King Crimson: Starless & Bible Black

Starless and Bible Black

Best song: The Mincer? maybe?

Worst song: one of the first three or the title track. I’ll say The Great Deceiver

Overall grade: 4

After finally, finally living up to their original potential with the release of ‘Lark’s Tongues’, the mighty Crim were right back in the studio recording the followup. Unfortunately, they only had about 20 minutes worth of material. Not the kind of people to let that minor problem deter them from their goal of releasing wildly inconsistent records every year, they set to work playing random improvisations until they hit on a few that they thought would polarise opinions enough to be put on an album.

I don’t like the first couple of minutes of ‘Great Deceiver’ – the melody seems forced and awkward, but it picks up in energy as it moves on. In the same way, ‘Lament’ takes quite a long time to get going, and the slow beginning part doesn’t capture my attention at all (this incarnation of King Crimson is good at LOUD AND INTENSE. On this album they’re often neither of those things, which works occasionally, eg. Trio, and fails often, eg. here.)

‘We’ll Let You Know’ is a pretty short instrumental and probably interests me the least out of all of them. It’s played very staccato all the way through and there’s a lot of beats that are just silence, an effect that’s used to extremes and causes none of the piece to really flow, so it’s not a particularly satisfying listen. In fact, it’s not until ‘The Night Watch’ that a track I really like appears; the quietly deranged vocal of that song an album highlight and its guitar solo noteworthy despite being fairly conventional.

Another really awesome track is ‘Trio’. It’s an improvised instrumental which might be about trying to find your way while lost in the jungle, or that might just be my interpretation, who knows. Funny anecdote about this song: Bill Bruford has a writing credit on it, which doesn’t seem strange at all until you realise there is no percussion. Apparently, his spontaneous decision not to add any was a really integral part of the song – and I completely agree. It must take a lot of restraint to not start playing when everyone else is jamming away, but I think he made the right decision, because I can’t imagine drums improving the track in any way. The mellotron and violin based piece doesn’t sound like most of this Crimson incarnation, but it’s nevertheless quite stunning.

‘The Mincer’ is menacing and brilliant. Its dissonance and general atmosphere mean I never feel quite safe while listening to it; it’s anything but background music – it’s the kind of thing that if it was played in a film, you’d be paranoid and on edge and you wouldn’t quite know why. It moves through a few different genres including a jazzy section and a more rocking one and includes a searing and unique John Wetton bassline. It ends not with a true ending, but at the point where the tape ran out during recording, and though that finish always throws me, I’m very glad they didn’t throw it out and start again.

Of the two long-form improvisations on the second side, I, like most people, prefer ‘Fracture’. I hear I’m in good company – Robert Fripp likes that one too. And why shouldn’t he? His guitar playing is literally on fire. I mean, it’s a really technical song, and I don’t think it’s meant to bring a tear to your eye unless you’re trying to play it and failing miserably, but damn can Fripp play, and I don’t mind him basically ripping off the structure of ‘Lark’s Tongues, pt.2’ if he keeps using those crazy time signatures and insanely fast chord switches. There’s absolutely no way he made this up on the spot. At over eleven minutes it doesn’t leave me breathless throughout, but there are enough sections that do to make it worthwhile.

The title track is more what you’d expect from an improvisation, with everybody playing well but nobody coming up with any ideas that really make you go ‘wow!’ In the words of Steven Wilson when he put out an album composed entirely of studio jams; “file under self-indulgent”.

I don’t think there’s a single song on this album that I could ever love unconditionally, but I have a LOT of respect for all these guys as instrumentalists and songwriters, and sometimes they earn that respect. Still, I mostly see this as a stopgap to prevent the band from releasing two classic albums in a row, which obviously just wouldn’t do. 

Jarvis Cocker: Jarvis

The Jarvis Cocker Record

Best song: I Will Kill Again

Worst song: Heavy Weather

Overall grade: 4

More than five years separate the final Pulp album and this, Jarvis’ first solo effort, although to be fair he was working on other things in that time too – most notably, a guest role in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, where he actually contributes three really good magically-themed songs and performs at the Yule Ball, basically just making an already-great movie even better. I’d guess that the songs here were written and recorded sporadically between his other commitments, as the album as a whole does seem a bit disjointed. Some of these sessions produced songs which are minor classics, while others are less than inspired.

There are two excerpts from an unreleased song, at the very beginning and near the end of the album, known as ‘Loss Adjuster’. They’re pretty piano pieces. In my notes, I have ‘I like Loss Adjuster’ written as I listened to the first one, and when I got to the second, ‘I still like Loss Adjuster’. There’s little else to say about it.

First real song is ‘Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time’ and lyrically it’s similar to Pulp, especially from the ‘His ‘N’ Hers’ era, but the production is not as perfectly polished and it’s less poppy. It works well as an opener with its mix of familiar and unfamiliar. Following on is ‘Black Magic’ which is very, very different, quite a lot heavier with a jumpy backing that reminds me a little of Talking Heads, only nowhere near as good, because this song doesn’t stay with me and honestly, I have no idea what it’s about.

I really don’t understand why ‘Heavy Weather’ was included. It has rain sound effects all the way through, which basically sums up everything that’s wrong with it, and it’s just so dull, with no real substance. Make a serious improvement to this album by removing this song and replacing with ‘Can You Dance Like A Hippogriff’ from Harry Potter.

Luckily, after its mostly inauspicious start, we get a real winner: ‘I Will Kill Again’ is amazingly chilling; a very creepy song from the point of view of a stalker observing his victim, and it’s a really interesting and perceptive look at someone with such a messed up mind. At the start the melody is slow and sinister, as you might expect, but later on, it takes more the form of a traditional love ballad, which is actually even MORE disturbing.

‘Baby’s Coming Back To Me’ is justified in its existence, I guess, by its delicate melody and good description of the feeling you get after receiving good news, where everything else seems good too. However, it never picks up any momentum and feels a bit lifeless throughout. That’s actually a problem that persists throughout the record. The best Pulp songs work so well because they masterfully build to a crescendo, while here many tunes remain static. ‘Disney Time’ makes a weak attempt at such a build right at the end, but it is, sadly, too little too late – a real shame, because the ideas behind the song and the first verse are impressive.

‘Fat Children’ is pretty hilarious the first time you listen to it, with its satirical lyrics and over the top cries of ‘Fat children took my liiiiife!’ Musically it doesn’t hold up so well, it’s a little repetitive and I like it less with each time I hear it. ‘Tonite’ also feels pretty stale, but did so from the first time I heard it, because it’s basically just recycling ideas from previous albums. Listenable, but adds nothing.

The other song I’m 100% in support of is ‘From Auschwitz to Ipswich’. It’s hopeless and depressing with good, insightful social commentary and a wonderful melody, so, in short, everything Jarvis is good at, and both the musical theme and the lyrics are very memorable, almost haunting.

For the most part, the lyrics on this album are very good, but they don’t do that nosy-neighbour, storytelling thing that I love about Pulp songs. The only song that does continue that tradition is ‘Big Julie’, and while it doesn’t reach the heights of ‘Wickerman’ or ‘Common People’, it’s a worthy continuation of the tradition, with an interesting character and some of the best lyrics on the album: see ‘Yeah, go and chase your dreams/But if your dreams are not your own/Then wouldn't it be better/just to work things out at home?’

‘Quantum Theory’ ends the album proper on a good note. It’s beautifully sung with a lot of emotion and quite cryptic in a way, not giving too much away about the story behind it, but definitely relating to a lost, maybe-dead lover, and the narrator’s way of coping; imagining them in a parallel universe where things worked out. It’s an idiosyncratic take on a love song and in that way it reminds me of ‘Something Changed’ from Different Class.

But there is a bonus track after 25-odd minutes of silence, ‘Running the World’. Although I can’t disagree with its message, it shouldn’t be there, and – dare I say it – someone with such a talent for lyricism shouldn’t need to use so many swear words.

This album is worth owning if you like Pulp or quirky singer-songwriters. Probably it’ll become the kind of thing that you rarely play all the way through, but have a few songs that you listen to a lot. Its towering highs make it more than worthy of a passing grade, but there’s enough I don’t like to guarantee it’ll never be a favourite. Jarvis is talented on his own but his style is dramatically different – and he’s allowed to change, but I’m still allowed to prefer things the old way.

Taylor Swift: Red

Red

Best song: All Too Well

Worst song: Everything Has Changed unless you have the deluxe edition

Overall grade: 6

I really expected to be seriously unimpressed by this. The sheer number of bands I discovered in the time between ‘Speak Now’ and this one alone means it’s automatically going to be at more of a disadvantage – at one point I was doing a band every week and listening to their entire discography in that time. You can tell I never do my schoolwork. Anyway, much to my surprise, this turned out to not only be the best collection of songs Taylor Swift has put out, but one of the best records of 2012, full stop.

The original album brief was that it would detail “the rise and fall of a relationship”, so I did wonder if it would be a kind of rock opera – well, pop opera, I suppose. Popera? That term must already have been coined by someone. But that didn’t turn out to be the case, as these stories don’t follow any kind of thread. Which was a minor disappointment at first, but then I realised that if they did, there couldn’t be any of her songs that tell the tale of an entire relationship, which are always so effective.

Unlike the last album, a handful of these songs are written by Swift in collaboration with other people. For the album’s fifth track, ‘All Too Well’, she returns to her original writing partner Liz Rose, who helped her edit the song down from 10 minutes in length. Not that I would have minded if she’d kept the length. Despite appearing fairly early on it acts as a centrepiece of the album, and although it follows the same basic pattern as many of her songs have before – starting with two verses that introduce the story, then a really powerful, swelling middle eight before a quiet, mournful section and then the eventual emotional finish – this guitar-driven confession only improves on what has come before. Musically and lyrically she knows exactly what she’s doing, getting her audience involved in the story before delivering the crushing though unavoidable blow that this relationship can never work out: ‘Cause there we are again when I loved you so/Back before you lost the one real thing you’ve ever known.’

Elsewhere, a freshness is brought to the songwriting process by other artists joining Taylor in a duet. The first of these is with Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol, and together they come up with the amazing alt-country song ‘The Last Time’, a dark look at an on-off relationship that both parties swear is now on for the last time. The two play off each other well and parts of it feel spontaneous and conversational, like the great exchange ‘This is the last time you tell me I’ve got it wrong/This is the last time I say it’s been you all along/This is the last time I let you in my door/This is the last time I won’t hurt you anymore’. But the other duet is with Ed Sheeran, and though I expected the two of them to be a perfect match, the song they came up with is bland and uninteresting, making it easily the worst thing here (although on the deluxe edition there’s a bonus track called ‘Girl at Home’ which is the worst thing she’s written, ever. Don’t listen to it)

The most commercial, chart-topping songs come courtesy of pop writing/production super-duo Max Martin & Shellback, although Swift still takes first credit and manages to bring her own voice to them. They’re all winners but I’m most interested by ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ because it shows she’s trying to push boundaries, maybe not in music as a whole but within herself. The dubstep influence is as far removed from country as you could get, but she performs convincingly on this purposefully messy song.

Most other material here is entirely Swift’s own (she also helps produce!) and it’s here that she slips back into her country ballad and pop rock tendencies, with consistently good results, although I’m going to dock points from ‘Holy Ground’ – I like it, but it doesn’t have any real hook, and isn’t the whole point of a pop song to get into your head? Other than that, solid stuff. ‘I Almost Do’ and ‘Sad Beautiful Tragic’ are the emotional tearjerkers and the second one in particular is very evocative, skilfully remaining general enough as to apply to many people’s memories. A change in subject matter comes in the form of ‘The Lucky One’, the ‘fame-isn’t-so-great’ song that every Serious Artist is obligated to record at one point in their life. As one of the world’s biggest pop stars, she’s earned the right, and the comparison of her own life with Joni Mitchell’s keeps things interesting, along with a particularly dynamic vocal performance.

 ‘State Of Grace’ opens the album with a killer drum and guitar introduction and a lyric that does basically sum the whole thing up: ‘Love is a ruthless game unless you play it good and right.’ The game is only played good and right in three songs; lighthearted bubblegum country ‘Stay Stay Stay’, escapist pop anthem that’s sure to be lots of people’s wedding song in ten years’ time, ‘Starlight’, and closer ‘Begin Again’. Contrary to the last two albums, it’s not a massive arena rock track with a far-reaching message, it’s a snapshot of an unsure, intimate moment between a couple who are just starting out and thinking that maybe, this time, things might work. It’s like Swift saying to us after all the negativity: ‘Don’t worry – I still believe.’

Right now, I can’t imagine Taylor Swift ever putting out a set of songs that equals or betters this. But then, I’ve said that before.

Yes: Going for the One

Going for the One

Best song: Turn of the Century

Worst song: Parallels

Overall grade: 6

Listening to this album is always slightly bittersweet. On the one hand, it’s brilliant and there’s no denying it; on the other, it was Yes’ last truly mindblowing album, and it can only go downhill from here. But it’s still a pretty impressive feat that this one turned out as good as it did: after ‘Relayer’, the band felt they were fresh out of ideas, and took a hiatus to pursue solo projects (of which Chris Squire’s is meant to be the best, though I don’t have it). But then they came back together, with Rick Wakeman returning to the band having made a pretty great start to his own solo career, and they had a whole bunch of new ideas to work with, which over time became this.

I guess that’s the reason why I like ‘Turn of the Century’ so much – it’s more of a collaboration than the others. It’s a slightly folk-influences tune that’s got this really cool production effect in that it starts off sounding like the music’s being played from very far away and gradually gets closer as it moves on. There’s also some ridiculously beautiful harmonies going on; that moment around the four minute mark where thye sing ‘I’m sure we know’ gets me every time. Elsewhere, Wakeman (he’s back! what could make me happier?) pitter-patters over constantly ascending and descending keyboard lines and the feeling I get from it is that the band have reached where they wanted to be. Past the point of needing to constantly prove themselves with the endless 20-minute songs, they’re comfortable with just staying in one place for a bit. It’s almost their equivalent of ‘Abbey Road’.

So if ‘Turn’ sees them content, then the track which gives Yes the new lease of life to reach that point is definitely the title track, which precedes it on the record. Rather than building up slowly like a lot of this group’s songs, it hits you in the face from its first few seconds, and the intensity stays with the song throughout. It almost matches ‘Time and a Word’ in its overwhelming positivity; Anderson’s euphoria can be felt as though he’s standing in the room right next to you and Howe’s guitars sound almost jubilant.

Rounding out side one is ‘Parallels’, an outtake from Chris Squire’s ‘Fish Out Of Water’ album. Now, I have minor issues with Chris Squire as a person in the way he takes total control of the band, treats its other members as disposable and also turned them into an 80s pop machine for a few years, but I do love his playing, and so if I thought this song was really good, I’d admit it. I don’t, though. I think if someone was trying to recreate the style of classic Yes, it would be a fair imitation, but coming from the band themselves it seems a bit uninspired.

Side two opens with the surprise hit single ‘Wondrous Stories’. I actually heard this played on mainstream radio pretty recently, which came as a real shock, though a welcome one. Some people hate it, and to be fair, if the band made a whole album of cute little pop songs like this, I would probably hate it too. But in moderation it works really well, especially coming right before the more challenging ‘Awaken’. Oh, and it strongly features Rick Wakeman’s NEW POLYMOOG! (As someone who doesn’t actually play any keyboards, I probably should not find that as exciting as I do. But it does sound amazing.)

I never used to be big into ‘Awaken’, thinking it didn’t really achieve anything not already improved on with their earlier epics, but then I heard Jon Anderson saying that he saw it as their best, or certainly most complete song, and I thought I’d try to see it in a new light. And you know what? I did. It doesn’t burst with originality in the same way ‘Close To The Edge’ does, but I see Jon’s point in that it’s more planned out, less improvised than earlier works, and it really takes the listener on a rollercoaster ride through musical themes and emotions – moving seamlessly from church organ to guitar solo to ethnic percussion to a sudden cascade of excitement to the sad and melancholy ending. And it all makes perfect sense; after all, they’d had a lot of practice with this extended composition thing by this point, hadn’t they?

If you’re not convinced, then just remember that this album, complete with its 15-minute closer, stayed at number 1 in the charts for two weeks. And it was freaking 1977. Now that’s a triumph.

Ramones: Road to Ruin

Road to Ruin

Best song: most of them, but I’ll stick with the obvious answer of I Wanna Be Sedated

Worst song: She’s the One

Overall grade: 6

The Ramones’ fourth album is both very familiar and very new. It gets off to an unsurprising start with the fast, energetic guitar riff of ‘I Just Want To Have Something To Do’, and it’s not until Joey starts singing that you realise quite how much development there has been since the last album. With Tommy Ramone out of the drummer’s chair (replaced by some guy called Marky, who sounds pretty similar) and now behind the scenes producing, things just sound different – the melody is emphasised more, and the anger, while still ever-present, has become more subtle. It’s really working for them. They never move into any kind of sickly-sweet pop; the guitar is too animalistic for that and the vocals too hard around the edges, but every song overflows with hooks and giant sing-along choruses. And while the record as a whole still gets samey in places, when a song gets stuck in your head (and it will) you’ll know exactly which one it is.

Songs such as ‘I Don’t Want You’ prove they’re finally taking this music business thing seriously. It doesn’t have many lyrics, but the delivery is a thousand times more sincere than anything on previous records. And a couple of the songs, like ‘I Wanted Everything’, break the three minute mark! That’s how you know they mean business.

The group seem more willing to experiment with ideas now, and there’s a slight country influence on ‘Don’t Come Close’, a great song which feels like something that would be played over the closing credits of a film. The influence is there too on ‘Questioningly’, but that track is more notable for being the band’s attempt at a solemn, honest love song. It’s the biggest surprise of the album in that it’s actually very successful! The slowed-down playing doesn’t lose any of the life that the faster numbers have, and the lyrics are good even though they’re frank and not hidden behind their usual veil of humour.

Further showing how these guys are moving on is ‘I’m Against It’. It almost seems like, dare I say it, a purposeful self-parody, taking the nihilism that defines punk and using it in such an extreme way that it becomes comical. I like how they’re not afraid to laugh at themselves and that they’re not trying to distance themselves from the whole punk scene, and I like the song too, especially Joey’s super-intense growling of the lyrics.

‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ has become one of the band’s best-known songs, despite originally being released as a b-side. Again, the fact that it’s based on a true story (Joey Ramone struggling to cope with the Ramones’ frantic touring) gives it more gravity, but the subject matter never tries to overwhelm the song, which stays fun all the way through.

The downside to the band’s new maturity is that the throwaway material is much easier to spot – ‘She’s the One’ is a blatant piece of filler that would have fit in better on one of the previous records, but still would have been one of the weaker tracks. And then ‘Needles and Pins’ is an acceptable cover, but just when their own songs are getting so awesome, I’m not sure it’s really needed.

But apart from those two, there’s nothing to bring this album down, unless you’re one of those people who believes that taking the music in this direction was the Ramones ‘selling out’. It’s not. This is the exact opposite of selling out! (I’m not sure what that is, though… pretty sure ‘selling in’ is not a term) This is the band becoming more artistically creative, more willing to experiment, and if it happened to sell them a few records, well, so much the better. I can’t see why old-time fans who are devoted to the first three albums dismiss this one when it has songs like ‘Bad Brain’ on it, something which takes the best elements of the early records and makes them better, or ‘I Just Want To Have Something To Do’ which is basically just a more technically interesting version of their past stuff.

This wasn’t the first Ramones album I heard, but it was the one that made me see what all the fuss was about when it comes to them, and I still see it as their absolute high point of studio output – the moment when their punk and pop worlds collided in a glorious explosion.

[REQUEST] One Direction: Take Me Home

Take Me Home

Best song: Change My Mind

Worst song: Rock Me

Overall grade: 3

I never used to give One Direction much thought. Much like Justin Bieber or Jedward, they were famous for having hairstyles, and happened to also release the odd song that sold like ice cream on a beach but that nobody older than thirteen actually listened to. And then it happened. People I knew, who I otherwise considered to have very good taste in music, began to confess to enjoying certain One Direction songs. Well, this wasn’t on! I see the appeal of the band to a certain demographic of people, but I just couldn’t understand why a commercial product with so little substance could satisfy a person whose favourite album is Revolver.

I made my feelings clear and then moved on, until a couple of weeks ago, when I was asked to listen to this album with an unbiased ear and review it. Which I did – and would you believe it, I only hate maybe ten of the songs on here!

It is difficult to know how to grade this, though. There are certain things I don’t know if I should take into account. For example, their superfans are often horrible people: I’ve often heard comments made by devotees to new fans like ‘we don’t want you, this fandom is full’. Bit harsh; surely it’s a good thing if more people appreciate your music? But I’m not using that as a criteria, since they don’t choose their fans. But there’s also the fact that the five members are actually pretty good singers. It’s never going to be demonstrated well on highly autotuned songs like ‘Kiss You’, but they have talent. Should I include that fact when deciding on a rating?

In the end, their abilities in the voice department were cancelled out by the fact that only three songs on the record give a songwriting credit to any member of the band, which is enough to make me lose respect for any artist. So I am judging this album entirely on its songs, most of which live up to my expectations.

Lead single ‘Live While We’re Young’ could almost be a parody. It really embodies every cliché of a modern day pop song: bright guitars, ridiculously obvious hook in the chorus, a more tender, slow bridge section in the otherwise uptempo song, never more than three seconds without some kind of vocal even if it’s just ‘oh, oh, oh’, most of the chorus layered and loud before the last line which is sung almost a cappella, and such a polished production that you could slip over on it. It’s blatantly assembly-line and doesn’t even try to hide it. I honestly can’t find a thing that might make it stand out from the crowd or distinguish itself from a thousand others released in the past few years. I particularly hate the lyrics, which are crude and obviously about sex, which is kind of inappropriate considering their fanbase.

Continuing with convention, One Direction follow the tried and tested pattern of two big, peppy singles followed by a ballad. I find ‘Little Things’ less painful to listen to than its two predecessors on the album, because it’s not so overtly commercial. But it’s still very formulaic and a song that’s meant to be this emotional and sincere really should be written by the band.

This album pretends the Beatles never happened, and goes back to the old tradition of padding out the singles with a handful of album tracks that don’t need to exist. ‘C’mon C’mon’ is a good example of this – it seems like it was written in half an hour to fill some space, and although it has an appropriately rousing chorus, the verses are mediocre and the quiet to loud transition in the third chorus is so awkward. Another example is ‘Over Again’, which I actually quite like the beginning of, as it’s more stripped down and has lost the production sheen – but that doesn’t last long. It’s written by Ed Sheeran, who has written a few good songs in his time, but this is clearly taken from his reject pile. ‘They Don’t Know About Us’ has a pretty piano introduction so that I originally thought it might be a nice surprise, but again, it quickly descends into pointlessness.

Each member of the band does make a token songwriting contribution, and some or all of them are featured (alongside professional songwriters) on ‘Last First Kiss’, ‘Back for You’, and ‘Summer Love’. Interestingly, these are three of the songs that come across as the most believable, and I think it shows that they’ve been more involved in the process from the start. But the first and last of these are also the most sickeningly sweet songs, making me gag with their too-perfect harmonies and lyrics that talk of unrealistic relationships.

As much as this style annoys me, it’s nowhere near as bad as ‘Rock Me’, the unlistenable Queen pastiche that occupies the middle spot on the album. I’d like to commend them for branching out, but hearing these five preppy, clean-cut boys try to convince us all they can play rock music is excruciating. In ten years’ time, it’ll be the embarrassing photo they have to keep hidden when people come round.

But finishing off on a positive note, there’s a couple of songs I can tolerate! ‘Heart Attack’ is mixed. The cries of ‘ow!’ in the chorus are really annoying, but I do find the tune very catchy. The pre-chorus section is good, and I like the way the close-up individual vocal of that part is neatly contrasted with the big group harmonising of the chorus. Should have been a single. And the biggest surprise of all is ‘Change My Mind’. It’s not positioned to be noticed and I’d never heard of it before I was commissioned to write this, but I’ve actually found myself growing to enjoy it rather a lot. It has a more mature feel than the surrounding tracks, and I can’t see it becoming dated as quickly as the rest of the record. The longing confusion of a guy who doesn’t know where he stands with a girl shows through, and although the multiple vocalists diminish the effect somewhat, its wistful melody and candid delivery show that maybe, just maybe, there’s some potential with these guys.

So while you won’t be finding me in the queue of people waiting to buy their next single the moment it comes out, I will be keeping half an eye out. Just to see where they go next.

Pink Floyd: Obscured By Clouds

Obscured By Clouds

Best song: Stay

Worst song: Absolutely Curtains

Overall grade: 4

Pink Floyd’s last attempt at a film soundtrack went swimmingly. Apart from the fact that they completely fell out with the film’s director and so released this album as something that, officially, had nothing to do with the film. Clearly assuming that anyone who then saw the actual film, ‘La Vallee’, would assume its use of exactly the same songs was a coincidence. Luckily, this never had to be an issue, because the people in charge actually changed the film’s title (or gave it an extra title) to fit in with the album. So as you can see, the band had plenty of experience of petty disagreements before they started their own war in the 80s.

That’s a bit of a history lesson, but it’s got nothing to do with the album really. What is interesting about this one is that it was written essentially in tandem with their artistic and commercial breakthrough ‘Dark Side of the Moon’. That particular piece was already in its early stages of development when the band were approached and asked to score something for Barbet Schroeder. Consequently, the whole thing reads like an outtakes and demos collection from ‘Dark Side’.

I imagine that for someone who worships ‘Dark Side’ and thinks every record should sound like it, this would be an absolute gem. For me, it’s a definite poor relation. Some of the ‘Clouds’ songs exactly correlate with those on ‘Dark Side’ a year later. The most blatant is ‘Childhood’s End’ in its ripoff of ‘Time’: the theme and structure of the lyrics are identical, the main melody is kind of similar, and at the beginning there’s what is basically ticking – a clear equivalent of the chiming clocks on the other song. ‘Burning Bridges’ is also the exact equal of ‘Breathe’ in its soft edged vocals and mellow atmosphere, and out of context I think I’d find it challenging to tell their openings apart. Lastly, ‘The Gold It’s In The…’ can only be ‘Money’, the token rocker. They still don’t seem all that comfortable with the style, but they’re getting better at hiding that fact, which must count for something.

Aside from those three, the other songs don’t have obvious counterparts, but all bar one would have seemed right at home on ‘Dark Side’. You could probably create a playlist that structures them into a double album if you’re a person who doesn’t think messing with the running order of ‘Dark Side’ is sacrilege (so not me then.) The one song that would feel out of place is ‘Free Four’, which is almost a throwback to the more lighthearted side of Syd Barrett musically, with a bouncy rhythm and a carefree demeanour, even during lines like ‘You are the angel of death’.

The two other vocal tracks are ‘Wot’s… Uh, The Deal?’, a Gilmour dominated affair that happens to be one of his favourites. I can’t argue with that. It has lots of guitars and his trademark soothing vocals and a very pleasant instrumental break in the middle, but is removed from easy-listening territory by the dark quality of Waters’ lyrics. ‘Stay’ is my absolute favourite. It gets the strongest emotional reaction from me out of anything on this album; I can just feel the yearning in that opening section. The brightly-coloured lyrics are very evocative and though nobody mentions is when discussing best Gilmour guitar solos, I can’t get enough of his wah-wah solo on this song.

To round out the album we have a handful of instrumentals. ‘Obscured By Clouds’ is very Floyd; some weird distorted guitars over an atmospheric backing, can’t really go wrong. ‘When You’re In’ has more going on and is pretty cool too, but is it film music? I can’t really imagine it as the backing track to anything, but who knows? ‘Mudmen’ goes through a lot of changes for its length and doesn’t really flow. Some of the sections are good – there’s a part near the end that’s awesome to listen to with headphones on – and some of them are less good, like the screeching guitar that’s not all that enjoyable to listen to. Strikes me as more a medley of ideas than a developed track. And the final ‘Absolutely Curtains’ doesn’t do a lot for me, just wandering around for a while. Plus, there’s another large-group chant at the end, for at least a couple of minutes. Is this becoming a thing, the Floyd finishing off their songs with famous chants? I can’t get into that, it disrupts the flow of a song.

So, in conclusion: the beta-test version of ‘Dark Side’. Listen to it for interest’s sake, but it’s hardly essential.

Radiohead: Hail To The Thief

Hail To The Thief

Best song: Myxomatosis

Worst song: We Suck Young Blood

Overall grade: 5

Remember when Radiohead announced their followup to ‘OK Computer’, and it could have gone one of two ways – either safely carried on in the direction of that one, a carbon copy, not breaking any new ground but sure to satisfy most people who fell in love with the original? Or the sharp left turn towards electronica they did take, which rebranded them forever as experimentalists and innovators? Well, if this had been the immediate sequel to ‘OK Computer’, I feel like it would have been the clone of that album everyone was expecting, and maybe things would have turned out very differently.

See, for the first time this album feels like Radiohead – there’s something of a formula at work. Take ‘Sail To The Moon’, for example. It’s quite a beautiful song but it is their classic haunting ballad, similar to those which have appeared on every album previous. Also, almost every song here follows the pattern of starting quiet and sparse and building up to a bigger, faster, almost angrier sound near the end. It would be interesting to hear more songs do the opposite. If you, too, would like to hear songs do the opposite… don’t look here.

That said, I don’t find this album unnecessary in the Radiohead canon. Lyrically it might well be the strongest thing they’ve done yet. They’re still partly political, partly fearful and partly cryptic, and lyric writing has certainly never been an area where Yorke has struggled, I just like these ones particularly. (I have a desktop background picture that’s a wordcloud just comprised of quotes from Hail to the Thief, like ‘Go and tell the king that the sky is falling in when it’s not’.)

There’s a great disjointed rhythm and hopeless atmosphere at the start of opening track ‘2 + 2 = 5’, and I also really like the effect later in the song with the sped up vocals. ‘Backdrifts’ creates similar effects, it’s like the song equivalent of a strobe light, very jerky and off kilter. And these two songs effectively demonstrate the one real difference between this album and its predecessors, which is that this is less abstract. Written in the run-up to the 2004 election with its anti-Bush title, nothing about this claims to be a hypothetical world. This is real, about things that are happening now, and we can’t even pretend to escape it.

‘Go To Sleep’ is different to the two I mentioned, though. It’s another with a great opening, swathed in those wafting acoustic guitars that make it kinda folky, but with a dark edge. Sadly, as it continues, it wanders into more generic territory. ‘Where I End And You Begin’ happily does not suffer from this problem. It has a truly brilliant section where the industrial rock-style backing is contrasted by Thom’s high, soaring vocals; a very exciting combination. I might listen to the album just for that little bit.

But what’s with the handclaps on ‘We Suck Young Blood’? What’s with anything about that song? It drives me insane and not in a good way. It’s not pleasant to listen to at all, and its point (about Hollywood taking over the minds of easily-led young people) could be made much better another way. I much prefer the more electronic-based ‘The Gloaming’, a melody deconstructed to the point of being unrecognisable, containing the line ‘We will suck you down to the other side’ sung with enough apathy to make it incredibly creepy.

One of the more traditional songs, ‘There There’, deserves a mention because I like the way the very dense instrumentation and the melodic vocal line are separate near the beginning but fuse to become one as the song goes on. Juxtapositions like this one are one of the things this album does well: for example, the pairing of melodicism and dissonance on songs such as my favourite, ‘Myxomatosis’. The only way I can think of to describe it is that none of the instruments sound like they’re exactly in the right place, making it unpredictable and all the more thrilling for it. Positioned in a place where most albums have their weakest tracks, it’s always a welcome surprise.

And then we finish things off with the emotional but not particularly challenging ‘Scatterbrain’ and its opposite number ‘A Wolf at the Door’. Of the two I prefer the second. On an album where nothing really flows, it fits right in, because I can’t imagine it ever flowing with anything. It’s strange, not a traditional closer, and doesn’t end the album neatly, kind of reminding you of the imperfections of everything (after all, how many things in real life end neatly?)

At this point in their career I’m not sure Radiohead were capable of making a bad album. Even if they’d tried, what they’d come up with probably would have been incredibly interesting. But instead, they played it safe. And while, as you can see from the rating, that’s not necessarily a bad thing; it’s definitely not a good thing either.

The Who: Who's Next

Who’s Next

Best song: Won’t Get Fooled Again

Worst song: maybe Getting In Tune

Overall grade: 6

(Here's one I wrote waiting for my operation this morning - which went really well, by the way, although I'm incredibly tired now.)

After the success of ‘Tommy’, Pete Townshend started to wonder how he could improve on the heights reached with that album. And so the Lifehouse project was created, something that has gone down in infamy as one of the most spectacular failures in music history, something that nearly destroyed the band and Townshend himself.

Now, nobody except Townshend completely understands the concept, but in essence it was to be a nightly live performance, fifty percent rock opera and fifty percent a kind of science experiment on the audience, who would be involved in creating the music. Before the concert each night, a bunch of information would be collected about everyone there, and then as the concert drew to a close, all the information would be computerised and somehow each person’s information would be turned into a single musical note. These notes, when played at exactly the same time, would allegedly create a ‘universal chord’ which would be some kind of spiritual experience for the audience. And as if trying to achieve this wasn’t enough, Lifehouse was also to be a double album and a film, which is the part that’s always confused me. If the universal chord was generated by the audience each night, how would they decide which version to use in the album/film? Surely it couldn’t be the same kind of experience if the listener wasn’t directly involved?

But anyway. Pete Townshend became completely overwhelmed by the scale of what he’d taken on and eventually almost suffered a nervous breakdown, causing him to shelve the project, although he has sporadically returned to it over the years and still dreams of making it a reality. Eight songs were selected from the original plans for Lifehouse and Entwhistle wrote a ninth, and these were recorded to make a simple, straightforward, no-frills rock album. Gone is the story and the overarching themes from the original plans, and instead the band are able to focus completely on the music, with often outstanding results.

Not their best album by any means but tighter than anything they’d put out before or since, Who’s Next is bookended by its two best songs, ‘Baba O’Riley’  and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’, both synthesizer-dominated in a time when synths were just entering widespread use. The truth is that I watched CSI: Miami and CSI: NY before I heard either of these, but I don’t think that influences how I feel about them, because I like the original CSI much better. I’ll take the full versions over the fifteen second remixes any day – ‘Baba O’Riley’ is the kind of song that packs so many different ideas into a relatively short time, which is fitting considering the original is 30 minutes long (now there’s a bonus track I’d like to see.) I guess this was one of the first arena rock songs, with its loud screams of ‘yeah!’, pulsing guitars, and loud and fast rhythm section, and of course it’s still one of the absolute best. For a mixture of the Who’s early protopunk sound and their later bombastic, operatic sound, it doesn’t get better than this.

But the other tracks aren’t half bad either. There’s nothing superfluous here – the fact that this is a single album sorted that out just fine, and we’re left with the good stuff, like the rocker ‘Bargain’ that really makes the most of Daltrey’s excellent voice, and the quiet, understated synths that create the mood in ‘The Song is Over’. I have no idea where most of these tunes would fit into the concept, and I’m fine with it staying that way.

‘Love Ain’t For Keeping’ is a short, country influenced track fill of childlike innocence. As a contrast to some of the more jaded songs, I think it could have been extended some more, since it interests me to hear Townshend messing around with these bluesier styles and it’s disappointing he didn’t have the confidence to make it a full song. Better than this is Entwhistle’s ‘My Wife’, featuring his trademark black humour and allowing him to play most of the instruments, including the piano and the horns. He always comes up with the goods at least once per album.

Side two is weaker but only slightly so, opening with ‘Getting in Tune’, which has excellent lyrics but the music lacks passion, seeming sometimes like it was written on autopilot. I prefer ‘Going Mobile’: more lighthearted than the rest of the material, giving an opportunity for Townshend to rock out on his guitar and use it to create some pretty unique effects. ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ has been a little overplayed over the years, but the melancholy verses and louder, more intense choruses are a traditional recipe for a dynamic song that’s always effective.

I also think this might be my favourite cover art on a Who album. Definitely looks like a teenage wasteland to me.

So what if Lifehouse had become a reality? In 1971 everyone was just waiting for the next musical innovation. Is it possible that the idea would have become the new gold standard, and everyone would be working to include audience involvement in their music? Or would it have been something like the Flaming Lips’ ‘Zaireeka’, an interesting curiosity but a one-off? I don’t know, but I hope Townshend finishes the project someday. Something that has informed so many of his albums both with the Who and solo, deserves to be seen through to completion.

Beautiful Days Festival 2013

Beautiful Days Festival 2013

Dates: 16-18 August 2013

Location: Epcot Park, Devon, England

Headliners: Ocean Colour Scene / Primal Scream / The Levellers

This past weekend I took a break from music reviewing and headed off to a festival instead! It was a pretty awesome weekend. Now, of course, in the modern age festivals sell most of their tickets before they announce which bands are playing, which just goes to show that the majority of people don’t go for the music, they go for the overall experience. In addition, I wasn’t really attending as a reviewer, but as someone looking to have fun and hopefully discover a new band… that being said, I thought I’d have a go at writing up some of what I saw. Artists tagged are ones I hope to write more about later - you've been warned.

Friday

Viv Albertine: In the 70s she was guitarist for female punk band The Slits, but hadn’t been in the music business since then until last year. You could tell she was so rusty; reading her own lyrics off a computer or forgetting to play any notes. The songs themselves kind of sucked too. They were repetitive, all played at the same medium-fast tempo, and her vocals sounded exactly the same on every single one. But the worst part was her between song chatter, which was trying way too hard to be funny. There was a feminist side to some of her lyrics, but at this point she was literally trying to make the men objectify her. She needs to realise that she can’t take 25 years off, come back and expect things to be like she never left.

Ocean Colour Scene: Friday’s headliners are a largely unknown Britpop band who’ve been around for about 25 years now, and I’ll discuss why they’re forgotten more when I review their sophomore album ‘Moseley Shoals’ (soon). Half of them were actually at the festival last year, and I saw them play an intimate acoustic set. This full-band main stage performance was the complete opposite but at least as good, with the already-brilliant ‘The Day We Caught The Train’ being turned into a singalong anthem than united the crowd. It should have been the encore, but I guess they thought that was a cliché, and I’ve nothing against their cover of ‘Day Tripper’, which was very respectable as Beatle covers go. I enjoyed the whole set, Simon Fowler’s very powerful voice elevating even the lesser new material (which was kept to a minimum with just a handful of songs from their this year’s album).

Saturday

65daysofstatic: I’d heard of this all-instrumental band before the weekend and they sounded like very much my kind of thing, but I’d never checked them out. So this weekend I made everyone go, which meant that if they’d sucked it would have been all my fault… luckily, they didn’t suck. In fact, they were totally awesome! I could hear influences of Sigur Ros, Radiohead, 90s house music and 70s krautrock, and there was widespread appeal to it all, because you could dance to it but it could also be listened to on a much more cerebral level – I have nothing but respect for bands that can do that. Add that they were all multi-instrumentalists who changed instruments as though they were changing hats, and that not once did I think a song of theirs would be improved by lyrics, and it’s no wonder everyone was impressed. I particularly liked their song second from the end, but as they didn’t announce titles, I have no way of knowing what it was, which sucks.

Primal Scream: I like this band on record but when Bobby Gillespie came on and played the first song, I was underwhelmed. I couldn’t hear it all that well and it wasn’t a particularly well chosen opener. So I was preparing to be disappointed, but the second song, a ‘Screamadelica’ cut, was much better. Really he should have played all of that album, given the audience’s response to everything they played from it. The group’s blend of Rolling Stones-esque pure rock’n’roll and dance music with a touch of trippy 60s psychedelia was perfect late at night, with ‘Come Together’ being a particularly good moment. I wish they’d played ‘Higher Than The Sun’ though, since that’s my favourite Primal Scream song. I also wasn’t a fan of the drum solo that closed it: a good drum solo should have  a beginning, middle and end, while this was just a whole lot of endings, like he couldn’t choose just one he liked.

Sunday

Citizen Fish: An offshoot of anarchist 80s band Culture Shock, this was billed to me as ‘forty minutes of political ranting’, which made no sense. If you have something to say but no music or melodies, then write a book, or poetry, or a blog! I was very surprised to find that Dick Lucas and his backing musicians have actual tunes to back themselves up, although the focus is very much on his opinions, which he has a lot of. He’s clearly very passionate about what he’s saying, so it’s a shame that we couldn’t all have had lyric booklets. As it was, I heard a brief description at the beginning of each song but then couldn’t make out much more. It was a good show, but it would have been better in a crowd of really dedicated fans who agree with everything he says. But he’s not a proper anarchist anymore – he claimed to have 5 songs to go with only 10 minutes on the clock, but in fact managed to finish on time.

Dodgy: This power-pop three piece were a great 90s singles band, but apparently they have a full five studio albums – who knew? Still, forgetting them (I assume everyone does) they are the embodiment of a good festival band, with their collection of unchallenging, catchy hits which are simple enough to have people singing along even if it’s their first listen. Some people complained that the performance ‘lacked energy’ but I think that the slowed down versions of their upbeat songs really complemented the fact that it was after lunch, in the baking sun, on the final day. Who wouldn’t rather be sitting down at that point? My only complaint was that their set was very short. I could have happily listened to them for quite a while longer.

Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel: Probably the most highly anticipated act of the entire weekend for me, Harley both delivered and disappointed. Set length was again an issue, this time because he has a pretty big career to cover. The hour might just have been long enough had I been allowed to pick the setlist, but unfortunately it was more tailored to the casual passerby than to the fans, meaning there was hardly any representation from the first two Cockney Rebel albums. But as much as I’d have loved to see him play ‘Death Trip’, he’s a great performer no matter what, bringing a whole new lease of life to the Beatles’ ‘Here Comes The Sun’, and working hard to get the crowd involved in singing the chorus to ‘Make Me Smile’ (yes, he finished with the hit, but who can complain when it’s such an amazing song?) I feel like my only problems with this would be sorted out if I saw him play somewhere where he and his band are the only name on the ticket. Hopefully someday I will.

Roy Harper: Headlining the second stage was something of an unknown quantity, in that it could have been great or it could have been terrible. After all, a cranky 72-year-old alone on stage with a small collection of guitars playing difficult, heavy-going is hardly a traditional recipe for festival success. But then, this wayward Dylan is certainly not a traditional guy. He is, however, an excellent player and songwriter with an incredibly loyal fanbase – there were fifty or so people at the front who I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d bought the festival tickets just to see him. On the opposite end of the scale, there was a guy at the back who might have bought a ticket just to heckle him. He yelled “I’m going to self-destruct if you keep playing!” to which Roy replied that he should come up on stage and do it in front of everyone. The guy left. Someone who provokes such polarising reactions like that has to be worth paying attention to, and while I’m not going to start following him around the country, I am going to investigate further. Reviews may follow.

The Levellers: This band actually invented the festival, and still organise it every year, and as such they get to both open it (with an acoustic set Friday lunchtime) and close it (as the only band playing on a major stage Sunday night). I can’t really argue with that, especially when they’re this good at it. They play exactly as a festival finale should be played: loud, fast, energetic and positive, trying to draw a crowd of thousands together after a weekend of everyone watching completely different things. Essentially, their music is folk rock, but it’s a million miles from the quiet, pastoral style that implies, often including more hard rock and punk influences. While I only recognised a small handful of songs (I left before their set last year) everything they played had me dancing, and I didn’t want it to end – which it eventually did with a spectacular firework display. They weren’t the best band I saw all weekend, but I can’t think of one that should have replaced them as the final act.

Miscellaneous

In addition to all the full sets, I saw part of The Selecter, a long-running ska band who I enjoyed in the festival setting but who probably wouldn’t be my first port of call if I were to seriously investigate the ska genre. I also saw the beginning of Imelda May’s set. She’s a modern Irish musician who looks like she’s from the 1920s and who sings like she’s part of American roots rock, and what I saw was enough to make a good impression. I saw all of The Wonder Stuff and I remember it being good fun, but it can’t have been particularly memorable if that’s as specific as my recollections get. At least there are no bad ones, I suppose. On the less musical side, I saw a great comedian called Robin Ince on Friday who you should definitely check out if you’re into intelligent comedy at all… but I wouldn’t know where to start  on reviewing that.

I also played the game Desert Island Discs with some people, which is a fictional situation where you’re stranded on an island with only 10 songs to keep you company. I managed to get mine to run well over the length of three albums.

King Crimson: Larks' Tongues in Aspic

Larks’ Tongues in Aspic

Best song: Exiles

Worst song: Easy Money

Overall grade: 6

King Crimson, the World’s Most Inconsistent Band (trademark and copyright, Robert Fripp, 1969) return from what should have been a career-killing album with their first effort that truly matches up to the brilliance of ‘In the Court’. Between ‘Islands’ and this one, the group has changed beyond recognition, with Fripp rightfully firing everyone he’d previously worked with and bringing a bunch of replacements on board, most notably ex-Family bassist John Wetton and ex-Yes drummer Bill Bruford. And so this band, who have very little to do with King Crimson at all, both in personnel and in style, hop into the studio and record an album that is, ironically, very worthy of the King Crimson name.

In addition, this is the only one of the three Crimson greats (generally considered to be this, ‘Court’ and ‘Red’) that doesn’t have a completely rotten track. Seriously! The highs aren’t quite as high as the other two, but the lows aren’t even in sight of the lows on the others. It’s a fair payoff, and I’ll take it.

The title track is split into two parts, which bookend the album, and I’d guess they were conceived like this because I’ve tried listening to them side by side, and they don’t flow so well together. Separately they’re a delight, though. The first one is a full band composition, heavier than anything they’ve tackled before, rehearsed sections and improvised sections moving into one another with ease. David Cross’ violin fits perfectly into the mix and the idea of it being one of the ‘core’ instruments rather than having just a token part makes the song stand out from what other bands were doing at the time. It also features Bruford interacting with another percussionist, Jamie Muir, which is pretty awesome, so it’s not just unique in sound but also in the eclectic range of instruments used.

Its immediate followup is the more traditional ‘Book of Saturday’, which is less than half the length of any other song on the record, but still worthy of inclusion. As much as I’d like to reject any post-Lake singer for this band, I have to admit that Wetton’s decent, and it helps that I can actually listen to the lyrics of this song without cringing – hello, new lyricist Richard Palmer-James! From an instrumental point of view, Fripp plays a mean backwards guitar here.

But third track ‘Exiles’ is my pick for highlight: a halfway house between the crazy rulebreaking of ‘Larks Pt 1’ and the safe, unprogressive ‘Book’, and is based around a grand Mellotron intro and the stellar group of musicians using their talents to create a swirling atmosphere rather than a crushing wall of noise. It’s probably easier to get into than the band are generally considered, too. ‘Easy Money’, on the other hand, is my least favourite moment. I’m not completely sure why – in theory all the ingredients are there to make it a great song, and certainly nothing makes me dislike it, but it just doesn’t enthrall me like the other songs do.

‘The Talking Drum’ is a quiet, semi-ambient piece, essentially an extended introduction to the final track, and for these reasons it used to go over my head. It opens with a very, very quiet drum part, and builds in volume so gradually that you hardly notice it doing so. For the first couple of minutes there’s nothing much to grab onto, but with patience the other instruments do come in, violin and piano and guitar playing melodies at odds with one another. It’s an understated, restrained exercise in controlled buildup.

Then there’s a sudden return to the title track, which is the opposite – it’s incredibly in-your-face, fast and powerful. It’s credited solely to Fripp, but there’s no way one person could have come up with all of this. But seemingly he wasn’t content with inventing progressive rock as we know it, he had to do the same thing with progressive metal. It’s highly appropriate that Dream Theater covered the song thirty-six years later; its influence can be felt all over their work. Not built around any kind of melody, it twists and turns round a rollercoaster of guitar riffs and drum patterns until you don’t know which way is up.

Sometimes I can’t quite believe this band is made up of real people. The idea of having the ability to create something like this is overwhelming.

Pink Floyd: Meddle

Meddle

Best song: Echoes, what else?

Worst song: Seamus

Overall grade: 5

(I’m gonna speed up on the Floyd reviews a little because I’d like to have The Wall reviewed before I go off to see Roger Waters perform it on September 14. Which is only a month away, so it looks like I’ll be speeding up a lot. We’ll see.)

Ever heard an album where one side is absolutely outstanding, a complete work of genius, and you can’t get enough of it, and the other side is sorta lacklustre and a complete letdown in comparison? Ever wonder why the good and bad music on one of these albums isn’t more evenly spaced so as not to be so top/bottom-heavy? Well, on the second count at least, this one is excused, because the work of genius is one complete extended piece running over the whole of the second side. Anyone who’s read my piece on sidelongs will know that this one, ‘Echoes’, is actually one of my three favourite songs of all time, so the album it comes from really should score at least a 6, but I can’t bring myself to get excited about most of side one at all.

The sole exception is opener ‘One Of These Days’. It’s the only Floyd song ever to feature Nick Mason take lead vocals, and unrelated, it’s also an instrumental. (That joke never fails to amuse me.) Incorporating hard rock and psychedelia, it uses twin basses and drums to create a harsh, aggressive atmosphere that delightfully torments the listener for five minutes, giving them high hopes for what’s to come.

Hopes are crushed, though, as ‘A Pillow of Winds’ comes in. Roger was clearly getting bored with the whole acoustic folk thing, as this one’s dull and lifeless without any of the lyrical imagery of earlier equivalents. ‘Fearless’ is an attempt at a power ballad that has none of what singles Pink Floyd out from bland radio music, except for that annoying ‘You’ll never walk alone’ chant at the end. ‘San Tropez’ is an essentially pointless foray into the world of lounge jazz with some of the world’s most boring keyboard parts and ‘Seamus’ is just pathetic. The fact that they tried to get a dog to sing a song really shows that they were at a loss for new material.

But then comes the treat, the exquisite fudge cake after the mundane spaghetti bolognese. I’m one of those hipsters who doesn’t think this band ever topped ‘Echoes’. Maybe on some level they agreed with me – it’s certainly telling that they never attempted another sidelong after this. And it shouldn’t be as truly astounding as it is. The four of them didn’t have that much technical skill, training or even experience to work with, yet they managed to pool the talents they did have and come up with this, and that just makes the finished product even more of an achievement.

Much of the middle section of the piece is based around sound effects, something the Floyd are skilled at incorporating into their music. Most of them are sea-related; birds, wind, whales, a submarine, and, yes, echoes, all of which make the track feel open, spacious and free. But there are some shrieks which give the song a darker edge – a sea casualty, perhaps? These water references carry through into the lyrics, which are also the first of Waters’ musings on the human condition, and their combination of abstract and intent make them really quite beautiful: ‘And no-one showed us to the land and no-one knows the wheres or whys/And something stirs and something tries and starts to climb towards the light’. But Rick Wright is the member who truly shines on his piece, from his ‘ping!’s at the beginning of the song that always send a shiver down my spine to his marvellous organ solo that appears just before the final vocal part. Honestly, this song includes every style of music they have covered and would cover(except for disco and 80s synth-pop, but they’d feel a bit out of place, no?), it’s the perfect balance of melodic and experimental and listening to it engages both the head and the heart. The input ingredients are simple, but the output will make your breath catch in your throat.

Has anyone ever noticed that all the bad songs on this album are fluffy, positive songs? Clearly, endless negativity and cynicism was always destined to be the place where Roger would shine. And now, with this album of extremes safely out of the way, it wouldn’t be too long until he’d realise that too…

Taylor Swift: Speak Now

Speak Now

Best song: Dear John

Worst song: Innocent

Overall grade: 5

Taylor Swift’s third album is the first one I listened to all the way through. The first two, I knew as individual songs, and the fact that they were all released at the same time was of little to no consequence. By the time this was released, though, I could see the importance of the album format, so this went on my CD player and I played it straight through, discovering every song at once. Does that influence how I think of it? Probably. There’s no connection between any of these songs, but in my mind they’re far more parts of a whole than just a collection of parts.

It might not be just me, though. Taylor’s certainly becoming more mature here and on many songs we see her taking on a more ‘adult pop’ style, so it wouldn’t be out of the question for her to be looking more towards the album than the singles. Although this development also leads to my main problem with the album: it’s a little predictable. The songs are well written pop songs with a hint of country, exactly the same as the last album, the slightly more sophisticated music and lyrics just able to counterbalance the fact that she’s not stretching herself re. styles.

But still, I’m not one to argue with a bunch of good songs, so let’s talk about some of these. Here, we can divide most everything into upbeat pop songs, slower ballads, and a small amount of slightly more ambitious material.

This last category comprises two of my favourites: this album’s answer to the emotional, multipart storytelling of ‘Love Story’ is ‘Dear John’, but this time it’s a story of empowerment rather than dependence, and it’s outstanding in the way Taylor’s voice shows its narrator move from being broken and hurt to realising she’s better off without that relationship. (That description doesn’t exactly make it sound groundbreaking, but this is impressive stuff.) The other one is ‘Haunted’, a very melodramatic song that almost strays into orchestral rock territory at times and features Swift almost shouting some of the lyrics, refusing to hold back any of her feelings.

A whopping five songs fall into the slow ballad category, and the best is the thoughtful and introspective ‘Never Grow Up’, where Swift gathers the courage to sing to her younger self, pleading with her to enjoy being young while she can, and the futility of the whole exercise makes it incredibly poignant. Also successful are the slow-building, understated ‘Last Kiss’ and the apologetic, uncertain ‘Back to December’ that showcase her talents to the full, both as a singer and a writer. On the other hand, ‘Enchanted’, while a nice tale of meeting someone once and having an instant connection that I can definitely relate to, ultimately doesn’t play to her strengths. And ‘Innocent’ is just an embarrassing attempt at psychoanalysing Kanye West for the incident when he interrupted her VMA acceptance speech.

And finally, upbeat pop. The title track and the closer ‘Long Live’ are both overblown, overproduced, and far cheesier than they rightfully should be, and I wholeheartedly enjoy both of them. Apart from anything else, it’s nice to see a famous musician writing a song appreciating their opportunities rather than complaining about the perils of being famous. ‘Sparks Fly’ is the closest this album comes to filler – it’s fun and catchy but doesn’t have any kind of a deep meaning. ‘Better Than Revenge’ is slightly self-conscious, a girly girl trying too hard to be one of the boys, but it’s catchy as hell and probably a great live number.

And that’s without even mentioning the actual lead single, the double-platinum ‘Mine’. Lyrically it’s the closest copy of anything from ‘Fearless’, with its description of a relationship that goes through its trials and tribulations but ultimately ends up perfect, but it deserves recognition for being the last of Swift’s songs to feature such themes, and there is a charming naiveté in her belief that this could happen.

This third album was entirely written by Swift herself with no help from other songwriters, making it completely her own work. It’s clear she really cares about the messages behind her songs and giving them a certain amount of musical depth, and is capable of realising these aims, but it’d be nice to see her push herself more and think outside the box a bit.

Yes: Relayer

Relayer

Best song: The Gates of Delirium

Worst song: To Be Over

Overall grade: 6

‘Relayer’, the seventh Yes album overall, is notable for being the last in a string of three to have 4 or less tracks, the last in a string of four to have awesome Roger Dean cover paintings, and the last before the band took their first hiatus to release solo material. It’s also notable for not featuring Rick Wakeman on keyboard-type instruments. As the story goes, he told the band he was quitting, but none of them took him seriously, and then he later got a phone call: “Why weren’t you in rehearsal today?” “…Because I quit.” Which prompted the band to find a quick replacement.

This replacement ended up being Patrick Moraz, a classically trained jazz keyboardist who had some credits in that he’d worked with members of The Nice, but was largely unknown. Just as significant was the other lead contender for the role, Greek electronic composer Vangelis, who would later release albums with Jon Anderson during his early 80s hiatus from Yes. I actually saw some Jon & Vangelis albums in a shop the other day, and I was tempted, but eventually decided it was too big of a risk to buy without listening first – though I will listen, because I think the blend of their musical styles could be really interesting. There’s no denying ‘Relayer’ would be a whole lot different if he had played on it, or Wakeman for that matter.

Because despite being new, Moraz’s influence is all over this album, a crazy experiment in jazz fusion. Liking the other classic Yes albums is definitely no guarantee you’ll appreciate this one, as there’s none of the symphonic, well-organised style of prog music that they’re famous for. And none of this is more apparent than on Side 2’s opener ‘Sound Chaser’, a well-titled cross between Lizard-era King Crimson and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. It’s full of sudden changes in volume, dynamics and tempo that pushes the band to their absolute limits of speed and creativity. Yes, they’re really just showing off all the tricks they can do, but there are a LOT of tricks, and it still manages to be more of a song than a jam. This is helped by the vocal sections that appear sporadically, although they’re actually my least favourite parts of the song, although I guess Jon didn’t have a whole lot else to do, so I’ll give him his moment. Far more interesting are Steve Howe’s guitar workouts and the funk-like chanting of ‘cha cha cha!’

The only other track on Side 2 is the light to ‘Sound Chaser’s dark, the gorgeous and melodic ‘To Be Over’. If I hated it I could make a crack about it being well-titled too because I’m always waiting for it to be over, but sadly that’s impossible, because I’m never looking forward to the end, even if the similarities between this and previous songs like ‘And You And I’ and ‘South Side of the Sky’ prevent it from being one of the band’s finest hours. The first three or so minutes are my favourite part, a kind of proto-dream pop that’s gentle and relaxing, and brings you down from the intensity of the previous song while still having little nuances that make it work on its own. The rest of it’s got slightly sharper edges, and I’m guessing that it’s this that inspired the icy painting we see on the cover.

But these two pale in comparison to the grandiose statement of Side 1’s ‘The Gates of Delirium’. In actual fact, this is the last sidelong Yes would attempt until 1997’s ‘The Solution’, which isn’t even a real song. ‘Gates’ is definitely a real song though, and what a song! Like all good sidelongs, it’s based around a pretentious concept (Tolstoy’s ‘War & Peace’) and can be categorised in at least ten musical genres. It starts off with a prelude that runs through all the different emotions felt as the battle approaches, featuring some particularly excellent vocal melodies from Jon, and then leads neatly onto an instrumental detailing the battle itself. The section’s incredibly dense and full on in a way that captures the terror and confusion of war. Alan White plays very well here, having had a chance to settle into the band that he hadn’t had when recording ‘Tales’. Then, the music does the same thing as side two by seguing from this into a quiet, beautiful ballad, known as ‘Soon’, the peaceful lyrics of which are at odds with the really quite evil ones of earlier. Much like ‘Sound Chaser’, although the instrumentals are unstructured and just feature the instruments playing off one another, the different sections give the song an overall purpose and flow.

To conclude, this is actually one of my absolute favourite Yes albums, and while it’s not quite as immaculately put together as ‘Close To The Edge’ its appeal often lies in its disorganisation. That being said, I generally feel slightly dirty after listening to this and loving it, and I have to go put on Rick Wakeman solo albums to make myself feel better.

Ramones: Rocket to Russia

Rocket to Russia

Best song: We’re A Happy Family

Worst song: I Don’t Care

Overall grade: 5

The Ramones release their first album for the third time, and yet if I was to listen to these albums not knowing which came first and which were just re-treading old ground, I think I’d call this one out as the best of the three. That makes sense, I suppose – if you keep practicing writing the same style of song, you’re bound to improve. There’s also arguably the biggest number of absolute classics on this album (not Blitzkrieg Bop though, sadface) which might be a coincidence or it might show that they’re getting better at judging which of their songs are likely to be popular with their fans.

The first of these future favourites is ‘Cretin Hop’, the most blatantly derivative song here. But be honest with me now – in your heart, which would you enjoy more: a rewrite of the band’s greatest song or a new song that’s kinda mediocre? After all, the Ramones are all about enjoyment. You’re not supposed to listen to them and think ‘That’s an interesting chord progression I’ve never heard before’ or ‘Wow, that lyric really makes me think!’ If you’re sitting still while you listen rather than shaking your head around like a crazy person, you’re doing it wrong. So I think ‘Cretin Hop’ is great because it gets that uncontrollable physical reaction from me right at the beginning of the album.

‘Rockaway Beach’ is the result of the little-known late 70s collaboration between the Beach Boys and the Sex Pistols. What? That never happened? Well, you could have fooled me because that’s exactly what this song is, a bunch of nice harmonies combined with super-fast loud guitars. Then there’s ‘Sheena Is A Punk Rocker’, all power chords and that instantly recognisable singalong chorus.

The one that just edges out the best song competition is ‘We’re A Happy Family’. Although musically the Ramones are in about the same place they were two years ago, lyrically they’ve come on a lot, and this song has a great set of words to go along with it. Another punch comes in the form of the written-to-shock ‘Teenage Lobotomy’: I can’t imagine another band trying to rhyme ‘tell ‘em’ with ‘cerebellum’. That, along with the cool drum opening and the repeated yelling of ‘lobotomy!’ means the song includes everything that made early-period Ramones great.

Two cover songs make an appearance here, and one of them actually achieves classic status too. It’s obvious which one – the great version of ‘Do You Wanna Dance?’! No, I’m kidding (although that IS a good cover too), it’s ‘Surfin’ Bird’ of course. It might be the most annoying song ever written, it might be the only ever song to be based off a radio jingle rather than the other way around, and it’s definitely the perfect song for this band. It reminds me of an excitable kid: gets on your nerves, tiring to be around, yet deep down you can’t help but like it.

There’s a little bit of filler on this album, but overall less than on its predecessors, so I can listen all the way through without getting tempted to tune out. ‘I Don’t Care’ is pretty stupid – it essentially negates my earlier comment about the band getting better at writing lyrics, but it’s very short and precedes 3 awesome songs, so I’ll tolerate it. ‘I Can’t Give You Anything’ is another low point. Not awful, but it doesn’t have the attitude and energy that it should coming from these guys. But there are a couple of songs that break the super-fast, loud mould of the highlights I’ve mentioned and make it work well – specifically ‘Here Today Gone Tomorrow’ and ‘Ramona’, a pair of more sincere love songs that don’t come across as contrived.

The part of my brain that values originality is yelling at me to dock this album points, but there’s so many undeniably great songs here that I can’t manage it. Get this one before Leave Home and even before the debut, so long as you’ve listened to… oh, you know what I’m going to say.

An Update/Admin Stuff

STATE OF AFFAIRS

An itinerary of new posts for the next few weeks/months

So, I haven’t posted anything in a few days, which I feel bad about. I was trying to make the most of my time at the Fringe festival, performing, seeing three or four shows a night and often not getting back til late, and then yesterday I got home and completely crashed. However, I’ll try to make up for the missed days by posting two or three reviews today, tomorrow and Wednesday.

Thursday around lunchtime I leave to go to Beautiful Days festival, and so there definitely won’t be any updates over the weekend, but there’ll be a full report and some other stuff Monday/Tuesday next week.

Wednesday next week (the 21^st) I’m going into hospital to have an operation. It’s very minor and there’s unlikely to be any complications, but I might need a day or two to recover, so I can’t guarantee anything new until the Saturday of that week. After that, I’ll do my best to catch up in the last few days of August with at least one review per day, two if I’m not completely swamped in all the work I have to do before I go back to school.

I head back on Monday September 2 to unpack and make my room look awesome with posters, tickets and concert programmes, and after that, I have to start going to classes and doing homework again… I’m aiming to do four reviews per week at this point (two during the week, two at the weekend) which will take us through from then until December 13 when the holidays start.

As far as what I’ll be reviewing, I’m going to cut down and focus on eight bands at a time rather than ten (so each will get reviewed every two weeks) and my next projects will probably be David Bowie followed by Roxy Music and The Clash.

-Rose

Tubular Bells For Two

Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells ‘For Two’

Date: 7 August 2013

Location: Underbelly Cowbarn, Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Support: n/a

Special guests: They were pretty special all by themselves.

I haven’t reviewed ‘Tubular Bells’, and I never will, because how could I choose a best song and a worst song for it? I am a big fan of the album, though, and if I were to write about it I’d probably give it a 6, which gives you some idea of how much I like it. Because of that, when I got to the Fringe festival and saw the posters for this up around the city, I couldn’t pass up the chance to see it. (Shameless plug: I’m performing here! The show’s called ’15 Minutes’ and it’s 45 minutes long. Come see it.)

The basic deal with this show is that there are two Australian guys who play their way through Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield. Sound unremarkable? Well, that album has over twenty different instruments playing on it and everything here is created live, no backing track whatsoever. In addition, they’ve never written anything down or had any kind of sheet music, they’re just huge fans of the record who have steadily learned to play it by ear. I reckon the whole idea of it seems a bit more impressive now.

I come to this show right after seeing a comedy show and a theatre show pretty much back to back, barely time to walk between venues in between, so I arrived with only a couple of minutes to spare, but as soon as I got to my seat I felt more relaxed. The atmosphere was calm, the lighting was low and a curious array of keyboards and guitars were placed on a stage, half-hidden in a cloud of smoke. And I’d just barely had time to collect my thoughts and have a drink of water before Aidan Roberts and Daniel Holdsworth were striding out on stage, giving a brief wave and smile to the audience and sitting down somewhere in the middle of the mishmash of instruments.

Then… they played it. No introduction or small talk, just straight into the main theme. At first they sit still, occasionally swapping a guitar strap over their head or swivelling a chair to reach a different keyboard, but it’s very sedate, and then it gradually gets more complicated as percussion is introduced and as several instruments start being played at once – I’d think these guys has five arms each if it wasn’t for their tagline of ‘Tubular Bells played with four hands and four feet’. Which isn’t strictly true anyway, as they also use their mouths to do the vocalisations.

Both of them are concentrating so hard on what they’re doing. They take this music very seriously, clearly love it a lot, and there’s nothing improvised about this show, it’s a note for note recreation of the original with everything timed to perfection. Their instrument switches in particular are so tight and rehearsed, and it takes only a second for Aidan to change from one guitar to an entirely different one or for Daniel to run across the stage from the keyboards to the bells themselves… there’s no way one person could do this show, but two is enough, considering that one can cover for the other during these brief pauses.

It’s not all seriousness, though – halfway through side one I caught the pair of them grinning at each other for a split second. During a pause in his part of the music Daniel picked up a glass of red wine and casually took a sip before poising himself for a big moment. At the end of side one, there’s a brief pause and blackout as someone says ‘Please excuse us, we need to turn the record over.’ And Daniel talks to the crowd while Aidan prepares the stage for them to continue: ‘This is a little something we like to call Side Two.’ And I don’t know if it’s the massive round of applause they got in the break or just the knowledge that it’s more than half over, but they’re a lot more at ease on Side 2.

People always think of Tubular Bells as the quiet, folky piece that it is in the first half, but the second part actually rocks out in a lot of places, and the part with the caveman vocals honestly scares me, at least it does when it’s played at top volume and I’m sitting in the third row. Not complaining, though – it shows that the volume and sound quality were both excellent. The lighting, too, was really well done. Simple colours didn’t distract from the performance but enhanced the mood, with blue for slower sections and reds and oranges for the more intense parts.

The one thing about the performance that I found a little strange was towards the end of the first part, with the announcements of ‘Grand piano… Reed and pipe organ…’ I could see the stage, and see that there quite clearly wasn’t a grand piano or a reed and pipe organ, it just sounded like there was, which was hard to get my head around. It’s a shame because I usually love that part where each instrument in turn plays the same theme. It’s cheesy but totally brilliant. But they really did have a glockenspiel, and of course, a full set of tubular bells. With the cry of ‘Plus… tubular bells!’ a full set of bright white lights came up over the bells. It was a beautiful moment to witness.

(Although, for a piece CALLED Tubular Bells it always strikes me how little they’re used. If you’re going to buy a set, you might as well get your money’s worth?)

Halfway through part two is a very intense drumming section, and after that was over, you could literally see the sweat dripping off Daniel’s face in particular, and for the last few minutes the performance did have less energy. They still didn’t miss a note, though, and they managed to pull off ‘Sailor’s Hornpipe’ excellently, purely on adrenaline I guess, which was an outstanding finale. Then there were a few bows, and another wave, and then they were gone, probably to get some much needed sleep. I imagine being alone on a stage that looks like it’s set up for a full orchestra really takes it out of you.

I would have liked to stay behind and talk to people about it afterwards, but I had a dinner reservation to meet (it’s been a non stop day.) However, on my way out I heard a brief exchange between a husband and a wife, aged around fifty. The husband was raving about the show, saying it was the best thing he’d seen at the Fringe (I’d agree with that) while the wife merely said ‘Yes, it was different.’ Stereotyping at its best/worst… I like to get into conversations with people at these events just to disprove these stereotypes. Hashtag adventures of a female prog fan under twenty.

Steven Wilson: The Raven That Refused To Sing

The Raven That Refused To Sing (And Other Stories)

Best song: Take your pick. I think I’ll pick The Watchmaker

Worst song: why? why? why? ok, The Pin Drop

Overall grade: 7

Look, it’s the album that’s in my little icon!

Reviewing my very favourite albums is something of a terrifying prospect, because I know I’ll never be able to do them justice, and I feel that particularly strongly with this one. Today, it is August 6 2013 and I can categorically state that Steven Wilson’s third offering is, without doubt, the best album released this decade so far. I’m fully prepared to re-evaluate this on December 31, 2019, but considering we’re over a third of the way through and there’s been no real competition as of yet… I’d say Mr. Wilson is in with a fair chance of the prize.

Whereas on his first two albums Wilson went a bit crazy having been let loose alone in the studio and started trying out thousands of ideas, most of which worked in fairness, here he finally seems able to stick to one main idea and create a work that is incredibly cohesive, driven, refined and which contains approximately 0.01% filler. It cleverly blends classic symphonic sounds with modern inventiveness and in doing so, fills every possible definition of ‘progressive rock’.

Of course, when I say one main idea, I don’t mean that this is a concept album. (Although somewhere around my third listen I began to see it as based around the concept of winter and loneliness.) Instead, as the title suggests, each one of these songs has its own story to tell. You get to meet a new character every time and hear about their life and often death, usually in quite a twisted way. I guess you could say that this is to a rock opera what a book of short stories is to a novel.

Opener ‘Luminol’ is a clear stylistic throwback to the 70s. I’m not sure what a chemical that makes blood fluoresce has to do with a busker who’s treated as nothing more than part of the scenery, but there you go. It’s jazzy with a lot of different melodies, all of which are interesting, and a particularly brilliant instrumental passage in the first couple of minutes. It’s not heavy on the lyrics at all, in fact they feel more like a special effect like a solo or a fuzz pedal than the focus of the song.

‘Drive Home’ is all about the guitar solo; I believe Guthrie Gogan plays it and it’s fast becoming one of my favourites in studio recordings of music. Prior to the sheer awesomeness of that, the song is a classic ballad but one of Wilson’s absolute best. It really does feel like a late night journey home.

There’s a lot of texture on ‘The Holy Drinker’ that makes the previous two tracks seem sparse in comparison. If we’re sticking with my winter concept, the first two related to the cold and the snow and the outdoors, while this one is indoors in front of a raging fire. I also think of this as the most unique and original part of the album. And the musicians that play here are literally of the highest possible calibre, and hearing them play really makes this song a joy to listen to, although it can seem a bit overwhelming at first with all these players being of an equal standard. I love Adam Holzman’s organ in particular.

‘The Pin Drop’ seems to be the token single, even though it wasn’t officially a single. It’s an objectively “normal” length, has the most energy and the most obvious hooks. I actually think it’s an amazing song that goes through an incredible amount of changes for its length, but even so, if he made a whole album full of Pin Drops I’d consider it selling out.

But the scariest thing of all, scarier than any of these stories, is that even after these four masterpieces the album hasn’t properly hit its stride yet. It does so with the magnificent ‘The Watchmaker’, which contains four minutes of frail beauty which perfectly represent the aged man in the story and the meticulous arranging of tiny parts in his craft. And then that wonderful cascading guitar part comes in and we realise that maybe the watchmaker can feel emotion after all! But after a few more plot twists, the watchmaker dies in a blast of dissonance. It’s perfectly written to tell a story through music with as few words as possible.

Wilson’s voice is at its absolute best and most tender on the title track – in fact there are times when I can’t believe the song isn’t a true story about his own life. The only half-decent word for this is spellbinding in how its dark, wistful atmosphere washes around you, and by the time it reaches the ‘Sing to me, raven…’ part I’m crying. Not many songs have that effect on me. It’s a perfect contrast to the ambitious epic of the previous track and I quite honestly cannot find a fault with it.

I feel like this album is probably full of little tricks and subtleties that I haven’t discovered yet. I can’t wait for it to be twenty years’ time and to be hearing this album, by then an old favourite, and to suddenly sit up and say ‘Hey! I never noticed that before!’

Prog rock in the 70s didn’t really have one person that completely defined the whole movement. These days it does, and that person is Steven Wilson, and he has just released one of the classic albums of the future.