower note with “Ooh, Yeh Yeh”, a blues-influenced song that forgoes dissonance and loudness for pretty harmonies and contentment.  It’s an appropriate ending, too, as Coxon has spoken about how the sessions for A+E yielded two albums’ worth of songs, with the punkier half showcased on A+E and the blues and soul influenced ones to potentially be released as an album later this year.

I’m always a fan of an album that totally cuts out the ubiquitous love song, so I think that factors into why I like A+E so much.  Mostly, though, it’s the combination of Coxon’s advanced and sophisticated musicianship with songs, production, and techniques that purposely obscure his skill.  His ability as a pop songwriter and performer has been pretty thoroughly explored on albums Happiness in Magazines and Love Travels at Illegal Speeds, and of course even his immense talent for guitar playing was challenged and improved on The Spinning Top.  What happens after that?  Well, for lesser musicians the answer is to retread old territory, and I suppose that, in his move from musical sophistication to simplicity between albums, Coxon’s doing some retreading of his own.  The success of his dive into krautrock and electronica is partially due to his constant willingness to experiment, and to embrace methods and techniques he hasn’t totally mastered in order to express himself.  A+E is an angrier and darker album than he’s released in years, but it’s also a much more fun album than he’s released in years, and Coxon’s joy in trying new things and embracing the results readily comes through.

Graham Coxon – Advice

Graham Coxon – The Truth

A+E is out today and is available through Graham Coxon’s website.

The beleaguered record and its shops have been the subject of much anxiety and many elegiac musings in the past decade. As more independent record shops close down and large music chains tread the uncertain path of receivership, the fetishization of music, especially vinyl, has kicked into feverish proportions. Directed and produced by Jeanie Finlay, Sound It Out: The Very Last Record Shop in Teesside, UK, is one of the more beautiful, understated tributes to independent record shops and their fans. Finlay has created an empathetic portrait of the struggle of the last independent record retailer in northeast England, and its standing as a cipher for community and escape. Between static shots of the grotesque bulges of chemical works, the more than apt metaphor of Teessaurus Park, and the seemingly ubiquitous closing out signs in shop windows, she captures the daily activity of the Stockton record shop, its workers, and its customers. Although so much of the film primes you to pity the inhabitants of the area and to abhor the sheer, paint-peeling malaise, you ultimately feel drawn into the world they make for themselves in a tiny, cramped shop on a nondescript side street. Despite the fact that I find it unfortunate that this documentary claims nearly all record collectors are male (I can’t dispute their statistics, but I can dispute their broad gender assumptions), it does present the little, joyous details that make music fans the curators of their own glorious worlds.

Finlay doesn’t profile the typical “hipster” music fans one might associate with independent record shop culture. The majority of her interviewees are fans of the indie-kid-sneerworthy: metal, makina, Meat Loaf, and Status Quo. While my own musical tastes (and music organizational habits) most align with Chris, the quiet insurance auditor sporting a Boards of Canada t-shirt, I could understand B&Q worker Shane’s excitement over seeing his favourite band, the Quo, a ridiculous number of times and living off the high for a fortnight, and I could identify with Gareth, the metal fan who needs music in his ears nearly all the time to escape his mundane environment. There’s a wonderful sequence in which Finlay shows the various music fans singing, playing air guitar, DJing, and reading the liner notes to their favourite songs; the implication, of course, is how all of these fans are equally absorbed in something beyond their circumstances. Finlay, originally from Stockton herself, never patronizes the shop’s patrons. As the film progresses, you find yourself focalizing through Tom, the shop owner. Though he admits to disliking some of the music being purchased in his shop and though he often wears a facial expression halfway between nonplussed and resigned, he still wants to talk to every customer and sees them as equally passionate as he is. You may begin the film by laughing and cringing at the idiosyncratic habits of the fans Finlay chooses to follow, but by the end, you realize that you probably have more in common with them than you do with your non-music-fan friends. You also realize that this documentary is about far more than the sad reality of record sales and record shops.

It seems that almost any discussion involving UK culture turns into one about social class. Whether a band is too public-school-educated to be authentic, or too working class to be taken seriously, economic class and its calcification find their way into the popular music discourse. With its scenes of people attempting to sell stolen goods to Tom and the discussion with many interviewees ending in talk of unemployment, Finlay’s documentary becomes about much larger, complex issues of dying industry, social decay, and the ways in which they are forgotten and ignored. Growing up in a house in which money was a constant concern and in which the security of said house was in doubt for well over a decade, I felt class quite pertinently, much more than race or gender. While I would consider myself to be in a more privileged position than many of the people featured in Sound It Out, I feel quite strongly working class. It’s not just class that makes me feel more affinity for the documentary than many might. In one of the key thematic moments of the film, Tom says that records hold memories. In my case, this visual document of aural collection forced me into some serious recollection of my own.

My first two trips to England were to Teesside. For better or worse, my first impression and understanding of England came from spending a total of five and a half months—over the course of two years—living in a private housing estate called Ingleby Barwick on the outskirts of Stockton-on-Tees. The first trip happened just after high school graduation, the second immediately after my first year of university. Needless to say, I was relatively ignorant when it came to the sociopolitical and cultural climates of the UK. As a citizen of a former British colony, which didn’t revolt but slowly slipped away through a series of British North America Acts, Britishness was still very much a part of my subconscious and my enculturation as a Canadian; however, I had no personal ties to Britain, nor did I have Internet access until I was nineteen, and was thus separated from the quintessential context of life in other countries that weren’t Canada or the United States. Most of my knowledge of England, and for that matter, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, came from cultural exports. High school English classes were dominated by the usual male suspects of the British canon—Shakespeare, Dickens, Orwell, Hardy, Blake, and Shaw—and my childhood was filled with surreal, pastoral notions of England like those found in Alice in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows, Narnia, and the stories of King Arthur. As a child, for all I knew, all English people were characters in Mary Poppins or Robin Hood, and as laughable as it may seem now, I remember being distinctly disturbed and confused when confronted with Billy Elliot and its depiction of a history never taught in school. And by the time I was seventeen, I had the skewed idea that Britain was dominated by synthpoppers in extravagant outfits, boy/girl/girl-boy pop groups with stilted dance routines, and a smattering of Britpop bands about which I had very vague conceptions of champagne supernovas, common people, and paranoid love in the 90s. Until I visited it, to me, England and its less than United Kingdom were a homogenous mass with vastly more history than my home country. And more castles. And perhaps more chimney sweeps.

You ask, why spend two summers in one of the most depressed regions of the UK? At the time, I had a friend whose father was a pilot working for a company that spent half the year flying to vacation destinations out of Canada and the other half of the year flying to vacation destinations out of the UK. My flight, accommodation, and food were either essentially free or at a low cost, and I was always more than willing to see more of the world. I had only been to parts of mainland Europe the year before as part of a school trip, and while I wasn’t quite an anglophile yet, I did quite desperately want to experience England. My friend ended up living numerous springs and summers in the UK, and I joined her on three more of them, one in the East Midlands, and another two in Cardiff.

That first summer in Ingleby Barwick nearly twelve years ago was most definitely full of rain and oppressive grey skies, but viewed through the golden, naïve lens of the youth telescope, it was a genuinely fun time. We were living in a house which was an average size by Canadian standards, and we were generally shuttled about by my friend’s father, who drove us to tourist spots like Whitby, York, Edinburgh, and even all the way to London for a few days. I knew that our two closest cities were Stockton and Middlesbrough, but the rest of my sense of geography was a bit fuzzy. Though Ingleby Barwick seemed to be a predominately residential area with its own pubs, convenience stores, schools, and Safeway, I didn’t grasp the significance of this hived-off community. In my Canadian mindset, it felt like many artificial suburbs do at home. I didn’t think much of it, and I suppose I didn’t spend enough time in Stockton and Middlesbrough to observe contrasts. I was still too fascinated by the more superficial differences like high street chains, heavy accents, Citrus Sharp Polos, and of course, castles.

We spent a few evenings hanging out with some local kids by the convenience store car park. They seemed just as bored and disenchanted as any adolescent would be living in a suburb without reliable transportation to bigger cities. Andy, Stuart, Mary Ann, Sarah, and David taught us the difference between pants and trousers, who PJ and Duncan were, and what L plates meant, but unsurprisingly, larger issues of culture didn’t come up. It was only on an excursion to Middlesbrough with our new tour guide Andy that I began to gain an inkling about the context of our vacation spot. While both my friend and I were university-bound, Andy was hoping to get into Teesside Tertiary College, but didn’t sound terribly confident about a future career. In one of the shops we went into, we struck up a conversation with the thirty-something owner. When we mentioned the cities we had visited and were planning to visit, he told us he had never been outside the Teesside area. He looked tired. I felt uncomfortable.

When I returned to Teesside for four months in 2001, I decided to work in order to earn some extra money for the following year’s tuition. I worked part-time at a pub in Yarm despite knowing almost next to nothing about beer, and got to know regulars who were very much like Sound It Out’s older, cheeky gentleman, who tells us you can find anything in Tom’s shop except for loose women from Taiwan. I also worked at an uncannily archaic movie theatre in the Teesside Leisure Complex. If the Grace Brothers owned a movie theatre, this would be it. My friend ended up working at the bowling alley in the same leisure park, and it was she who ended up bearing the brunt of our social ignorance. The fact that she was an outsider taking a job away from local people probably already made it a rather bitter situation. But when she unthinkingly mentioned where she was living, that her father was an airline pilot, and that she intended to be a medical doctor, the ostracism ensued. As much as the first summer had been about giddy exploration, the second summer was about slow dawns of reality. I started to see the north-south divide. I started to see the council housing a short bus ride away from Ingleby Barwick. I started to see the boredom borne from poverty and unemployment rather than from suburban isolation. I didn’t really receive the same negative treatment as my friend did. In fact, I was quite friendly with those I worked with. Michael, my co-worker at the theatre, even wanted to give me a mix CD, but he became part of the theatre’s high turnover and quit before he could. I often wonder if my co-workers’ attitudes towards me were different because I was more than just a tourist in a foreign country; by living with my friend and her family, I was also a tourist in a different social class. Perhaps that same difference in treatment and my liminal position of less affluence and less entitlement were what soured our friendship seven years later. Eventually, my halcyon holiday in another person’s privilege turned a bit Brideshead Revisited/The Line of Beauty, and the long stints in the UK ceased. And I haven’t been back to Teesside since 2001.

It’s easy to be cynical about schemes like Record Store Day. At the same time, Sound It Out shows just how important such a ploy is for independents. I may hold a more favourable perspective on the Internet and its role in mail order records, including the easy distribution it affords tiny record labels, than the subjects of Finlay’s film; however, I do still empathize with the need for some sort of physical sanctuary, where you can flip through dusty racks and experience serendipitous finds, and where you can talk to shop staff who want to share their favourite music with you. Even the last true record shop in my hometown doesn’t seem as friendly and as lovingly stocked as Sound It Out, or a myriad other British record shops I’ve been to. It’s a large part of why I’ll keep coming back over the Atlantic to buy my music.

Unfortunately, in all of my time in Teesside I never visited Sound It Out. At seventeen and eighteen I was still finding my musical tastes, and I wouldn’t have known what a haven a place like Sound It Out is. No matter. My musical education really started whilst in the UK, and I will always appreciate that. My time in Teesside works in strange tension with my musical memory. Incidental repetitions can embed deeper memories than they should or than you would like. If I were ever to hear Ronan Keating’s “Life is a Rollercoaster” again, I’d likely feel a bizarre bittersweetness. And sometimes I still wish I had that mix CD from Michael.

For more information, visit the Sound It Out site.

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