Hypothetical mixtape: April 2012

I listen to stuff. I think about it. Briefly. I type some words. April 2012 wasn't a year ago. Yet.

"Are You Gonna Waste My Time?", by Zeus. If you believed this song was the product of 2012, well, you would believe anything. And yet it's true! A totally unexpected breath of fresh air that squarely hits that unlikely mid-point between Matthew Sweet and Queen. Not to mention a band name that suggests late 1960s Greek prog rock.

"Compare and Contrast", by Matt LeMay. And speaking of Matthew Sweet, there must be something in the ether, because if you had snuck this power-pop gem onto Sweet's "Time Capsule" album while nobody was looking, you would probably have gotten away with it. Which, in nobody's language, is a bad thing.

"How Deep Is Your Love", by The Rapture. This one-sided 12" from 2011 is not quite "Happy House", but it's in the ballpark. It makes me feel the way I felt when I first played the second, crucial DFA "Compilation" set: that here are a bunch of hipsters who have been listening to, and distilling into their own sound, something not unlike my own ideal record collection.

"Night And Day (Daphni Mix)", by Hot Chip. I'm not that much of a fan of Hot Chip. They do one type of song really well (viz., "Over and Over") but they also do a lot of other songs. Man of the moment Daphni takes one such and flips it on its ear. It ends with a minute of free-jazz-style skronk of a kind that you wouldn't expect to hear on a Hot Chip record. The preceding six minutes are pretty surprising, and, in fact, exciting, too.

"Rained the Whole Time (Nicolas Jaar Remix)", by Shlohmo. In the absence of anything new from Jaar himself, it's nice to be able to hear him add his distinctive electro/acoustic tinkerings to someone else's music. I haven't heard the original of this, but there isn't much here that doesn't sound like the work of Jaar. What's not to like?

"Soul Vibrations", by Dorothy Ashby. Not a song that can easily be translated into words. Check it.

"Never Let It Go", by Dolly Mixture. There is a particular type of honesty, of not being afraid to expose your own frailties, that makes much of the music recorded in the aftermath of the "punk rock" eruption a joy to listen to even 32 years later. That, and a knack for an irresistible melody. That particular, brief moment, linked in my own mind with smudged copies of the NME as it was before colour printing allowed them to better affix the text to the page, didn't last long. It probably couldn't have. See also The Marine Girls. *Sigh*.

"Angie La La", by Nora Dean. It is on the Treasure Isle label, but it doesn't bear much resemblance to what your or I would immediately call "reggae". It is certainly exotic -- including, but not only, in the Martin Denny sense. Released, evidently, on the back of a U-Roy seven-inch. Insane! (In an odd kind of way it puts me in mind of Broadcast.)

"There's A Reward", by Joe Higgs. Whereas this is reggae through and through. (Although you don't actually find that out until about 15 seconds in. Wait for it. And while you're at it could somebody please construct a song out of a loop or loops from those first 15 seconds? Thanks.)

"Clouds", by Deep Time. And thus we are thrust back into the present day. I don't mean to be unfair here by latching on to the observation that the singer can't help but be compared to Laetitia Sadier. There is much more to the song than a lazy comparison like that. But hey, it's Saturday afternoon.

"Call Me Maybe", by Carly Rae Jepson. The trouble with being behind in your writing by a year is that a song that you, maybe, recognised as something special while it was still in its embryonic phase, is that, well, by the time you finally get around to putting pen to paper it has been all over everywhere and back again. So that even you probably don't entirely want to hear it again. (At least one of your children threatens to kill you if you don't turn it off.) And yet here it is, and you are surprised, and yet also not, to discover that it can still give you goosebumps. What's with that?

"I'll Be Your Man", by Anna Calvi. We also, sometimes, like a nice twang in our guitar. This would be one of those times. It would appear that Anna Calvi did the twanging herself. Impressive. There is a certain earnestness here, or seriousness of intent, perhaps, that makes me think, "Nineties". There may well be an essay to be written about the lyrics, too. But since when have I taken any notice of lyrics?

"Girl You Need A Change Of Mind", by Eddie Kendricks. It's not only the weirdness quotient, or the ubiquity, of a song that makes it impossible to write about. A song as absolutely perfect in every way as this one resists all efforts to wax lyrical. Again: check it. (Consumer advisory: the full 7.5-minute version is even better.)

"Distillation", by H. Tical. Once upon a time, and I think it was mostly in Europe and to a lesser extent the UK, a bunch of musicians would get together in a studio and spend what by today's standards would be unfeasibly extravagant budgets recording short pieces of music in the hope that some of them would be picked up for use in film or television. Small runs of vinyl albums would be released, not for commercial sales purposes but because, well, it wouldn't make much sense to make these recording and have no way of getting the right people to hear them. Then the world forgot all about them, and these recordings, now known as "library music", grew dusty in a corner somewhere, as movies and television shows came to be populated by music specially written by one of a handful of essentially rote composers (obviously not a blanket statement; you're not going to find me dissing Morricone, for example, or Nino Rota, or Bernard Herrmann, or to be specific Jonny Greenwood's score for "There Will Be Blood" -- oh boy, now there's a doozy), or by pop songs chosen by what seem to be called "music consultants". (That's a gig I wouldn't mind.) Today, as with everything else, people collect these records and share them via the internet. They can be fun to listen to, and the record covers tend to be pretty groovy in a sixties design kind of way, and without their influence Stereolab and Broadcast, to name just a few, would sound (and look) quite different from the way either of them turned out. This is one of those tracks. It has some spirited electric guitar.

"I Only Have Eyes For You", by Beck. Evidently this was generated for an artist's installation project. If, like me, you have been lamenting the recent paucity of recorded Beck, this will remind you of what you have been missing. You might say it is doo-wop filtered through the fevered mindscape of a David Lynch movie. Or you might not.

"I Am Not Waiting Anymore", by Field Report. It may put you in mind of Phil Ochs' "I Ain't Marching Anymore". (The name might be the only reason for this. On the other hand it might not be.) It also puts me in mind of the underheralded Peter Case, which is kind of a nice surprise.

"Mirrorball", by Nisennenmondai. One is inclined to think that if Can had hailed from Japan in the early 21st century they might have sounded something like this. (Perhaps Manuel Gottsching has wandered in to contribute some guitar.) It also builds in a way that suggests they have been listening to LCD Soundsystem, masters of that particular form. After a minute or so you might find yourself screaming "Make it stop!" Five minutes later you will have lost all track of time. And there are still six more minutes to go. Who would ever have thought three Japanese chicks could make such a racket. What's that? Oh. You're right. "Shonen Knife."

Song of the day

"Planet Phrom", by Peter Gutteridge.

On the subject of Dunedin.

It may turn out that one of the reasons I am so fond of the music of Real Estate is that it contains within its crevices the latent influence of the golden age of music from Dunedin. Matt Mondanile plays guitar for Real Estate. Real Estate are not from Dunedin. They are not even from New Zealand. They are from New Jersey, which is not the same thing at all. Mondanile also has his own band/project, entitled Ducktails. Ducktails have just released a new album, called "The Flower Lane". It includes a song called "Planet Phrom". This may or may not ring bells with you. "Planet Phrom" is a song from Peter Gutteridge's Xpressway cassette, "Pure", from 1989.

Peter Gutteridge is from Dunedin. He may not be a household name anywhere, possibly even Dunedin, but his name crops up in a surprising number of places, if you were obsessed by the "DN scene" in the mid- to late-eighties. (As I was.) He appears on assorted tracks by The Chills (of which, in the early days, he was a member), The Clean (ditto), and The Verlaines, all of which are household names somewhere, if only in my own household. He was a member of short-lived almost-supergroup Snapper. He plays keyboards on The Alpaca Brothers' sublime "Legless" EP. (What's that you say? Never heard of it? Where have you been?)

He co-wrote "Point That Thing Somewhere Else". And there aren't many people on this earth who can say that.

When I first heard Peter Gutteridge the file-card system inside my head positioned him somewhere between Suicide and Spacemen 3. In fact he sounds nothing like either of them but the resonances of both are there, if not so much on "Planet Phrom."

Alan Haig plays drums on this track. There is another Pete Frame-type family tree for Alan Haig, perhaps at least as complex as the one sketched out above for Peter Gutteridge. Which is, in any event, far from complete. (Sandra Bell, anyone?)

Song of the day

"Christopher Columbus", by David Kilgour and the Heavy Eights.

A new David Kilgour song! Free! On the internet! Man, I love this place.

Visit http://archhillrecordings.bandcamp.com/track/christopher-columbus.

It also turns up three minutes into this clip. (So it's not a completely new song.)



The guys really should try to keep their guitar strings under control.

Song of the day

"Other Thematic Material", by Magazine.

I sometimes read Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck comics. They have been written and drawn over the years by many different people, but always with such a high level of craftsmanship that you never look at a drawing of Donald, or Scrooge, or Huey, Dewey and Louie, and think to yourself, "That's not right".

That is the kind of neat trick that Howard Devoto has pulled off with "Other Thematic Material". It could almost be an outtake from "Real Life". Except that "Real Life" was recorded in 1978 and "No Thyself", on which this song appears, was recorded in 2011.

The bass is not being played by Barry Adamson, and yet is instantly recognisable. The guitar is not being played (obviously enough) by the late John McGeoch, and yet it, too, is instantly recognisable. If anything, the main difference is in Devoto's voice, which clearly can't quite be asked to do what it could do 33 years ago. But Howard Devoto is the one component of Magazine that no amount of craftsmanship could mask the absence of. (Note: I am choosing not to draw attention to the lyrics.)

Okay, so "No Thyself" is never going to have the same pull as the first three Magazine albums, but it was nice, not to mention totally unexpected, to have them back.



[Side note: I heard that Barry Adamson has rejoined the Bad Seeds for the current tour, but that he is playing percussion rather than bass. This strikes me as a bit like hiring Marco Pierre White to do the washing up, but I'm sure they have their reasons.]

Song of the day

"Weakness and Fever", by The Durutti Column.

And speaking of Kevin Ayers, there are a couple of songs on the new reissue of "LC", by The Durutti Column, that suggest a connection -- which I had never noticed before -- between Vini Reilly and the earlier generation of English pastoral psychedelicists that included Ayers and Syd Barrett. (And perhaps the connection then travels further back to the land of musical Albion depicted by Rob Young in his marvellous book "Electric Eden". But we might be getting ahead of ourselves there.)

I suspect I can also detect a hint of The Cat's Miaow in here, too. But then I would say that.

RIP Kevin Ayers

Kevin Ayers, significant figure amongst the Canberbury fringe of the UK prog rock scene, has died at the age of 68. 68, from where I sit now, is not old. My mother died at 68. She wasn't old. On the other hand, she didn't live the rock'n'roll lifestyle, and was never addicted to anything stronger than a small square of Swiss chocolate every night after tea. Perhaps the life expectancy of musicians differs from that of farmers' wives.

I didn't know much about the Canterbury scene, but I did have Kevin Ayers in my record collection from surprisingly early on: so early, in fact, that I didn't really know what to do with him. The record was "June 1, 1974". I bought it for the Brian Eno tracks, was scared out of my wits by John Cale, mesmerised by Nico, and failed to grasp Ayers at all (he takes up all of side two, so an entire side of vinyl lay virtually unplayed). So little did I acknowledge his presence that when I finally discovered "Joy of a Toy" I failed to make any connection whatsoever between it and the guy on side two of "June 1, 1974". I had some catching up to do.

Nevertheless, I hope it is reasonable to observe that with the loss, now, of both Ayers and Barrett a large part of that particular generation's supply of British eccentricity has left the building.

Song of the day

"Ohm", by Yo La Tengo.

I probably don't mention Yo La Tengo anywhere near as often as they deserve; it seems like every three years since forever a new YLT album has appeared, each as compelling in its own way as the ones that came before, and yet each is as familiar as a favourite old, worn blanket.

What is the difference between YLT and bands like Sonic Youth or Stereolab? Each of them have had long, stellar careers. Their later albums are in no way inferior to the earlier works that made their names, and in every case are instantly recognisable as the work of nobody else but them. Nevertheless, there is no reason why you would listen to, say, "Murray Street", good and all as it is, when you could be listening to "Daydream Nation" for the gazillionth time. Likewise Stereolab (insert equivalent comparators here). Not so Yo La Tengo: it seems, with them, that no matter how many times, when listening to whatever at the time is their brand new record, you can play "name the older YLT song this corresponds with", their most recent album is always the one you want to listen to. No, I can't explain it. Perhaps the three year gaps are the secret ingredient.

"Fade", the new one, is no different. Familiar Yo La Tengo tropes abound. There's the "Season of the Shark" song. The "Sugarcube" one. The "Autumn Sweater" one. The ones (happily) that bear distant echoes of my personal favourite YLT album, "And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out", with its crepuscular Gregory Crewdson cover photograph and matching aural mood. (Their cover art is always first rate, too. These folks have impeccable taste. And speaking of Stereolab, I should mention that production this time is by John McEntire, who was largely responsible for the sound of a high number of essential Stereolab records.)

"Ohm" is a good way into the album. It is basically a circular, mantra-like riff that runs through a number of, let's call them verses anyway, before Ira finally lets loose some of the feedbacked guitar you've been waiting for, then the vocals come back, it builds a bit, then stops. In under seven minutes it, like the whole of the album, is relatively concise by YLT standards (the album probably clocks in a good 30 minutes shorter than most!). You would imagine that they could easily have run it out to 15 minutes with no diminishing returns. (I am surprised to note that the live versions that presently appear on YouTube are, if anything, shorter than the recorded version.) This restraint, I think, works in its, and the album's, favour. "Refreshing" doesn't just apply to fizzy soft drinks.

And I apologise if noting that the underlying structure of the song bears the slightest resemblance to "Son of the Father" spoils anybody's enjoyment of it.

Song of the day

"A Day's Pay For A Day's Work", by Darkstar.

Somewhere, Brian Wilson's lawyer is reaching for the telephone ...



It might be a tad early to be hanging out the "album of the year" sign, but, by crikey, if there is a record that chimes more with this listener than Darkstar's "News From Nowhere", well, it's going to be one cracker of a year. First this, then "m b v", then a new Miles Davis live box set wherein you can hear music change before your very ears, and shortly a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album that is, in a word, fascinating (although whether that is in a positive or a negative sense it's too soon to say). In the immortal words of Mike Williamson, "It's all happening".

Song of the day

"What You Wanted", by Seapony.

The Feelies and Look Blue Go Purple had a baby and they called it rock and roll. Or jangle-pop. Or twee-core. Or ...

Impressions

What were you even doing in 1991? It really does seem like a lifetime ago. (Literally so for some of you.) Did the internet even exist? I might have somewhere, but it didn't at our house. There was the radio, there were music magazines, there were nice, and knowledgeable, people working in any number of record stores. Suddenly, out of nowhere, there was "Loveless". (I'm not sure how this happened, but I made do with a taped copy of "Loveless" until around 2000, when I finally bought it on CD at the second-hand stall at Fyshwick Market. For a dollar. That is not a misprint.)

"Loveless". A goddamn mystery of an enigma of an album. All you wanted to do was turn it up, but the more you turned it up the worse it sounded. (This has been somewhat rectified by the reissue, but the underlying architecture of the thing remains as ungraspable as ever.) What "Loveless" did was open a door into an entirely new way to make "rock" music, a door which nobody since has been game enough to go through, or, if they did, they haven't known which direction then to go in and quickly crept back out again. (Exception: "Dreams Top Rock", by Pluramon.)

It is a door to which, seemingly, Kevin Shields possesses the only key.

Fast-(well, not that fast)-forward to early 2013. Most of us thought it would never happen or that, if it did, the 22 years gestation would result in some over-cooked stew that could only taint the reputation of its forebear.

I really shouldn't do this, given my almost perfect track record of fatally misreading albums on first listen (Exhibit One: writing off "Remain In Light", first time through, as a disco record). But recording one's first impressions of "m b v" seems to be today's little parlour game, so here are mine. The listening conditions: once through. On computer speakers. While somewhat distracted by other things. (Promising, yeah?)

The bulk of this record sounds much as you would have expected a follow-up to "Loveless" to sound. The songs are new, but the template is instantly recognisable. New corners of the MBV sound-room do seem to have been illuminated, but for the most part the album doesn't seem to have unlocked yet further doors. Not that it needed to. But this does induce thoughts along the lines of "What took you so long?" On the other hand, there is a song that sounds like nothing so much as Stereolab heard through 200 layers of gauze. And then there are the last two songs on the album, which are perhaps the point of the thing: two songs that sound like nothing, or at least no music, you have ever heard before. I don't know what they mean, and I'm not even sure how to listen to them. They might even represent the End of Music. One can hope they represent, for Shields, a way forward.

And that, really, is all I've got to say about it. For now.

Song of the day

"Who Loves The Sun", by The Velvet Underground.

Who loves the sun? Not me, that's for sure. If I can't be undercover or at least in the shade, I will be the first person looking for a hat and dark glasses; and usually, a little later, a packet of Disprin Forte.

Nevertheless, we are off to the beach (or what (we) Canberrans refer to as "the Coast") for a couple of days. "I have never been so excited in my entire life." (There. I said it. Now stop pointing that gun at my head.)

Still, I've got some Neal Stephenson, some Dupuy & Berberian, some New Yorkers, some Coronas, some headphones. Everything's going to be just fine.

(Ha. Imagine Lou Reed and his pals off for a day at the beach. Pale skin. Black clothing. Leather boots. Mirror shades. Sneers.)

(Can't seem to get any of the clips of this song on YouTube to work, conspiracy buffs, so here it is.)

Song of the day

"Long", by Daphni.

I have this theory that every great synth-pop album from the late seventies / early eighties ended with a quiet, evocative piece of instrumental music. These instrumentals were perfect for those of us who could dance like a robot and be reduced to tears by the sounds made by machines. The funny thing is, I can't conjure up an actual example, and I am forced to concede that I may in fact have invented the idea.

This tradition, assuming it to exist, is brought up to date by "Long", the final track on Daphni's very fine "Jiaolong" long player from (what is now) last year. Daphni, as you already know, is Dan Snaith, who is the evil mastermind behind Caribou.

Hey, where the heck did that harp come from?

Song of the day

"Last Land", by John Talabot.

Does anybody know what sample/s is/are being used in this song? There is something in there that sounds very, very familiar, but I can't quite put my finger on what it is.

AND IT IS DRIVING ME CRAZY.

I suppose one could always just g**gle it, but that would be too easy.

Song of the day

"I Don't Owe You Anything", by Sandie Shaw.

Why am I making you listen to this?, you ask. Well, first off, Sandie doesn't make too bad a fist of this Smiths song (her take on "Hand in Glove", I'm sorry to say, is awful). But mainly, I have been listening to this song in order to demonstrate something Johnny Marr said recently about how Smiths songs were made. It seems that, unlike most guitar bands, the songs weren't built upon the bass and drums. Rather, the structure of Smiths songs centred around the guitar and the bass. Listening again to a random assortment of Smiths songs with that in mind, I can hear what he was getting at. But it may be that to hear it properly you have to have Morrissey bound and gagged and placed in a box in the corner. You know, just for a couple of minutes. Give it a try. Morrissey won't mind. Much.

Song of the day

"Love Cry", by Four Tet.

Should you buy a second-hand copy of Four Tet's 2010 album, "There Is Love In You", for ten bucks? Should? The heck. How could you not? It may not carry the instant WTFness of hearing "Rounds" for the first time (especially if, like me, you had not previously heard any music made the Four Tet way). But it may in fact be the better album of the two. It also differs from his subsequent output, which, while excellent in its own way, seems to be a series of exercises in envelope pushing. "There Is Love In You", on the other hand, gives the impression of having been made as an album, and certainly benefits from being listened to all the way through.

Nevertheless, "Love Cry", which was also released as a 12", can easily be severed from the album and stuck up on your wall with super glue, as we have done here.



(Incidentally, the B side of the 12", "Our Bells", is a mighty piece of work in its own right, taking his music in a kind of Brian Eno direction. (Like I know what I'm talking about.))

Song of the day

"Are 'Friends' Electric?", by Tubeway Army.

So. Around years 9 and 10, that would be 1978 and 1979, I went off the rails. 

This statement must be put in context: an only child living on a farm four miles from the nearest town, in a small rural community, has limited opportunity for going seriously astray. But he can nevertheless find opportunities, if he works at it, for letting his parents down.

How did I do it? Largely by misbehaving at school, which was easy enough, and in retrospect relatively harmless: mostly I came across to my teachers as an annoying pain in the butt and general smart alec. This was in aid of "forging" my own "identity". (Which started and ended, if I'm being honest, with my buying from the Melbourne Show, and gamely wearing once or twice, a badge that read "I'm Antisocial", in "punk" lettering. (Why am I thinking, right now, of Rik Mayall's character in "The Young Ones"?))

I got one opportunity to take things a bit further. And, perhaps unwisely, or for the wrong reasons, I took it.

My best friend in primary school, and even as far back as kindergarten, had been Malcolm. My dad and his dad, and a few of their respective brothers, had made up the bulk of a cricket team, Fish Creek West, that played on a lopsided cow paddock a few miles out of town. So our families saw a bit of each other, even though my mum and dad's social life didn't really exist. By this time the cricket team had disbanded. Its members had either moved away or given up cricket for lawn bowls. Malcolm's dad died and they moved into town. Malcolm rebelled before I did. This included his disowning me as a friend, or at least telling me that I was uncool (true) and that my dad was an idiot (manifestly untrue, and by far the more upsetting of the two things -- but, given his own loss, it might have been understandable to me if I had been old and "mature" enough to make the connection).

Malcolm thus had two advantages over me: he lived in the town, and therefore had access to things that could be obtained in a town, viz., cigarettes and alcohol. He also had an older brother (adopted, as it turned out; not that that is relevant, but it does go some way to explaining how two people who resembled Laurel and Hardy could be brothers), who was able to facilitate access to same.

At the same time it had become clear to me that I had to win back Malcolm's friendship, and that I could only do this if I could prove to him that I could be a Bad Boy. It didn't seem like a good idea, but I didn't see that I had any choice, if I wanted to put an end to a long period of school-bus bullying and ostracism. 

The Blue Light Disco came to town. I had permission to go to this highlight of the Fish Creek social calendar. I was dropped off at Malcolm's house beforehand. Malcolm had come across cans of VB, which he had stashed behind the railway station. Alcohol had never before passed my lips. I had no idea what it was supposed to do to me. I drank two cans. Malcolm drank, I think, a few more. We went to the disco.

I was, even then, a music obsessive. I gravitated straight towards the DJ. I was flicking through his record crate when I found, to my amazement (I really did think I was in a world of my own, with my surface-mail NMEs and my night-time access to 2JJ), a copy of Tubeway Army's "Are 'Friends' Electric?", which was yet to make its first appearance on Countdown and was therefore still largely unknown in Australia. I asked him if he would play it. Some time later, after either the two cans had kicked in or, more likely, I had convinced myself that they had, that opening synth line came on, louder and in better sound quality than I had ever heard it before.

And then, dear reader, I went nuts. I was was an acne-spotted stick insect. I had long, lank, straight black hair and black horn-rimmed glasses. I wore a polyester Miller shirt of some combination of brown and orange. I wore desert boots. I "danced" around the room like a lunatic, crashing into people, spinning my arms about, and jumping hither and yon, for the entire length of the song. I danced myself under the table. Literally. I stayed there for some time, wondering what had just happened, and, more ominously, what was going to happen. The adult help, all of whom were known to me and, worse, to my parents, escorted me from the premises and arranged for them (my parents) to collect me.

I doubt that I was actually drunk (although for a time I endured the cruel and vicious nickname "Two Can Stan") but beer could still be smelled on my breath. (Or was it teen spirit?) I underwent a necessary interrogation when I got home. (The car ride itself was awfully silent, and silently awful.) Mum was in tears in bed for some time. Of course I denied, in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, that I had been drinking (I said it had been Malcolm, and that the smell must have got on me somehow). Mum made me promise that I would never do it again. (That was a promise that was easy to keep, if only because of lack of further opportunity. Eventually the hormones settled themselves down, I knuckled down at school in year 12, and I threw away the "I'm Antisocial" badge.)

I had made my mum cry. I had made my dad look at me in a way I had never seen before, and didn't much like. I had made an utter dick of myself in front of my peers. I had to live with all of these things at once. I think I discovered, and not for the last time, that going off the rails was not for me.

I still get goosebumps when I hear this song.

Hypothetical mixtape: March 2012

Coming not exactly hot on the heels of our February 2012 hypothetical mixtape, here is what we cooked up, or reheated, for March. Um, that would be March of last year.

"The Motorcade Sped On", by Double Dee & Steinski & Mass Media. It starts with these things: the introduction to the Johnny Carson show. The opening chord of "A Hard Day's Night". JFK. Three gun shots. A news bulletin. All in very rapid succession, such that, if you were listening in 1985, you really would not have had any musical framework into which to place it. It also would have been deeply confronting to anyone with personal connections to the assassination or who had been old enough in 1963 to have been scarred by it. I wasn't even born then, but I still find the track, even at this late date, surprisingly affecting. It also paved the way, eventually, for DJ Shadow's "...endtroducing" (among other things), and so has a cultural legacy of its own.

"Driving Away From Home (Wicked Weather For Walking)", by It's Immaterial. There are several songs that, throughout the earlier, less self-assured, years of my life, I harboured an affection for that was deep but secret. They were songs that I didn't think fit the way I saw myself, or more likely the way I wanted others to see me. "Rio", by Mike Nesmith. "Baker Street", by Gerry Rafferty. "Wicked Game", by Chris Isaak. "Driving Away From Home" is another one, and one, I must admit, that I had completely forgotten. I still like it. (I still like all those others, too. And now I don't even care who knows it. [Insert blogging as self-psychotherapy alert here.])

"I Don't Know Why I Love You", by British Electric Foundation. From the less well-known second volume of their "Music of Quality and Distinction". Featuring the one, the only, Green Gartside on vocals. When your young grandchild says to you, many years from now, "What did the eighties sound like, grampa?", you will play this, and they will know. (So it was released in 1991. It's still eighties to the core.) What's that you say? There's an extended version? Oh crap. [Cranks up the Google.]

"I Keep Mine Hidden", by The Smiths. And, speaking of the eighties: ooh, look, a Smiths song that doesn't seem to have appeared on any of the 25,000 (and counting) Smiths compilations that continue to litter the countryside. B-side of "Sweet and Tender Hooligan", apparently. Warning: contains whistling.

"Exactly Nothing", by Real Estate. We can always get excited about a Real Estate b-side. This is a song (and Real Estate a band) that probably, at some level, wouldn't have existed without The Smiths. I really like what Real Estate can do with guitars within the framework of the humble pop song. They can give a song both air and density at the same time, which is kind of a neat trick.

"Imaginary Girl", by The Silver Seas. The piano makes you think "Ben Folds Five", only I never much cared for Ben Folds Five. In my ideal world, every time you switched on your car radio this would be playing.

"Friend Zone", by Spectrals. We've said it before and we'll say it again: everything sounds better with reverb.

"Goldilocks Zone", by Grass Widow. Conveys the spirit of Electrelane (and, perhaps, The Raincoats) sufficiently well that how could we say no? It's the guitars, innit?

"Ohio / Machine Gun", by The Isley Brothers. Sometimes a piece of music has to go for nine minutes in order to find the sweet spot. The Isleys here take two anti-'Nam/Civil Rights Movement talismans, fuse them together, and travel so far into The Zone that there ain't no coming back.

"Police On My Back", by The Equals. Another anti-establishment song, then. At first blush it sounds a bit stilted in comparison with the agit-punk of The Clash's cover. But stick with it. Who knows, you may end up preferring it this way.

"Miss You", by The Rolling Stones. What have we here? Only the second-most ridiculous thing you ever heard: not just The Rolling Stones, but The Rolling Stones in a "Special Disco Version". The third-most ridiculous thing you ever heard? It works! Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts really come into their own over this song's 8.5 minutes. (You have to try to ignore M*ck J*gg*r. But you've been successfully doing that for the last 30 years anyway so that shouldn't be too hard. Focus instead on the electric piano.)

"Pacific State", by 808 State. Having sat through a lifetime of Dancing Stones, you need to have your palate cleansed. This will do nicely.

"Movie Show Dubwise", by Junior Delahaye. Okay. It goes like this. In the 1970s, heyday of dub and roots reggae, Lloyd "Bullwackie" Barnes recorded and released, on the Wackie's label, a bunch of crucial reggae tracks before relocating to New York, where he continued to do much the same thing. In the early '00s a couple of likeminded Germans, Moritz Von Oswald and Mark Ernestus, who had already been responsible for practically the only post-early-'80s reggae worth listening to (they understood the essential yin-and-yangness of bass and space) under the Rhythm & Sound moniker, undertook a spit-and-polish reissue programme of a choice selection of Wackie's material. It holds up particularly well, and it is hard to argue that old-school dub has ever sounded better. This is a good example. Its A-side, "Movie Show", also appears on an album called "Showcase", which I have, and which is as good a place to start as any.

"Domina (Carl Craig's Mind Mix)", by Maurizio. As fate would have it, this, too, is the handiwork of Moritz Von Oswald and Mark Ernestus, subtly tweaked by that man Carl Craig. While this may not fall under the rubric of "reggae", it, too, has bass and space. In quantity.

"Kohoutek-Kometenmelodie (Parts 1 and 2)", by Kraftwerk. Somebody took this 1973 (i.e. pre-"Autobahn") seven-inch single from Kraftwerk, fused both sides together into one long track, and gave it up to the internet. And we thank them for it. 

Song of the day

"Hymn of the Big Wheel", by Massive Attack.



Today's question is: do you really need to buy the 2012 remixed/remastered version of Massive Attack's "Blue Lines"? I haven't heard the 2012 release, but listening to the original CD, from 1991, I can't say that I can find, with the passage of 21 years, any particular deficiency or negative legacy in the original. In fact, I would happily say it still sounds as vital, as fresh as a daisy, as it ever did.

On the other hand, if you don't already own "Blue Lines" in some form, there is only one answer: grab a copy with your Ears Pinned Back.

Impossible, it is (as Yoda might have said), to single out any one track from what must be one of the most solidly excellent albums of recent years. But today we are going with the closing number. For a reason. Possibly an entirely spurious reason, but a reason nonetheless.

Listening this morning, with slightly more open ears than usual (holidays, after you have been on them for long enough, will do that to you), I was struck by the similarity, in one of the synth lines, between this song and Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream", which is, as you already know, one of my favourite songs. Neneh Cherry is responsible for the backing vocals on "Hymn of the Big Wheel", and also (I now discover) co-wrote the song. There is, as you also already know, a previous connection between Massive Attack and Neneh Cherry: Robert "3D" Del Naja co-wrote "Manchild" (which happens to be another of my favourite songs). All of this elaborate joining of the dots leads us to: last year's unexpected and surprising (and entirely successful) cover by Cherry, with jazz collective The Thing, of "Dream Baby Dream".



Which is a long way from Massive Attack, admittedly, but I suspect they would approve.

Big wheels within big wheels, indeed.

Song of the day (2)

"Got Paid", by Katy B.

And speaking of Gary Numan, this song starts off with 10 seconds of pure, unadorned Numanesque synth squelch. You would think, wouldn't you, that it would be all downhill from there. You would be wrong: partly because of the song's irresistible happy-times vibe, partly because Katy B has a voice that has genuine kick while also being as smooth as.

Normally I'm not a fan of songs that have guest rappers, or what have you, dropping in for a bit of a rant half way through. But for this I can't help but make an exception.

The other notable thing about this song is that it comes as part of a free four-song downloadable EP. By a name act. On the most major of major labels. And none of these songs could be described as leavings, floor-scrapings or other detritus. They are good. This, I suspect, says something bigger about the future of the music industry than might be immediately apparent. (Of course your understandable first reaction was: "Cool! Free stuff!") What that something is I'm not at all certain, but when Sony -- Sony! -- starts giving you something for nothing, that suggests to me that somewhere, somehow, shit is going down.

Maybe the answer lies in the attendant "Privacy Policy". Or maybe I'm just jumping at shadows. Wouldn't be the first time.

Song of the day

"Motorbikin'", by Chris Spedding.

You know how every so often a song will pop into your head that you haven't heard for years, possibly decades? Today, this is that song.

Watching the TOTP footage below, it strikes me that Spedding here is inventing the look of Joe Strummer, who hadn't been invented yet.



Thinking of this song then got me thinking of "Airport", by The Motors (I'm not sure why).



Oh, I see. It's a transportation theme. In which case, we can't leave without reminding you of Gary Numan's "Cars".



We could go on. We won't.

New Yorker cover of the day

(If you open it in a separate tab/window you can make it bigger. But you already know that.)

2012 was a remarkable year in many respects; most of them not in a good way. But one pretty much amazing thing happened: Chris Ware published a book (notable enough in itself, really), "Building Stories", that ended up in the New York Times list of best 10 books of the year. As someone who has been following Ware since his "Floyd Farland, Citizen of the Future", and who owns all but a couple of Acme Novelty Libraries (there didn't seem much point in buying the last couple of "Jimmy Corrigan" issues given their appearance around the same time in the book; oh how I regret that decision now), I see that last sentence as one of the most unlikely, but deserving, ones I have ever written. (In 1981 I reacted almost violently against the sudden, and equally unexpected, mainstream acceptance of Talking Heads, feeling that My Band had been taken away from me. I'm older than that now.)

I'm not going to go on about the thing itself; you can read that anywhere. (The one thing I will mention is that, this being a Chris Ware production, no detail has been overlooked: a short strip might have been included, if the author had thought about it, on the inside of the box that encases all of the other goodies; so, of course, such a strip appears. You might miss it if you are not already familiar with the Ways of Ware.) Of course, you should buy it, even though there is a fair chance you will already be familiar with some of its contents. There has never been a "book" quite like it, and there most likely never will be. I can't see how it wouldn't have permanently exhausted him, although in late breaking news he has been given the first New Yorker cover of 2013.

Instead, I simply note that during 2012 I read an interview with Ware in which he acknowledged the influence on his work of early New Yorker illustrators including Ilonka Karasz, the creator of the above cover and of many others. You can see the connection, if not exactly a clear resemblance (although those trees are absolutely Chris Ware trees). Composition. Weight. Balance. Substance and form sitting in perfect harmony. (And, if you stretch your imagination as far as it can go, thematically this cover might be seen to be not a million miles away from what "Building Stories" is "about".) And so it is that, once again, two seemingly disparate but equally important influences in my own life are shown to be closer to one another than I could ever have imagined. It is, indeed, a funny old world.

Song of the season

Twas the night before Christmas

And all through the house

Not a creature was stirring

Not even a mouse.

Except for your old uncle Noddy.



We would like to wish our reader [sic] a very 1973 Christmas.

Song of the day

"Hey Cowboy", by Lee Hazlewood.

In which our hero invents a new musical genre: country & northern.

Lee, as well as being a bit of a ladies' man (as the youtube clip attests), is one of the great arrangers in the annals of popular music (as the youtube clip does not attest, on account of its origins as a low-fidelity rip of a 1970 TV special -- but in the spirit of Christmas, why don't you download it here).

"Hey Cowboy" appears on "The LHI Years", strongly arguably the reissue CD of the year (and also strongly arguably the second-best album cover of the year).

Take it away, Lee.

Song of the day

"Sunlight On The Faded", by Laurel Halo.

There is a little ritual that I have where, every year, when The Wire magazine announces its best albums from the year just gone, I go out and buy a copy of the one that has been voted Number 1. I'm not sure why I do this, other than force of habit, but it is a magazine whose tastes tend to veer a little bit left of centre of my own comfort zone, but not too far, so I am likely to find something that stays with me but that I might not have otherwise checked out. (Mind you, I'm still struggling to make sense of last year's: Simon Reynolds described it as the audio equivalent of Jeff Koons, and I'm not inclined to disagree. Whether that makes it essential listening is another question.)

So, if the rumours are true, and Laurel Halo's "Quarantine" gets the nod this year, nobody would be happier than me. One, because it would be a truly deserving winner. Two, because it saves me some money, on account of I have had my own copy for quite some time. There are a number of artists presently working in what would be termed, loosely, the "electronic" field who are doing some very interesting, very listenable and yet very experimental work at the moment. James Blake and Nicolas Jaar didn't put out albums this year, but alongside "Quarantine" we were treated to work at various points along the present cutting edge from Burial (with one more to come, any minute now), Flying Lotus, Four Tet, the artist normally known as Caribou but this year known as Daphni -- whatever he chooses to call himself, I'm listening -- and, a late entrant for my own album of the year, Andy Stott.

Anyway, rather than being content to rest on her, ahem, laurels, Laurel Halo has followed up "Quarantine" in double-quick time with this single (it has an equally compelling dub version on the verso), which is kind of like the album but with a layer or two of "difficulty" stripped away. Her voice is still so exposed as to sit on the edge of uncomfortable (for the listener) but the music is, while still constructed of sounds that could never have existed in your grandfather's day, a little more direct and compelling.

Actually, to heck with it. I don't have much in the way of words for this song. Listen closely and absorb.

Song of the day

"Pure Affection", by Eternal Summers.

A song that for some reason resonates with me more now than it did when it first appeared, a couple of years ago. It's like a collision between the twin tectonic plates of early-80s Dunedin and late-80s Pacific North-West, coming to rest on the shores of the magnificent final Beat Happening LP.

What? There's a Beach Fossils remix of this? No way.

Unexpected albums of the year

"Here Before", by The Feelies.

"Falling Off The Sky", by The dB's.

(Disclaimer: okay, Discogs tells me that "Here Before" came out in 2011, so I must have been absorbing it for longer than I thought. (That's what happens when you get old.) Which kind of makes the entire concept behind this blog post redundant. And makes me feel like a bit of a dick. I could have scrapped it, I suppose, but why let temporal inaccuracy get in the way of a good story? Plus the dB's record came out in 2012. Definitely.)

I can't imagine either of these albums appearing on anybody's end-of-year best-of list. They are, in many ways, records made by ageing hipsters for ageing hipsters. But the fact that they exist is itself a remarkable thing, and the fact that they are both as good as they are is more than anybody could have expected.

For both of these bands, their heyday, if they ever had one, was in the early to middle 1980s. Neither of them outlived their usefulness, thus (perhaps) maintaining both their dignity and their legacy. Instead, they went off and did other things. Chris Stamey and Peter Holsapple (dB's mainstays) have worked together on and off in the years since, and the Feelies have done a couple of low-key reunion tours, but I can't imagine that anybody would have expected either band to reconvene for an album of new material, let alone both of them doing so at more or less the same time. (Happy days!)

Yes, they are not alone in this kind of second (or third) act. Mission of Burma have now put out more albums post-reformation than they did in the glory days, and Wire continue to fight the good fight when many others would have taken a well deserved final bow.

On the other hand, if either of these groups had continued to work their own furrows year in and year out, like Sonic Youth, or REM, or U2 (or even The Rolling Stones), neither of these albums would probably have warranted more than a passing nod.

So, is staying out of the game for 20 years a good career move? An interesting question, but one we won't be dwelling on here. The point we want to make is simply that these are two thoroughly decent, well crafted collections of songs by musicians who know each other instinctively, and that slip very comfortably alongside each band's existing catalogue, but that make no pretense towards having been made by the people that they were 20 years ago. Thus, the range of the vocals has dropped, the tempos have slowed, there are more acoustic guitars, the lyrics are reflective, perhaps tending towards the melancholy (tho' in no way being a downer), and, in the case of The dB's, no longer sound like they are being belted out by kids with their whole lives ahead of them. (The Feelies never sounded like that.) But The Feelies are still The Feelies and The dB's are still The dB's. What they are both saying, in other words, is: "This is who we are now".

It makes me very happy to be able to write about these records. If you have a dad who was too young for The Beatles and too old for, I don't know, gangsta rap, black metal and mnml techno, who tells dad jokes but doesn't wear dad jeans, one of these records might just put a smile on his face on Christmas morning.

RIP Dave Brubeck

"Take Five" might well be the one bit of jazz music that everybody knows. That in itself is quite an achievement.

Take a bow, Mr Brubeck.

YouTube of the day

"You Forget", by David Kilgour.



This was going to be a "Song of the day" but then I discovered that this song was subjected to video treatment, uh, back in the day.

The chord change at 3.16 is why I listen to music.

Record cover of the year

Have you ever wanted to go to Jollity Farm? (I know I have.) Or Devil Gate Drive? Or Montague Terrace? Now you can! It's easy when you have a map.

I'm not sure why nobody ever thought of this before now, but I'm glad it was Saint Etienne who did.

YouTube of the day

"Dr Mabuse", by Propaganda (directed by Anton Corbijn).



As I'm sure you all know by now, I have been obsessed with this song ever since it first revealed itself to me, on the radio, around 1984. It's an obsession that takes a bit of work, because there are so many different versions, edits, etc of it, reissues, ZZT trademark multiple single releases, that it's impossible to know if you have gotten to the bottom of it. (Me, I have a 12". I have no idea which one. It's got "Femme Fatale" on it as well. And Paul Morley's hand is all over it.)

So anyway, it came as a bit of a surprise to discover the existence of this video, which only came to my attention recently, thanks to the title of one of the several "Mabuse" versions that appear on a very handy new Propaganda compilation, "Noise and Girls Come Out to Play". (Is Mr Morley still in the house, or have they developed a computer program to emulate his gnomic prose?) (I should say, I mean that as a compliment.) Of course, as a piece of music you can't really go past the full ten-minute opus. It's got everything, including a drum machine solo (which must have been devilishly difficult to pull off). But this clip is worth a look and listen, both as a concise version of the song itself and as a kind of 1984 time capsule: the hair, the po-faced expressions, the pseudo-mystical nonsense, the title cards, Corbijn's trademark black and white camerawork (not a lot of colour and light, is there?).

But what really makes it for me is the discovery, right at the very end, that Claudia Brucken has the sweetest smile. It makes you wonder why in all the publicity photos they make her put on the most serious "teutonic" face. I suppose it wouldn't have fit the image, but it's such a waste! I think I could happily leave it frozen at the 4.27 minute mark forever.

Song of the day (2)

"Love Interruption", by Jack White.

Curse you, Jack White. Not only do you establish the greatest colour-coded two-piece rock band in the history of the world. Not only do you make a career out of artistic alliances with attractive women that you are no longer going out with, and create relationship furphies (or at least red herrings) to further the mystique. Not only do you come up with the idea of the travelling record store, for which I will hate you until the day I die for my not having thought of it first. Not only are you the only American ever (possibly not true) to use cricketing terminology/imagery in furtherance of a musical career. No. Not content with all of those things, you are also responsible for this song, which I cannot get out of my head. How do you create such musical propulsion without so much as a drum or a bass guitar? How do you fit so much into 2.5 minutes? Where did you find Ruby Amanfu, whose backing vocals are the most perfect of perfect fits? Where did you get the idea to turn what is basically a power pop or maybe even pop-metal song into what is essentially a duet between clarinets and an electric piano?

How do you make everything look so damn easy?

A few words about "Anastasis", an album by Dead Can Dance

The year was 1990. We were renting a small terrace house in Liverpool Street, North Fitzroy. It was the year we got married, and the start of our life together. The house was positioned so as to receive the least amount of sunlight possible. It was a very cold house. And damp. Mould cruelly took from me one much-loved pair of op-shop stovepipe trousers and a pair of black pointy shoes.

The house had a dishwasher. Neither of us had ever lived in a house with a dishwasher. We figured that in the absence of dishwasher powder we should be able to squirt a quantity of dishwashing liquid into the space provided, with the same result. We figured wrong.

We also shared the house with mice. One night Adrienne was talking on the phone with someone when a mouse scurried up the cord that connected the handpiece to the telephone. Mice also ate one layer of our wedding cake. (Ants ate the other layer. I think it should be safe to say now, 22 years later, that neither of these things proved to be bad omens.)

My musical tastes also changed over the course of 1990, as we unconsciously sought out some common ground. It seemed time for me to say goodbye, at least for a while and/or outside of headphone listening, to Swans, Einsturzende Neubauten, Big Black, John Zorn, Husker Du, and the like. Tom Waits seemed like fair game. (Although to this day I have never been entirely sure.) And we both liked Elvis Costello, The Blackeyed Susans, My Friend The Chocolate Cake, and (of course) the many moods of Dave Graney. (I don't think we had yet discovered the love that dared not speak its name -- lounge music.)

But one record that particularly mesmerised both of us that year was "Aion", by Dead Can Dance. It was the first Dead Can Dance album I bought; I had not previously had anything more than a passing awareness of them in their earlier, classic Goth incarnation. I don't even know what lured me into buying it. But it immediately stuck. It seemed to strike both of us as coming from somewhere we could both appreciate (if not recognise), a place that was both mysterious and striking. We listened to it a lot in that house, and have continued to bring it out from time to time ever since. (I also distinctly remember sitting on the floor in the living room one Sunday afternoon listening to an interview with Lisa Gerrard on Triple R or 3PBS that conveyed the distinct impression that she is not like other people (viz., as mad as a hatter). Which, I suppose, just confirms that linearity and/or rationality of thought is not a prerequisite for artistic creation.)

They released a couple more albums after "Aion", in which they chased their particular, and elusive, muse in different but still rewarding directions, and we stayed along for the ride. Then they went quiet. Lisa Gerrard did some solo work, collaborations and film soundtracks (quite a lot, actually). Brendan Perry retired to Ireland and was a less visible presence. We didn't feel the urge to pursue what either of them was doing individually. The Dead Can Dance albums we knew and loved were enough to tide us over.

All of which is to say: my sense of amazement at the existence of a new Dead Can Dance album, in 2012, might well amount to nothing more than misty-eyed nostalgia. But it also might be down to its being a record of the highest quality, landing unexpectedly, like a dream, in the middle of an era when the prevailing aesthetic, at least outside of the purely electronic/fetishistic realm, seems to be one of slap it down and push it out. Whatever emotional and intellectual plane they are operating on, it results in music that sounds like nobody else. It also allows them frequently to get away with things nobody else could get away with.

Cases in point:

1.  Brendan Perry's lyrics on "Children Of The Sun", which, if anybody else was singing them, would come across as the most embarrassing hippie nonsense, but the gravity with which he sings them, and the sheer exhilaration of the musical accompaniment, render nugatory any question of how much he means it and how much is slyly winking self-mockery. His voice, an authoritative blend of Jim Morrison, Scott Walker, Mark Snarski and Frank Sinatra, commands an authority that cuts any such questions short.

2.  "Amnesia" slides uncomfortably easily into "The Eternal", by Joy Division, a pre-Goth talisman for those of their/our generation but also a song, and a band, that remain largely untouchable and from whose narrow orbit you would have assumed Dead Can Dance had drifted away many years ago. And yet somehow, again, their unblinking sense of purpose means that any doubts are left at the starting gate.

Look, I can't really say much that would convince you of the worth of this album if you were disposed the other way. As a possible (or even likely) album of the year, it is, as I have attempted to convey, a very personal choice, and I would be the first to admit that with Dead Can Dance you either get it or you don't. But if that die has not already been cast for you, can I at least suggest that you give it a try? (And if you do, please, to do it justice, listen on CD through good quality speakers or headphones. It's what they would want you to do.)

(And to FACT Magazine, who included it in their list of 50 worst album covers of the year, I say: phooey.)

Song of the day

"Reservations", by Wilco.

"I've got reservations about so many things but not about you."

I can't think of another song lyric that I can relate to so completely.

Well, except for "I feel like sitting down", obviously.

New Yorker cover of the day

17 March, 1962. By Abe Birnbaum.

Surely this deserves to be on a wall somewhere, not just sitting on a newsagent's shelf trying to catch the eye of the unsuspecting browser. Although I imagine it would have worked as that, too.

(Apparently he once did a children's book, called "Green Eyes", which I have long kept half an eye out for, thus far unsuccessfully. Yes, I know that's what the internet is for.)

As usual, if you open the picture in a new window you should be able to enlarge it. But I imagine you are way ahead of me on that.

What John Zorn did next

And so, after a hectic 2010, in which he released, more or less, an album a month, you would expect that John Zorn would have taken it easy in 2011. And in a sense, by his standards that is what he did. "Only" five albums under his own name appeared that year. One was a surprise. Now read on ...

"The Satyr's Play / Cerberus". There are some John Zorn albums that I would happily never listen to, or even think about, ever again. This album is in that category. Whether Zorn is in the business of throwing every kind of shit against the wall and seeing which lumps of it stick, or whether I just don't have the right set of ears for this kind of chamber/avant/compositional malarkey, is a question I won't spend too much time divining an answer to. I'm not interested, and that's that. Most of this album is given over to two Zorn regulars, Kenny Wollesen and Cyro Baptista, hitting things -- including some pretty nifty-sounding things, it has to be said -- as per Zorn's instructions, along with a selection of sound effects. As you might expect, goats appear. It would probably have been better (at least for the goats) if they hadn't. We are in the field or discourse where people tend to spell the word "Magic" with a "k", and "Weird" with a "y". It contains a couple of rather nice passages, but even these are marred by the appearance of those blasted goats. The rest of the album is given over to a mostly gnarly combination of bass trombone, tuba and trumpet. (The word "random" comes to mind.) For ten minutes. And if that sounds enticing, you are a braver person than I am.

"Nova Express". If you read William S Burroughs during your university days (as one does), you would recognise the title of this album, and also the names of a few of the tracks: "Port Of Saints". "Dead Fingers Talk". "The Ticket That Exploded". In fact, this is the second Burroughs-themed album of Zorn's, following on from 2010's "Interzone". As with that record, I have little to no sense of where the Burroughs connection might be coming from. Maybe it's a red herring. Maybe my Burroughs days are just too far behind me. Whatever. The music is very cool regardless. Joey Baron you already know as one smart, agile drummer. Trevor Dunn is a bassist Zorn has been using regularly of late, although usually he is plugged in (Greg Cohen being the go-to guy for the upright) whereas here he plays acoustic. Similarly John Medeski, best known as a Hammond technician, plays the piano. Kenny Wollesen finesses the vibraphone (because, y'know, everything sounds better with vibraphone). This is music to immerse yourself in. What sets this, with its frequent abstractions, apart from "The Satyr's Play / Cerberus"? That's hard to say. Maybe it's just one's greater familiarity with a piano/bass/drums structure. Maybe it's the intuitive sense of Baron's drumming doing just enough to provide the listener with an anchor. You can, at least most of the time, tap your feet to this music, while at the same time being invited to concentrate hard enough to get to the bottom of it. It's an invitation I am happy to accept this time around. Although such is not, alas, the case for ...

"Enigmata". "Res Ipsa Loquitur", writes Zorn in his lengthy accompanying essay to this album. The phrase is well known to lawyers: "the thing speaks for itself". But Zorn adds an addendum: "Sed Quid In Infernos Dicit" ("but what the hell does it say?"). Which, when put together, is not a bad explanation of what Zorn does, not just here, but on many of his records. He also makes a couple of other pertinent observations: "the world may not be ready for this music." And "it makes no pretensions to be anything other than what it is." Of course, he is making a case for his own work here, and while the music "sounds" good on paper, that doesn't convert the damn thing into anything that approaches my own understanding of what is "listenable". Which seems to me to be a bit of a setback. Maybe he took the time to articulate and communicate his thoughts about the creative process as a way of both acknowledging this music's wilful cussedness and engaging the listener in a kind of aural staring contest. In which case, whoops, I blinked. I can admire it (it must have been hell to learn and play -- you really need dudes of the calibre of Marc Ribot and Trevor Dunn (who switches to electric five-string bass here) to pull this off). But, as with the first album dealt with in this survey, I don't know that I really want to go through it all again in a hurry.

"At The Gates Of Paradise". On the other hand, and maybe here I am further demonstrating my own narrowmindedness, I can listen to Zorn's chamber jazz ensembles (my term) both at length and on repeat. Plus, this is the exact same quartet as on "Nova Express". The mystery here, if you choose to turn your mind to it, which you certainly don't have to, is as to when you are listening to Zorn's composition and when what you are hearing is the players, playin'. And on this occasion they are not telling. Which is fine, the music works the same way regardless. It is, as the man said, what it is. There are moments when you might imagine yourself sitting at a table in some smoke-filled supper club, drinking a martini and sucking on a cheroot, listening intently to the Vince Guaraldi Trio. At other times you might be immersed in a world of 1950s exotica a la Martin Denny. Certainly the vibraphone helps in this regard. But the versatility of John Medeski is maybe this record's trump card. This is a world that Zorn has been frequenting quite regularly of late. The question of whether this particular well might start to run dry hasn't yet formed itself, but it is a question that cannot be ruled out in the future.

"A Dreamers Christmas". Which brings us to the words we never thought we would be typing: this is John Zorn's Christmas album. To which the only response, as no doubt its author intended, is "What the???". Is it some kind of post-modern exercise/statement? An elaborate hoax? A move into the lucrative field of television-advertised product? A quest for fame and fortune? Something for the kiddies? It may even be all of the above. (The appearance of Mike Patton in the credits might suggest, to those familiar with his other Zorn-related utterances, that the kiddies should be kept well away. But let's keep an open mind.) Indeed, the front cover design is rather family-friendly, with the possible exception of Santa's slightly disturbing blackened eye-holes. (John Zorn would delight in pointing out to you that Santa is an anagram of Satan.) Once lured in by the cover, what do we find? Seven traditional Christmas songs and two Zorn originals, performed by The Dreamers sextet, the most potentially radio friendly of all of Zorn's projects. (Which is not necessarily even remotely close to radio friendly, really.) Trevor Dunn. Joey Baron. Kenny Wollesen. Cyro Baptista. The bearded wonder Jamie Saft on keyboard duties. And the trump card, Marc Ribot on guitar, a fellow guaranteed to breathe life into the most moribund of music. Not that this is at all lifeless. The surprise, which is no surprise at all really, is that you actually could slip this on while your grandmother is serving out the Christmas pud and nobody of any generation would bat an eye. Even Patton is on his best behaviour, channelling Mel Torme in his performance of Torme's own (with Robert Wells) "The Christmas Song". A (Christmas) cracker.

Which brings us, somewhat belatedly, to 2012, and by last count a further ten records under Zorn's name have been released this year, with at least one more to come. As usual, not everything will be to everyone's liking. None of it at all may be to some people's liking. Me, I'll take it all in when I'm good and ready and most likely write a few words about the exercise here. But you know by now not to expect it any time soon.

Song of the day

"We Came To", by The Crystal Ark.

In which The Crystal Ark turn into The Juan Maclean. Well, kind of. The Juan Maclean with home-made synths and a hint of Spanish. Sounds okay to me!



(Note: clip is of the "house mix", not the album version, but it will give you the general idea.)

Song of the day

"Bend Beyond", by Woods.

I hope it's just a phase I'm going through, but some of the more highly regarded recent releases from well-known, and in some cases loved, artists have been putting me in mind of the phrase "I like your old stuff better than your new stuff". Those that jump readily to mind are by Cat Power, Tame Impala and Best Coast. There are others. The Best Coast album, for example, demonstrates what happens when an artist who makes an early impression based on a particular sound, or a particular transmogrification of the zeitgeist (does that even mean anything?), steps out from behind the veil of that sound and reveals ... nothing special.

Woods are a band that have made sounding ramshackle and slap-dash something of an (anti-)art form. So the signs weren't good when they announced that their new album would be made in an actual studio. Would Woods, too, throw out the baby with the sonic bathwater? Well, the answer is, well and truly, no. "Bend Beyond" reveals that, even when Woods' sound has been (relatively) cleaned up, they still have something going for them. That something is a keen ear for a melody, a turn of phrase, whatever is that X factor that goes into making a song memorable.

The title track ("Bend Beyond" -- well, duh), I think, bears out my earlier description of Woods as occasionally coming across (in a good way) as a kind of dishevelled Mercury Rev. What passes for the chorus is so gorgeous that lesser artists (or more sensible ones, perhaps) would have milked it for all it was worth. Woods, on the other hand, give us a couple of fleeting glimpses of it before spending most of the remaining four minutes teasing out some well-wrought guitar shenanigans. (It is not surprising that the first live version I found on YouTube runs for 10 minutes.) Then we get two more runs-through of that gorgeous chorus, as if to confirm that we didn't just imagine it. And that's it. It sounds better than it reads on paper, mainly because it is impossible to describe the (again, relatively) fragile beauty that the song is exuding.



Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that it's not even the best track on the album. There is an astounding three-song sequence in the latter part of the record that has gone a long way towards convincing me that Woods are, as of this moment, the best thing going.

That live version of "Bend Beyond" I mentioned? It's here.