Audio Journal : 22/03/2010

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Julian Plenti's Julian Plenti Is ... Skyscraper has sat in my iTunes Wish-List since it was released last year, and I finally got around to buying it over the weekend. This was mostly prompted by listening to Interpol's Antics in the car all last week; from the paucity of Interpol music I thought it was high time to get Plenti's album; Plenti is a pseudonym for Interpol's vocalist Paul Banks. Given that one of the things that has always appealed about Interpol is Banks' Ian Curtis-esque delivery, expectations were pretty high for his first solo album under the Julian Plenti alias.

As is so often the case, approaching something with heightened expectations often leads to disappointment, and that's exactly how ... Skyscraper is. I truly hope that it will grow with repeated listening, but so far – three listens in – my conclusion is that it's a good album, but it's just nowhere close to Interpol at all. For one, it's far too optimistic; I've become used to the negativity and world-weary disenchantment across their three albums, and, well, this just isn't grumpy enough for my tastes. Secondly, like the good, but un-Strokes-y output of Albert Hammond Jr and Julian Casablancas, Banks's album has a totally different sound to anything his parent band have produced; I've never understood this. Does this imply a dissatisfaction on the part of a group member about the personal direction he or she wants to go in? Pondering aside, like I said, not a bad album, just not an Interpol album.

An album that I haven't listened for a good few years is Set Yourself On Fire (2004), the third album by Canadian band Stars. We bought this after Mrs S had heard the tracks 'Your Ex-Lover Is Dead' (how Morrissey is that?) and 'Reunion' on BBC 6 Music, but the album was a disappointment. The orchestral grandeur of 'Your Ex-Lover Is Dead' seemed to be a one-off, the rest of the album struggling to know what it wanted to be; there are tinkly keyboards, fey indie rock songs and the occasional burst of wistful violin. So I tend to avoid it when I'm scrolling through my playlists. But this week I was in one of those restless moods where I couldn't settle on anything in my iPod and decided to give it a listen. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it had grown on me, and whereas previously I'd got annoyed at the chopping and changing of styles, now it simply has a pleasing variety.

Talented family patriarch Loudon Wainwright III released a new album this month. Songs For The New Depression is a collection of songs for guitar and ukele, the common theme of which is the poor state of the post-Lehman, post-Madoff, post-Bush US economy. So you get songs about the difficulties in the real estate market ('House'), cynical pieces about their car scrappage scheme ('Cash For Clunkers') and the track which neatly summarises the whole sorry affair, 'Times Is Hard'. It's a good, cynical album with Wainwright III's trademark wry humour, but it would have been nice to hear some of the songs delivered as full band pieces (as on Strange Weirdos or Recovery), but if you're a fan of solo folksy performances this won't disappoint.

Vinyl corner



Okay, let's start with the sleeve of Bill Sharpe & Gary Numan's 'No More Lies' (1988) – it's awful, even by Eighties standards. Attempts at futuristic bleakness come across more like two leather-clad Village People in a gay bar than the look I suspect they were trying to cultivate. If it wasn't for the 'computer'-y font around the edge, you'd be mistaken for thinking this was some sort of hair-Metal record.

It's not. It's actually one of the better tracks in the entire, patchy Gary Numan back catalogue. Numan is someone who for me went off the boil after 'Cars' and the earlier work as Tubeway Army and I rid myself of my greatest hits CD many moons ago. The record box was spared, leaving the blue vinyl limited edition 7" and another track 'Your Fascination' (1985); in keeping with the 'weeding' I'm doing at present with my music collection, 'Your Fascination' (actually another good song come to think of it) was slung at a charity shop (the sleeve still bearing the price tag of the charity shop I bought it from years ago) and 'No More Lies' is on eBay.

'No More Lies' is a defiant, soulful Eighties pop track that could've been recorded just as well by Human League or even any of the Stock, Aitken & Waterman crop of singers. It's certainly not like any of the robotic synth pop Numan produced in his earlier years, nor does it provide any clues to his later, doom-laden electro-rock output. It's just a piece of breezy, polite pop music. The B-side, 'Voices' has a more muscular synth bass-line but mines a similar vein. As seems to be happening a lot lately, I found myself preferring the B-side to the lead track.

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 31/08/2009

I’m currently listening to Narcisstika by Toykult, a band I’ve never heard of before. They briefly started following my tweets this week, so I thought I’d check them out. Reverbnation have been giving their new album away and I thought ‘What the hell? It’s free’. Described as ‘rock electronica’, it reminds me of bands I used to listen to like Cubanate or Parallax who melded heavy guitars with electronics to fantastically bleak effect. Electronic sounds have come a long way since those two bands adventurously deployed them, the effect of Narcisstika being a sequence of edgy, jarring beats, twisted sounds and warped vocals all melded together in a rapidfire blur, as best illustrated by my favourite, ‘Automatic Addict’. Get a copy here.



Gang Of Four are listed as one of Toykult’s influences, and coincidentally I bought their classic Entertainment! album this week. Gang Of Four, along with bands like Wire, The Pop Group, Mekons and others, epitomised the post-punk sound which has had a strong bearing on modern bands like Franz Ferdinand. True UK punk really only lasted a couple of years (it’s a shame no-one bothered to tell Sham 69), rapidly fragmenting into a sound that incorporated other influences. In Gang Of Four’s case that influence was a combination of arty knowing and funk – their lyrics read like a dystopian Nietzschean self-help book while their basslines wobble around like a punk-weaned George Clinton.

The Rumble Strips, whose debut album Girls And Weather failed to live up to expectation and just reinforced the narrow-minded view that they were Dexy’s clones, have returned with a confident new album, Welcome To The Walk Alone. The album is glossily rendered by producer du jour Mark Ronson with plenty of strings and less emphasis on the horn section that made the Dexy’s comparisons so easy. The effect is something I can only describe as how Elvis Costello might have sounded if Phil Spector had ever produced an album for him. For all the strong new material, my favourite song is ‘London’ which I first heard at an NME gig in Northampton a couple of years ago.

I should give a quick plug to Those Brave Airmen, a four-piece band formed by some of my old school friends. Their MySpace page includes four of their songs, which are anthemic heavy guitar tracks with a grungey vibe. My wife, who is something of an expert on such things, says they remind her of a band she used to like called Live.



Finally, I’ve been listening to So Damn Happy, a live album by Loudon Wainwright III which effortlessly blends together emotional, folksy numbers with more humorous tracks. ‘Heaven’ has the audience in stitches, detailing as it does a debauched vision of the afterlife while ‘Primrose Hill’ movingly recounts the depressing story of a homeless London busker. I don’t know how Wainwright can so easily blend together such apparently conflicting themes, but he does and it’s brilliant.

Audio Journal : 22/06/2009

In the last week I think I've bought or received more new CDs than during the whole of the rest of 2009. This, I should stress, is not 'new music' as generally I can't keep up that these days. I don't listen to radio, I don't read music magazines and instead rely on my wife, who does both of those things. Anything new I've got into over the past two years has generally been because of her recommendation.

One of the new bands she's been buying songs by is The Virgins, whose debut album has been in heavy rotation on my iPod ever since she bought it last week. The Virgins are a New York four-piece making upbeat Eighties-esque New Wave rock that's undeniably retro by way of influence, but quintessentially modern - and New York - in its sound. Listen for yourself at their MySpace page. If it was possible to wear out songs on an iPod like you could with vinyl records, my copy would be wrecked now after the past week's worth of play. I implore you to check them out.

Another thing filling my earphones over the past seven days was Trees Outside The Academy by Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore; I know I'm becoming something of an unashamed SY bore, but Moore's 2007 album confounds expectations and is quite beguiling. Anything anyone in that band produces is always excellent anyway, but this was much softer than expected.

As with SY, I know I have prattled on about David Byrne here far more than is objective, but I bought his Big Love: Hymnal album last week on a rare splurge at Rough Trade East and thought it was quite beautiful too. The album contains instrumental songs crafted for the soundtrack to the US series Big Love which has something to do with Mormons, but all I know is that the songs here are uplifting and 'spiritual' I guess.

I've somehow managed to squeeze in a couple of listens to the album Strange Weirdos, a selection of songs by Loudon Wainwright III used in or inspired by the (surprisingly mature) Judd Apatow comedy Knocked Up. I'm gradually working my way around the Wainwright family, starting with Rufus - still far and away the best singer in the music business today - and now his father. Ordinarily Loudon's folksy songs may not be everyone's cup of tea - I'm still getting used to them myself - but these tracks are highly accessible and quietly moving. The cover of Peter Blegvad's 'Daughter' gets me every time; appropriate given that it was a Father's Day gift.

Finally, I attempted to visit the exhibition of Moby's inchoate drawings at the Neu Gallery last week, but got thoroughly lost in the East End. My soundtrack for the experience was White Light / White Heat by The Velvet Underground. It just seemed to lend itself to the surroundings.