It’s probably about time something was said about a few acquisitions.
It took a long time to convince myself I needed to hear Stereolab’s “Margerine Eclipse” and Belle & Sebastian’s “Dear Catastrophe Waitress”. Apprehension abounded. Stereolab’s recent output has been about equal parts struggle and joy. Each of the last three studio albums had their share of downtime. Three songs might profitably have been chopped off the end of “Sound-dust”, while the middle part of “Cobra and Phases” remains hard work, if an admirable attempt at matching minimalism with pop music. So why is “Margerine Eclipse” such a breath of fresh air? Beats me. It just is. It’s less longwinded, for a start. There is also the use of the kinds of sounds employed in their work with Mouse on Mars, circa “Dots and Loops”. Somehow there seems, as much as anything, to be more space for the groop [sic] to move around in. Inevitably they sound different given the loss of Mary Hansen, with Laetitia’s vocals doing all of the harmony work. It may not be “better”, but it is, in its own way, different.
Then there’s “Dear Catastrophe Waitress”. For a long time I didn’t know if I could “go there”. The admirable-in-theory “democracy at all costs” approach had led the band to lose sight of their strengths (mainly, Stuart Murdoch’s songwriting), and had also caused some unfortunate juxtapositions: the deeply affecting “The Chalet Lines” into the hyper-twee “Nice Day For A Sulk”, for example. (You could, if you were so inclined, burn an extremely good single CD-R from the best parts of the last three albums.) And the thought that they were now to re-work their sound via Trevor Horn, while throwing Murdoch back into the foreground, had me thinking that they may be one step too far removed from their roots for salvation to ever take hold. Of course, I was wrong on all counts. It’s not all Murdoch, and that’s no bad thing. The songs are, to a man, wonderful. The production is brilliant. The entire history of the English pop charts is in here somewhere, down to Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back In Town”. Even a song with the unhopeful title of “Piazza, New York Catcher” gets an unambiguous thumbs-up. How could I ever have doubted them?
Meanwhile, Stephin Merritt is back with this year’s Magnetic Fields, “i”, the first on a major label. “No synths”, they loudly proclaim, and while some of us doubt that this is entirely true, it produces a setting wherein the hitherto self-consciously “retro” 80s sound can no longer inhibit, as it does when one is feeling less charitable, enjoyment of the songs themselves. Merritt will one day make a fortune as people with voices more friendly to the masses than his own discover the universality of his songs about love. Above all else, Merritt should be treasured because he is the first real lyricist that “we” (by which I mean anyone born after the Second World War who takes any more than a passing interest in popular music) have had. Merritt seems to have absorbed everything that he has ever seen, heard, or read, and to be able to squeeze little pieces of it into songs that are somehow able to turn the most unlikely material into something witty, clever, profound, or all three together. (Nobody else that I’m aware of has applied the Pantone colour system to the pursuit, or loss, of love.) Your grandparents were lucky enough to have had Cole Porter and Irving Berlin. We are lucky enough to have Stephin Merritt, but, as yet, too few of us know it.
And, of course, there’s Nick Cave, who gives us not one but two albums, a wordtorrent even by his standards, supported as ever by the shambolic majesty that is the Bad Seeds. Blixa is gone, Mick Harvey steps up to the plate in the way that only he can, and an organ has been thrown into the mix. It will take time, as Cave records always do, to absorb, but for now it is an unexpected pleasure to set either disc spinning. We had our doubts upon hearing “Nocturama” about the pursuit of a nine-to-five ethic in the world of creativity. We may well have been wrong. Who said all work and no play would make Nick a dull boy?
But wait, there’s more. Thanks to the mantra of “free downloads before 7 am”, and no less thanks to the generosity of my work colleague (for one year only) Sarah, who had the good sense to put me onto folks like Sufjan Stevens, Devendra Banhart, M Ward (saviour of the universe, notwithstanding that the “M” only stands for “Matt”, which is not quite as romantic or mysterious as, say, “Miracle”, or "Manfred"), songs:ohia, Iron & Wine, and others of that ilk, I have spent much of the last few months drowning in great music of all hues. And yet, even with such a steady and varied diet of diverse, “new”-sounding music (even when much of it also sounds “old”), do I find myself reaching more often than not for two albums of unashamed old-fashioned pop music - you know, the kind with guitar lines you can play along to, and hooks that you can’t get out of your head - Snow Patrol’s “Final Straw” and A C Newman’s “The Slow Wonder”? I’m not even going to write anything about these records (there’s really not much I could say, beyond “I don’t know why I like them but I do”), they are not particularly "cutting edge" or otherwise startling, they simply brighten up a dull existence. For that I say, thanks, fellas.
