The Who: Tommy

Tommy

Best song: The Acid Queen

Worst song: Sally Simpson

Overall grade: 4

Well, this is different. I always forget that this one comes right after Sell Out, because it doesn’t seem like a natural progression – or it does, but not an instant one. Catchy pop songs, and then BAM, rock opera! Some would say the first ever rock opera. That’s not true from the point of view of ‘a group of songs that work together to tell a story’ but it is the first to have that bombastic operatic feel we think of upon hearing the phrase.

But my biggest problem with the Who is that often they were really original, and often they wrote great songs, but it wasn’t very often that they did these two things at the same time. In other words, around the halfway mark Pete Townshend started getting really into the story he had mapped out in his head and sort of forgot that he needed tunes to go with it. That’s why all the best songs can be found on Disc One, except for ‘Pinball Wizard’ and ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’.

So, what is this incredibly important story that so preoccupied Mr. Townshend? It’s about a boy called Tommy who becomes deaf, dumb and blind after watching his father murder his mum’s other woman, gets taken to a prostitute who tries and fails to “heal” him, becomes really awesome at pinball. Eventually he becomes obsessed with mirrors, which annoys his mum for some reason so she smashes one, which somehow makes him able to speak again. Now in possession of the ‘miracle cure’ for things, Tommy is suddenly in demand, and gets loads of followers. His uncle makes him start up a holiday camp where Tommy basically tries to show everyone the joys of pinball, only the campers revolt against him.

Or, to put it more succinctly: it’s ridiculous and doesn’t make any sense.

Maybe if Pete Townshend had become a novelist, he could have explained why a mirror is such a good cure for deafness, dumbness and blindness, or why pinball became such a huge fascination for Tommy. But he had to focus on music as well as story, and it turns out they both suffered.

If no-one’s made a ‘Best of Tommy’ compilation yet, there’s a gap in the market for one. Here’s what I’d put on it.

1.       Overture – A truly outstanding beginning whichever way you look at it; it’s a proggy, mostly instrumental track that includes a lot of themes that are later repeated on the album, as well as some parts that differentiate it, so its inclusion would keep this shorter version cohesive.

2.       1921 – Not as immediately rewarding as some of the other stuff I’ve chosen, but the  interplay between the vocals and guitars are cool, and I always have a soft spot for those songs that have two different singers singing different sections.

3.       Amazing Journey – in the story, this is the bit where Tommy starts to hear music in his mind, so as you can expect, there’s a lot of really interesting stuff going on here; a touch of psychedelia, a bit of some other things, it’s the exact opposite of dull.

4.       Cousin Kevin – Entwhistle wrote it, and his songs are generally awesome. The other one of his on the full version actually isn’t, but this one suits his dark style of writing and its lyrics (about bullying) are just as relevant to the real world as they are to the world of ‘Tommy’.

5.       The Acid Queen – how could I not keep this one? I can never get over how good this song is. It’s one of the points when I find the story least believable (who takes their son to a prostitute? Right, NOBODY.) but here, I could just focus on things like the epic hooks and Townshend’s stellar performance on guitar and ignore the ridiculousness of the narrative.

6.       Sparks – Look, I put the album out of order! Mostly to split up the instrumentals and not have the pop songs beside each other. But this is one of my favourites, and no, I’m not getting it confused with the band Sparks, who are also one of my favourites.

7.       Pinball Wizard – a song Townshend hates but most people like; it’s closer to the old style of the Who, more riff-based, and it’s a song about pinball – what more could you want?

8.       I’m Free – Another rare good moment from the second LP, this Entwhistle-driven track could definitely stand up as a song by itself.

9.       Underture – whoa, this one is way later than it should be! I just like the whole idea of contrast between ‘overture’ and ‘underture’ and I’d put this one last if I wasn’t including the actual closer. Keith Moon is brilliant on this one; he could have been a prog drummer if he wasn’t so much more concerned with playing at maximum volume and causing mass destruction.

10.   We’re Not Gonna Take It (including the whole See Me/Feel me part and everything) – The best possible finish to any version of this album.

Total length: somewhere in the region of 46 minutes; could conceivably be a single album and would be a far more satisfying listen without all the other fairly pointless tracks.

Yes: Tales from Topographic Oceans

Tales From Topographic Oceans

Best song: The Revealing Science of God (Dance of the Dawn)

Worst song: The Ancient (Giants Under the Sun)

Overall grade: 5

It seems slightly twisted to write this on the same day as a Ramones review. I feel like a traitor, like I’m betraying both bands equally by listening to and enjoying the other one. But don’t listen to what people tell you about this album – more than anything else, it’s an incredibly important protopunk record. Sure, Iggy Pop was loud and Status Quo only knew three chords but it was this album, more than any other, that really inspired the rage that punk musicians felt, that really convinced them that speaking out against the musical climate of the time was the only way to go.

But despite it causing a whole musical movement three or four years after its release, this album got quite a lot of hate from critics for quite a long time. Its reputation seems to be improving somewhat throughout recent years, and I’ve read quite a few positive reviews of it since George Starostin trashed it on his old site. I guess I’ll be positive too – qualified positive. This could be a single album and it might be one of my favourite Yes albums, and that could either be these four songs each cut down to around twelve minutes, or it could be just two of these songs (first and last, please) with a little more effort put into each of them.

That second option is because I think that even if these songs were perfect, this album would still be too much. I have Soft Machine’s ‘Third’, another album made up of four sidelongs, and it’s freaking hard work to listen to, as much as I like it – and I say that as a lover of these extended compositions. But overall I’d choose all four songs shortened, just so Jon Anderson can still claim to be the only person to write an album based on ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’, which is of course why he started this project in the first place.

So, four songs to talk about, and how much I like each one directly correlates with their interest to filler ratio, so if they WERE cut down (if I say it enough, Jon might take the hint) it’s perfectly possible that ‘Ritual (Nous Sommes Du Soleil)’ could be my favourite, because parts of that song are, in a word, sublime. It’s the closest thing on the record to a traditional song and it showcases Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman performing some of their best work. However, it’s also the most drum-heavy track, and we’re had a lineup change in the last year – Alan White is now behind the kit, and he’s very good, but he’s not Bruford-good. So this is the only point where Bill’s missed. (Side note: I now have his autobiography! Should I do a book review?)

I’ll go backwards, then. This is preceded by The Ancient (Do I Have To Write These Subtitles Every Time) which is the part that really drags. Half the band barely make an appearance and so Steve Howe is left to hold up the fort on his own which he does with some boring electric guitar and some awesome classical guitar, and the song, especially the first half, is a lot more noisy and experimental than you’d expect from Yes, and the style isn’t something they do well. It’s a fair effort, though, and makes more sense if you’re following the lyrics and/or concept. Interestingly, if my sources are right, Howe actually contributed to these lyrics, making it not quite such an Anderson-dominated affair as most think.

Further back still, ‘The Remembering’ is laid back even in its interesting sections, and in its dull parts I think that Jon Anderson should have composed ambient music. I don’t really think that, it would have been a huge waste of his talents, but he certainly COULD have done. Chris Squire plays excellently on this song though; think ‘The Fish’ but bigger. If each band member really made their mark on one section here, this is his, and if you’ve ever thought the bass can’t be a lead instrument, here’s proof that it can. Oh, I also think this song inspired the tranquil blue of the cover art: one of Roger Dean’s best works, it was my desktop background for a while.

Lastly, to begin with, ‘The Revealing Science of God’. A friend of mine once said something like ‘When a song becomes longer than about eight minutes, it’s no longer a regular song, it’s a symphony’. I’m not trying to be pretentious, but I think that’s true here. This is great, great stuff the most fully formed piece, the one with enough musical ideas to justify 22 minutes, that completes the triumvirate of Yes sidelongs with ‘Close To The Edge’ and ‘Gates of Delirium’. It defies the whole idea of a structure and seems to have beginnings and endings in unexpected places. It’d be brilliant to see this one live.

Each of these are worthwhile pieces to varying degrees, and you shouldn’t just dismiss this album. At the same time, you might not want to listen to it all at once. You could split it up and do a piece when you wake up, one in your lunch break, one after you finish school/work for the day and one before you go to bed… come to think of it, that actually sounds rather nice, doesn’t it? I might do that next time instead of what I usually do, which is listen to it while I perform mindless tasks like putting all my CDs onto iTunes.

Don’t believe the controversy: say Yes to this album.

That was by far and away the worst line I have ever written.

Ramones: Leave Home (or 'What If The Ramones Were The Beatles?')

Leave Home

Best song: Pinhead

Worst song: Commando

Overall grade: 4

I like this album slightly less than the first one. In a perfect world, there would be a meaningful reason for this along the lines of its being less revolutionary and not changing the face of rock music, but in actual fact that’s a sidenote, and the truth is that I like this album less because it doesn’t have ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’. That song should be on all the Ramones albums. Or maybe it should just BE one of the albums. I’d definitely listen to a 30 minute version of Bop, and I’d enjoy it too.

The most important thing for getting into this album, and the next one, is acceptance of the fact that the Ramones’ best song was the first song on the first record and technically it could only go downhill from there. Lower your expectations just slightly to discover the also-great material on album number two. The more I listen to this the more I like it, and in that way a 4 seems harsh, but a 5 seems like too much, and I still consider 4 a good grade, so there.

One of my favourite tracks here is ‘You’re Gonna Kill That Girl’, often said to be a parody of the Beatles’ ‘You’re Gonna Lose That Girl’. This only adds to the fact that I see a lot of similarities between the early careers of both bands. The Ramones were angrier, but both groups were made up of four guys who wrote short catchy pop songs about random topics whose main intention was to be a good time, both had two central members who had a lot of conflict, both never intended to be particularly important or influential but were… and this got me thinking about what if there were more similarities between the two groups.

After the success of ‘Leave Home’ in 1977 the Ramones star in their first film, ‘Rocket to Russia’, a quirky comedy about the band themselves embarking on their first Russian tour but having a lot of problems with the personnel and equipment on their rocket. After their next studio effort, ‘Road to Ruin’, they work on a slightly more ambitious film, ‘End of the Century’, about a cult who are planning a mass murder for the year 1999 only to realise that the sacrificial boating shoes are being worn by Marky Ramone. Over this period the Ramones discovered a growing interest in expanding their musical vision, learnt a few more chords, and incorporated folk and soul influences on ‘Pleasant Dreams’ in 1981, which has now become the indie controversialist’s pick for the best album. This period also marked Dee Dee Ramone’s growing interest in sampling, something he had first hear while filming ‘Rocket to Russia’, a technique which he would incorporate into a number of later songs.

It wasn’t until 1982’s ‘Subterranean Jungle’ that the band truly cemented their own place in rock history by pioneering an up-and-coming musical movement of the time, hip hop. The critics loved how they used rhythm, production and the spoken word to create effects never seen before, and even bigger was in 1984 when amid the growing singles climate of synth-pop, the Ramones released the first rap concept album, ‘Too Tough to Die’. The album focuses on a group who suffer a simultaneous near-death experience while performing, but pull through, only to have these events repeat themselves later, and the cover features a painting of the band surrounded by many famous serial killers. This concept was partly inspired by the fact that the band had recently stopped touring or playing live after a few instances of deaths during their shows due to overexcitement: they wanted to protect their fans and themselves from this fate.

It’s worth noting that ‘Too Tough to Die’ singlehandedly inspired 75% of rock bands of the mid 80s to write their own concept albums. A staggering number of these concept albums, however, were about sex, and all of these were written by hair metal bands.

The Ramones push the boat out further on 1986’s sprawling double album ‘Animal Boy’, featuring a plain red cover, over thirty songs in over twenty musical styles, and provoking a debate that rages to this day about whether or not it would have been better as a single album. Things go downhill for their next and final film, ‘Halfway to Sanity’, a cheery, colour-themed singalong about patients in a mental hospital, accompanied by a maligned soundtrack album. This, the realisation that they were unlikely to make any more significant developments to music, and the growing conflict between leaders Joey and Johnny and the marginalised Dee Dee caused the Ramones to seriously discuss splitting.

On 30 January 1989, the Ramones performed their final live show on the roof of the CBGB club during recordings for ‘Mondo Bizarro’ (provisional title Poison Heart) which would become their final album. However, the album’s sessions were torturous for all involved and consequently the project was temporarily abandoned, and the group returned to the studio to record their swansong, ‘Brain Drain, the second side of which constituted ‘The Pet Sematary Medley’ of interlinked songs packed with distorted fuzz guitars and angsty lyrics and consequently is said to be one of the first grunge songs. For the cover, the band photographed themselves striding confidently over an elongated drain, seemingly unaware of the brain tissue below.

‘Mondo Bizarro’ was eventually released in 1992, although Johnny Ramone was reportedly unhappy with it and later recorded ‘Mondo Bizarro… Without Clothes’ for his own personal satisfaction.

I had way too much fun writing this.

Taylor Swift: Fearless

Fearless

Best song: Fifteen

Worst song: You’re Not Sorry

Overall grade: 5

Following the release of this album, Taylor Swift headlined her first tour, and I saw her play Wembley Arena in London. Her support act was a young Canadian musician who nobody had ever heard of, and his name was Justin Bieber. Two months later, everyone was talking about him. “I’ve seen him live,” I was able to say, and got starry-eyed looks in response.

Even if it did make Justin Bieber big, there’s still a lot to like about this album. It’s packed with danceable pop songs and mournful ballads that, in other hands, might seem like vapid carbon copies of other contemporary music, but not when Swift’s singing them. She’s just so earnest – her lyrics aren’t afraid to tell the whole truth of a story and even though the themes are still high school romances and teenage dramas in many places, she clearly believes what she’s singing about.

A huge country music fan would be likely to call this album ‘selling out’, but personally I think she was always going to turn to pop. It’s clear in some of the songs on her debut, like ‘Our Song’, but even more so in its bonus tracks and in a lot of her unreleased material from her early days, and combine that with the fact that, now in the limelight, she was probably exposed to a lot more pop music than country, and I don’t think it was a conscious decision to write her new songs in this way.

Taylor Swift is often accused of writing exclusively moany breakup songs, but that only applies to three songs here, and two of them are actually really good. The first is White Horse, which begins with her feeling downbeat and sorry for herself, having realised that ‘I’m not your princess; this ain’t a fairytale’ but goes on to see her getting up and feeling empowered as she decides that ‘this is a big world, that was a small town, there in my rearview mirror disappearing now’, takes charge of herself and leaves him. The other is ‘Breathe’, a song contrasting reserved detachment in the verses with an outpouring of emotion in the painfully honest chorus.

‘You’re Not Sorry’ tries to do the same thing as ‘Breathe’, but it’s a poor imitation, uninteresting musically and it doesn’t make me care about the outcome of the relationship is describes.

The complete opposite of these songs is the wonderful single-type material of ‘You Belong with Me’, ‘Forever And Always’ and the title track, all of which make me wish I was a twelve year old girl again, dancing around my room and singing out of key and wondering how it was that this Taylor Swift understood my feelings. You can hate them because they’re not as ‘serious’ as a lot of music or you can love them because they do exactly what they’re supposed to and they make you happy. I’m pleased to be in the second camp.

But there are two really, really standout songs on this record that I haven’t mentioned yet, and either one of them could be best song, cause I’m never sure which is better. ‘Love Story’ is the single that made her famous; you probably know it, it was shamelessly produced to be a hit but it can’t hide the fact that its retelling of Romeo & Juliet has a far broader, longer-lasting appeal than the average MTV audience. ‘Fifteen’ is where Swift gets to shine as the sole songwriter with a big-sisterly warning about the difficulties of high school where the music seems to develop and grow older along with the narrative. Clever stuff.

The only tracks that depart from the love song formula are the final two. ‘The Best Day’ is closest in style to the last album, lacking the anthemic choruses of this one and instead staying simple and understated. The fact that she writes a song for her mother is sickly sweet but the song itself is genuine enough to justify it. Lastly, ‘Change’ is the sweeping grand finale, full of power and triumph and soaring ‘hallelujahs’ over a string backing, and the best part is, it’s vague enough that you’ll always be able to apply it to your life.

I’d be very surprised if Taylor Swift ever took a political stand or put herself into a cause, but that being said I can think of far worse role models for young girls to have. In this album she speaks up for underdogs, takes moral high grounds, moves on, gives advice, has fun and even appreciates her parents. And she does it all to music that isn’t too bland or boring to actually listen to.

Classic Plastic / Seattle Yacht Club / Fox In The City / The Frenzied Anaesthetist

Classic Plastic / Seattle Yacht Club / Fox In The City / The Frenzied Anaesthetist

Date: 26 July 2013

Location: Blind Tiger Club, Brighton

Support: technically those last three were the support

Special guests: creepy old guy who tried to convince us to stay afterwards, saying there would be ‘more bands’

I just booked tickets to see Rick Wakeman’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth next May, which will be a kind of live extravaganza, with a giant stage set made up of mountains and elves and stuff, and about six different orchestras. This show I saw on Friday night was the complete opposite – tiny wooden stage, no set, never more than six people up there at one time. And instead of everyone sitting down and paying attention, there was a lot of jumping and moving about, going to get drinks, talking and shouting. So yeah, not necessarily worse, but very different.

Probably worse, though, let’s not lie.

I’ll talk about these bands one at a time since they can’t really be condensed into one chunk of review.

The Frenzied Anaesthetist

Not to be confused with the Genesis song ‘The Supernatural Anaesthetist’, this group of four guys play a fairly typical garage rock/hard rock sound that’s not offensive but is difficult to get excited about. On most songs the drums were completely overpowering and drowned out the rest of the music, which was a shame because they had an interesting twin lead guitar/twin lead vocal lineup on some of the songs which I would have liked to hear. On the opposite end of the scale was the bass player who might as well have not been there for all the influence he had on the proceedings – I don’t think I saw him do anything for the entire set. But none of them really acknowledged the audience; they played and talked more to each other, like they were rehearsing in a room at home. I’d call them a pretty standard opening act. Some good beats, but you can’t imagine them ever playing to a sold out crowd.

Fox In The City

I’d never heard of this band before the night, and after being uninspired by the first group, I wasn’t expecting a lot. However, I was really pleasantly surprised! They were an entirely instrumental rock band, kind of like Liquid Tension Experiment but slightly less virtuosic. I don’t know if they couldn’t sing or just didn’t want to, but either way it’s a more challenging genre to take on, and I think they succeeded. They actually had three guitarists, which at times brought some really cool and unique combinations of effects to the proceedings – like if one had a really bright tone, one was plugged into a fuzz pedal and the third was creating feedback or doing something else entirely. They could have varied the thickness of the sound a little more and added some solos, as I noticed they were all playing together almost all the time. Their final song (out of just four) stood out to me as particularly strong. It was very diverse, starting off in a soft, dream-pop kind of style and then moving into something almost heavy metal, before a section of what I’m calling melodic goth rock and then back to dreamy and quiet to finish. I don’t know what it was called but I’d like to. Would see again.

Seattle Yacht Club

I was very interested to see whether this band would have four guitars, if they were going up each time, but sadly they didn’t – just a duo with one guitarist, one keyboardist and an electronic drum machine. Small problem with this review: I actually wasn’t paying attention to most of the set because I was ‘being soclal’ and ‘engaging in conversation’ (these are things I don’t often do). I heard enough to brand them as a homegrown lo-fi indie pop band, and to say that they seemed pleasant without being captivating. However, they apparently have songs released on iTunes, so for more in-depth analysis you can download these and then write your own review on the following lines.

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Use a second sheet of paper if necessary.

Classic Plastic

I actually paid attention here, since I already knew some of their songs and so I knew I’d enjoy them. I was not disappointed by their translation to the stage. They were clearly the most technically skilled musicians of the night as well as the most experienced – the actually interacted with the crowd (the room suddenly filled up just before they came on stage) and for the first time, I was really watching them play the music rather than just listening to the music. They all wore awesome paisley shirts and mixed the energy and raw power of a Sixties garage band with the frills and gimmicks and tricky time signatures of classic prog and it’s a wonderful combination, sure to appeal to anybody who likes their music a bit alternative and left of the mainstream while still retaining song structure and melody. Oh, and they have to be OK with hearing it at a volume that’ll leave their ears ringing all night. I like the noise, though, the way the band is in your face and not afraid to demand all of your attention. At the end of the set the busy stage (six of ‘em) descended into anarchy and there was some smashing of instruments reminiscent of a few old rock icons. When picking my favourite band of the night, I think the unexpected twists and turns in Classic Plastic’s songs elevates them to the top for me. They have an EP coming out later this year, I just learned, and I’m definitely going to get it. I’d happily pay to see them live again at some point in the future.

Pink Floyd: Ummagumma

Ummagumma

Best song: Careful With That Axe Eugene

Worst song: The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party

Overall grade: Live album – 6 and studio album – 3. Overall – 4 because of inconsistency .

Pink Floyd’s first live album is also their best. That’s not to say I don’t like the other ones, but… well, put it this way, if I had a time machine and I was allowed to use it to go back in time to see live music, Pink Floyd in the sixties would be right at the top of my list. As it happens, I don’t have a time machine, and I never will, because if time travel was going to be invented, surely the people from the future would have travelled back in time and told us? But that’s hardly on topic. Point is, this album is the only official document of live 60s Floyd there is.

All four live tracks are better than their studio versions, and three of them are amazing in studio, so that tells you something. ‘Careful With That Axe Eugene’ was only ever released as a b-side and never worked so well in the studio setting, but live it’s mind-blowing, a masterpiece of playing with dynamics, suspense and shock complete with bone-chilling screams and the single vocal line which is growled with an ominous intensity.

‘Astronomy Domine’ is done in more of a psychedelic jam-band style, and again both are superb, although it’s always sad to hear David singing instead of Syd. ‘Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun’ is majestic and powerful in its restrained quietness for the first few minutes, before becoming more improvisational near the end, and even though its counterpart on the ‘Saucerful’ album is one of my favourite Floyd songs ever, I still just about prefer this rendition. And lastly, there’s ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’ itself, the most similar to its original version, but with a ‘Celestial Voices’ section that’s infinitely more beautiful.

Then, because the band didn’t have any group compositions planned, and clearly didn’t like each other enough to get together and write any, so, ELP-style, each of them was given a quarter of a studio album to fill with their solo work. To be honest, they should have just made it a double live album, including Interstellar Overdrive and other such things, but maybe the record company wanted some new material.

One of the band members rose to the challenge superbly and came up with two classic songs, and the other three, well, didn’t. I’d like to say that it was somebody surprising like Nick Mason who excelled, but no, it was predictably Roger Waters. He was the only member to split his portion of record into two wildly different musical ideas. His first contribution was ‘Grantchester Meadows’, possibly his most successful pastoral folk rock style piece, although ‘If’ comes close. Spacious, gently played and softly sung, someone who normally sees the Floyd as too weird could easily enjoy this song, so long as they turn it off before the fly gets swatted at the end. However, the same can’t be said for ‘Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave and Grooving With A Pict’ (on my list of 5 Greatest Song Titles Ever™; coming soon) which I can’t in good faith refer to as music. Essentially, it’s Roger testing out all the studio effects he could, and only on his voice – there’s no instruments at all in this song… which technically makes it one of the first purely electronic songs? The Scottish poetry and animal noises are hilarious once in a while, but I’d be concerned if someone claimed to play it every day.

Going down in quality, David Gilmour writes a piece called ‘The Narrow Way’, which I think could have been really good if the rest of the group had been involved with writing it. Sadly, I don’t think a 23-year-old Gilmour was capable of successfully writing a 12-minute track, so although there’s some groovy space rock in the second part and a good melody in the final, vocal part, it feels more like an unfinished demo than a real song.

Down one more, Rick Wright pens a pseudo-classical piece based on a Greek myth about a guy called Sisyphus who was forced to roll a boulder up a hill, watch it fall back down and repeat this for eternity. Does it sound like Rick’s getting ideas above his station? He is. The piece isn’t worthless, as Rick’s a good player and this does show through at times, like the piano section which is quite enjoyable, but overall it’s hardly essential listening.

Since it’s Rick’s birthday at the time I’m writing this (July 28) I feel compelled to mention that he did write some good songs and I’m a big fan of his 1996 solo album.

Last, there’s Nick Mason’s ‘The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party’. My favourite thing about this closer is the title and my second favourite is the flute intro/outro, which is played by his now-ex-wife. The rest of it is a 9-minute Mason drum solo, and although I really like long drum solos played by skilled, exciting and inventive players, Nick Mason is none of these things, and I would not encourage listening multiple times in search of hidden depths – there aren’t any. Nick is a good speaker and writer, though, so perhaps he should have used his section of the record to tell a story.

A necessary purchase, but if you eventually start using the studio disc as a coaster, don’t be too surprised.

Steven Wilson: Grace For Drowning

Grace For Drowning

Best song: Sectarian

Worst song: why do I make myself do this? perhaps No Part Of Me

Overall grade: 6

“For me the golden period for music was the late sixties and early seventies, when the album became the primary means of artistic expression, when musicians liberated themselves from the 3 minute pop song format, and started to draw on jazz and classical music especially, combining it with the spirit of psychedelia to create “journeys in sound” I guess you could call them. So without being retro, my album is a kind of homage to that spirit.” –Steven Wilson, mid-2011

For his second solo outing, Steven Wilson decided to make a classic prog album and this is how many words he had to use to describe it without actually using the word ‘prog’.

‘Grace For Drowning’ was conceived as a massive double album. I don’t know how he has the time! As well as working on records with some of his bands, like Blackfield and Storm Corrosion, he was remastering stuff for Crimson, Caravan and Tull, he somehow managed to squeeze this project in too. It’s crazy, and the best part is, the quality doesn’t even suffer.

I was originally going to give this a 5 because I think I give out 6s too easily, but then I listened to it again and compared it to some other things I’ve given 6s too, and I definitely like it at least as much as Surrealistic Pillow and Bookends, so I can hardly deny giving it a 6. Plus I’m in a really great mood and I really don’t feel like being stingy with grades or superlatives or anything.

Essentially, this is two albums on two separate discs that both complement and contrast each other. The first one is more conventional and more melodic, while the second one is more sinister and adventurous in its songwriting. You can think of them as day and night, good and evil, childhood and adulthood, whatever. It’s definitely conceivable that somebody could really like one disc and strongly dislike the other, but I’ve always thought they work best as a pair.

The title track is a brief instrumental prelude, piano-based, quietly setting the scene for the album and leading into ‘Sectarian’, a contrast because it has so much going on. I can imagine this busy track being a big old mess in less experienced hands, but Wilson can pull it off fine. The Mellotron’s very prominent on this song, too, giving it a more old fashioned feel. It could almost be an outtake from some 1973-74 King Crimson.

The quieter tracks include ‘Deform to Form a Star’, an introspective vocal ballad that almost seems to have gospel influences, and ‘Postcard’, a very mainstream, very marketable breakup song. I don’t think it loses anything for being this, though. Immediately after it comes ‘Raider Prelude’ which is the darkest part of disc one, and serves as a bridge between the two discs as well as being a teaser for what will come later.

By the time the full song does come around, we’ve already had a couple of other ominous and dramatic songs in a similar vein, so it’s not too much of a shock. These are ‘Track 1’, which I believe is so named because it would be such an atypical opening track for any album; and ‘Index’, a creepy bass and electronic drum-fest with lyrics about a sociopath. It’s very deliberate, and then ‘Raider II’ makes things even more nightmarish because it’s more freeform and you don’t know what’s going to happen next. I’m not sure I can even consider it a song in the traditional sense, more like a musical lab experiment. It’s highly ambitious, dissonant, and at times bordering on unpleasant, it has a wonderful epic climax but then a pointless ending, it has some awesome unpredictable time signatures but some sections of it are overlong, and all these things make it a huge, imperfect achievement.

After being all shaken up by this piece, the conclusion of ‘Like Dust I Have Cleared From My Eye’ brings me back down to earth slowly. It’s calm and unhurried and I’m big into the twin guitar solo in the middle of it, but I can’t decide if I like the ending or not. It’s either a clever way of making the transition from the world of this album to the real world as seamless as possible, or it’s pointlessly just there.

 If you get the deluxe edition, there’s a third disc with a bunch of other songs and also a work-in-progress version of ‘Raider II’, which is a great find from the point of view of someone like me who has no idea how one might go about writing a 23-minute song. Even to get a little part of the thought process along the way is really cool.

In conclusion: I don’t think this album is Wilson’s greatest work; it’s still very sprawling and a bit all over the place, but if he never makes something on this scale again, then it might well be the magnum opus that he’s remembered for in the future. That would make sense – it shows many different sides of his musical personality and displays his vision and ambition to the full. 

Radiohead: Kid A

Kid A

Best song: Everything In Its Right Place

Worst song: no, I just can’t. but In Limbo if you make me choose

Overall grade: 7

If Sigur Ros and Kraftwerk decided to make an album together, the end product would probably sound similar to this. Only not as good, because few things are: this is not only the best Radiohead album, it is one of my top albums of all time. You don’t have to like it, but I’ll probably be more inclined to like you if you do.

I’ve noticed a very different attitude to this album between ‘serious’ music fans and more casual music fans. Either of them might like it or dislike it, but upon hearing that I think it’s the best thing Radiohead have done (yet) the serious fan shows little surprise, yet to the casual listener, this is considered to be a surprising and controversial opinion. Maybe that’s because a lot of critics rate it, but people who don’t read reviews just remember back to when it was first released and everyone was really shocked that it wasn’t OK Computer, version 2.0.

Now I heard about all this controversy before I listened to the album, so I was actually expecting to hate it, or certainly be more surprised by it than I was. However, what ended up happening was that not only did I fall completely, uncontrollably in love with Radiohead’s fourth effort, but it also made perfect sense. ‘OK Computer’ hinted at the band’s interest in electronic music, and it seemed only natural that they would take that further.

It’s not full blown electronic, though. It may be mostly made by computers and packed with even, regulated rhythms but the human, emotional touch is always present. Like ‘How to Disappear Completely’, where Thom Yorke’s wailing is absolutely heartbreaking, and there are more legato, swirling textures enveloping the whole song. (Is using an Italian word in a music review too pretentious? I’m not sure I’m comfortable with it, to be honest. Might not do it again.)

You might expect an album where the first track is the best to feel top-heavy and be a letdown later, but no, the quality is top notch all the way through. The opener truly is almost faultless, slow and deliberate and intriguing to introduce the album’s themes, with those opening notes that seem to be warm and cold at the same time. Then there’s the atmospheric title track, a piece of music that defines the ‘less is more’ philosophy. And then there’s ‘The National Anthem’, heavier than the first two barely-there compositions with a  noisy horn section at the end that contrasts the note-by-note perfect construction of the rest of the album. That’s okay. Not everything has to be precise, this isn’t math rock, you know.

‘Treefingers’ is the song Radiohead always seem to have, that works really well but only as a part of the album. I can’t see anyone hearing just this song and liking it, but as part of a whole it’s excellent. Some people call it ambient, I don’t really see that – I prefer to think of it as a song that requires patience.

Another favourite of mine here is ‘Idioteque’, a Krautrock-influenced track with a whole bunch of unrelated layers looped and thrown in together, creating a really unsettling landscape. People have covered this song, which seems crazy to me. How can you cover something that has so much unique identity?

Things slow down again towards the end of the album with ‘Morning Bell’ and ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’. The first of the two is a harrowing, empty song about cutting kids in half. Well, we actually had a positive song earlier in ‘Optimistic’, so that had to balance out somewhere! About that final song, what kind of messed up film would it take to have that as a soundtrack? That’s not an insult, though, it’s a wonderful conclusion to an incredibly intense album. It’s not the conclusion – there’s actually a mini hidden track after a couple minutes’ silence, ‘Genchildren’, but I don’t listen to that one, it ruins the album’s symmetry and completeness. Maybe it should’ve been on ‘Amnesiac’.

This album almost casts a spell. Once you’ve started it, you can’t turn it off until the end; it takes you to another world – the impersonal, indifferent ice world of the cover. Then somewhere around ‘Optimistic’, you realise that that’s this world, and that’s terrifying.

Pulp: We Love Life

We Love Life

Best song: Wickerman

Worst song: Roadkill

Overall grade: 5

One thing I really respect is a band that knows when it’s time to stop. Pulp are, without a doubt, one of these bands. ‘We Love Life’ is the sound of a group who have done all they can for music, and want to bow out on a high note rather than fading into the pits of mediocrity. And there was certainly no secret made of its being their last album – on the back of the liner notes, you can see the band in a campervan driving away, one of them holding up a sign saying ‘Bye’. I definitely think they did this the right way. This album is their most mature release, but it’s not quite as strong as the last two, and not as unique either (this is possibly down to the change in producers, though).

When I write reviews, I usually like to focus on the little details that make songs great, but Pulp are really more about the overall picture, the way just the sound of their songs is grandiose, epic, angry, confident, life-affirming and full of pride. Even the weaker songs are swept up in this and it elevates them. It’s probably why I like ‘Weeds’ so much despite it being exactly like all their other album openers, or ‘The Night That Minnie Timperley Died’ despite it being so rushed (it was written in ten minutes, which I only recently found out but wasn’t surprised by at all.) The only song that really disappoints me is ‘Roadkill’, because it has potential but never seems to get going.

‘Wickerman’ is brilliant, just brilliant. It would be easy to just get engrossed by the story being told through the lyrics. But that would disregard the music, which goes a long way to enhance the story. The way Jarvis’ voice moves so easily from singing to speaking to somewhere in between is so clever, really adds to the overall effect. The story Jarvis tells is about a river that runs underneath a city that the narrator likes to walk along to see where it goes, and near the end it occurred to me that the river is actually the sewers. That’s a twisted and disgusting interpretation of what might otherwise be quite a an everyday sort of story, and it’s morbidly fascinating.

There’s a couple of other career-highlight tracks too. ‘I Love Life’ is, according to iTunes, the song I play most, and it shows that Jarvis isn’t out of quirky lyric lines yet. I love the double meanings of ‘Mum & Dad have sentenced you to life’ and ‘I love my life; it’s the only reason I’m alive’. The song sounds contented and laid-back, with a clear message: you can only work with what you have, and it might be hard but it’s always best to be happy about it. ‘Sunrise’, too, is a wonderful swansong. Jarvis used to hate mornings, shown in songs like ‘Monday Morning’ and ‘Bar Italia’. Here he doesn’t. He sees that mornings have all kinds of possibilities; a new start, like the one he’s about to have… oh, yeah, this is also the only Pulp song that’s not necessarily lyrics-based. The second half is instrumental and it’s a great, uplifting sound.

I’m also going to quickly shout out to ‘Bob Lind’ which most people don’t like, but I do. Yes, the lyrics are about how much being famous sucks, hardly new ground for the band, but the music’s really good. Also, ‘Bad Cover Version’ because of its cute, off-the-wall pop culture references in the final verse. Try to listen to that verse without smiling. I dare you.

Previous Pulp records, ‘His ‘N’ Hers’ in particular, felt very synthetic. On the contrary, ‘We Love Life’ is natural, and you can see that in the plants growing around the band’s name on the cover, in the titles of some of the songs, and in the fact that money from selling the CD is donated to Future Forests. This is a band who have always been about fighting for the underdog, and now they-re fighting for trees – who are really the ultimate underdog, because they can’t fight for themselves.

I ‘borrowed’ Jarvis Cocker’s first solo album from my dad and downloaded it to my iPod. I’ve listened to it but I haven’t formed an opinion yet – when I do, I’m sure I’ll review it here.

King Crimson: Lizard

Lizard

Best song: Lizard

Worst song: Lizard

Overall grade: 5

I’m very tempted to write two reviews for this album, because it has a really strange quality that not many others do. Sometimes when I listen to it, I love it and I’d put it as possibly their best work. And other times, I think it’s a big old mess and then I don’t know what I ever saw in it. I just can’t seem to make up my mind either way. King Crimson are a very contradictory band, but not usually within the same album.

I’ll start with some facts, because I know I won’t change my mind on these next time I listen… first, the main thing this album is not is another version of the debut, and anyone expecting that (as I’m sure they were at the time) will get a big shock. Everyone always thinks of Crimson as Robert Fripp’s baby, but in actual fact he didn’t do a huge amount of writing on the first album. On the second he did more, but considering how much influence was taken from the debut, I don’t count it. Therefore, this is the first album where Fripp really dominates as a songwriter, and what he does is he takes ‘Cat Food’ and makes it into an entire album. That was an odd little track to start with, so when stretched out to the length of a whole album you can just imagine how eclectic that might sound.

Reasons this album might be KC’s best work: it has a lot of variety and there’s always something going on; a very small portion of passages are dull. Jon Anderson sings on one of these tracks! (Well, part of one.) That’s the first example of Yes giving a member to King Crimson, although they got this one back. Seriously, his voice is great and it really suits the tone of the song. There’s another song, ‘Happy Family’, that I once heard described as a maze, and I can’t think of a more perfect description – it has this whole complicated, where-is-this-going? thing about it, but comes together. Most of the record has a really full sound, lots of instruments playing at once (including some interesting things like a cornet and a cor anglais) which I like – I think of that as the complete opposite to ‘Moonchild’. There’s a strong jazz influence throughout and a balance between the freaky, frightening type of jazz and the fun, happy jazz. The whole thing is very complex and the fact that the band managed to pull off this complexity makes the album a big achievement.

Reasons this album might be a huge mess: No Greg Lake. Okay, I have to get over that, I have to stop comparing Lake-sung Crimson songs to the others. Ignore that point. Real arguments – sometimes the songs seem more like medleys than songs, with a lot of musical ideas that could be interesting but that are just flung together haphazardly. Pete Sinfield’s lyrics are worse than ever. Do not make the mistake of trying to read along while you’re listening… if you’re someone who finds lyrics important, you’ll hate this. ‘Lady of the Dancing Water’ shows the band being less successful with slower material as before – maybe that’s why they went on to move in a heavier direction. It’s not an album you can ever really get used to, you have to work to enjoy it, every time. Not something for when you’re tired. The whole album’s basically an experiment in just how much weirdness the band could get away with. And the biggest negative of all: I have a huge amount of respect for this album, but I could never get emotionally attached to it like I am to ‘Selling England by the Pound’, for instance.

And yes, as I’m sure you’re wondering by now, the best song and worst song are the SAME song. Because depending on my feelings on the day, it’s either a highly inventive and fascinating example of a prog sidelong or an accidental recording of the band messing around in the studio on their break.

So, when I’m analysing it, I can see its many, many strengths and that’s why I’m giving it a really good grade. But I can’t justify giving it the 6 or 7 that I often want to, because of the very real possibility that tomorrow I might listen to it and end up throwing it across the room in despair. If Robert Fripp actually tried to make an album that has this effect, then he’s even more of a terrible genius than I previously thought.

Ambeon: Fate of a Dreamer

Fate of a Dreamer

Best song: Cold Metal

Worst song: Lost Message

Overall grade: 6

There are some records which are completely unique. You don’t know where they come from and there’s certainly nothing else that draws on them, which can be puzzling because they’re often really, really good, but in reality it just adds to their mystique. I don’t think this is something you’d be likely to just discover, seeing as it’s completely uncommercial, semi-ambient at times, and was out of print for years. You could be recommended it, or you could listen to unconventional independent online radio like I do, hear a song from it there and be completely entranced.

As soon as that happened I knew I had to hear the whole thing as quickly as possible. Which I did, and it’s really quite an overwhelming listening experience; it feels almost spiritual in places. It comes from Arjen Anthony Lucassen, the main guy behind a prog metal band called Ayreon (and not a particularly well-respected one, I don’t believe) who decided to rework some of his own tunes and turn them into an ambient album. Along the way, he discovered a 14-year-old Dutch vocalist and basically realised she was a perfect fit for the music, so he brought her in to sing and write lyrics, and this is the only product of their collaboration.

So, songs… only two of these remained as the original instrumentals, and vocals feature to varying degrees on all the others. For example, you’ve got the opener, ‘Estranged’, which is almost entirely focused on the singing, except for that pretty flute part that opens it up. The instrumentation here is very sparse to showcase the beautiful voice – it’s hard to believe she’s so young. But on the second track, ‘Ashes’, the other parts come more into their own. Listen to the fast, jumpy guitar and the crashing drum at the beginning.

There’s a creepy sound of children playing that links the second and third songs. Actually, the segues are in general perfect on this album. There’s never a need for pauses, each song just slowly becomes the next, which isn’t always easy to pull off. Once we’re into it, ‘High’ is a really good song, but it doesn’t have the same detached, unreal feel as the first two: it could have been someone else’s song, which I don’t find with most of what’s on here, so it’s a bit less interesting for that.

‘Cold Metal’ is spectacular, though. The drums are intimidating and ominous, and the vocals sound tortured and terrified. The instrumental middle section starts off fast and crazy but suddenly goes all quiet, and then these wordless vocals come in, and they’re even more chilling than when lyrics were involved – think ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’. Apparently this song was a single. I can’t imagine anyone buying an Ambeon single.

The first instrumental, ‘Fate’, takes a very long time to build up. For a while it holds you there, suspended in anticipation. It’s an exercise in atmosphere and mood, using tricks like a hurried drum tap that sounds like running away, and a very quiet piano part that you have to strain to hear, but none of this is really ambient music because it messes with your mood. You certainly don’t want to tune it out and do other things while you listen.

The vocals come back for ‘Sick Ceremony’ and they’re still so powerful and evocative, but it’s just been proven they’re not necessary to make these songs great! In fact, the first song that doesn’t sound fresh to me is ‘Lost Message’, which is superfluous because it doesn’t do anything the other songs don’t also. That disappoints me. ‘Surreal’ might do too, I’m not sure. The title is perfect, it feels very cold and clinical like a nightmare, but I can’t help thinking that the melody’s familiar to me from somewhere.

To finish off there’s just ‘Sweet Little Brother’, a twisted fairy tale that freaks me out and I don’t like to think about late at night, but it certainly makes an impression, and ‘Dreamer’. It’s mostly instrumental (not as stunning as the earlier one though) and it has some strange sound effects that sound like children’s toys that have turned against them. Some more wordless vocals come in after about three and a half minutes, but they’re very pushed back. In fact, the whole piece feels like it gets further and further away, like it’s coming from behind a screen… right up to that choral-sounding a cappella vocal ending. I can’t recommend this whole thing highly enough. It’s beautifully crafted and beautifully produced to give it a ghostly, ethereal sound.

At first it seems like a tragedy that this is the only album recorded by this pair, but maybe it’s for the best. After all, it’s a bit of a one trick pony, just the combination of great soundscapes with a great voice, and a lot of albums of the same might not have the devastating effect that this outlier does. 

My Everest: Filthy Little Secrets

Filthy Little Secrets EP

Best song: Daytime Constellation

Worst song: Obsession

Overall feelings: Positive

My Everest are a group of four girls from Surrey, in the south of England, who write and record songs and play live gigs in their spare time, fitting this in around their studies. In fact, I only know of the band because I used to go to school with two of their members (just putting that out there now for it they ever become famous). Now, I’m no expert on the general quality of the local amateur music scene, but I do know that this band are pretty damn good… they’re never going to change music or win any prizes for innovation, as you can see similar sounds to theirs in Riot!-era Paramore, Avril Lavigne, Busted, and a whole bunch of other bands going right back to The Jam, but they’re talented instrumentalists and songwriters and they’re at the upper end of the genre they’re working in.  Mostly, how I’d describe them if I was trying to recommend them is: ‘they’re great for if you like modern pop music, but don’t want it to sound as cheesy or bubblegum-y as most of the radio’.

This EP, released a year ago next week, contains four of their six currently released songs, has a purposefully-rough hand drawn picture of a pair of purple Converse shoes on the cover, and lasts just 14 hyped-up minutes. It begins with the title track, ‘Filthy Little Secrets’, which is one of those songs you can’t believe people aren’t already dancing to at parties, because it’s got a chorus that deserves a whole room of people singing along to, pumping their fists. I particularly like the song’s instrumental coda – I play air guitar to it a lot…

‘The Worst Way To Sleep Is Alone’ is the token ballad, and it’s great too, in fact it used to be my favourite. I find it most interesting from a lyrics point of view; about a messed up girl who’s in a relationship with a guy she doesn’t like purely because she doesn’t want to be alone. But the tender vocals in the middle eight section hint that she may be starting to have feelings after all, and is even more confused. It’s a very emotional song.

Four songs isn’t really enough to justify a weaker one, but there is, and it’s ‘Obsession’. It’s not all bad – I think the choppy opening is awesome, and the instrumental bridges are as good as on the other songs, but the vocal part sounds forced, the lyrics are slightly creepy, and the hooks can get annoying. Also, it ends with a very awkward transition into the final track. They don’t flow together but there’s not a long enough pause for two different songs. Luckily, once you’ve got over that, you’re listening to their best song!

That’s ‘Daytime Constellation’ I’m talking about, a really catchy song that feels so natural for the band to play, like they’ve been doing it forever and now aren’t worrying about getting it right but are just enjoying performing it. A really good song is one you lose yourself in, and don’t have to concentrate on because you’re already thinking about it, and that’s what this song does.

If the idea of pop or pop-punk music is something you’ve never got into, I doubt this EP will change your mind, but if you do have a passing interest in the genre I would strongly recommend having a listen (not in shops, I think, but you can order it from their site or buy it off iTunes) – it would be a shame to miss out on My Everest just because they’re not as widely known as their influences. ‘Filthy Little Secrets’ may be very short, but musically it’s just as good as most pop albums released around the same time. Smaller percentage of filler, too.

Simon & Garfunkel: Bookends

Bookends

Best song: America

Worst song: Voices of Old People

Overall grade: 6

‘Recent information leaked to the New York Times tells us that the pair once had a third friend called Tim, who intended to play 'silent partner' in the band, helping with backing vocals and playing instruments, while never taking his own place in the limelight. However, as the release of the first album drew near, Tim grew hungry for more power, and petitioned that the band be re-named 'Simon & Garfunkel & Tim'. This notion was overruled by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel quickly (possibly the only thing they ever agreed on) and, humiliated, Tim left the band to pursue a career in wheat farming.’

I directly quoted that from Simon & Garfunkel’s page on Uncyclopedia, but I actually wrote it in the first place, so it’s alright. Anyway, the point I hope to make with this completely fictional information is that this album, this album is direct proof that the pair categorically did not need a third member. They did not need Tim, or anyone else, because this is their masterpiece, and it’s fantastic just as it is.

It was 1967 and the whole idea of the concept album had just been proposed. Paul Simon was into the idea and so he planned for a thread to run through the first side of the album, detailing the life of a person from their childhood until they grow old. This aside, though, the album doesn’t take anything from any other musical movements happening at the time (it is a rock… it is an island…) and if you didn’t know, there’s probably nothing that gives away when it was released. The concept does make sense if you listen for it, but even if you don’t, this side has some of the most hauntingly beautiful melodies Simon would ever write.

There’s only five real songs on the side – it is, I hate to say it, bookended by the title track, which is an instrumental guitar piece at the beginning and then has vocals added the second time, that serve as kind of a depressing coda to the journey: ‘Preserve your memories, they’re all that’s left for you.’

Four other great  songs fill the gap here, the first being ‘Save The Life Of My Child’, an electric, slightly experimental anti-war protest song that shatters the calm of the opening. Then comes ‘America’, three of the greatest minutes of music ever put to tape. Symmetrical in structure, it tells the tale of a couple who have travelled in search of the American Dream but found themselves lost and alone with nothing, and feeling bad seeing all the other people who have come for the same reason and have no idea what lies ahead. The guitar and piano tune starts off innocent and hopeful but soon turns downbeat and depressing. Yes covered this song, and I love Yes, but the original is way better.      

The other great song on this side is the nostalgic, lovely ‘Old Friends’ which has a real bittersweet mood to it, especially when you listen to the line ‘Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly: how terribly strange to be seventy’ and realise that both Simon & Garfunkel are past seventy themselves now. Clearly this song is the reward after ‘Voices of Old People’, Garfunkel’s sole contribution to the album, which is exactly what you’d expect from the title. I can hear old people talk any time, I don’t need to pay to buy a CD of it.

Side 2 is a hotchpotch of unrelated songs, in general more upbeat, lots of bouncy folk-pop to be found here. ‘Fakin’ It’ has some awesome horns which make it a little different, and ‘Punky’s Dilemma’ and ‘At the Zoo’ are songs about seemingly mundane things (cereal/zoo creatures) which are novelty-ish and keep the whole album down-to-earth. ‘A Hazy Shade of Winter’ is the only real rock song on the album. People who say S&G are whiny, listen to this!

And, of course, ‘Mrs Robinson’. If you don’t know it, stop whatever you’re doing and listen to it right now. I’ll give you a moment.

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Got it? Good. That song is a classic of the genre, originally written for the ‘The Graduate’ soundtrack, but it works just as well out of the context of the movie, considering every part of it is catchy and wonderful, and that’s why I’m ending this review here, because I really want to play it.

The Who: Sell Out

The Who Sell Out

Best song: I Can See For Miles

Worst song: Relax

Overall grade: 6

It feels strange, rating this album so high when it hardly has the weight of later efforts in their career. It’s hardly any kind of grand statement. But somehow this is the moment when everything came together for the band, and particularly for Pete Townshend, who, it seems, can write songs really well here. Maybe that’s due to the focus that having a concept to work around gives him. Of course, there’s not really a concept: the album is a fake broadcast of a pirate radio station show, so the songs can be – and are – about anything.

I think it’s a great idea though, and the group make the most of it. There’s not just a token jingle to start things off, they’re all the way through, and they’re all different. I guess you could argue that they get annoying, but how can they be any more annoying than when you’re listening to an actual radio station? Besides, the music is still good even on the adverts for things like ‘Heinz Baked Beans’ (the adverts are all Entwhistle’s baby, by the way, while Townshend concerned himself with the full length songs.)

The variety of songwriters on the previous album made it feel schizophrenic at times, but here we have consistency not previously seen on a Who album, yet all the songs still have their own distinct personalities. This is definitely the band’s poppiest and most easily accessible album, and while it’s not overtly psychedelic, it does take influences from the Summer of Love and fit in with what the Beatles and maybe also Cream were trying to do at the time, in that it’s very much inspired by the happier and brighter side of the genre.

For the first time, none of the songs are awful! Even the cover,  John Keene’s ‘Armenia City in the Sky’, is a great power pop tune featuring lots of guitar feedback that they perform really well. ‘Relax’ probably comes the closest to being unimportant because it doesn’t make a huge impression on you, but it’s alright while it lasts.

‘I Can See For Miles’ is the album’s true classic, one of the harder rocking songs on the album with soaring vocals, crazy drumming and that intro (yes, the bit everyone talks about, but it’s just so amazing). But I also have a serious soft spot for ‘Odorono’ because it’s a brilliant satire of product placement, something that’s so prominent in our society today.

John Entwhistle does contribute one proper song to this, ‘Silas Stingy’, one of those ones where he creates a character, only this time it’s a man and not a spider. Unsurprisingly it’s bass driven and a little sinister but mostly the story is way over the top, but still entertaining. It’s good, but not quite as good as his original masterpiece ‘The Ox’. And while we’re talking about these songs that tell stories, I also like ‘Tattoo’. If you just listen to the tune it’s all innocent with lots of nice little harmonies, but it’s actually about guys who get tattoos of naked girls and then get told off by their mothers… quite a shock really. It’s probably the song that’s most ‘typical’ of the band in style, I’d say.

So yeah, the subject matter of a lot of these songs is frankly ridiculous (I haven’t even started on ‘Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand’) but I wouldn’t say that about every single one – ‘Sunrise’ is a tender love song, basically just Pete and his guitar, atmospheric and sincere, while closer ‘Rael’ is the same kind of proto-prog operatic rock that the band would focus on with their followup. It rolls in at nearly six minutes and has an ‘epic’ feel that isn’t quite in keeping with the down to earth style of most of the album, but it holds my attention and it’s better as a closer than it would be if it were awkwardly halfway through.

Overall, I don’t know where this came from as it hardly seems a logical progression from ‘A Quick One’, but I’m extremely glad they made it. Radio London should have done more broadcasts. If they did, I’d be tuning in.

Ardingly College Battle of the Bands: review and interview

Ardingly ArtsFest: Room for Improvement and others

In the last week before the summer holidays began, my school hosted a week dedicated to the arts. As part of this, on the Wednesday morning, there was a ‘Battle of the Bands’ featuring only students. I was pretty tired when I headed down to the main stage, considering I’d just performed a play and was also suffering a minor head injury, but it was warm and everyone was sitting on the grass in groups, really relaxed, and it seemed like a great day to laugh at some of the people I go to school with and maybe actually find some talent in some of them. And, what do you know – that actually happened!

In total we had seven bands perform, which surprised me – I didn’t know my school had that many musical people, especially considering how many of the students had already left for the summer by this point. First up we had ‘The Justin Ho Trio’, who weren’t spectacular, although this might be an unfair assessment because they were disadvantaged by being first up with no idea what to expect, and they lost the element of surprise as the stage technicians kept asking them to play parts of their songs to test the audio system. They played two covers, the first being ‘Crossroads’ by Cream, and the second actually being a cover of a cover, John Mayer’s version of the Hendrix song ‘Bold as Love’, and both came across as mediocre imitations of good songs.

They were followed up by ‘General Buller’, a band who played completely ridiculous original songs – the kind that are so terrible they become really good fun for everyone involved, and it could have been a really great set if it weren’t for the inane between-song commentary of the frontman, who tried to convince us that the songs had Serious Artistic Merit. But that’s a quality that’s meant to show without being pointed out, as proven by the following act, unaccompanied singer-songwriter Charlie Jackson, who really impressed me with his two original songs and who seemed stylistically reminiscent of Coldplay’s Chris Martin in the early 2000s.

The next band to take the stage was ‘Safe Kinda High’ (second Hendrix reference of the day) and although they had it tough coming after Jackson, I thought they were great too. Musically, similar to General Buller, yet they took themselves less seriously and related easily to the audience as they played their mix of covers and originals. Most of the band then left the stage, but their frontman Jojo Macari stayed to perform as an acoustic solo artist. There on his own, you could tell the songs had been written by the same person as the full-band songs, but there were more vocals-based, more understated and more serious. One of these has actually been recorded and released online, while the other remains untitled, although I refer to it in my head as ‘No Recollections’.

Jojo Macari: Blown Away - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-HsnT9kXJI

Macari was also involved in the final band of the day, ‘The Laces’, who opened with a terrible pool table joke, and clearly have talent (specially their guitarist) but whose only song was in more of a hip-hop style and so wasn’t my thing at all. It did, however, make for a good finish to the event, but I’m getting ahead of myself… one other band performed in between, and that was ‘Room for Improvement’.

I tell you, if this competition had been judged on audience reaction, these five guys would have won by a landslide – the cheer when they took the stage was enormous. First, they played the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ ‘Under the Bridge’, a great song off an otherwise uninspiring album, and this band’s classically trained lead singer, Dom Morgan, clearly has more talent than the original’s Anthony Kiedis. The only problem with this is that he seriously overshadowed the other members of the band. The lead guitarist, I am sure, would have shone in any other setting with his solo, and yet here didn’t feel quite as important. Some harmonies were also added by rhythm guitarist Thomas O’Dell, and I thought the different approaches of the two singers (his quiet and gentle compared to Morgan’s extreme and emotive) could have been made use of more – of course, I discovered after that this would have happened if it wasn’t for microphone problems!

Following this, the band played a rendition of Weezer’s ‘Island in the Sun’, which was less polished, but this of course suits the song. It was more of a full band workout and it seemed as though they were more laid back and enjoying the moment by this point.

The night before had been comedy night, featuring several famous comedians, but opening for them had been a local professional band called ‘Reachback’. I’m happy to say most people I spoke to agreed with me that there was very little to enjoy about them – no talent, grating mic personality and an obvious pastiche of Paramore. At least half of the student bands would have been much more deserving of that slot than they were.

After the show, I spoke to the rhythm guitarist and backing vocalist of ‘Room for Improvement’, Thomas, about his band and the show as a whole. First I asked him about the band’s name (this has always interested me – a name is usually the first thing somebody knows about a band, so it must be a pretty huge decision to make) and was told that during the band’s early sessions, which may have been lacking in productivity, the lead guitarist suggested that the name would hint to the audience to not expect much… and that it would hopefully be a nice surprise when they turned out to be alright.

Moving onto song selections, Tom told me that ‘Under the Bridge’ was the first song they figured out how to play and therefore was the best rehearsed. It’s also one of the only songs that all five members liked, considering how conflicting their music tastes are – “psychedelic rock, punk, metal, hipster and weird pony dubstep”. ‘Island in the Sun’ was chosen when they realised they needed a second song with half an hour of rehearsal time to go, because its four basic chords made it a quick one to learn. In Tom’s words, “we didn’t have an ending so did the musical equivalent of sticking a band aid on it and hoping for the best!” Currently the band have just returned from a difficult tour of Ghana, on which they spent their spare time writing original songs, on which Tom writes the lyrics and all members collaborate for the music.

I then asked if, considering their cover versions stayed fairly faithful to the originals, they thought this was the best way to play a cover or if they thought it was better to rearrange it and make part of it your own (I had recently persuaded him, a huge Beatles fan, to listen to 801’s reworking of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’). He replied that both can work, but if you change the song, it’s important to ‘make it your own properly’. Staying faithful can, according to him, be best for tribute bands, but these should still add their own little touches, such as the guitar solo and harmonies on ‘Under the Bridge’.

I was shocked to hear that Tom as a guitarist is completely self taught and has only been playing for six or seven months! The guitar he uses isn’t a real Fender Stratocaster, but could be mistaken for one from a distance. He told me that it was his dad’s in the 80s (obtained under ‘pretty suspicious circumstances’… intriguing) and that its bright red colour worked well with the band’s uniform of white T-shirts and different trousers.

The ArtsFest crowd was the biggest the band have played to so far in their career, although they nearly played a car park show to several hundred people, and would have if it wasn’t for the weather. Apparently, playing to a massive crowd would be ‘amazing’ but also nervewracking, given the fact that any major mistakes would be witnessed by so many people. However, considering how much the band have enjoyed playing to smaller crowds, they aim to keep working their way up to see just how fun it can get.

When I asked him his honest opinions on the other student bands, his reactions were mixed… one band which I’ll leave unnamed was completely trashed, and in his words, had “No real stage presence: good instrument playing, but the singing was just not good. The tone was off, no real expression and it just didn’t sound nice!” However, he praised ‘General Buller’ were praised for writing songs that suited the vocalist’s limited range, and also singled out ‘The Laces’ for being one of the better bands and having good showmanship. He believes his band shared that trait and their lead singer managed to get the crowd excited before their playing started, and I’d definitely concur with this.

To finish with, we talked about the future of both Tom and the band. He hopes they can keep working together for now and cryptically hinted that there might be ‘more opportunities for them, come September’. He likes working in a group setting (despite the arguments) because the sound they produce is a lot more full than what he can do on his own with his guitar. However, he’s not completely sure what route he plans to take into the music business. He just knows that he wants to get there, hopefully playing stadiums, and hopefully playing a fusion of psychedelia and modern mainstream pop. I can imagine this and will be following his career, however, I happen to know that he also enjoys and is a natural at stand up comedy, so who knows…