Turn Off The Sun | Armour Plated Tongue

02/09/2011 Leave a comment

I’m sure that the residents could bring to mind a 1,001 things, but if you had asked me before today I would have struggled to list anything great to have come out of Bromsgrove. Whilst it may draw the attention of some, as attractions go the National Telephone Kiosk Collection doesn’t turn me on.

It’s a good job then that Turn Off The Sun are about to release their new EP, Armour Plated Tongue.

What difference will it make? Well, the five piece hail from Bromsgrove and Rubery and should, with a prevailing wind, put both places on the map. A skilful mix of memorable melody, weapons-grade alternative rock guitar, subtle synth lines and a dynamic rhythm section, the four songs within are genuine contenders for breakthrough.

From the moody piano line of first track, Intro, discussing how the human race has “made a mess of love,” there is real and raw passion on display. Whilst it may not seem an obvious reference point for a contemporary alternative band, the vocal lines that follow in Let The Right One in, Cardiac, and Embers bring to mind Ryan Adams at his most honest and emotional. The repeated refrain of “Did you get my love?” in the latter track could easily have been inspired by Adams’ earlier body of work.

Nevertheless, let’s not get sidetracked. The squally yet melodic guitar lines that colour each song are more akin to Foals, The Cribs or perhaps on occasion Johnny Marr’s earlier incarnations. In other words, well worth listening to. The insistent bass lines and frenetic drumming provide a solid and essential foundation that help build the raw, heart-on-sleeve whole and make it so captivating across it’s 13 minutes. Adding the finishing touch are washes and waves of synth that demonstrate that Turn Off The Sun are constantly in service to their songs, adding as they do essential meat to the bones, rather than overwhelming any given track.

Regardless of their beginnings or their geography, then, Turn Off The Sun are ones to watch, acknowledged by the patronage of Tom Robinson, amongst others, on his BBC 6 Music show. Here’s hoping for a full length album in the not too distant future. For now, the quarter of an hour that is Armour Plated Tongue will have to keep our appetites abated. Something that is seems very well equipped to do.

‘Armour Plated Tongue’ is released next week. The band are launching it with a gig on 7th September at The Rainbow on Digbeth High Street in Birmingham. They’ll be playing with Turbogeist and Raven Vandelle. For more information, you can visit them at their Facebook page.

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Brandon Flowers | Flamingo

03/10/2010 Leave a comment

4/5 | Find it at: The Skin Back Alley Music Store

The mediocre reviews that have met the release of Brandon Flowers’ solo debut over the last few weeks have been utterly baffling. It is as if there has been a consensus among music journalists to damn Flamingo with feint praise, all of the copy having been patch-worked together from the same basic criticisms.

“Disappointing solo debut from the frontman of the squillion selling Killers…”
“This starts well, but sadly it is all down hill after that…”
“The albums three producers create a gloopy mix of 80′s soft rock…”
“The choruses lack the urgency of The Killers…”
“The gambling metaphors and religious images quickly irritate…”
“Some arrangements are unimaginative and there’s a feeling of blandness…”
“Flowers has got overexcited with his bible and the proliferation of gambling metaphors results in serious imagery fatigue…”
“What we have here is a Killers record made without the Killers that sounds like The Killers and is almost as good as The Killers, but not quite…”

Whilst there is always the argument that so many people can’t be wrong, I’m going out on a limb to tell you that they are. There is no doubt in my mind that if this album had been recorded by a man with the surname Springsteen, the exact same critics would be hailing it as a continuation of The Boss’ current purple patch.

One of the critics quoted above was right about one thing. The album does start well. Very well. The marshalling drums of Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas – so redolent of the Tamla Motown songbook – start a run of strong, tuneful songs with beautifully crafted melodies. The lyric, “…Didn’t nobody tell you / the house will always win…”, could be straight out of, yes, Springsteen’s own Atlantic City.

From there it is on to the perfectly formed Only The Young. The song’s synth washes, simple drum pattern and plucked guitar lines will seep in to your brain and take up residence in much the same way as The Killers own Read My Mind.

Jenny Lewis then pops up for a duet in the form of Hard Enough. “Some people think that it’s best to refrain from the conventions of old-fashioned love,” sings Flowers. “Their hearts are filled with holes and emptiness, they tell themselves that they’re too young to settle down.” The criticisms of bland meaninglessness and confusion could be swept aside with that one line alone.

It is with the triumvirate of Was It Something I Said, Magdalena and first single Crossfire however that this album finally seals itself as something special. The squelchy bassline of Was It Something… does, shock-horror, sound akin to upbeat pop tracks from ‘the decade that fashion forgot.’ But it’s tale of love gone awry, layered with Byrdsian jangle and lyrics of blue collar grafting with “…a job at The Nugget…” lift it immeasurably.

Magdalena is the finest song in a fine collection. Flowers’ way with an instantly memorable tune and the songs reverb-soaked “woah-oh” refrain cement themselves within the first twenty seconds. And again, there is a clear manifesto here. Bible-thumping? Far from it. Brandon may make no attempt to hide his Mormon faith, but even in it’s depiction of a spiritual pilgrimage from Nogales to Magdelena, the song sings hopefully of forgiveness, love and redemption, not the fiery furnaces of sinners going to hell. “Please don’t tell me I can’t make it / It ain’t going to do me any good / Please don’t offer me your modern methods / I’m fixin’ to carve this out of wood,” pleads Flowers, just before “prodigal sons and wayward daughters” pop up a short time later. “I know I can be forgiven / In the broken heart of Mexico” he concludes.

All of which segues beautifully into anthemic single, Crossfire. Those jangly guitars rear their heads again to great effect as a funky bassline propels the thing along mid-tempo. And yes, here’s that biblical imagery again. “We’re caught in a crossfire / Between heaven and hell.” Tiresome? Hardly. It provides a strong lyrical backbone that would be heralded as ‘thematic coherence’ had this album been recorded by anyone else.

Ultimately Flamingo does seem slightly out-of-time. It is a fully realised album in the age of digital downloading where individual songs are king. It has a strong spiritual outlook in the age of scientific, empirical thinking. This, combined with Flowers air of preening and flamboyance could also make the album inherently ‘uncool’. But it would be a great shame to allow these points to stand in the way of recognition of an album that feels essentially like 40 minutes of unadulterated pop brilliance. “Our dreams will break the boundaries of our fear” sings Flowers during the closing lines of Crossfire. Quite.

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The Nico Blues | Blame The Boredom, Blame The Basements

14/07/2010 3 Comments

4/5 | Download it at: The Nico Blues

It’s there in the fuzzed up riff of album opener, Three’s A Crowd. It’s definitely there in the searing vocals of singer Eric Goldberg and his counterpart Evan Campbell. It’s there, too, in the reverb soaked anthemic final cut, Adjust Accordingly.

In fact, the whole of new album from The Nico Blues is run through with it: alternative rock pedigree.

These five from North Jersey may be based on the east coast, but their sound is likely to take you straight back to the west coast at the height of the alternative explosion. At one point during Unprofessional, I could have sworn that I was listening to The Pixies had they spent more time channeling the ghost of Alex Chilton. Folk Song #2 had me contemplating a holy alliance between the lyrical dexterity of Stephen Malkmus and the melodic chops of Teenage Fanclub.

But let’s not get too carried away and give the impression that we think Blame The Boredom… is some sort of pastiche; a one-dimensional throwback with a surfeit of style over substance. Let’s be plain: you can’t write songs this good if you don’t care wholeheartedly about your craft.

The minor chord progression of Exit 6, with it’s finger-picked filigree, care-worn vocal and tale of a woman that made a lasting impression is a delight. If anything, it’s a shame that it’s over in just two short minutes. But somehow it’s all the more memorable as a result. Fleeting, but oh so perfectly formed.

Skylar Adler’s booming drum pattern that kicks off Story With a Purpose builds into a mid-pace groove with an impassioned vocal and gutteral guitar thrum that will have you wanting to lope around the room, arms aloft, losing yourself in the music. That is, of course, just before the punky thrash of Don’t Forget to Breathe drags you kicking and screaming back to the now to work yourself up into a sweaty, pogoing frenzy.

And then, oh. The afforementioned Adjust Accordingly. It’s special. The kind of beautifully melodic fuzz-box guitar that reminds you of blissful summers as a teenager, saving your hard earned bucks to buy the latest Smashing Pumpkins album at your local record store. The vocal harmonies fill your heart. And then just when you think you can’t take any more comes the harmonic, chiming, impassioned howl of a guitar solo. If you don’t want to cry tears of joy at this point, then your soul is – I’m afraid to say – beyond saving. The whole track is over in three minutes. But it feels epic.

A melodic, memorable, triumph, I’ll blame the boredom and the basements until the cows come home as long as The Nico Blues make music this good.

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Animal Collective | Merriweather Post Pavilion

26/06/2010 Leave a comment

5/5 | Find it at: The Skin Back Alley Music Store

I’ve been trying to think of something coherent to say about the Animal Collective album, Merriweather Post Pavilion. It’s difficult to write about because it feels uncategorisable and, for that very reason, challenging.

I suppose it was almost inevitable that, whilst thinking about the music, I would think of other artists that might be comparable and that would help me to capture the sound in words. The difficulty here is that it seems possible to pick out similarities – even if they are only fleeting – to a great many and varied other performers. But how do you bring that broad spectrum into a coherent whole?

The word that feels as though it has cropped up in my thinking more than any other is ‘impression.’ I find impressions of a great many things in the music, elements that do, after repeated listening, start to build into a picture of an ecstatic reverie. The album feels ‘impressionistic’ in the same sense as the impressionist movement in painting. The brush strokes of the music are broad, visible and bright, but with changing qualities of light, movement and angle that capture something beautiful about human perception and experience.

MPP’s use of repetition, and the songs’ tendencies to build to a euphoric crescendo, all make it seem as though you are bathing in a natural, musical high. This is dance music, Jim, but not as we know it. “If I could just leave my body for a night….” sings Avey Tare, “…the ectasy turns to rising light.” If this is dance music, you would have to acknowledge that it’s at the glow-stick end of the spectrum.

So it is with all this in mind that I am coining MPP as the first ‘Impressionist Rave’ album. It is also a significant achievement and may, in time, come to be revered as a landmark. Just as, in the old musical world, Nirvana took elements of pop, hardcore and alternative and fashioned a grungy murk that blew music apart, so might Animal Collective have been the inspiration for a new, vibrant, transcendent act that would restructure the musical landscape.

As it is, I suspect that Pavilion will remain a beacon around which a discerning segment of music lovers will congregate, the old musical landscape having been worn away with the passing of time and the scattering of the musical tribes. Nevertheless, the album deserves to be heard for it’s bold creativity, restless energy and euphoric influence.

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