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- Mat

Audio Journal: 04/03/2014 - R5, IndigO2, London

When did teen-rock get so grown-up?

Last night we found ourselves at IndigO2 for a concert by R5. Never heard of them? Neither would I were it not for my seven-year-old eldest daughter's love of two Disney Channel shows - the series Austin And Ally and that channel's film Teen Beach Movie.

Both star a blonde, tousle-haired young guy called Ross Lynch, who as well as singing through both shows also happens to be a guitarist and vocalist in a band called R5, thus named because the group consists of Lynch and sundry brothers (and a sister).

So, at least on 'paper' this all sounds like familiar Disney territory - a young heartthrob, a contract with Disney's Hollywood Records label, a slight whiff of the manufactured boyband (except for the girl, of course). But then there are the following facts that need to be borne in mind:

• They play real instruments, live, with no backing tapes or miming or anything like that
• They have an album's worth of really good, comparatively mature songs that owe more to sun-drenched California than teen-pop
• They rock

Pop music, at its most irritating, has an infectious, subversive quality. It also has the capacity to feel artificial, churned-out on some vast production line under Communist-era-style portraiture of some gurning industry oligarch like Simon Cowell. R5, in contrast to a One Direction or whoever else the kids are listening to these days, feel like a proper band that just happen to have received a massive break thanks to their frontman, who, on the evidence of his onstage demeanour, is more than happy to just be a part of the band rather than accept the nominal limelight.

Ross Lynch's humble role in the band may have, however, been lost on an audience of swooning girls and their mothers. And fair enough. Plus it's sort of nice to see kids following what looks and feels like a proper band compared to some of the horrors available out there.

This was my eldest daughter's first full concert (her first concert proper was the Chili Peppers at Knebworth in 2012, but she fell asleep early on in the set and we left), and also the first concert for our six-year-old youngest daughter. Both had a great time. As did their mother.

As did I.

Audio Journal: 03/03/2014 - Rufus Wainwright 'Vibrate' + 'Live From The Artists Den'

To appreciate Rufus Wainwright's idiosyncratic approach to music, one only needs to listen to the all-too-brief 'Oh What A World' which opened the singer's third album, Want. Here are all the sides of the artist compressed into a three minute curiosity - a bit of Leonards Bernstein and Cohen, a spoonful of Stephen Sondheim, a pinch of George Gershwin, a lot of Judy Garland and a measure of Antony Hegarty and Holden Caulfield. Theatrical, wistful, louche, literate, spoiled, yearning - 'Oh What A World' is all of these things and maybe more, a soaring, triumphant overture for the both throwaway and the earnest.

Not for nothing did Caitlin Moran describe Wainwright as having 'all the quiet don't-mind-me demeanour of a pissed rainbow on a trampoline', but the extravagance for which Wainwright has been known is, save for the poppy 'April Fools' and decadent 'Foolish Love', is either missing from Vibrate or exposed as the mere fallacy of reputation. Instead, the compelling singer-songwriter is allowed to emerge, the sensitive soul blessed with a beguiling voice as comfortable singing about promiscuity, Greek boys and addiction as he is a perpetual romantic yearning for the world to stand still, for love, for appreciation or for the admiration of his father; a self-proclaimed gay messiah capable of giving his old friend Jeff Buckley a run for his money with his cover of Cohen's 'Hallelujah' or singing irreverently about dancing hopelessly to Britney Spears on the whimsical baroque track that gives this best of compilation its title.

In time Wainwright may receive the same critical appreciation that his mentor / saviour Elton John or Billy Joel now humbly accept, and Vibrate will go a long way in raising the profile of one of modern music's most original voices.

Released concurrently with Vibrate, Live From The Artists Den captures Wainwright performing at The Church Of The Ascension in Manhattan, and possibly provides more evidence of the singer's flamboyance than on Vibrate, mostly thanks to a pair of outrageous gold lame slacks, red metal-studded loafers and sideburns that are reminiscent of Travolta in Pulp Fiction. Running through most of his Mark Ronson-produced sixth album Out Of The Game, that album's mature pop leanings transfer far better to a live setting than on record. 'Rashida' and 'Welcome To The Ball' swing with a glam insousiance, while the rueful 'Out Of The Game' (complete with a paper mask of Helena Bonhan-Carter) and the optimistic 'Montauk' finds Wainwright putting his past to bed with a polite sense of humour.

The set also includes 'One Man Guy', originally recorded by his father Loudon Wainwright III, a track which would sound positive and affirming if it didn't have an onanistic undertone, while the dutiful son also tearfully tackles his late mother Kate McGarrigle's 'On My Way To Town'. Ronson puts in an appearance on the synth drama of 'Bitter Tears', but inevitably it's the fan favourites of the stirring '14th Street' and 'The Art Teacher' that are the major highlights.

Vibrate and Live From The Artists Den are released 03/03/2014

Thanks to Louisa

Audio Journal: 01/03/2014 - St. Vincent 'St. Vincent'

Annie Clark, better known as St. Vincent, knows how to make odd records. Her 2012 collaboration with David Byrne, Love This Giant, found her screwball approach to deconstructing rock and pop music blended with rich brass arrangements, Clark's distinctive voice harmonising with the elder statesman Byrne like a sort of bewitching counterpoint to the former Talking Head's own wonky sensibilities.

For her eponymous fourth album, Clark once again dips her toe into the strange funk offered up on Love This Giant, fuses it with dirty electronics and adds in typically oversized riffs that sound totally out of place on what is essentially a precision-honed pop record. Those riffs belong on a Seventies record, filled as they are with garagey jerkiness and hoary levels of distortion, hovering bluntly and somewhat self-consciously above squelchy synths and rhythms that could have been borrowed from a Buck 65 or Money Mark record. Opener 'Rattlesnake' has a bold, clipped sound filled with unexpected left turns and a smooth sensuality that really shouldn't work (but does anyway) while 'Digital Witness' - one of the album's strongest tracks - feels like it should have been part of the Byrne collaboration.

'Prince Jonny' and 'I Prefer Your Love' are without question the album's most prominent pop moments, being minor dramas that sit somewhere between emotional tragedy and the sort of stagey ballads that have quirky off-Broadway musical written all over them; these songs are vivid, emotional masterpieces that showcase the tender heights that Clark's voice can ascend to, as well as highlighting the filmic realism of her lyrics. Elsewhere 'Birth In Reverse' offers a skewed New Wave effervescence mixed in with the sort of clangorous punk riffs that Gang Of Four made their own.

If St. Vincent put her mind to it, she would be more than capable of knocking out glossy pop that would show most chanteuses a thing or two. Instead, she's more comfortable occupying that weird musical hinterland frequented by Björk and Polly Scattergood, and the result is much more interesting as a consequence.

Related: a review I wrote for Clash of St. Vincent and David Byrne at the Roundhouse in London last year can be found here.

St. Vincent was released on 24/02/2014.

Thanks to Matt.