Anyone who has been paying any attention to advertising on television in the last few months may have noticed the signs of something a little strange going on: a crisis of masculinity.

Yes, the land that wanted to “Bring Back Buck”, or head down to the local hardware store in hopes of ‘doing it themselves’, and whose favourite national identifiers are the barbecue and the pickup truck, seems to be questioning its own masculinity. Well, at least this is the premise for recent promotions like the New Zealand Transport Authority’s ‘Mantrol’ campaign, Lion Red’s ‘Man Points’ scheme, and Fonterra’s yogurt range, Mammoth Supply Co., which targets ‘real men’. In the Mantrol ads, a hirsute everyman in tight jeans strolls through a series of rooms of men engaging in stereotypically masculine pursuits like fishing, cricket and D.I.Y. building. Turning to the camera, he wonders whether “the fate of mandom is uncertain,” and asks, “what does this all mean?” The ad then goes on to cynically draw a parallel between good driving (“a manly thing”) and masculinity.

As for Lion Red, their campaign juxtaposes acceptable masculine behaviours (which are rewarded with ‘man points’) with their unacceptable opposites. These pairings include “Catch Bag / Man Bag”, “Owning a Ute / Owning a Hatchback”, “Putting together a BBQ / Cooking Tofu Sausages on it.” Finally, “Buying flowers when you’re not even in trouble” is to be punished by the deduction of 417 ‘Man Points’. An advertisement for Fonterra’s Mammoth Supply Co. Yogurt establishes a similar set of dichotomies. Men are permitted to slap each other on the behind “while playing sport, but never while watching sport”, and “can grow facial hair, but never groom facial hair.” What each of these campaigns seeks to do is put a label on things sacred to masculinity, whilst simultaneously rejecting a variety of ‘new age’ threats to it. While it might seem laughable that a generation of heirs to the likes of Colin ‘Pinetree’ Meads would be having a crisis of identity (within the media at least), this debate is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. And so one must ask the question, how did something as seemingly innocent and innocuous as a slice of tofu became the subject of such intense anathema in New Zealand’s media?

In order to address this question, we turn inevitably to rugby, the veritable Mecca of masculinity for New Zealand’s ‘ real’ man—stuff.co.nz’s rugby page is called ‘Rugby Heaven’, for instance. Within the field of sport, and for this country, the field of rugby, masculinity is becoming an increasingly contested subject. Remember the national furore over Dan Carter’s underwear campaign for Jockey? And what about those pink All Blacks jerseys from a few years back? Good examples both of this as yet unnamed threat to the conventional order of all things manly within rugby. Perhaps the clearest illustration of how such a thing might play out was “eyeliner-gate”, when Ma’a Nonu upset the All Blacks management by donning eyeliner before stepping out onto the field for the final of the NPC in 2004. Quick to defend the national sporting culture (and to protect the authenticity of their brand), the eyeliner was originally explained away by the All Blacks management as a locker-room prank. Nonu didn’t seem to get the memo however, claiming that his decision was actually “a bit of a fashion statement”. To New Zealand’s older rugby establishment this explanation was unacceptable, and prompted a media frenzy in which Nonu’s behaviour was seen as emblematic of a new generation of players whose lack of competitiveness on the field could be ascribed to the loss of its “hard man” tradition. While Colin ‘Pinetree’ Meads bemoaned the substitution of steak by pasta in the contemporary All Black’s diet, former All Black Norm Hewitt (whose “hard man” bona fides are guaranteed by his participation in the 2000 NPC final for Wellington with a broken arm) “pleaded” that the presence of eyeliner on Nonu’s brow was indeed a team punishment, and hoped that “he’s not going to get a nipple ring or an ear ring in the right ear next”. In a paper on the topic of metrosexuality, VUW academic Anita Brady argued that “Hewitt’s deliberate reference to an ear ring in the right ear, historically often imagined as a coded reference to the wearer’s homosexuality, is telling… Nonu’s appropriation of an unequivocally feminised cultural practice threatens a more immediate insertion of the spectre of homosexuality… into a homosocial space that is dependent on the, often violent, disavowal of its (homosexuality’s) relationship to the signified heterosexuality of such spaces”.

In other words, masculine identity in sporting culture is seen to depend in part on a rejection of homosexuality. A good example of how this plays out is in the sacred sporting space of the locker room, where male eyes are constantly able to gaze upon other naked or semi-naked male bodies. As such, the locker room is regulated by a set of unwritten codes that govern the behaviour of its inhabitants. According to these rules, one’s eyes must not linger too long upon the body of another teammate, and all physical contact is forbidden, at least until the athletes enter the field of play. This same logic can be seen in the aforementioned Fonterra commercial, which claims that no physical contact is permitted while ‘watching sport’. In this way, one set of physical practices (those of a sporting nature) are permitted, within a particular context (on the sports field), while another (anything that might be seen as ‘homosexual’) is refuted at all costs. As for Ma’a Nonu, how was he able to escape being labelled as a homosexual, given that he had admitted to applying the eyeliner himself? Here again we will turn to Brady, who argues that “the rescuing of Nonu (and of masculinity)… comes with the invocation of the discourse of metrosexuality”.

Under the metrosexual label, Nonu joins the ranks of the David Beckhams of the world, as a “new age” man, who is permitted to groom his hair, dress competently, exfoliate, and, in short, adopt cultural practices that are stereotypically viewed as belonging to the domain of gay men. Crucially though, the metrosexual is able to retain his (“new”) masculinity without actually being homosexual. What we have been watching in the media of late then, is a competition between this “new” form of masculinity, and the older “hard man” style that dates back to the early days of New Zealand’s colonial past, and that relies on a thinly veiled homophobia as the source of much of its humour.

So, within the field of sport, and particularly rugby in New Zealand, we see a negotiation between two contesting ideologies, that of the rough, and even simplistic ‘hard-man’ and that of the ‘in-touch’ metrosexual, ‘new man’; where both ideologies are carefully positioned and defined in opposition to homosexuality. However, it is worth noting that each of these positions work as commodities in advertising culture where such identities are sold back to us. We must not forget that Lion Red are attempting to sell beer in the same moment that they attempt to define masculinity. Nor is queer culture exempt from this, as its discovery by advertising executives as “the pink dollar” has resulted in its own wave of products and sales initiatives. Whether it is the threatening of masculinity through risible marketing concepts like ‘mantrol’, or the advocacy of more “open-minded”, metrosexual actors in sport (as promoted in Daniel Carter’s underwear commercials), the replay and reaffirmation of these discursive positions in contemporary advertising work to ingrain such ways of thinking into public discourse, and of course if circumstances permit—make a little cash.

In the example of sport, these discursive positions are constantly tied to a nostalgia for older forms of the game, and importantly, the players who represent them (in the case of the ‘hard-man’), and then a ‘coming to grips’ with the infiltration of metrosexuality in contemporary sport culture. This negotiation is brilliantly played out in an advertisement for no8.co.nz—a rugby website or forum for debate about rugby (and as the advertising suggests, for debate between the old and the new). In one advertisement, Colin “Pinetree” Meads faces off against Leigh Hart, aka the TV personality ‘That Guy’, in a call-and-response styled debate comparing old and contemporary features of rugby:

Hart: Protein Shake…
Meads: Steak ‘n’ Eggs
Hart: Team Physio
Meads: Vere Meads
Hart: Interchange bench
Meads: …Not in my day!

Here, the older features of the game, albeit mythical, are privileged as pure and authentic, and necessarily tied to the ‘hard-man’, exemplified in this case by Meads. In contrast, Hart’s subjectivity, which broadly stands in for that of the “new man”, is presented as the contemporary reality of the sport. By representing a more mythical form of the game, Meads adopts an ideological position that doesn’t stand for historical instances of rugby, but rather an attitude towards its culture; one tied to hardened, no-nonsense, masculine actors. However, at the end of the advertisement, both men stand alongside another rugby player from the series, Buck Shelford, interpellating the audience to remind us that both positions are legitimised. In other words, what this advertisement suggests is that both the “new man”, (or Ma’a Nonu’s metrosexual), and the “hard man” of New Zealand’s colonial past are permitted to co-exist, particularly given their implicit shared disavowal of the homosexual other.

“Oh wow, that’s really interesting. What career track is that?”

This is the question faced by Joel, a Nietzsche-reading, Russian Lit/Slavic Languages double major in the film Adventureland. He sarcastically responds: “Cabbie, hotdog vender, marijuana delivery guy. The world is my oyster.” As well as providing one of the funnier moments in the film, this question highlights a major paradox, which exists at the very heart of every academic institution. A tension exists between the university’s imperative to provide qualifications with vocational outputs (gettin’ us the jobs!) and its role as a space that can facilitate a critique of society independent from external influences. We can talk about this in terms of disciplines. Just compare the respective functions of law and philosophy degrees. Upon graduating with a law degree, it is expected that you will pursue a career in law, or at least will leave the university with a qualification that will guarantee your future employment. As for a philosophy degree, well, Joel’s response might be equally applicable here too, but if he was feeling sincere he might just admit that the liberal arts also play an important role within society. The university has always been a contradictory entity, founded upon a deep-lying set of conflicts.

The Paradoxical University

In November 2010, Victoria University axed its Gender Studies program. To major in Gender Studies now will require students to cobble together papers from a variety of different departments. At the same time, New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce outlined the importance of increasing vocational outputs at tertiary institutions, highlighting what Canadian academic Alison Hearn calls “the central tension between the usefulness of the university to its society on the one hand, and its need for academic freedom from external interests on the other.” Hearn calls this the ‘Paradoxical University’. Her argument is that this tension has always existed within the university, but why is it so especially pronounced today?

One reason is the advent of neoliberal politics: an ideological paradigm that promotes a free market and individual autonomy from state intervention. Neoliberalism can therefore act as an economic and social policy imperative, both at the level of the state and also individual governance. Neoliberalism encourages private enterprise, consumer choice, and transactional thinking—in other words, an undertaking of personal responsibility over general wellbeing, based on the logics and language of the market, and a de-emphasis of government intervention in social welfare.

In light of these initiatives, external influences both public and private combine to unbalance the university’s orienting paradox, and we see this at both levels in New Zealand. John Key has made the government’s policy on tertiary education clear in his constant promotion of vocational output in NZ universities. Likewise, the imbalance in private or industry funding between faculties and schools affects the success and growth of each program. As both government and industry move to play a more prominent role in dictating and defining the operation of the university, the university’s emphases on teaching and research shifts toward those fields with a higher monetary yield, both in terms of research (sciences) and the production of workers (commerce, law, etc).

The Vocational University

In July of last year, Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce outlined the National-led Government’s plan to directly link tertiary education funding to targeted career outcomes. “I want to see funding linked to employment outcomes, not just internal benchmarks. This will send a strong signal to students about which qualifications and which institutions offer the best career prospects. And that’s what tertiary education has got to be about.”

You can trace a clear connection between this policy initiative and developments like last year’s closure of the Victoria University’s Gender Studies department. Faculties with clear vocational outputs like Commerce, Science and Law stand to benefit, while the humanities (and liberal arts in particular) and languages are more at risk—and these aren’t the only changes that are in store for our academic institutions. National has also begun altering the tertiary sector’s funding structure in order to target better student performance. As Joyce puts it, “In short we’ll provide financial incentives for institutions to continually work to improve the educational performance of their students.”

So New Zealand’s universities will be judged on a mixture of performance-related factors, including successful course completion, qualification completion, and progression to further study, starting with an initial maximum of 5% of total university funding being performance based. This might sound like a potentially positive initiative—until one considers how such a policy would likely be implemented. Teaching staff will now be under immense pressure to reduce their fail rates, whilst simultaneously increasing pass marks across the grade spectrum. The question that needs to be asked is whether this will genuinely precipitate an improvement in teaching standards, or whether it will simply mean that marking becomes more generous. For instance, will greater administrative measures be taken to ensure that students at risk of failing a course are encouraged to withdraw rather than attempt completion, and therefore risk receiving a fail grade?

The Corporatised University

With New Zealand universities being under increasing pressure to reduce costs and generate revenues, while catering to a growing demand for tertiary education, as well as to redefine themselves under the contemporary Neo-Liberal paradigm of increasing privatisation and free-market rule, we have also seen a clear movement towards operational practices that are commonplace in the private sector. In 2010 the Wishbone food chain opened a store on Kelburn Campus as part of a redevelopment of the Cotton Building that foreruns the imminent arrival of the Campus Hub, a space which will provide further opportunities for businesses to open storefronts at Victoria University. These developments will do more than simply alter the social and physical spaces on campus. They will also have implications for the university’s orientation as an independent site for cultural discussion and societal critique. How is it possible, asks Hearn, “to successfully teach students to think critically about their consumerist environment, for example, when they are sitting in a classroom named after a corporation?” Although the presence of a multinational corporate entity such as McDonald’s at Victoria University remains unlikely, the sanctified status of the campus as a space free from the presence of private enterprise can no longer be guaranteed.

Major in Yourself

Students are faced with a choice of direction in the type of study we wish to undertake, which is, of course, part of a much larger formation of selfhood. The discourse of personal transformation has always been part of higher education, from the stereotypical freshman to the mature student: both are entrenched in a journey to, as academics James Cote and Anton Allahar put it, either “find oneself” or “better oneself” as “architects of their own destiny.” However, the rise of the promotional, neoliberal university brings with it a language of personal responsibility and a mentality dictated by market logic, where the journey of becoming is much more defined—that is, to pursue a career.

If the university is indeed dictated by an increasingly neoliberal mentality, then what can we expect from the student body? The answer to this question lies in another set of questions that all students, especially first years, should ask themselves: Why am I at university? What do I want from the university, my lecturers? What do I want from my degree? These seemingly simple questions are likely to be met with a predictable, straightforward progressive answer: degrees get jobs, which pay the rent. However, upon scrutiny this mentality challenges the fundamental (albeit idealistic) purposes of higher education. Within this relatively consumerist mentality, students start to appear as autonomous ‘choosers’, perceiving education as what Hearn calls a “zero-sum game, where they get (in the form of grades) what they pay for (in the form of capital or fees)”.

Likewise, the university becomes less a space for the production of knowledge: instead, as Vice-Chancellors’ Committee chairman Derek McCormack commented to Nathan Beaumont in the Dominion Post (16/07/2010), the university “becomes more and more like an employment agency”. Alison Hearn has suggested that this consumerist mentality, prevalent in many universities around the world, can be seen as a major factor in the obsession of ranking and comparing various institutions. Take Victoria University’s current marketing slogan, “Get amongst the best”. This marketing strategy certainly doesn’t mean to be taken literally (the QS World University rankings put Victoria at 225th); rather, it is an imperative for consumer choice. It upholds a predictable neoliberal stance on education—that it is purchased, and added to a list of numerous other qualifications in order to build a well-rounded, productive workforce. If students are encouraged into a “get the most for the least” mentality, then where does that leave student organisations such as clubs, sports and the student community in general?

Clearly, the balance of orientation within the paradoxical university is becoming more and more one-sided, with worrying implications for students, staff, and the nature of tertiary education itself. If the contemporary university continues to be subservient to commercial pressures, then developments like the axing of the Gender Studies programme are likely to become increasingly commonplace. As students, we need to carefully consider our place within the academic institution, as well as that institution’s place within society as a whole.

Artist: Surf City
Album: Kudos
Label: Arch Hill Recordings

They’re on Arch Hill, their name is a reference to a Jesus and Mary Chain reworking of a Brian Wilson standard, and the first track on their debut album sounds like all of the above. The reverb on each snare hit could be direct from Psychochandy, and the submerged vocals could easily be mistaken for those of a young David Kilgour.

Okay, so the surf rock guitar lines from their self-titled debut have been chucked skipways, but you still shouldn’t expect much from Kudos that isn’t pictured on the Surf City tin.
None of this need be a bad thing though. Given that Surf City make little attempt to shy from their influences, it would be unfair to judge them on anything other than execution, and in this respect they score pretty well. Heck, they even manage to ride out ‘Icy Lakes’ through upwards of four riffs, various breaks and a killer chorus (which they play three times). It’s almost eight minutes long, but the band are careful never to digress too far from its core melodic line; even when they do begin to steer away one can rest assured that a return to a catchy hook is never far around the corner.

On closer, ‘Zombies’, although they trade the driving riffs for chanted vocals, chiming sampler loops and a tambourine driven beat that recalls the Beta Band’s ‘Dry the Rain’, the barbecue haze aesthetic remains intact throughout. I’m even reminded of the Flaming Lips in places, with the backwards cymbals and distended bass that open ‘Autumn’ suggesting a bit of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, at least until the band’s warm-tone guitars squawk their way back into the mix and reassert the status quo.

It’s a simple formula, and one which they stick to for most of the rest of the album. To their credit, Surf City are comfortable enough in their sound not to fuck with it, and as a result, when they do make departures they tend to come off with an easy and casual panache. Sure, they’re treading in relatively familiar sonic seawater, but, given the appeal of its frequent and likeable hooks Kudos is a hard album to dislike. Furthermore, Surf City’s willingness to flirt with alternative approaches to their principal sound (fleeting though they may be) suggests that they have plenty of avenues for growth in the future.

4/5

Xiu Xiu, with support from Glass Vaults and Siamese
Live at San Francisco Bathhouse, 11 Sept.

Xiu Xiu is one of the more polarising bands to have visited Wellington in the last couple of years. Given the relatively small size of the night’s crowd it struck me that most of us are firmly entrenched in the ‘no’ camp. This is perhaps understandable, as their emotional intensity, schizoid approach to songwriting, and confrontational lyrics all make for a pretty difficult package, even on record. Live, Jamie Stewart is howling lines like “Beat beat me to death, I said it / Beat beat me to death” into the faces of the crowd from a couple of metres away. Clearly this isn’t for everyone, but I was still surprised to find San Fran much less than half-full, especially given the band’s stature, the relative dearth of quality international acts to have visited (at least since the Galesburg ‘summer of plenty’), and the reasonable ticket price ($25). Even worse, some of those who did show up seemed to think that it was cool to talk, giggle and pop balloons during some of the band’s quieter songs. Even in my drunken state I can recall being most unimpressed, and Stewart didn’t look particularly enamoured with the reception his music was receiving either.

Given these trying circumstances, I feel I must give ample kudos to both him and new member Angela Seo for forging on, and treating those of us who held their music in higher regard to an impressive and varied set. Although they tended to favour the poppier moments of their discography, I wouldn’t shy from using adjectives like noisy, uncompromising or dissonant to describe the experience of seeing them live. Make no mistake, though Xiu Xiu employs the odd disco beat, they are by no means a dance band, regardless of what some of the more wasted members of the audience seemed to think. Even a recognisable crowd favourite like ‘I Love the Valley OH!’ saw its ostensive pop structure subverted by the band’s trademark dentist’s drill approach to percussion, as well as by blasts of noise from Seo’s synth and Stewart’s abusive treatment of a Nintendo DS.

Unsurprisingly, their set was weighted towards their more recent material, with both ‘Gray Death’ and the brilliant ‘Chocolate Makes You Happy’ (“Chocolate makes you happy / And it keeps you awake / As you unbutton your top button / Bewildered by the pain”) from their new album, Dear God, I Hate Myself, given faithful and effective renditions. As they wound their way through these songs Stewart’s energy and intensity saw him work up quite the sweat, while Seo navigated her arms through an intricate choreography of percussive motions with unwavering focus and intent. Together, they operated in juxtaposition, albeit one which collapsed when each successive song descended into the obligatory whiplash of its noise assault breakdown.

I departed the Bathhouse with mixed emotions and ringing ears. As engaging as Xiu Xiu had been, I couldn’t help but feel that the night would have been greatly enhanced by a larger and more appreciative audience, but perhaps that’s typical of their gigs, and apt given the kind of art that Stewart has chosen to produce. Should a Xiu Xiu show ever be euphoric, let alone fun? Probably not.

It was fitting that they didn’t bother to return for an encore.

The Clientele—Minotaur
Label: Merge

There are few bands I can think of who have simultaneously been as prolific and as consistent as The Clientele. By my count they’ve released four EPs, five LPs, and a singles compilation, and, in this author’s opinion, every one of them is worth a listen. With each release, the band has managed to simultaneously retain its core sound (literate, wistful, and surreal pop-songs) while also gradually developing, either through the addition of extra members, glossier production values—the first LP, EP and singles comp were all completely submerged in gauzy reverb—or by expanding the scope of their songwriting.

With Minotaur, the band continues to diversify its palette; the opening and closing tracks are classic Clientele numbers, bookending a six song stretch that contains a noisy guitar workout, a cover (West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band’s ‘As the World Rises and Falls’), an instrumental, an underwritten pop gem and a lengthy spoken word piece. In other words, it picks up nicely where their last LP, last year’s superlative Bonfires on the Heath, left off. Given that most of these songs are leftovers from those Bonfires sessions, it’s a pretty generous offering, and there’s much to like here, regardless of whether the band’s music is familiar or not. New listeners will marvel at the eloquent lyrics and catchy melodies of Minotaur’s poppier moments (‘Minotaur’ and ‘Paul Verlaine’ and the economical ‘Strange Town’ are all highlights), while veterans will appreciate ‘Green Man’s’ titular reference to a lyric from 2008’s That Night, A Forest Grew EP.

Still, if you’re new to the band you might be better off starting at the beginning (I’d recommend their singles comp, Suburban Light), as the songs here aren’t quite on par with the band’s finest moments; but this is still a worthwhile release, and, if you’re a Clientele devotee like yours truly, an absolutely mandatory acquisition.

3.5/5

The Burgundy Room is an underutilised space. Its small dimensions, low ceiling, underground location and twilight-style (think circadian, not vampiric, guys) lighting ensure even an audience of thirty will make the venue feel both intimate and well attended. Here there were probably around 80 people in attendance, making for a pretty optimal size of crowd, and rightly so, given that the night’s lineup made for a fine showcase of all-Wellington talent. One man + Gameboy act Old Grey Wolf kicked off proceedings with a hard-todislike set of dance beats and videogame glitch. He probably played a couple

songs too many (given the nature of his setup it’s pretty hard to differentiate most of the tracks), but his energy and enthusiasm was largely appreciated.

Up next were Glass Vaults, whose unhurried approach and delicate vocals immediately distinguished them from the dancier acts that made up the rest of the bill—TV DiSKO’s eclectic between set beats all but demanded headnoddery. Live, Glass Vaults more than match the command of tension and dynamics that marked out their recently released debut EP as a local release of the highest calibre. Richard Larsen’s achingly gorgeous voice was all the more compelling when experienced at close quarters, and drummer Rowan Pierce turned in a potent shift on the skins.

Complaints? It would be interesting to see them stretch everything out a little more, but this was neither the time nor the place, and after one last round of tasteful TV DiSKO disco it was 47 Diamantes’ turn to take command of the room. The effect was not dissimilar to a mass contraction of nerve stimulant; everyone danced in a convulsing frenzy, while synthist Kelvin Neal played massive drop after massive drop (and also mashed a keyboard with his beardface). Unleashing her trademark shriek, vocalist Gemma Syme swooped into the crowd and was soon thrashing about on the floor, catching the audience in two minds. Did we keep dancing, or get the hell out of the way? By the end of their set it didn’t really matter, as nothing was going to stop the duo from having their way with us. In the best way possible. Thanks guys.

Of course, this kind of appropriation has a long, storied, and at times highly controversial history. “There’s long been an interest [in Asian culture] in the West. You could trace it back to the Greco-Roman world, with exotic products coming overland from the Silk Road,” says Professor Stephen Epstein, Director of Victoria University’s Asian Studies Programme.

Appropriation can occur in a variety of ways, and can be as simple as purchasing a piece of kitsch from Iko Iko, getting a tattoo of a Kanji character on your wrist, or even preparing a plate of sushi for dinner. Although these examples may seem trivial, the processes of appropriation, which extends to the ownership of artefacts from a foreign culture, can at times be problematic.

A Brief History of Orientalism

To explain, Epstein points to Edward Said’s book, Orientalism. Here, Said traced the history of western fascination with eastern cultures, and their depiction as an exotic “Other” with promises of the unknown, mystical properties and distinct aesthetic qualities. “The East,” Epstein says, “was positioned in binary opposition to the West. It was a mirror image, an inferior image, and a feminised image.” Throughout the ages then, western travellers have returned from the East bearing exotic artefacts, which showcased these oriental qualities, and in turn began to influence western culture. And, as Epstein explains, these processes continue today.

“You still see a lot of orientalist tropes in action, particularly in mainstream western culture, emphasising the mysterious East, as it were. Take Lost in Translation, which really polarises people. It’s both critiquing Bill Murray’s character, but also making fun of ‘wacky’ Japan, and presenting Japan as unknowable. Remember tall Bill Murray in the elevator scene, where he’s towering over all the ‘identical’ Japanese? So there definitely still is a lot of orientalism going on.”

Burger Fuel, Star Wars and the Zen Masters

Films like Lost in Translation and The Matrix can be seen as a continuation of this Orientalist process, producing an idealised image of Japanese and pan-Asian culture which does not necessarily reflect their contemporary cultural makeup. For instance, when we think of Japanese television, our minds might instantly jump to the clips of bizarre gameshows featuring slippery obstacle courses, human Tetris and Matrix-style ping pong that Burger Fuel seems to be so obsessed with playing on those wall-sized LCD screens of theirs. But does this really represent the makeup of terrestrial Japanese programming? In fact, the most popular genre on Japanese screens turns out to be the light serial drama, which receives more airtime than either the madcap gameshows or the even more familiar export, anime.

The figure of the venerable Asian spiritual master, at one with the world via some kind of Zen mind conditioning, is equally stereotypical and familiar to us. I need only mention the words Star Wars, Yoda and the order of the Jedi to remind you of just one example of the sorts of pseudo-mystical philosophising that is constantly dredged up in mass-media depictions of Asian or Asian-inspired spirituality. These kinds of depictions are often superficial, if not downright wrong, and may draw as much on western new-age wish-wash or bastardised Freudian theory as on any genuine eastern spiritual practice.

Re-Appropriation and Lolita Fashion

However, cultural appropriation does not necessarily have to be harmful, or stereotyping. It can also be playful, curious or thought-provoking, and it can often be multi-directional. At the same time teenagers across the world don Sailor Moon outfits and upload cosplay (an abbreviation of costume roleplay) videos to YouTube, the Japanese have been engaging in Lolita fashion. An incredibly popular subculture, Lolita fashion draws on Victorian-era clothing (think frilly blouses and petticoats) and updates it by applying gothic-era aesthetic tweaks. Naturally, this style has since produced a veritable cornucopia of offshoots, some of which incorporate traditional Japanese (Wa Lolita) or even Chinese (Qi Lolita) styles into the Victorian outfit. And if that somehow wasn’t culturally complex enough for you then there are plenty of videos to be found on YouTube featuring westerners showing off their finest Lolita threads to the invisible hoards that frequent the internet.

As Epstein notes, “appropriation involves increasing interconnection, movement of people, and cross-fertilisation”. The result is an increasingly blurred set of notions of cultural ownership. Does Lolita fashion encapsulate something quintessentially Japanese? Or is it really just an appropriation of an anachronistic mode of dress? Is it a dead culture, which has become fair game for appropriation by anyone, anywhere, or an unfortunate revival of an oppressive mode of dress? Is an English teenager wearing a Lolita outfit more or less authentic than a Japanese teenager doing the same? At some point these kinds of questions simply stop becoming interesting. It might sound banal, but at the end of the day culture is just culture.

That Fluoro Green Digital Rain Shit

What we do want to be aware of though is the moment where appropriation becomes more troublesome. Commoditisation of culture, where one group gains monetary benefits by mining the culture of another, is particularly problematic, especially when it occurs in a manner that fails to engage in any kind of dialogue or exchange with the source culture and its heritage. Think of those descending Katanaka characters in The Matrix. Their usage in the film serves little purpose other than to function as a bit of extra window-dressing, or as a sprinkling of what Epstein calls Japan’s “Gross National Cool” to make the Nebuchadnezzar and its crew seem that much more multi-cultural. Japan, and therefore anything vaguely ‘Japanese’, become signifiers for the cool, the edgy and the high-tech. Call it Neo-Orientalism if you will. Sigh. Oh, and did I mention that they ripped the ‘digital rain’ directly from the opening credits from the anime feature Ghost in the Shell?

Samurai Code +Hip Hop + Chess

In spite of all this, some of the more wonderful exponents of cultural appropriation and re-appropriation should not be disregarded. Think of the Wu-Tang clan, and in particular GZA’s three-way mashup of hip-hop, Samurai philosophy and chess in Liquid Swords. In the words of the man himself:

“Liquid Swords comes from a kung-fu flick… But the title was just… perfect. I was like, Legend of a Liquid Sword. Damn, this is my rhymes. This is how I’m spittin’ it. We say the tongue is symbolic of the sword anyway, you know, and when in motion it produces wind. That’s how you hear ‘wu’.That’s the wind swinging from the sword. The ‘Tang’, that’s when it hits an object. Tang! That’s how it is with words.”

Anyone who has heard Liquid Swords will know how perfectly this metaphor applies in the context of GZA’s music. If the tongue symbolises the sword, than what is the art of the MC if not the art of ‘liquid’ swordplay? Not only has GZA appropriated (by way of samples from Samurai flicks, as well as from a lyrical and philosophical standpoint) the Samurai code, he has also engaged in a cultural dialogue, drawing parallels between both sets of aesthetics (and chess!) in a manner that extends beyond mere fetishisation or fascination with Otherness. If the example of Liquid Swords tells us anything then, it is that culture is always in a state of flux. Simply put, culture changes, and regardless of whether different kinds of appropriation are ‘good’ or ‘bad’, they are still going to occur, and produce (potentially new) meanings as a consequence.

Today, the repetitive jerk of the Maneki Neko (Beckoning Cat) arm is one of the most familiar sights in quotidian Wellington life. I cannot accurately imagine Wellington’s Cuba Quarter without thinking of all those delicious (and cheap!) Malaysian restaurants. Sushi bars are equally ubiquitous, and there are more than a few Korean joints (and Karaoke bars) nestled about as well. Doubtless, my own desire to seek out these imported flavours is in part the result of an ongoing fascination with their Otherness. However, just as we have imported Asian cuisine and culture, the process, as Epstein concludes, goes both ways: “A lot of it is back and forth, and it becomes difficult to talk about things being specifically eastern or western anymore.”

Glass Vaults are a Newtown-based duo comprised of Richard Larsen and Rowan Pierce, and have been making quite the buzz around Wellington with their excellent live set over the last few months. With the release of their excellent self-titled debut EP they’re proving that the attention, which is rapidly spreading throughout the interwebs, has been more than justified.

The website for Sonorous Circle, the artist’s collective which released Glass Vaults, describes the EP as “a cloud-dwelling pop delight”. It’s a description so apt that I won’t bother to attempt to top it. Producer Bevan Smith (of Signer fame) will inevitably receive much of the credit for his spacious and airy mix, which makes Glass Vaults perhaps the most impressively recorded local release I’ve heard in some time. Crucially though, Glass Vaults take full advantage, blending together an impeccably arranged array of guitars, synths and delicate falsetto vocals into a set of tracks that cover the spectrum from ambient mood pieces (opener ‘They Will Grow’) to Sigur-Rosian epics (‘Set Sail’, ‘Forget Me Not’). And while much of the album is relatively accessible, the third track, ‘New Space’, also demonstrates a pleasing experimental bent, with its jittery percussion and reverb-heavy vocals reminiscent of the better work of Christchurch’s Mount Pleasant (which these pages praised so effusively last year).

For such a short release—Glass Vaults clocks in at just under 25 minutes—the band manage to weave in an enormous variety of sounds, bending genres at will, and generally coming across as original and underivative. There’s plenty to praise here, but I think I’ll settle on two qualities in particular. The first is Larsen’s high-pitched vocals, which manage to convey plenty of emotion without ever sounding overly affected or shrill. Given the risks inherent in such an unrestrained style of delivery, this is quite the achievement. But perhaps even more impressive is the band’s approach to percussion. Simply put, the drums on Glass Vaults sound fucking immense. Mixing both acoustic and digital percussion, the drums are usually juxtaposed against the ambient backdrops, and the result is a spine that is both powerful and dynamic.

All up, Glass Vaults is a truly remarkable debut, and given that the band sounds at home in its more drawn out moments, it also bodes well for any future transition to the long player format. Oh yeah, and did I mention that it’s free? Just fire up Google…

Before launching into the review proper, let’s spare a moment for some a modicum of praise for Flying Nun’s decision to make Grayson Gilmour its first new signing. Having him on board makes several quite significant statements. Firstly, it reasserts the label’s commitment to an underground, DIY aesthetic, as Gilmour is well known for his commitment to self-release and retention of artistic autonomy, both in his work as a solo artist and as a member of So So Modern. Secondly, it demonstrates a willingness on the part of Flying Nun to avoid being typecast as an exclusive club for jangly guitar bands. Sure, this stereotype has always been somewhat unfair, as the label has always had a diverse roster, but the signing of Gilmour renders any accusations of conservatism invalid from the outset.

Given all this, it’s a shame that No Constellation itself isn’t a little bit more substantial. It begins strongly enough, with opener (and advance single) ‘Loose Change’ sketching out a sonic blueprint for the rest of the album by the fourth bar. After an idly plucked bass note, a stacked procession of piano, glockenspiel and drums pound and arpeggiate their way up the scale before dropping out. The melody is carried on only by Grayson’s right hand on the piano, and then everything else cuts back in. Loud/Soft, Loud/Soft, Loud/Soft.

To anyone who has heard Grayson’s earlier albums it’s an instantly familiar device, and it makes up the entirety of ‘Loose Change’. It’s a brash statement, but one that also reaffirms Grayson’s commitment to an approach which has served him well throughout his solo recording career. And this is the primary complaint with No Constellation, because for all its embellishments (pellucid production, prominent use of glockenspiel and strings) it’s hard not to see Grayson himself stuck in the kind of holding pattern which Flying Nun paradoxically seem to be striving to avoid by choosing to release his album.

For the opening suit of the aforementioned ‘Loose Change’, the more varied (and very glockenspiel-driven) ‘Chromosomes’, and the anthemic ‘I am a Light’ (one of the most potent songs Gilmour has ever written), he gets away with it on the strength of their songwriting and melodies. Unfortunately, the predictable switch to ballad mode for the unremarkable and overlong piano lilt of ‘Fire Downstairs’ releases much of the tension that its predecessors had worked up. The rest of the ride is riddled with further inconsistencies. ‘Circa Skeleton 31’ is an inconsequential instrumental interlude, and ‘Gem Apple John’ is a self-indulgent attempt at introducing variety through diversionary tangents into finger clicking and jazz-inflected piano workouts.

There’s no doubt that Gilmour is a gifted technician, but he’s always been at his best when channeling his off-kilter efforts towards the service of melody and songwriting (his more muscular songs tend to be his best). On No Constellation he doesn’t quite get this balance right, and the result is an uneven record whose opening promises plenty, but delivers without decisiveness. It’s a bit of a shame, but as a (re)start for both (post-So So Modern) Gilmour and Flying Nun there’s still enough here to suggest that the future could be plenty bright.

3/5

Album: No Constellation
Artist: Grayson Gilmour
Label: Flying Nun

In the seven years since the release of his DIY debut, Grayson Gilmour has firmly established himself as a leading light in New Zealand’s underground music scene. He has released four albums, an EP, and has been one quarter of Wellington’s peerless synth-punk powerhouse, So So Modern. Flying Nun has just announced that his fifth LP, No Constellation, will be their first release since their re-acquisition by its original owner, Roger Shepherd.

If that doesn’t deserve some press then we don’t know what does, so Salient sent Kim Wheatley on a mission to track down the famously hermetic musician and procure the low-down on the Flying Nun alliance, a recent mix up in the Dom Post, and on the rumoured So So Modern break-up(!).

I met up with Grayson in the back room at Olive, where he explained the intricacies of a little bit of a press mix-up.

Turns out a recent Dominion Post article on Grayson was published over a week early, messing up the press schedule for his new album, and forcing the crew at Flying Nun into a scramble to bring its promotion forward. To compound matters, The Dom Post misquoted him in their article, creating the impression that Grayson didn’t know who Flying Nun’s owner, Roger Shepherd was.

We laugh about this, and I assure Grayson that I’ll do my darndest not to misquote him, while also promising to use the images Flying Nun provided Salient with in their press kit (The Dom Post used a six-year-old press photo for their piece instead). Once all this has been cleared up, I ask Grayson if he can explain the backstory to signing with Flying Nun.

“It started about two years ago, just in little drips and drabs. My friend suggested I meet up with Roger, and then [flatmate and former VBC head-honcho] Matthew Davis [ended up] taking on a bit of a role within Roger’s working circle of friends. It was kind of an uncanny development, and it makes for funny living arrangements now.”

Intrigued, I ask how far in advance Grayson knew about the iconic label’s potential rebirth, and if he had recorded the album in the knowledge of it being released on Flying Nun. 
“The initial [expression of interest by Flying Nun] was in the loop about a year ago. And then I started recording [No Constellation] itself in about May last year, and I finished it in about July. It’s been a long wait to release this album!”

So why didn’t No Constellation come out sooner then?

“Well, it wasn’t set in stone at the time, but after hearing it a few months later they were like, well, we’re going to come back, and we’re keen to work with the album, let’s see how things go and we’ll try and have it out before the end of [2009].”

Unfortunately, the re-purchase of Flying Nun was held up, and Shepherd was forced to find new backers, a delay which had knock-on effects for the release of Grayson’s fifth LP.

“It was definitely weird [sitting on the album]. My subconscious was thinking ‘Maybe the album’s already been released, and that maybe no one liked it, which is why nobody’s said anything about it yet!’ … It’s definitely been a wait, but at least it wasn’t fatal or anything.”

I asked Grayson about the possibilities for international distribution through Flying Nun, and whether the label will be able to draw on its considerable reputation to get albums like his out beyond New Zealand’s shores.

“Because all of those relationships have been reformed we’re now in the process of finding out who we’re going to go with in the United States and in the UK. At the moment New Zealand is confirmed, Australia is confirmed, Japan is in the works, America is almost confirmed and Flying Nun and I are comparing forces for Europe because I’ve got a lot of friends over there through the connections So So Modern has made, so we’re trying to set up a complete network.”

Exciting times ahead. But Grayson is careful to stress that the new international outlook won’t fully compromise his DIY aesthetic or work ethic.

“One of the reasons why I went with Flying Nun was because they had the same approach or attitude to the music industry [as me]. You share the load, and you all know what’s involved. It isn’t like [adopts a faux-serious voice] ‘Oh, we can’t have the artist understand management!’ The music industry is a weird industry, but it’s not that hard to grasp.”

Case in point is the album’s cover, which Grayson explains is a photocopied scan of an image he found in an old Time magazine in his teens, and which he’d re-discovered on his hard-drive while trying to come up with a new cover. “I guess it has a zine-ish feel. You can even see the trim of the photocopier.” Grayson also assures me that he will continue to provide a DIY lyrics zine (as he has for prior releases) to those who want to purchase something with a little bit more of a personal touch. “It’s just a nice addition… and it’s still applicable for this release.”

As for the sound of No Constellation, Grayson explains that he’s careful to avoid pigeonholing himself. Although the album features a return to his piano-driven sound (which he left behind on his previous release, the largely acoustic Chapters EP) Grayson explains that some of his self-imposed limitations have ensured that there will be some degree of progression from its predecessors. For instance, the recording of No Constellation was the first time Grayson had recorded an album himself. In addition, So So Modern’s intensive touring scheduling ended up impacting on the album’s writing process.

“The way I wrote No Constellation was to start on one instrument and then transmogrify into another. I’d start writing on a guitar and then [when I went to record the part] I’d switch to another instrument… Quite a few of them started as ideas on the guitar because I was on tour and obviously wasn’t able to lug a piano around.”

Finally, I turn to a question which I’m slightly nervous to ask Grayson about: the small matter of the rumoured So So Modern breakup. I needn’t have worried though, as Grayson was happy to clarify matters.

“So So Modern is pretty much on a life sabbatical at this moment. The band has been playing shows for five years now, and we’ve done a hell of a lot. Especially in the last year with the band having to do things as a three piece [while fourth member Aiden Leong completed a medical internship]… I guess all the signs just point to: hey, let’s just have some fun. And this was probably the right time to take some time off. We’re all going to jump into our respective corners of the world in the following months… So we aren’t even going to be in the same country.”

But are they ruling out a reunion in the future?

“It’s hard to say whether something will happen again, or in what sort of capacity, but it’s not off the cards either.”

Grayson Gilmour is playing at Bodega on Saturday 8 May with Seth Frightening and Secret Knives opening. Tickets are $10 on the door or $25 for a ticket and a copy of No Constellation.

Where Salient takes a look at an album that was out of sync with the prevailing musical zeitgeist at the time of its release, but has managed to gain new lustre with the benefit of retrospect.

1987: Big Black – Songs About Fucking (Touch & Go)

“I think I fucked your girlfriend once / Maybe twice, I don’t remember / Then I fucked all your friends’ girlfriends / Now they hate you.”

But you didn’t really fuck her, did you Steve? Not once, not twice, not ever. And the reason you don’t really remember it very well is because IT NEVER HAPPENED.

How can I be so sure?

Because I’ve seen this.

In a weird way though, that desperately dorky-looking bum-bag encapsulates everything that was great about Big Black. Speaking bluntly, Albini and his pals were a bunch of loser no-hope nerds who were jaded about everything that was happening in music during the early-mid ‘80s. Or at least everything that was in any way unethical, pretentious, or which didn’t sound like the aural equivalent of being brutally savaged by a rabies-infected pit bull.

And just like that bum-bag, no aspect of their music was appealing (at least not in the conventional sense) because they were, in short, noise masochists, whose cheap guitars produced the same effect as biting on tinfoil: short stabbing blasts of pain. The subject matter of their songs was equally distasteful. Take ‘Colombian Necktie’, whose title literally references the practice of slashing your victim’s throat and pulling their tongue out through the gash. Its isolated opening chord sounds equally horrific. But for all their sonic and lyrical obscenity, the members of Big Black weren’t even remotely badass in any way, shape or form. They weren’t killers, rapists or thugs, just angry dudes with bad physiques who were compelled to do something a little different from their contemporaries.

And yet, you just can’t help but get a huge kick out of listening to these pathetic dorks rage about how “Sometimes you know you want to fuck somebody up / Sometimes you just want to fuck.” I guess it’s because playing the sadist can sometimes be pretty fun. With Songs About Fucking Big Black showed us why, with each song functioning as a cathartic expression of fantasy, an empowering means of escapism from both their, and our, otherwise banal forms of existence.

Wellington dance duo 47 Diamates are about to embark on their first official New Zealand tour—co-headlining with Tommy Ill—playing shows at Mighty Mighty, Cassette #9 (Auckland) and Goodbye Blue Monday (Christchurch). Salient’s Kim Wheatley met up with the two band members, Kelvin Neal and Gemma Syme, to discuss, among other things, the apocalypse, their next single, and male genitalia.

It’s a miserable Wellington afternoon and I’ve just interrupted Diamantes’ practice by showing up a few minutes early to Gemma’s flat for our interview. The duo is about to embark on their first official tour the next week, and they’re clearly still in practice mode when I arrive. After a little bit of umming and arring over whether we should start the interview straight away or wait until they run through one more track, Kelvin launches into an explanation of the band’s backstory.

It turns out the two members met when Kelvin ended up joining Gemma’s band, Wellington’s indie stalwarts Holiday With Friends, as a drummer. Unfortunately, HWF split soon after, with the boys forming the Beasties-influenced rap group the Crackhouse 5, while the girls started the driving guitar band Diana Rozz. Despite the breakup, Gemma and Kelvin remained friends, and soon ended up flatmates. It was also around this time when Kelvin fell in love with dance music after seeing a Holy Fuck set at an independent music festival in his native Australia.

Before long he’d bought a MacBook and was spending late nights at the keyboard, searching for the ultimate dance ‘drop’ in his headphones. Things seemed to be coming together, but he needed a vocalist to test drive his would-be bangers. As his next-room neighbour, and the front-woman of a band in her own right, Gemma was the obvious person for the job. Gemma describes their first collaboration as being “basically a rip-off of the Crystal Castles song ‘Alice Practice’, which we recorded one evening and then forgot about. It was a bit of a joke really.” By chance, Gemma stumbled across it on her hard drive three months later and gave it another listen. I asked them to describe the song as though it was a physical object.

“A piece of poo, wrapped in diamantes, and run through an Atari,” answered Gemma.

“So we made a MySpace page and put it up there,” explains Kelvin. Amusingly, the song was given the irreverent title: ‘Second Best Snog Ever’. “It was supposed to be called ‘Second Best Song Ever’, but I spelt ‘song’ wrong,” chuckles Gemma.

Following this revelation, I decide to ask whether there’s a similar story behind Diamantes’ nonsensical band name. Gemma grins, and explains that their name comes from a story about her grandmother who used to enter beauty queen contests in Kaikoura. “She always kept coming in second place. But then one talent show she had ‘the vibe’, wowed everyone and came first.” The first prize turned out to be a tiara. “So she wore the tiara, and it’s been going through my family ever since. My mum has it, and eventually I’ll get it. And it’s got 47 Diamantes left in it!”

Once we’ve covered these formative anecdotes we move on to discussing the band’s sound, prompting Kelvin’s usually jocular voice to take on a slightly more serious tone:
“We make dance music that sounds more like indie pop. Specifically, the structure of a Diamantes track resembles an indie pop song more than a club banger, but we do still use synths and sampled drums, so there’s a bit of both going on.”

Gemma elaborates further, emphasising how important it is for the duo to have fun with their music: “The lyrics are inspired by teenage sensibilities. They can be quite melodramatic, whereas indie music can often be too cool.”

Kelvin agrees, explaining: “My whole life I’ve listened to guitar bands. But dance music is something that I think is really fucking fun. Basically, I wanted to be in a really fun band myself, so starting a dance band with my friend just made the most sense.”

Live, Diamantes set-up is about as simple as it gets, with the MacBook providing the sampled drum beats, over which Kelvin uses Diana Rozz’s microkorg to lay down his incredibly catchy synth lines. This leaves Gemma with plenty of scope to hurl her reverb-drenched voice around, dance manically or perhaps high five the audience during the teasing build-up to one of Kelvin’s massive drops. “We’re a visual band,” says Kelvin, “You know how some bands present the whole package…” But before he can finish, Gemma interjects: “With us you don’t just get the penis, you also get the balls, and maybe the perineum as well. Basically, we’re a perineum band.”

Definitely a heady mix then! And one that makes for a refreshing change from the proliferation of serious-minded guitar bands that seem to have been dominating the New Zealand music scene lately. After reflecting on these contrasts for a little longer, we joke about the absurdities of trying to put a label on Diamantes’ sound. I suggest ‘Post-Apocalyptic Electro-Pop’, but Gemma disagrees: “I don’t think we’re destructive. We would be fighting to the end, so the apocalypse can’t have happened yet.” Kelvin chimes in, exclaiming: “Maybe we’re Pre-Apocalyptic!” before Gemma laughingly suggests that they might be “Apopalyptic Party Pop,” a description which we all agree is perhaps the most apt.

My attempt to describe Diamantes as apocalyptic proves to be fruitful in more ways than one, because it also prompts Kelvin to give me a preview of their new single (Kelvin calls it a “slow-banger”): a collaboration with Tommy Ill which they’ve serendipitously decided to title ‘Armageddon Ready (For the End of the World)’, and which is due for release via the band’s MySpace on the same Monday that this issue of Salient hits the streets.

“We’ve been wanting to do a song with Tommy for ages,” explains Kelvin, “and since we’re going on tour with him it made sense for us to record something together.” Naturally, the collaboration will be performed throughout the tour as part of Diamantes’ set. Given the energy and visual spectacle of both involved parties, the prospect of seeing them on stage together is a mouth-watering one.

47 Diamantes are playing at Mighty Mighty with Tommy Ill and Old Grey Wolf this Thursday (29th April). Tickets are $5 on the door.

You can also download 47 Diamantes’ new single, ‘Armageddon Ready (For the End of the World)’, for free from here!

Where Salient takes a look at an album that was out of sync with the prevailing musical zeitgeist at the time of its release, but has managed to gain new lustre with the benefit of retrospect.

2008: Moscow Olympics – Cut the World (Lavender Recordings)

Few genres can be as thankless for bands to enter into as shoegaze. After all, it’s widely accepted that My Bloody Valentine perfected the form with Loveless back in ‘91, effectively rendering the efforts of all future wannabe shoegazers an exercise in futility by default. And that’s where Moscow Olympics come in. With 2008’s Cut the World this unheralded Filipino outfit created perhaps the finest post-Loveless shoegaze album, almost two decades after the genre was supposed to have run out of breath.

Paradoxically, Moscow Olympics’ success is largely down to their ditching of the obligatory Kevin Shields fuzz tone, opting instead for a clean, New Order-inspired, fast strum, ably supported by airy keyboards and melodic bass leads. It makes for a delightful dream-pop template, and in 7 songs spread concisely over 28 minutes there isn’t a single wasted note. Sure, you could call it an anachronism, but Cut the World is so flawless that to ignore it would be the far graver crime.

Oh, Campus. As if we hadn’t spent enough time poring over Facebook albums and reminiscing over ‘the good times’, we’ve compiled some of our favourite shots from the festival, with middling to amazing captions in tow. Many thanks to the contributors, listed below.

Photos below by Rachel Brandon

Deer Park, opting for the ‘Panda Bear – El Guincho’ effect

DZ, keeping the DFA1979 dream alive

Secret Knives

Campus Valedictorian Andrew Wilson, in a rare moment of near-niceness

Melbournians Ouch My Face, trendsetting up a storm

The moment you realise you’re drumming without a bra is never a fun one

Tiger Tones – probably playing Madonna?

The Dodos – where anyone can be a drummer

‘The Other Guy’ in The Dodos

More So So than anything else

Human Pool, I guess?

Something’s missing….

‘Dunedin Fashion’

Big K Fashion?

Pets With Pets Without Pants

BEST SPRINGSTEEN COVER EVER

The noticeboard – your guide to a ride home

Deserving of the spoon.

I think this was before the song about his dog dying. Awwww.

Despite being the most positive band at campus, Parking Lot Experiments failed to impress the Grape Expectations-soaked crowd. Mopey cunts.

Girl Talk caught up with the ‘guitar revolution’

The decision by P.L.E to use two stages simultaneously: really. fucking. confusing.

Metal singers: cunning linguists

Whoever gave her a ride home, email her details to arts.salient@gmail.com

Physdicks

Deprived of the mighty Thunderbolt by reality, Pikachu found battling humans more difficult than expected

Despite best efforts, The Ruby suns failed to entertain the one nu-rave fan left in New Zealand

Bevan Smith didn’t even know he was supposed to be playing

‘Just a circle-jerk, bro’

Simon Buchanan

THEFT

Campus a Low Hum aka Vietnam as depicted in Full Metal Jacket

Where not to go after consuming three bottles of Grape Expectations.

Life drawings

The punishment for people passing out. Trouble is, they can’t really think about what they can’t remember.

The Campus BBall final, with commentary from Dan ‘Dean’ Deacon

The Mexican Wave, overwhelmed by apathy from the seated.

Petra Jane

I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me, but it’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst.

I don’t think this worked out

Felicity Young

“There is a thing called” blah blah

Pig Out showed up at camp to hate on everyone and steal shit. It wasn’t funny.

‘Grace, will you be my prom date?’ : Probably the most awkward campaign of Campus. It was EVERYWHERE.

The ‘Twilight’ Zone

Tubby fucking barrel of lard Deacon ruined my nice new tshirt with sweaty. sweaty gym class. BAD DAN DEACON

Gerard Way made a surprise appearance in the barn

Ruby Suns. Again??

This is a band called The Ruby Suns

Despite the pool being drained, some people just didn’t fucking get it

I think most people are actually watching the inflatable toys

Kim, did you choose this photo?

Awwwwwwww

I wonder.

Ben Butcher

As it turns out, twee is back. Who knew?!

S Club 7′s surprise set was outstanding

Since its debut in 2007, Camp a Low Hum has steadily increased in both size and stature, attaining a reputation as the underground music festival of choice for those tired of the vast crowds, ubiquitous corporate sponsorship, elderly rock star histrionics and overpriced everythings that pervade the likes of Rhythm & Vines and Big Day Out. Returning in its fourth incarnation, and with a new name (Campus a Low Hum), the 2010 edition also marked the first major change in the festival’s format since 2007. Where previous Camps had (aptly) been held at various campsites near Wellington, the venue for Campus was a small agricultural college called The Flock House, located about 20 minutes’ drive from Bulls.

Changing what had undoubtedly been a successful format in previous years certainly posed a risk, but upon arriving at the site it was plain to the eyes of all in attendance that the choice of venue was nothing if not inspired. The Flock House proved to be a collection of assorted buildings in various stages of disrepair and dereliction. The three main stages comprised of an outdoor ‘assembly’ area, a three-walled barn and, most improbably, a drained indoor swimming pool. In addition, the site also housed the traditional ‘Renegade Room’ (available for use by bands not included in the official lineup), a water tower, several campsites, blocks of dorm rooms, a large gym, and a canteen.

In keeping with its name and location, Campus embraced a high school/first year uni aesthetic, with festival organiser Blink assuming the role of ‘principal’. As well as an extensive lineup of underground local and international acts headed by the international troika of Dan Deacon, the Dodos and Jens Lekman, one could find entertainment in a variety of other forms as well. There were life drawing classes, exhibitions of visual art courtesy of several underground artists, a roller disco, an ‘orientation’ party, a basketball tournament, a mixtape swap, a student radio station, class photos, a ‘library’—containing a textbook which ‘students’ were encouraged to deface with as much profanity as possible—a dawn ceremony, an extra-curricular PE class, and of course the obligatory prom on the final night.

As for the bands, the lineup was so vast (over 60 official acts played, some more than once), and consequently so eclectic that selecting highlights would largely have been dependent on personal preference. If dancing was your preferred mode of enjoyment, then Dan Deacon’s inclusive and interactive set to an absolutely packed late night crowd in the swimming pool was probably going to be as good as it got for you. Others may have found Deacon’s tendency to spill over into new-age gimmickry irritating, and might instead have applauded Blink’s brave (and utterly vindicated) decision to have Dunedin’s Die! Die! Die! headline the main stage on the final night. Their set consisted of a number of new songs and they played with such precision and ferocity that they more than made up for the disappointing sets turned in by other New Zealand A-listers So So Modern and The Shocking Pinks, both of whom underwhelmed despite playing to sizeable audiences.

Fans of twee were fed ice-cream by Americans Polka Dot Dot Dot, Jens Lekman made hearts swoon in advance of the Prom, Australians DZ played renegade sets all over the place, crushing all before them with their Justice-inspired thrashing dance rock, and the Ruby Suns reprised their early evening party starter set of 2009 by filling the pool with balloons and reproposing some of their old songs as veritable club bangers.

Bearing all this in mind, how did Campus compare to the three preceding Camps then?

Well, noticeable improvements included a more efficient timetable (I can’t remember any instance where two sets ever overlapped), the presence of actual toilets instead of the porta-loos of previous years, and arguably the best lineup yet. The A-grade international indie stars were impressive in their own right, but they also received able support from 20-odd Australian bands and numerous on-form local acts. Of those, Die! Die! Die!, Signer, John the Baptist, F in Math, the Ruby Suns, Batrider, The Crackhouse 5, Diana Rozz and the Tiger Tones turned in the most memorable performances.

The downsides compared to past Camps were the reduced spontaneity of the Renegade sets (most of which were pre-booked), the discernable presence of a few obnoxious slam dancing wasters (presumably due to the increased ticket numbers, or perhaps because of the Flock House’s proximity to Wanganui?) and the bad weather, which plagued the first day and a half. These proved to be minor quibbles though and, as with previous years the only truly unfortunate thing about Campus was that it had to end.

The Ruby Suns at Campus a Low Hum (photographer: Rachel Brandon)

The Ruby Suns have just released their third full-length album, Fight Softly, which finds the band’s sound evolving from their earlier world-pop sound towards a smoother, R&B influenced approach.

Led by frontman and songwriter Ryan McPhun, The Ruby Suns are about to embark on a short New Zealand tour before they head off to the United States.

Salient’s Kim Wheatley gave McPhun a call to discuss the new album, the band’s touring plans and their upcoming show at Mighty Mighty.

Kim: The Ruby Suns lineup seems to change all the time. You played at Campus a Low Hum with Amee Robinson and Bevan Smith—also of Signer—in the band. Will that be the lineup for your upcoming US and New Zealand tours as well?

Ryan: It’s actually going to be completely different because Bevan and Amee aren’t available to tour, so I’ve got two friends, Graham Panther and Alistair Deverick, to come with me.

Kim: Will the set be similar then?

Ryan: It’s mostly new stuff. There will be more songs off Fight Softly than in our set at Campus where we played a few more old songs.

Kim: Where you had ‘Oh Mojave’ recast as a club banger, almost… How did that happen?

Ryan: It just comes from getting bored from playing things over and over again and wanting to present songs differently. We just wanted to make the old songs a bit more fun.

Kim: And hence the balloons and crazy outfits at Campus as well [see picture]. Did you have any other special surprises in mind for this tour, or was that just a Camp special?

Ryan: [Laughs] Our main focus has been on getting the guys to know all the songs. Once that happens, who knows? But we’re pretty much there.

Kim: When I was listening to Fight Softly, I was reminded of the sound of your live sets when you were starting to rework the older material from Sea Lion in early 2009. Was there a conscious effort to take your live approach into the studio?

Ryan: It was probably almost the other way around. Changing the live songs around was more of a reflection of what I was interested in with the direction I was heading. And when I came to create new stuff that was going to be on the album it was just the same kind of thing, I didn’t want to do anything that I’d done before.

Kim: So it was all really one uniform progression?

Ryan: Yeah, and if anything the way songs sounded live was just an indication of the direction the band was already heading.

Kim: You covered ‘Running Up That Hill’ in early 2009, right? That seemed like another pointer to your new direction.

Ryan: Oh yeah, that’s true, we did.

Kim: Can we expect any covers on this tour, or will it all be Ruby Suns material?

Ryan: The only song that we’ve thought of covering is that latest Alicia Keys single, ‘Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart’.

Kim: I don’t think I’ve heard it.

Ryan: Man, it’s really really good. I don’t know if that’s actually going to happen though.

Kim: So we won’t hear it at Mighty Mighty then?

Ryan: Probably not. Well, it depends. But probably not…

Kim: I remember reading somewhere that Mingus (in the song ‘Mingus and Pike’) is a dog. In that case, who or what is ‘Pike’?

Ryan: Pike is a street in Seattle.

Kim: So what’s the story behind that song then?

Ryan: That song is about some of our experiences at this house that we lived at. We were babysitters for this dog because the guys who lived at the house were on tour so we were looking after the dog.

Kim: On the whole was it a good time in Seattle then?

Ryan: We had been touring quite a bit before then so I kind of got this post-tour depression where I felt really lethargic. I spent a lot of time doing nothing, and just feeling kind of crappy.

Kim: Maybe you should play some basketball?

Ryan: [Laughs] Yeah, that could help.

Kim: Your US tour is going to be with Toro Y Moi. How did you hook that up—through the label, or is he an old friend?

Ryan: I got in touch with him just in time because he’s starting to blow up big time. I think the first thing of his that I heard was a Michael Jackson cover that he did.

Kim: Really? Which song?

Ryan: ‘Human Nature’, which is one of my favourite MJ songs, and I really liked the cover. And then I heard some of [Toro Y Moi’s] other stuff, which I thought was cool too, so I just asked him if he wanted to do a tour with us and he said sure.

Kim: I can see that being quite a good love pairing…

Ryan: It’s kind of perfect because he’s a one-person band, and it’s easier to play after a one-person band sound-wise.

Kim: And I guess it makes it easier to tour as well, not having to have loads of gear and people?

Ryan: Yeah he’s just going to be travelling with us and there’s less gear too so it works out nicely.

Kim: This interview is going to hit our website in the middle of Orientation. I imagine there will be some unsuspecting first years stumbling into Mighty Mighty for the first time on Friday. In one or two sentences can you give me a description of what they can expect from your show there?

Ryan: Umm, gosh! It would be some sort of… [long pause] ‘Popical’ dance party.

Kim: [Mishearing Ryan] A tropical dance party? That sounds a little bit like the inside of Mighty Mighty, with all those palms and such.

Ryan: No, no. ‘Popical’! I made up that genre.

Kim: So, the Ruby Suns are the forerunners of the ‘Popical’ genre.

Ryan: Yup.

Kim: Ok, now back to Fight Softly, I take it the title is intentionally ambiguous?

Ryan: Yeah it is. I guess I had some sort of weird idea of what fighting softly might mean, but really it was just made up as a joke. It could mean a lot of things, and it’s fun to think of the options.

Kim: Was it easier to record this album? Presumably for Sea Lion you would have had a lot of analogue tracks and instruments, whereas Fight Softly was mostly digital.

Ryan: Well, it was recorded in the exact same way, with the same sort of process. For me it’s a lot easier just to make a whole lot of overdubs of instruments I can physically play. But this time I wasn’t interested in the end result of that kind of approach. There are really so many possibilities with computer recording and digital effects so I wanted to explore that more.

[PAUSE]

Ryan: Oh shit, one of my chickens got out! [to the chicken] How did you get out. Oi!

Ryan: Sorry about that.

Kim: Why do you have chickens Ryan?

Ryan: Because I like to eat eggs.

The Ruby Suns are playing at Mighty Mighty on Friday the 26^th of February with Signer and DJ Shorty K. Door sales are $10.

Welcome precocious first year! Are you feeling tired of the interchangeable and unremarkable mainstream bands that the circle-jerk New Zealand music industry is trying force-feed you, yet feeling unsure as to what your alternatives are? Well guess what kid, you’re in luck, because Kim and James have put together a list of ten underground Wellington bands to watch out for in 2010.

KIM

Diana Rozz

These three girls are veterans of the Wellington underground scene, and with Diana Rozz they’ve joined forces to form one of the tightest live bands going. Expect riffs, riffs and more riffs (with a sprinkling of organ on top). They once had a raffle at one of their shows and the prize was 5kg of frozen meat. So I guess they’re probably the band to see if you want some handouts to help you through the winter.

Tommy Ill

Just as likely to sample The Lion King Soundtrack as ‘The Message’, Tommy Ill’s live show is as unpredictable as his choruses are memorable. His debut album is going to drop later this year and the little I’ve heard of it sounds fucking awesome. So go check him out before he signs with Def Jam and splits for Brooklyn in a second-hand concord.

The Crackhouse 5

These three drunken reprobates probably played more shows than anyone else in Wellington last year thanks to their extended curatorship of Crack Wednesday at Mighty Mighty. Their new set of Red Country powered post-Beasties raps was perhaps the highlight of the Renegade Room at Campus a Low Hum, and they’ve got a new EP in the works as well.

47 Diamantes

Q: What do you get when you mix 1/3rd of Diana Rozz with 1/3rd of The Crackhouse 5?
A: An erotic d-floor duo that deals strictly in bangers. Be warned though first years, people sweat ecstasy in Wellington, so lap that shit up and dance.

John the Baptist

I never thought I’d find myself partaking in a hoedown in a barn, but strange things can happen at Campus a Low Hum. Blame John the Baptist, because their machine-gun banjo brand of hipster country was just too damn catchy to resist. They also covered ‘Down by the River’ once, and it was awesome.

JAMES

Brains

Matt and Hugh picked up their instruments of choice a little too late on in life to be ‘Da Next Hendrix’, so instead they and Will listened to lots of Die! Die! Die! and played as fast and as loud as they could. That was in Dunedin. Now they’re moving up here to scorch Wellington up with their super energetic brand of noisy punk. CHECK IT.

Rifles

A singer with a voice of gold and the stage presence of a pre-collapse Morrissey. A drummer who can recite The Lion King verbatim. A band who can incite riots with their charismatic punk feelings, heavy on petting and on intense rhythms.

Gaywire

Homo-erotic speed metal. Once they played at San Fran and the bar ran out of beer. AWESOME.

Secret Knives

Ex-Over The Atlantic member takes reverby guitar cues from his old band and forms them into a completely different machine—80s cheese is thrown out the window in favour of dark, intense guitar lines, wispy vocals, and one of the best EP releases from a Wellington band in the last few years. They don’t play often, but when they do (such as their upcoming show opening for NZ luminaries The Chills), it’s pretty much unmissable.

Signer

Part-time Ruby Suns member Bevan Smith’s brand of chillwave disco has won him a legion of fans in recent months, dealing in totally gleeful bangers that are guaranteed to turn that frown upside down. Like handclaps, ear-to-ear grins and wide-eyed joydancing? Then Signer is your bag, baby.

I first heard Tommy Ill—aka Tom Young—at a Wellington mini-festival called Party for the People in 2006. With the help of hype-man and ally Buck Beauchamp, now a member of local alt/rap group The Crackhouse 5, Tommy Ill pretty much destroyed my preconceptions of what New Zealand hip hop was supposed to be.

This dude was tall, affable, awkward, dressed in skinny jeans and white. He was also playing to a crowd of indie kids during the height of the nu-rave fad—when, you know, wearing ironic fluoro was cool—and was able to win them over with his easily relatable blend of tongue-in-cheek humour, hook-laden choruses and slice-of-life party storytelling. “They call me op-shop Kanye” is a typical line from his first single, ‘Bill Cosby’.

Fast-forward four years and I’m standing on the balcony of Buck’s flat with Tom, sipping at our 100-proof whiskeys (recently purchased at ratio of $1 per standard drink thanks to a successful expedition to a Petone liquor store having a liquidation sale) while his friends in The Crackhouse 5 lay down a new track inside.

When I asked him to fill me in on his pre-2006 back-story Tom was happy to oblige. He candidly recounts how he had gotten hooked on the Beastie Boys at the age of 12 after hearing them when a classmate commandeered a high-school stereo. Soon Tom was writing his own raps, and by his late teens he was playing impromptu shows at the Wainouimata Rugby League Club. This part of his career didn’t last long though.

“[In the end] I was put off doing shows by the amount of violence at the club. There were rap battles and they usually ended with people going: my gang is better than your gang, and then getting stabbed.”

Clearly it was time for a change, so Tom relocated to central Wellington and formed a band called the Special Olympians. The band would eventually evolve into local indie stalwarts Holiday With Friends. Although Tom’s tenure with the Olympians was brief, his friendship with HWF eventually led to a run of opening slots that would introduce
him to the Wellington indie crowd.

Building on these early foundations, Tom has since been able to establish himself as a viable fixture in New Zealand’s independent music landscape, releasing three well-received EPs in the process: Toast & Tea Kettles, Matchsticks and last year’s excellent Come Home Mr Ill.

We spent the rest of our conversation discussing Come Home Mr Ill, and in particular, its closing track ‘Best Damn Evening’, in which Tom describes an entertaining series of events from what the song’s chorus refers to as “The party of the year / The event of the season”.

Although the lyrics weren’t based on any one night in particular, Tom has retrospectively ascribed ‘Best Damn Evening’ status to a recent house party he played at hosted by Baly Gaudin. Gaudin occasionally moonlights as Tom’s hype man, and was responsible for designing the cover art for Come Home Mr Ill.

Gaudin’s house party featured an improbable set from none other than Baltimore’s indie-dance guru Dan Deacon. Serendipitously, Brian Hainsworth—of Crackhouse 5 fame—was on hand to document the event, and Tom is hopeful that “as long as Brian wakes up on time” the footage can be used to make a music video for ‘Best Damn Evening’.

Many of the lyrics on Come Home Mr Ill refer directly to the nocturnal activities of Tom and his self-described “rabble of friends”. I was particularly amused to learn that the song ‘Lunch Meat’ was inspired in part by a cocktail—the ominously titled ‘Luncheon Fellatio’—invented by another of Tom’s pals.

Following this revelation, our conversation turns to a recent review of Come Home Mr Ill in the Dom Post, in which parts of Tom’s EP were compared to Kid Rock.

In an attempt to avoid future attempts on the part of music reviewers to pigeonhole his music, Tom informed me that he has been listening to “a lot of ‘80s electro-based soul music”. He lets slip that he is also planning on sampling some for his debut full-length album, which he hopes to release later this year. The plan is to write six or seven new songs to go alongside reworked versions of tracks from Matchsticks and Come Home Mr Ill. Tom’s intention is that the album will function as an effective introductory document to his aesthetic, and is hopeful that it will be able reach a wider audience than his EPs. So will his status as an outsider artist change in 2010 then? Who knows? But for now you can catch him (and not pay to get in) at Mount Street bar next Tuesday night.

Playing for FREE at Orientation
Mount Street Bar,
5pm Tuesday 2nd March
(with Old Grey Wolf)

Their set at the Powerstation in Auckland also owed much of its success to this new/old meld. Various assorted samplers, EQs and effects pedals surrounded the three members of the band. These high-tech gizmos were used to create twinkling digital soundscapes, transforming the large venue into a strange sonic land, where almost anything seemed possible. Songs flowed into each other, with watery effects and synthesized arpeggios producing a consistent, and mesmerizing, canvass. The opener, ‘In Flowers’ was a case in point. The sound of its first samples silenced the riotous applause that marked the start of the bands set, which soon burst into life following the arrival of Geologist’s beating drum machine and a rousing first up vocal performance from Avey Tare. And before the last blissful notes could completely fade away, a new set of samples and beats had morphed into their place, signifying the beginning of the next song.

The setlist consisted primarily of the highlights from the band’s annus mirabilis (‘Daily Routine’, ‘Summertime Clothes’, ‘Guys Eyes’ and the superlative new single ‘What Would I Want? Sky’ all featured), interspersed with the occasional old favourite (a subdued take on ‘Who Could Win a Rabbit’, a manic ‘Slippi’ from Here Comes the Indian, and a mass singalong to Panda Bear’s ‘Comfy in Nautica’). Stationed between the more static pair of Geologist and Panda Bear, Avey Tare (who was spared of the responsibility of manning the electronics tables, and instead switched between vocals, guitar, synth and live percussion) was the focal point during most of Animal Collective’s set, until Panda Bear totally stole the show during an extended take of ‘Fireworks’. He went absolutely ballistic on a set of toms, whipping the crowd into a frenzied spell of dancing which continued throughout ‘Slippi’, before peaking during the inclusive tribalisms of ‘Brothersport’ in a scene reminiscent of the Ruby Suns’ already legendary set at Camp A Low Hum earlier this year. This proved to be the end of Animal Collective’s setlist proper, but the band returned for a subdued encore rendition of ‘Bleed’ (from the new Fall Be Kind EP) before finally delivering the moment that all but the most blinkered hardcore fan had been waiting for: ‘My Girls’. Leading the crowd through a truly euphoric singalong, Lennox’s voice (ably supported by Avey on backing vocals) repeated those indelible lines (“There isn’t much that I feel I need / A solid soul and the blood I bleed…”) over and over again, against a backdrop of shimmering electronics and danceable bass beats. The delights of their limitless experimentalism, the beauty of those soaring tenor voices. Together, they marked the night as magical.

#1 Animal Collective
Merriweather Post Pavillion

Where Kid A served as the perfect opener to the decade, capturing the paranoia and technological uncertainty rife during the early 00s as well as smashing down the barriers of acceptance for experimentation in popular music, Merriweather Post Pavillion is the ideal closer to 10 years that have seen this influence unfold, expand and flourish. A veritable cornucopia of found sounds, dreamy, synthetic soundscapes and giddy vocals, Merriweather Post Pavillion is the perfected product of a group who have spent the decade pushing boundaries of noise, sound and song, and sees them strike the ideal balance between palatability and discovery. It’s also just a really brilliant album, able to give you all the things great music should, be it a broad, uncontrollable smile, a soundtrack for a beautiful summer’s day, a brief respite from cold, harsh reality, a journey back to childhood, or just something awesome to dance to. Above all, Merriweather Post Pavillion shows that regardless of whatever else has happened in the world, in music at least the Oughties have been a decade of expanded horizons, increased acceptance and an embracement of difference.
—Ryan.

#2 Raekwon
Only Built 4 Cuban Linx Pt. II

Raekwon first announced plans to release a follow-up to his 1995 solo debut, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, in 2005. In effect, therefore, anticipation for this album has had four years to escalate. By all means, it should have resulted in a Chinese Democracy scenario—and yet, somehow, Raekwon managed not only to meet, but also to exceed expectations that were already sky-high. Guided by an impressive arrangement of producers, Pt. II marks a fine return to the form of The Chef’s formative Wu-Tang salad days. Consider the tense, ‘Idioteque’-referencing beat of ‘Penitentiary’; the atmospheric, drawling ‘Black Mozart’; the insistent, uneasy throb of ‘House of Flying Daggers’, all of which could comfortably go toe to toe with any highlight from the original Only Built 4 Cuban Linx. Even if there have been several more notable hip-hop releases this year, Pt. II is, by some distance, the best.
—Elle.

#3 The Antlers
Hospice

The Antler’s debut, Hospice, is a concept album told from the perspective of a hospital orderly that focuses on his relationship with a young girl suffering from terminal bone cancer. Peter Silberman’s (The Antler’s singer and principal songwriter) musical representations of the vicarious suffering and alienation felt by the album’s protagonist are both chilling and captivating in their honesty. But for all its great emotional heft, Hospice is also a work of serene beauty. In combination, Silberman’s quivering vibrato and delicate arrangements render what might have been an unbearably painful listening experience into a touching work of transcendental catharsis.
—Kim.

#4 Grizzly Bear
Veckatimest

Veckatamist stomps out its own genre: the so-called ‘Baroque pop’. Grizzly Bear’s follow-up album builds on the groundwork laid by Yellow House nicely, with more technical songwriting and experimentation than their previous effort allowed. Pedants debate over which track reigns supreme: ‘Two Weeks’, ‘Ready, Able’, or ‘While You Wait for the Others’—all contenders for song of the year. Once again, Grizzly Bear prove that they are the superlative pop practitioners of their class. They are choir boys extraordinaire, with nary a step awry as their voices sway sadly towards graduation; I wanna matriculate where they’re matriculating.
—Maggie.

#5 St. Vincent
Actor

Actor is an aptly named album: singer Annie Clark sets about creating a carefully staged production of pretty voice as narrator against a frenetic backdrop. Clark’s vocals remain calm, even when the arrangements are anxious, even hostile. The listener wants to warn our charming protagonist of what lurks behind her, but her occasionally wavering voice indicates that perhaps she knows: one suspects this is what Feist would sound like if she fell down the rabbit hole. ‘The Strangers’ remains the standout track with prettily whispered lyrics “paint the black hole blacker”, representative of St Vincent’s clash of light and dark; pop and melodramatic avant-garde float separate like oil and water.
—Maggie.

#6 Japandroids
Post-Nothing

Where no small part of 2009’s musical output seemed predisposed to a trashy garbage sheen (not necessarily a bad thing), Japandroids simply turned up the volume. Pummelling out eight tracks of pure garage anthem nostalgia, they created an album of singles that still stands out as one of the catchiest records of the year. Between near-emo wordless hooks in ‘Young Hearts Spark Fire’, the carefree playfulness in ‘Wet Hair’s’ refrain (something about French-kissing French girls) and their predisposition to having the volume knobs at 14, Post-Nothing comes off as a wholly impressive, aggressive, and unforgettable listen. Somehow Harder // Faster // Catchier // Better than any other rock album this year.
—James.

#7 Yeah Yeah Yeahs
It’s Blitz!

With It’s Blitz!, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs took a turn for the accessible, the melodic; the pop-y. It’s a change in direction that often sets a band’s career on the downward spiral (N.B.: ‘selling out’), but I don’t feel that this is the case with the YYYs’ third. Granted, it contrasts with the blistering Fever to Tell, but it also stands alone as an example of the YYYs’ distinctive sound: the game is the same, but the rules have changed. Instrumentalists Nick Zinner and Brian Chase experiment with setting concepts of distance and nostalgia to music on vintage Arps, which Karen O grounds with her inherent white-hot heat and larger-than-life persona. It’s Blitz! is fun, infectious, emotional, and, yes, it’s a stellar YYYs record. Sure, there’s no ‘Maps’ equivalent, but that’s a sign of a band that’s looking forward, rather than back. P.S. Also best album artwork of ’09 IMO.
—Elle.

#8 HEALTH
Get Color

While HEALTH don’t strike 9/9 on their sophomore effort Get Color, there are so many incredible moments enclosed within its industrial noise shell that it’s pretty indispensable in terms of this list. The LA noise band have always been capable of incorporating badass dance beats into their work, but never more so than on lead single ‘Die Slow’. It’s all pulverising riffs and eerily robotic vocal lines, and comes bursting into life on its half-speed-banger chorus. Despite the dance influences all over ‘Die Slow’ and standout ‘We Are Water’, Get Color still holds its own as an incredible noise-rock record. While Nine Inch Nails may no longer officially exist, there’s no need to worry—HEALTH have that market cornered on Get Color, and don’t look to ease up on their trade anytime soon.
—James.

#9 Handsome Furs
Face Control

If you’re looking for an album that shows just how much a social environment and life experience can affect a band’s sound, look no further than Face Control. Inspired by their tour of Eastern Europe, Face Control reflects the area’s harsh and unforgiving landscape and culture. Combining sharp, angular guitars with heavy, processed beats, the Handsome Furs have created an album that exudes swagger and attitude while simultaneously avoids pretension. With songs like ‘Legal Tender’, ‘Evangeline’ and ‘I’m Confused’, Face Control meshes a minimalist punk aesthetic with strained, earnest vocals and storytelling surety in a way that feels both vibrant and immediate.
—Ryan.

#10 Underwater Peoples
Summertime Showcase 2009

2009 has seen a seemingly endless succession of unknowns emerge from the amorphous realm of blogs, rapidshare sites and torrent trackers, all with the same goal in mind: to produce the perfect soundtrack to a summer of sun, nostalgia and poolside parties. The Underwater People’s label has been responsible for many of the finer exponents of this breezy aesthetic blend, and in the form of their Summertime Showcase 2009 they’ve also produced a perfect introductory document. So hurry up antipodean sun. We need your solar rays so that we can bask, beachside, with beer in hand, blasting Real Estate’s ‘Backyard’ on our
boomboxes. Now that’s what I call bliss.
—Kim

#1 Radiohead
Kid A

Kid A. Even the name suggests enigma. To hear the gentle modulations and eerily disembodied vocals of the first few bars of ‘Everything in its Right Place’ in y2k was to hear the sound of music being reshaped, forever. Thom Yorke’s processed voice on the title track, the Eno-esque ambience of ‘Treefingers’, the whirring no-dance drum machines of ‘Idioteque’ and the Dadaist randomness of the lyrics (Yorke famously pulled lines out of a hat in an attempt to overcome writer’s block) were, in combination, a potent deathblow to the rhetoric of instrument-based determinism.
After Kid A, anything was fair game for anybody, and the notion of a major band producing its “difficult” or “experimental” album had become banal, if not redundant. In a decade where music has been defined by its variety and democracy, it is entirely apt that Kid A be remembered as a kind of a singularity, a jump-off point for the advances which were soon to follow in its wake. That Kid A hit #1 on the billboard album charts as a result of buzz generated by a series of viral “blip” advertisements and an advance Napster leak was not only delightfully serendipitous, but also further evidence that Radiohead were, as always, ahead of the game. They had, in one fell swoop, erased the past, defined the terms of the present, and forecasted the future. Simply put, Kid A is the best album of the last ten years because when it came out it sounded like nothing else, but by the decade’s end you could practically hear its influence in everything that had been made since.
—Kim.

#2 Arcade Fire
Funeral

I can think of at least ten albums that I’d rather listen to right now than Arcade Fire’s Funeral—but that’s a good thing. It means it’s become an integral part of my collection, in the vein of Abbey Road, Chutes Too Narrow and Kid A. Sure, I may stray in favour of newer and more exciting releases, but I’ll always return to my old faithfuls—and when I do, I’m once again struck by their brilliance, which never grows old. Funeral is one of those albums where you pick up something new with each listen. It’s sincere, thoughtful and emotional, as well as astonishingly well-formed for a debut—and despite its theatrical element, it has none of the pretentiousness that plagues certain other indie bands. And what’s more, it acts as a reminder of music’s cathartic power, in an era when unfortunately, it’s all too easy to see it as a commodity.
—Elle.

#3 Panda Bear
Person Pitch

Panda Bear just seems to nail everything on his 3rd album, Person Pitch. Even though it seems kinda reductive to reference Brian Wilson when talking about Person Pitch, it’s somewhat unavoidable—while reggae/dancehall and minimalist techno play important parts in the album’s construction, it’s the exultant warmth and beauty of Lennox’s voice over his flawlessly looped pop dreamscape that sees Person Pitch rise head and shoulders above the rest of the pack. Children playing among handclaps, chants and a fucking Cat Stevens sample may not seem credible ostensibly, but once you finish the epic ‘Bros’, it manages to fit wonderfully. An incredible album that not only subverted the expectation of music fans entirely, but became a Wilsonic tome that is yet to be equalled. As close to pop perfection as you’ll get in this decade.
—James.

#4 Kanye West
The College Dropout

Of course there’s going to be something by Kanye in the top ten albums of the decade. The question was which: Late Registration is a gem, and Graduation ain’t half bad either (there was no 808s as far as I’m concerned). It was, however, The College Dropout that won the enviable number four spot. This album marks Kanye’s leap from first-class producer to respected rapper/pop-star, a role he’s adopted with aplomb. It’s The College Dropout’s frankness (the forthright discussion of religion in ‘Jesus Walks’) and humour (the frenetic pace and tongue-in-cheek comedy of ‘The New Workout Plan’) that make it an instant classic. Hell, on ‘Through The Wire’, the dude is rapping with his jaw wired shut. I’ll just come out and say it: I love Kanye, and if you dispute this placing, I’ll fight you. Okay then? Okay then.
—Elle.

#5 LCD Soundsystem
Sound of Silver

Imagine for a moment that you’re in a room with a friend or two, just relaxing, having a conversation. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to you, people are quietly slipping in through the doors and windows, and before you know it, there’s a full-blown party going on with you at the centre. This is what Murphy’s beautifully subtle dance/punk hybrid feels like: he builds his songs up with such a quiet, workmanlike intensity that they often catch you by surprise. The culmination of his talents is Sound of Silver: a painstakingly crafted work that roots you to the spot as you discover its layers of complexity while simultaneously commanding you to forget your troubles for a moment, get up, and just dance. 
—Ryan.

#6 Grizzly Bear
Yellow House

With atmospheric flourishes used to intensify core pop sensibilities, Grizzly Bear’s second album marked a turn away from the oughtie’s instrument du jour: synth. Yellow House is like a collection of sinister little lullabies, but just as we drift off to sleep on Droste’s droll voice, eerie knocking sounds (‘Marla’) or crashing cymbals (‘Lullabye’) jolt us back to reality. ‘Knife’ and ‘On a Neck On a Spit’ are standout tracks; their hum-ability testament to Grizzly Bear’s impeccable melodic songwriting, while their inability to be done justice in the shower point to the vital layers of instrumentation stacked into every song. Yellow House heralded a welcome return to vocal harmonies: Fleet Foxes, Department of Eagles and Bon Iver soon followed suit, but none so delicately, none so darkly, none so well.
—Maggie.

#7 The Strokes
Is This It

Is This It is important for a couple of reasons: firstly, it served as a broker between the mainstream and the growing underground garage rock revival, and secondly, in a time when bands were beginning to discard the traditional ideas of what a rock band should sound like, it showed what great music you could still make with a couple of guitars, bass, drums and vocals. Lead singer Julian Casablancas has called it a “time capsule” and that’s exactly what it is. In fact, Is This It sums up the prevalent garage rock sound of the early 00s so well you wonder why the other bands even bothered.
—Ryan.

#8 Death From Above 1979
You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine

 “FUCK DFA RECORDS FUCK JAMES MURPHY WE DECLARE JIHAD ON THEM HOLY WAR ENDING IN THIER DEATH AND DISMEMBERMENT… james murphy is a selfish piece of fuck that will burn in the flames of a specially dedicated rock and roll jihad. if i had the resources i would fly a plane into his skull.”
This is what Sebastian Grainger and Jesse F. Keeler wrote after Murphy’s label forced the then-1979less Death From Above into changing their name. Their singular album, You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine, doesn’t so much speak the same sentiment as it does scream it. The whole album is the decade’s loudest “fuck you”, sizzling by in a maelstrom of kiss-off shallow lyrics, curb-stomping riff brutality, and the ability to deliver more beats than Ike Turner. They broke up soon afterwards, but thanks to this album, DFA1979’s legacy remains brutally untouchable.
—James.

#9 Interpol
Turn on the Bright Lights

One of the least discussed musical trends of the last ten years has been the quiet death of the guitar solo. It is entirely fitting, therefore, that the best guitar album of the last decade doesn’t feature a single moment of 6-string showboating. The clever dynamics and telepahtic interplay of Paul Banks and Daniel Kesseler on Turn on the Bright Lights captivate in a different, and altogether more genuine fashion than the often heavy-handed attempts of axe heroes of yore. But despite the peerless excellence of Interpol’s musicianship, the central irony of Bright Lights is that it’s the consistently unshowy vocals of Paul Banks which really steal the show. The essence of his performances is an at times unsettling tendency towards naked emotional honesty. And like Ian Curtis before him, the dryness of Banks’ baritone voice ensures that he can deliver great lines (“She puts the weights into my little heart / And she gets in my room and she takes it apart”) without ever running the risk of sounding overwraught.
—Kim.

#10 Danger Mouse
The Grey Album

To those who would pose the question of whether the mashup is a valid form of art in and of itself, I would respond with a three-word answer: The Grey Album. Yes, it represents a landmark moment in music history, and yes, it took some serious confidence to mix and mangle the work of the most successful band and the most successful MC of all time, but none of that really matters. What matters is that The Grey Album succeeds unequivocally as an album. Furthermore, Danger Mouse’s arrangements not only cast Jay-Z’s songs in a new light, but they also extend them into previously untraversed realms of sonic possibility.
—Kim.

It’s official, we’ve just entered 2009’s home straight. In celebration of the end of another year (and another decade), Salient’s music writers will be getting together to drink some drinks, make some lists and, well, reminisce. The fruits of that labour shall be revealed in the final issue of the year, but as a little tease for the retrospectives that are to come here is my personal list of the ten best songs of 2009:

1) Animal Collective – My Girls

‘My Girls’ is at once exuberant and ambiguous; its potent melange of fey harmonies, cutting-edge electronics and found-sound samples give the listener plenty to explore. In fact, there’s almost so much going on that it almost becomes difficult to pinpoint exactly which constituent element makes ‘My Girls’ so damn brilliant. If pressed, I think I’d say that it’s the childish “whooo!s” which provide the final coating of fairy dust that convince you of the veracity of Animal Collective’s magic. ‘My Girls’ is a sort of aural equivalent of Alice’s Wonderland; a seemingly infinite adventure, full of fantastical delights and emotions. Want another ride down the rabbit hole? Just press repeat.

2) The Antlers – Wake

A slowly unfolding epic, ‘Wake’ is the emotional climax of the most gorgeous album of the year. Its first half is a delicate ballad that’s all spectral “Oohs” and ticking clocks. Despite their wistful quiet, these first four minutes slip by without ever feeling innocuous. After a brief piano segue, ‘Wake’s’ second half progresses inexorably towards an immense crescendo, and is topped off by one of Peter Silberman’s most heartfelt lyrics: “Don’t ever / Let Anyone / Tell You / You Deserve That.”

3) Grizzly Bear – Two Weeks

Grizzly Bear’s note-perfect performance of ‘Two Weeks’ on Letterman almost single-handedly kick-started the immense hype machine which preceded the release of Veckatimest, their delightful sophomore album. Its success should come as no surprise. The baroque qualities of its staccato piano line and of Ed Droeste’s weightless crooning hark back to pop music’s formative years. Paradoxically, Grizzly Bear’s rhythm section serves up a relatively modern sounding combination of off-kilter drums and muscular bass lines. Put it all together and you can hear why ‘Two Weeks’ is the sound of timelessness personified.

4) Dirty Projectors – Stillness is the Move

Indie artists have threatened to dabble with R&B for quite some time now, but not until 2009 did the two genres collide with full force. In the digital age, music has become such a malleable medium that extragenre experiments have long ceased to surprise. What might come as a bit of a shock is the identity of 2009’s most successful proponents of this new hybrid form. The Dirty Projectors might sound like your stereotypical art-rock band, but thanks to some impressive technical chops, as well as a talented pair of female vocalists, they manage to conjure a wildly successful combination of polyrhythms and pop posturing on ‘Stillness is the Move’. I’ve never heard anything quite like it, and I doubt anyone else has either.

5) Mount Pleasant – In Lust

Jonathan Phillips has been New Zealand’s most prolific and most potent songwriter of 2009, but only fifty people have noticed. Released as part of an odds and sods EP called I Forgot, ‘In Lust’, is arguably Phillips’ finest recorded moment to date. With its paired down arrangement, horror movie glockenspiel and string interjections, and a vocal performance so emotive that Phillips’ voice breaks, rendering him almost entirely incomprehensible, ‘In Lust’ is also the most unsettling song of 2009. And then there’s its devastating final lyric: “In lust we fall apart / In lust we fall apart.”

6) Animal Collective – Summertime Clothes

If ‘In Lust’ is 2009’s most anguished moment, then ‘Summertime Clothes’ might be its diametrical opposite. Sampled sounds of running water and children playing establish a summery, nostalgic aesthetic that Animal Collective’s instrumentation promptly seizes upon, and never relinquishes. Bright synth melodies, ebullient harmonies and an insistent percussive framework all play their part, but it’s Avey Tare’s wonderfully inclusive chorus (“And I want to walk around with you”) that really makes this song a winner.

7) Washed Out – Feel it All Around

If there was ever a perfect soundtrack for the sunburn+hangover combo then ‘Feel it All Around’ is it. The finest exponent of 2009’s sound du jour—the wasted summertime jam—‘Feel it All Around’ might even have the staying power to outlast the fad. The secret to its success lies not in Washed Out’s excessive use of reverb, nor in the breezy synths, but in the repetitive, almost dub-inflected bassline. It’s a rubbery piece of head-nod inducing brilliance that will probably get sampled to the point of nauseous ubiquity once crate-digging DJs in search of the next big thing stumble across it. But for now, enjoy this piece of blissed-out brilliance while you can. It’s almost summer after all…

8) Raekwon – House of Flying Daggers

(ft. Inspectah Deck, Ghostface Killah, Method Man and RZA)
2009 has not been a vintage year for hip-hop. Jay-Z bombed and none of the up-and-comers (Drake, Wale, etc) managed to shake the furniture up enough to gain serious attention. And so it was left to a returning veteran to release the most essential hip-hop album of the year. Thankfully, Raekwon did not let us down. In fact, he brought his A game, and (almost as importantly) so did the rest of his guesting Wu brethren. Their finest moment on Only Built for Cuban Linx Pt. II is the posse cut, ‘House of Flying Daggers.’ Each verse is so brutal that I still can’t decide which is the best. Sure, it’s nothing new, but when the MCs are this talented, and the beat bangs this hard, who cares?

9) Phoenix – Lisztomania

‘Lisztomania’s’ best quality is the sense of urgency that its so-simple-it’s-almost-stupid arrangement manages to create. From the outset (an insistent two-note guitar riff) Phoenix sound like they’re in a rush, and by the time the second guitar, the keys and the punchy drums have all piled into the mix they’ve built up such a strong head of steam that it seems inconceivable that they’ll ever be able to slow down. In fact, they do manage to take a foot off the accelerator for a brief moment before launching into its Cadillac-class chorus: a high-speed disco-fist pumper, which finds Thomas Mars’ baguette-bearer lover-boy vocals at their blue-eyed best.

10) Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Zero

With ‘Zero’ the YYYs finally escape the shadow of ‘Maps’, and they do it in fine style too. Karen O has always been confident, but ‘Zero’ finds her positively swaggering. The band are on fire as well, but still manage to have the patience to hold something back until around halfway through, when they drop in synth line so huge that it could be the bastard love child of ‘Time to Pretend’, ‘Don’t You Want Me Baby’ and ‘Policy of Truth’. Post-Punk, New-Wave and Garage Rock; call it whatever you like, but I prefer to call ‘Zero’ anthemic.

So if you haven’t heard the news already, the Beatles have just reissued their entire back catalogue in sparkling remastered versions, and have made them available in both mono and stereo format. In the music nerd world this is KIND OF A BIG DEAL. It’s exciting news, so in celebration we, Salient’s humble music writers, have decided to pay our respects to one of the greatest bands of all time by reviewing three Beatles albums: Revolver, The White Album and Abbey Road. In these reviews each writer will attempt to explain why the album they have chosen is their favourite Beatles record. Unfortunately, none of us had enough money to be able to afford the fancy new remastered versions for these reviews, and Parlophone didn’t think to send the Salient office any free samples, so we had to make do with the original versions, ripped to .mp3 at 192 kbps. It’s a shame really, but hey, what can you do? Oh, and I almost forgot. Jay-Z released The Blueprint 3 the other week too. Unfortunately, we didn’t have space for a full-length review of both Jay-Z’s new album and of the three Beatles records. Since The Beatles have a greater net worth than Jay I thought it was only fair that he lose out in the battle for space within Salient’s hallowed music section. As a booby prize, I’ve decided to return to a tradition that I established earlier this year. And so, without further adieu, I give you my Haiku review of Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3 (Roc Nation):

Bloated Blueprint Three
Please no more Alicia Keys
I’m off thee, Jay-Z

By Kim Wheatley

Abbey Road (Parlophone)

When I told my friend and fellow Beatlemaniac Tom that I was writing on Abbey Road for an upcoming issue of Salient, he looked wryly amused. “What are you going to say? That it’s good, and you should listen to it?”

As usual, he had a point. All that can be said on The Beatles and their extensive back catalogue has been said—and published in books, journals, and even an academic paper (Liverpool University offers a Masters of Arts in ‘The Beatles, Popular Music and Society’). By and large, it’s a closed case.

So, let me make this clear: nothing I write in this ‘review’ is going to shed new light on the subject, nor do I intend for it to do so. Take it as more of a billet doux to my favourite Beatles album: their last, and in my opinion, their best. Because unlike The Beatles (I skip ‘Revolution 9’ without fail), Sgt. Pepper (‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ soured me on both marriage and clarinets), and Revolver (…actually, no, Revolver’s pretty good), I don’t want to miss a moment of Abbey Road. Their magnum opus, it’s the sound of a band at the height of its expertise, but also, a band aware of its impending split.

Indeed, Abbey Road arose from a desire to make The Beatles’ last release one that could speak for the rest of their output. None of the band’s members were satisfied with Let It Be acting as the ultimate bookend for their back catalogue, and Abbey Road was their endeavour to make one more, as McCartney put it, “like they used to”.

And oh, that magic outcome. Abbey Road unites moments of soul, folk, pop, ballad, blues, rock and roll, honky-tonk and even lullaby into a cohesive, authentic whole. Some of The Beatles’ best-loved tunes (‘Octopus’s Garden’, ‘Here Comes The Sun’) are from Side A of the album, while Side B (‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ onwards) is a nine-track medley that leads into the cathartic climax, ‘The End’. In typical Lennon/McCartney form, the weight of its final phrase (“And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”) is lessened by the inclusion of a ‘hidden’ track ‘Her Majesty’, an irreverent ditty in the vein of ‘Wild Honey Pie’ and ‘Dig It’: a conscious decision to end on a light note, rather than a sombre one.

‘The End’, although a fragment of the final suite of Abbey Road, rates alongside ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ and ‘I’m So Tired’ as one of my absolute favourite Beatles tracks because it sees the band ‘come together’ at a time when all involved felt like falling apart. Starr performs his one-and-only drum solo, and McCartney, Lennon and Harrison divide the guitar solo between them (two bars each), while the final harmonies are breathtaking. The power of ‘The End’ is that it brings both Abbey Road, and The Beatles’ career as a whole, to a satisfying conclusion, rather than a saddening one: the perfect epitaph.

Elle Hunt

The Beatles (aka The White Album) (Apple/Parlophone, Capitol and EMI)

Is The White Album the best Beatles LP? It’s impossible for me to say. I think a sound case could be made for any one of Rubber Soul, Revolver, The White Album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road as being their greatest record. But what about influence? I’d like to argue that, more than any other Beatles album, the unpigmented one has been the most historically significant. But before I dive into that, lets get a few things straight first. The White Album is a complete mess. It lacks cohesion, consistency and community. It’s also home to some of the most inane moments the fab-four ever recorded: ‘Wild Honey Pie’, ‘Piggies’, ‘Birthday’ and ‘Why Don’t We Do It in the Road’. Fucking stupid songs the lot of them. And then there’s ‘Helter Skelter’, which is (to my never-ending amusement) widely regarded as being the “First-Heavy-Metal-Song-Ever™”. Its opening lyric is “When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide?” I kid you not.

But for all of its flaws, The White Album has copious amounts of one quality that the rest of the great mid-late period Beatles albums sometimes lack: charm. There’s something infinitely endearing about the act of reaching beyond your grasp, of singing beyond your range, of directing Southland Tales (ok, maybe not that last one). Let’s face it; everybody loves a sprawling epic, even if it is a mess (think Apocalypse Now, or Sign o’ the Times). Clocking in at 93 minutes in length, The White Album is well over ¾ of an hour longer than Abbey Road, the Beatles’ next longest album. Its 2xLP format provided the band with plenty of opportunities to branch out, guaranteeing the presence of a little something for everyone who hears it, regardless of their musical preferences.

Do you like pretty little ballads? Well ‘Julia’ and ‘Blackbird’ are two of John and Paul’s finest. ‘Julia’s’ influence has been particularly notable. I know for a fact a certain Mr Elliott Smith was a fan (Wikipedia says that The White Album was his original inspiration for becoming a musician). Perhaps you prefer a feisty hard rocker? In that case, ‘Back in the U.S.S.R.’, and ‘Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey’ (an undeniable candidate for “Best-Song-Name-Ever™”) are the songs for you. What about wanky guitar solos then? Well, I like to think of Eric “Cumhand” Clapton’s 6-string masturbation on ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ as being the perfect proto-Guitar Hero whiteout. And then there’s ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’, the experimental three-part epic that would later be a direct inspiration for a famous Radiohead song. Oh, and speaking of Radiohead, I’m sure you’ve noticed that the chord progression on ‘Sexy Sadie’ is pretty much identical to that of another seminal OK Computer cut. That’s right, without The White Album, there would be no ‘Paranoid Android’, and no ‘Karma Police’, meaning that OK Computer wouldn’t have been anywhere near as influential, meaning that grunge might not have died in 1997, meaning that we might all still be wearing flannel! We have the Beatles to thank for saving us all from the genuine historical possibility of a fashion apocalypse. Thank goodness for marijuana and amphetamines and LSD. Thank goodness for that phony Indian spiritual guru. And thank goodness for Yoko Ono. Without all of you, there would be no fractured, supersized, wide-screened, mega-plusplus’d epic no-real-album-cover genius masterpiece White Album. Without you, the tradition of monochrome album covers and titles would not have been established. We wouldn’t call Weezer “The Blue Album”, Orbital’s Untitled II “The Brown Album”, and Jay-Z wouldn’t have called his ‘retirement’ LP The Black Album. There would be no Grey Album (the “Best-Mashup-Album-Ever™”). And without The Grey Album there would be no Girl Talk. And we all love Girl Talk, don’t we?

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the infamous ‘Revolution 9’. Sure, it might be the most skipped Beatles song ever, but it was also the first avant-garde noise piece to ever find its way onto a major pop album. An entire genre of music (noise) practically owes its existence to this seminal moment in music history. And if all that wasn’t enough to convince you of The White Album’s ongoing importance, here’s some more information about some of the other great songs that can be found within its weighty white depths:

• There’s the doo-wop wonder that is ‘Revolution 1’. A song that the Beatles would later refashion as the equally excellent ‘Revolution’.
• There’s ‘Long Long Long’, one of George Harrison’s most underrated contributions, in a whole catalogue of underrated contributions.
• There’s ‘I’m So Tired’, whose lyrics James Murphy ripped off, along with the chord progression from ‘Dear Prudence’, in order to create ‘I’m Never as Tired as When I’m Waking Up’, one of the “Best-Blatant-Tribute-Songs-Ever™”.
• And finally, there’s the eternal children’s sing-along, white-guy-reggae-rhythm classic ‘Ob-La-Di-, Ob-La-Da’, which finds The Beatles beating The Clash to “The-Jamaican-upstroke™” by a good ten years! ‘Ob-La…’ is also notable for containing a cheeky gender blender lyric, which went wonderfully unnoticed on popular 60s radio. Without The White Album there would be no Antony & the Johnsons!

But I digress, what I’m really trying to say is: “Hot damn, that White Album sure is an incredible thing huh?” Unfortunately, I’m running out of words now, so I’ll have to bring my eulogy of its undeniable genius to a somewhat (in my opinion) premature close. But before I wrap up, I would like to take a moment to apologise for using almost twice as many words as Elle and Ryan in their reviews of Abbey Road and Revolver. But I figure I’m allowed. After all, The White Album is twice as long, twice as cool, twice as loud, twice as fun, and at least twice as influential as their favourite Beatles records. See what I’m getting at here? Finally, I’d like to conclude by thanking Salient for giving me the chance to review a Beatles album. When I became a music reviewer I always dreamed about what it would be like to write one of these someday, but I never actually thought that that it would happen. I write self-congratulatory opinion pieces, so this opportunity means a lot to me, for obvious reasons.

YO KIM, I’M REALLY HAPPY FOR YOU AND IMMA LET YOU FINISH, BUT PET SOUNDS IS ONE OF THE “BEST-ALBUMS-OF-ALL-TIME™”.

Kim Wheatley

Revolver (Parlophone)

It’s pretty much impossible to write about The Beatles in 2009 without sounding totally redundant, so I’m not even going to try to review this album critically. Instead, I’m just going to say why I love 1966’s Revolver, why you should too, and why it’s so important that you listen to it if you somehow already haven’t.

I love Revolver because it has my favourite Beatles song from my childhood, ‘Eleanor Rigby’. Aside from the vocal harmonies, the only Beatle present is McCartney, whose solemn vocals float above an energetic string section that gives the song a stark feeling of contrast from earlier work, and highlights Revolver as a turning point in the Beatles sound towards more serious and experimental territory. It’s also an incredibly beautiful and touching song on death and loneliness, factors that didn’t stop me belting the lyrics out at the top of my lungs in the car when it came around on 1, my only experience of the Beatles for years.

I love Revolver because it’s the first time that Lennon and McCartney give Harrison (my favourite Beatle) the space to shine as a songwriter, not just a brilliant guitarist, with three tracks written by him, one of which (‘Taxman’) is even given the coveted opening slot on the album. Labelled the ‘Quiet Beatle’, for his professionalism and shyness in public, Harrison’s songwriting skills, while initially lacking, grew exponentially as he gained confidence but were only given recognition towards the latter stages of the Beatles’ work. With ‘Taxman’, Harrison launches an attack at the grossly unfair British Tax system (The Beatles were, at one stage, being taxed 95% for some of their earnings), combining harshly funny lyrics with McCartney’s rollicking guitar treatment and classic Beatles harmonies. Elsewhere, ‘Love You To’ displays Harrison’s increasing fascination with Hindu culture, drenched in Sitar twang and deft use of Tabla, while ‘I Want To Tell You’ expresses the frustration of being unable to communicate one’s thoughts, emphasised by the song’s chaotic instrumentation and spiralling vocal delivery.

I love Revolver because as an album it’s so balanced. The harrowing ‘Eleanor Rigby’ is followed by the soft dreaminess of ‘I’m Only Sleeping’, and Ringo’s starring moment in the jaunty ‘Yellow Submarine’ is paired with ‘She Said She Said’, Lennon’s acid-tinged trip accompanied by Harrison’s jangly guitars and McCartney’s fuzzy harmonies. The whole album works on opposites drawn together in a way that makes them feel born together, embodied by ‘Good Day Sunshine’, a song that never fails to make me smile with the way it opens with ominous piano before exploding into a charmingly optimistic song about love, radiating happiness and reminding the listener that regardless of the new directions shown on Revolver, the Beatles are still the best in the business at upbeat pop.

Finally, I love Revolver because it showed listeners (and more importantly the Beatles themselves) how much more textured and developed their sound could become if they spent more time in the studio and played around with stuff (they spent around 300 rather than the usual 100, setting a trend for future artists). While this undoubtedly sucked for audiences in the 60s, with the Beatles withdrawing from live performances soon after Revolver’s release, for the rest of us it was awesome, sparking a period of musical creation that produced some of the best moments in music history, with Revolver acting as a springboard into the brilliant home stretch of Beatles albums (Sgt. Peppers, The White Album, Abbey Road) that revolutionised pop music. And that’s why I love it.

Ryan Eyers

For a band which has only released four albums and a smattering of singles in a recording history that has spanned over 30 years, The Clean sure has a good sense of timing. Their mid ‘90s albums Modern Rock and Unknown Country coincided perfectly with the discovery of their trademark sound (skuzzy guitars and lyrical witticisms) by American indie bands and college radio. Fast-forward to 2009, and an age where musical fads come and go at a rate so fast that even the most cutting edge of blogs can scarcely keep up. Despite these fickle conditions, one discernable trend is the prevalence of understated summer-pop cropping up on private torrent sites and hidden rapidshare uploads. Though not sounding strictly like what was to come, Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavillion use of watery samples and round-the-campfire attitude set the initial tone, which has since been fully defined by up-and-comers like Beach Fossils, Real Estate and Ducktails.

In a delightful slice of serendipity, Mister Pop, The Clean’s first album in eight years, largely trades in their old dirty guitar chug in favour of a more relaxed psychedelic aesthetic. Take the looping keyboard melody and sighing female vocal harmonies of opener ‘Loog’, which instantly conjure images of poolside relaxation and tiny cocktail umbrellas. ‘Are You Really on Drugs’ marks the appearance of the first conventional vocal from frontman David Kilgour. It rolls along pleasantly enough, with its bright guitar jangle punctuated every now and then by cheeky whooshing noises, while Kilgour repetitively asks somebody (possibly himself): “Are you really on drugs?” ‘In Your Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul’ is perhaps the highlight, its wistful lyrics and gently chiming guitars recall the warm sounds of 60s pop, but its casual slide guitar solo is 100% kiwi ingenuity (of the most psychadelic kind). ‘Back in the Day’ is another fine example of the Clean’s newfound summery sound. Its twangy, upbeat guitars would have sounded at home on a Real Estate single, but it’s the typically understated chorus vocal that make the song especially memorable, with Kilgour cheerfully reflecting: “Hey, it puts me right back in the day, yeah.” The appearance of a vocoder on ‘Tensile’ finds The Clean (quite successfully) adding new elements to their sound. Simultaneously, the gently driving guitars and squiggly synths of the same song find them rolling back the years to do what they do best. All up, Mister Pop is an effortless effort, a wonderful combination of nostalgia and vitality, and a welcome return for one of New Zealand’s most loved musical acts. Now come on Kilgour, how about some tour dates please?

Ratings:
Mainstream: 3
Indie: 7.5
Kim: Makes the iPod

After spending most of my mid-term break cooped up indoors (it rained lots) at my parents’ house in Nelson, I returned to find that Wellington was being drenched in the springtime sun. Pleased with this development, I decided that it was time to get myself into the sunshine spirit. Unfortunately I lacked one essential catalytic piece of equipment: a boombox. “Not to worry,” I told myself, and promptly logged on to TradeMe, where, lo and behold, I soon found myself staring lustily at this fine piece of summertime kit:

The highest existing bid was $1.50, so I figured that an autobid of $50 would ensure that my victory in the auction would be little more than a formality. Buoyed by this thought, I swiftly set about compiling a suitable soundtrack for the imminent arrival of my glorious ghettoblaster. And so, without further adieu, I give you…

The Summer BoomMix.

1) Neon Indian – Deadbeat Summer
Released to the usual blogospheric fanfare a couple of months back, ‘Deadbeat Summer’ is a woozy slice of summer psychedelia. A sluggish mishmash of noodling synths and digitally airbrushed vocal sighs defines its initial tone. A bar of programmed snare hits signals the arrival of the chorus (“Deadbeat summer, it’s just a deadbeat summer”), which somehow manages to retain the rest of the song’s languid aesthetic while simultaneously injecting a healthy dose of pep as well. Top stuff!

2) Delorean – Seasun
‘Seasun’, the lead single of Delorean’s recent game-changing Ayrton Senna EP, is a revelation. A thudding set of tom hits, set to a ticking blend of arpeggiated synth lines quickly gives way to a club-worthy female vocal sample. It’s wordless inflexions are pitched up and down, while massive piano chords provide yet another layer of accented hits. The various constituent elements (guitars, bass and handclaps all find their way in to the mix as well) seem so disparate, but Delorean’s meticulous sense of arrangement melds them into an irresistible rhythmic whole. And when the vocals finally arrive (after two whole minutes of foundation laying), they form a simple, yet repetitive refrain, which recalls a fresh Balearic house sample, direct from the Ibizan night. Naturally, they ride this melody out to its logical, and emphatic, conclusion.

3) The Go-Team – Ladyflash
A desperately retro production crackle. A tin can drum racket. Those upbeat guitars and keyboard swells. And then there’s that poorly mixed female vocal. It all reeks of nostalgia for the AM age. “We came here to rock the microphone / We came here to rock the microphone!”

4) A Tribe Called Quest – Can I Kick It?
The quintessential boombox anthem, and a tour de force in the art of stealing part of somebody else’s song (in this case, the source material is Lou Reed’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side’) and then placing it in a new context where it fits so naturally that you can almost forget that it had ever been used anywhere else.

5) Beat Happening – Indian Summer
A risky choice to follow up one of the ‘90s most recognisable hip-hop songs, ‘Indian Summer’ is nonetheless a classic in its own right. A slowly picked guitar that evokes George Harrison’s sitar is set to a stuttering conga rhythm and Calvin Johnson’s primitive vocals. His voice is almost devoid of tune, and yet somehow manages to be both soothing and captivating. “We’ll come back for Indian summer / We’ll come back for Indian Summer / And go our separate ways.”

6) The E.L.F. – Cockroaches
Following a couple of slightly more subdued numbers, ‘Cockroaches’ strikes me as the perfect song for a return to that idyllic sense of joie de vivre that I would like to define my BoomMix by. A cheeky tumble of drums and turntable scratches sets the tone (FUN!), before a perpetual motion backbeat takes over. Though he isn’t quite as limited a vocalist as Calvin Johnson, Darren Cross’ thin croon should really sound awful when set to the background of the pastiche-disco arrangement of ‘Cockroaches’. Thankfully, the nervous busyness of the production, as well as a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek chorus, ensures that he comes across as endearing instead of inadequate.

7) Y.A.C.H.T. – Psychic City
Like ‘Losing My Edge’, except without the irony and designed for exposure to the sun instead of the disco ball, ‘Pyschic City’ is a celebration of the party spirit. And since summer is the ultimate party, it strikes me as being an entirely fitting selection for my BoomMix. “Come on over over / Come on over over / Come on over / We’re having a party for you.”

8) The Clean – Tensile
This just-released single from Godzone favourites, The Clean, sounds almost intentionally tailored for the advent of summer. Things are a little different this time around, as their trademark ragged overdrive is replaced by a warm synth pattern. And then there’s the presence of an element that some diehards might decry as blasphemy: a vocoder. But before your reaction can become too severe of a kneejerk, Kilgour unleashes his trump card. It’s a drunken synth line that winds up and down, almost out of synch with the other instruments, giving ‘Tensile’ an almost tropical vibe. Will somebody please mix me a Singapore sling? Thanks.

9) David Byrne and Brian Eno – Strange Overtones
How to wrap up my perfect summer BoomMix? It’s a challenging proposition, but since any mixtape is intrinsically an exercise in nostalgia I’ve decided to opt for a song that is itself a working recontextualisation of past glories. ‘Strange Overtones’ is the highlight of Byrne and Eno’s triumphant 2008 reunion, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. Though its wistful verses might at first sound out of place on my mixtape, its upbeat bass, funky guitars and thudding drums are perfectly in keeping with what has already come before. As the song progresses, Byrne’s vocal becomes increasingly assured, eventually culminating in a powerhouse chorus. It’s one of those hyper-harmonised affairs, of the kind that he’d perfected on Remain in Light, and it ensures that the conclusion of my BoomMix evokes a certain sense of timelessness. Summer itself might be over, but the party will go on!

Editor’s note: During the writing of the previous piece, Kim was out-bid for the boom-box, stranding this article in an ocean of fantasy.

If you have a boom-box and care about the Salient Arts Team’s mental health (or just wanna sell it anyways) get in contact at arts@salient.org.nz.

The Antlers’ debut, Hospice, is a concept album, which centres on the relationship between a hospital orderly and a young girl with a terminal illness. Its non-elliptical narrative is delivered in lengthy, stream-of‑consciousness bursts that recall James Mercer’s method (though not his means) on the Shins’ Chutes Too Narrow. The Antlers’ stock trade is a quiet/loud dynamic, but even the big moments, which might otherwise threaten to hit Sigur Ros-esque levels of intensity, have an unusual muted overtone to them. Vocalist (and songwriter) Peter Silberman has a soft voice, which maintains its whisplike quality even as the volume levels begin to rise. Together, the lyrics, the vocals and the varied instrumentation (a reverb-heavy mix of piano, synths and orchestral arrangements) form an evocative blend, working in unison to reflect the sadness and alienation experienced by Hospice’s two protagonists.

Thankfully, The Antlers manage to avoid the potential pitfalls of their weighty subject matter by presenting it with uplifting anthemics and interspersed moments of childlike tenderness. ‘Bear ’is perhaps the most obvious example of this balanced approach. It begins with Silberman singing gently over an interpolation of the melody from ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’. A rising swell clears the way for the entry of a deftly strummed guitar figure. It’s one of the few uses of a truly conventional chorus on the album, and Silberman’s vocals carry it off with a perfect piece of juxtaposition: “We’re too old/We’re not old at all/Just too old/We’re not old at all.”

I can’t imagine anybody writing a more gentle and touching song about an abortion. And that’s the genius of Hospice; though its lyrics are often achingly sad, the melodies always seem to produce the sensation of being comforted. Take the album’s second single, ‘Two’, which describes the orderly’s experience of learning that his ward’s illness has become terminal. Its foundations are simple: Silberman’s non-stop storytelling voice, a repetitive guitar strum and a bare-bones kick+snare beat. The guitar riff stays the same for ‘Two’s’ entire 6-minute duration, while other elements (bass, organs, synths, piano, high-hats) are added to the mix, steadily increasing the tension like mercury rising in a thermometer. But for all of ‘Two’s’ heavy lyrical content Silberman manages to maintain a reassuring, if slightly worried, tone of voice.

And then there’s ‘Wake’. As the second-to-last track, and at almost 9 minutes in length, it serves as Hospice’s emotional climax and denouement. A gentle chorus of “oooohs” and a delicate arrangement of keys and strings provide the tender backdrop, while Silberman sings: “The hardest thing is never to repent for someone else, it’s letting people in”. It’s a downright gorgeous moment, but Silberman refuses to rest on his laurels. He presses on with another verse (“Well you can come inside, unlock your door, take off your shoes”), before returning to the same melodic conclusion. But this time things take an unexpected shift; the humming vocals drop out, leaving only a series of naked piano plinks to carry ‘Wake’ forward. Silberman’s voice returns over a dark progression of piano chords, the keys pile up, and the choral refrain finally arrives. “Don’t ever / let anyone / tell you / you deserve that.” The words are repeated over and over, while another (higher) vocal track comes in to provide further emphasis and support. On ’Wake’, Silberman’s voice is gentle and reassuring, but also firm and insistent. And underneath? The band ramp themselves up to produce the most perfect crescendo imaginable, in an album that was already full of them. I can vividly remember the first time I heard it; my body rendered immobile, held captive to its beauty. As Silberman delivered his closing remarks on the final track, ‘Epilogue’, I felt the inevitable tears run down my cheeks.

Taken as a whole, Hospice is an incredible work, and one that almost feels out of time in an mp3 age where tracklists are increasingly becoming a recommendation rather than a rule. It’s truly refreshing to hear a band produce material that relies so heavily on the linear album format. Even Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest, which is perhaps Hospice’s closest cousin in 2009, can be picked apart and experienced in a modular fashion without doing too much harm to the songs themselves. But this is something else. Silberman’s lyrics are often veiled in a manner that adds ambiguity to the narrative, forcing you to work hard in order to experience the full force of his themes. Such respect for the intelligence (both mental and emotional) of its listeners, combined with its delicately unfolding beauty, and an unflinching emphasis on structural unity, mark Hospice out as the most rewarding album of the year.

Ratings:

Mainstream: 3 Stars
Indie: 9.8
Kim: Genius

In a classic interview addressing the topic of “the inevitable backlash,” LCD Soundsystem’s commander-in-chief James Murphy pointed out that blending elements of rock and dance music was “typically… a really really bad idea, with really really bad results”. Of course, Murphy’s DFA label continues to act as a facilitator for the production of some of the finest examples of a collision of aesthetics that has become increasingly commonplace since his production work on The Rapture’s Echoes established its initial blueprint. Unusually, for an artist best known for producing post-millennial dance music, Murphy has largely eschewed the possibilities offered by the sheer processing power of the computer (you’ll never hear an AFX’d drum line on an LCD Soundsystem album). Rather, his trademark sound is defined by the presence of nostalgia, particularly for the analogue age. This exclusion of the digital leaves a gap that makes for an obvious evolutionary next step, should anybody feel they could rise to the challenge of disproving his aforementioned claim.

Fast-forward to 2009, almost a decade since that cowbell whipped us out of what the Dismemberment Plan once infamously referred to as “Doing the standing still”, and we find recent DFA signing YACHT (aka. Jona Bechtolt, formerly of The Blow, and new member Claire L. Evans) taking the Rapture’s original formula and running with it. Straight to their illuminated MacBook keyboards and single-pane touch panels. The product of this evolutionary experiment is their fourth album, See Mystery Lights.

Opener ‘Ring the Bell’ begins with a palm-muted guitar riff that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on an AC/DC single. Then there’s the percussion, a watery, thunking sample that wouldn’t have been out of place on Merriweather Post Pavillion.

In fact, it’s pure digital, and it’s the kind of thing that you’d never hear in a conventional Murphy production. But the most obvious example of YACHT’s willingness to employ computer trickery can be heard in the electronic treatment of the vocals, which have been playfully pitch-shifted into upbeat dance inflections. At first, these are single, repetitive jumps, up and down the scale, but at the conclusion of the first verse Bechtolt’s voice undergoes a remarkable alteration at the hands of something resembling an arpeggiator plug-in. If sound could be made visual, picture a representation of a male voice being split from its monochrome whole into a multicoloured burst of rainbow bright.

It all makes for a wonderful opening statement, made even more compelling by some smart production decisions. For much of See Mystery Lights YACHT takes the risk of avoiding dominant mid-range sounds. Instead, Bechtolt and Evans prefer to entrust a simple mix of bass, miniaturised percussion, paired-down guitar and high-pitched synth flourishes with the responsibility of carrying their songs into the strobe-lit terrain of the dance floor. ‘I’m in Love With a Ripper’ (which, as its title suggests, draws its hook from T-Pain’s mainstream hit ‘I’m N Luv’ (Wit a Stripper)’) is the undisputed highlight. Its glue is a driving, delay-soaked bassline, over which Bechtolt scatters a dazzling panoply of production tricks: Vocoderised vocals, microprocessed drum drills and insistent laser bleeps. They’re all present, and perfectly layered too, like a well-dressed hipster venturing out into an autumnal chill. On ‘Psychic City (Voodoo City)’, a clean, straight guitar strum provides a no-frills backdrop for yet another mishmash of electronic elements, while Evans drawls “We’re having a party for you” between spoken verses that recall some of The Dismemberment Plan’s finest moments.

Unfortunately, YACHT fall just short of producing a document capable of soundly disproving Murphy’s bad-combo thesis, because two of its eight proper tracks (the 9th and 10th songs are a remix of ‘Ripper’ and a brief-but-still-annoying a cappella reprise of ‘Psychic City’) are completely disposable. ‘The Afterlife’ is a mid-tempo talkfest with a clichéd hall-of-mirrors chorus that spends five minutes going nowhere. Worse, its location at second drop all but kills the momentum that YACHT had so painstakingly built up on ‘Ring the Bell’. Even more disappointing is ‘Don’t Fight the Darkness’, a track whose spartan structure lacks the brightness and vivacity that characterises the rest of the album. And as if that wasn’t enough, its chorus features the kind of down-pitched vocal sample that might have sounded okay on a mid ‘90s Daft-Punk b-side, but whose presence here is entirely unwelcome, especially given that most of See Mystery Lights finds YACHT looking forward, rather than back. Still, 6/8 is a commendable success ratio, but don’t take it from me. Instead, wait for next month’s party playlists, which, I suspect, will provide ample proof that YACHT are more than worthy of the expenditure of your body’s kinetic energy.

Ratings:

Mainstream: 3 Stars
Indie: 7.7
Kim: Makes the iPod

So I was bargain hunting in Real Groovy the other week. Ostensibly I was in search of the Beat Happening/Screaming Trees split, but really I was just browsing for the sake of browsing, as if to fulfill a hunter—gatherer need at some base, cellular level. Before long my fingers stumbled across a spartan, black and white sleeve. Speedking, it said. The Fist and the Laurels, it said. Do those two names mean anything to you? If they do, then you, like me, are a music geek. It’s almost as if the only meaning behind your existence is derived from a constant pursuit of the hottest sounds. They might be cutting edge, like a John Talabot sunshine house single from Barcelona, or they might be long-lost b-sides, perhaps off Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock sessions. When you’re at a party you just can’t stop ranting about how Joy Division’s ‘Atmosphere’/’Dead Souls’ beats out ‘Strawberry Fields’/’Penny Lane’ as the greatest double a-side of all time. You’ve got a MacBook Pro with over 1,000 albums on it. And then there’s the lossless material, the live bootlegs, all in .FLAC format, painstakingly downloaded from obscure torrent tracker sites. You need to get a life. In fact, you’re probably the kind of person James Murphy poked fun at on his debut LCD Soundsystem single, ‘Losing my Edge’. No, you aren’t an ageing hipster (that would be Murphy himself). You are something even worse. You are one of the kids who is coming up from behind. You are an internet seeker who can name every member of every good group from 1982 to 1998. You even have a little jacket, and a borrowed sense of nostalgia for the unremembered ‘80s. But maybe, just maybe, you were there.

I know I was.

I was there.

I was there in 1996 at the first Animal Collective practices in a high school music room in Baltimore, MD. I was there when Ryan Schrieber started up his first music review site. He wanted to call it Pitchforkmedia.com. I told him: “Don’t do it that way, you’ll never make a buck.” I was there. I was the first guy playing M.I.A. to the indie kids. I played it at Mighty Mighty. Everybody thought I was crazy. We all know. But I was there. I was there.

I’ve never been wrong.

So I’m holding The Fist and the Laurels, and I’m nerding out. You see, Speedking was the band that James Murphy was in before LCD Soundsystem. Unfortunately, they imploded in 1997, preventing the release of what would have been their debut album. An album that would (if the All Music Guide is to believed) have [proved] “Speedking to be one of the great acts of the ‘90s, and the leader in the return of no wave’s danceable guitar thrash.” If those words are true, that’d make TFatL a must-have for any self-respecting “internet seeker”. In the end, the album did see release, on Tigerstyle in 2002. And I’ve just found a copy, some seven years later, in a second-hand bin here in Wellington. Needless to say I splash out the $15 required to make it mine, rush home, flick on my stereo, insert disc one, and hit ‘play’:

The first thing I hear is a series of modulating synth clicks and filter sweeps. And then the drums come in. James Murphy’s drums. Thudding bass kicks and snare snaps alternate between landing on and off the beat. Then the bass. A dirty low-end menace, followed swiftly by an explosion of thresher-shark guitar. Unfortunately, my preferred type of guitar is usually of the warm and fuzzy variety, not tinny metallic junk. To put it plainly, Chet Sherwood’s guitar sounds like the chainsaw from a bad horror film. So I turn my stereo down a little bit. Just as I start to ask myself whether I’ve gone soft, the slashing chords stop. And then guitar and bass resume instantly, locked into a wicked swinging parallel. The high hats start to open. It’s practically a fucking disco rhythm! That’s more like it Jimbo! The rest of TFatL is a mix of aggressive post-Sonic Youth indie, with the vocal duties split democratically between the punkish yelps of Sherwood, bassist Miriam Maltagliati’s more considered turns and the straining attempts of James Murphy (who hasn’t quite figured out how to get the most out of his limited voice yet). The best vocal performance comes from the guesting Jeremiah Ryan (of Six Finger Satellite fame), on the album highlight, ‘Hearts and Flowers.’ It’s a song that, more than any other on TFatL, prefigures Murphy’s later work. The guitar alternates between muted scratching, siren screaming and a melodic breakdown rhythm, while the synths sweep/squelch on and off in a fashion that sounds almost identical to that which Murphy would deploy almost half a decade later on ‘Give it Up’. It’s a hell of a track, but unfortunately the rest of the album never quite reaches the same heights.

Sure, the album’s more progressive tracks like ‘What is a Mason’, ‘Millionth Monkey’ and ‘Get the Dogs’ do foreshadow the dance-punk that Murphy would later patent as the figurehead of the DFA empire. However, for much of the rest of TFatL, Speedking use their synths to provide a disconcerting background ambience rather than to aid in the creation of danceable rhythms. Surprisingly, Murphy’s drumming is also a let down. He has a tendency to overcomplicate things, using too many kick-drum hits and one-handed 16th note high-hat taps when simpler beats and a disco swing might perhaps have proven more effective. Most frustrating of all is the band’s reluctance to take any real risks with their material. It’s as if they could tell they were onto something new, but lacked the courage to properly follow through because it would have required them stepping outside of the familiar indie/punk framework. Speedking just weren’t very self-aware, and as a result, they produced something that sounds like angular indie + moog squelch, but lacks an end product. TFatL is essentially an unfinished equation, with a question mark following the equals sign. Of course, we all know what the answer is now, a fact that makes TFatL a frustrating listen for anybody going back to it in post-DFA 2009. It’s as if you can almost hear Murphy using calculus to work around the equation in search of a new proof, but on TFatL he falls short because he hasn’t quite gotten his head around some of the other variables. Perhaps that’s why he waited until 2002 before allowing Speedking’s work to see the light of day, because by then he’d been able to demonstrably solve the elusive dance-punk equation in one decisive sonic moment: ‘Losing My Edge’.

RATINGS:
Mainstream: 1 Star
Indie: 7.0
Kim: Makes the iPod

The first thing I noticed about Family Cactus when I saw them open up at Camp a Low Hum earlier this year were their lifting multi-part vocal harmonies. They played at 11am, and I think it’s pretty safe to say that almost everyone in attendance was suffering from some combination of sleep deprivation, hangover or comedown. The band seemed understandably woozy as well, but on the whole managed to acquit themselves pretty decently under the circumstances. I’ve seen the Family Cactus a few times since, and while I wouldn’t describe them as the most energetic live band going, their collective vocal efforts and strong melodic sensibilities generally tend to ensure that their shows are an enjoyable experience.

Unfortunately, their debut album, Come Howling, seems to reveal more about Family Cactus’ flaws than it plays to their strengths. Take the mighty harmonised hook on lead single ‘Kingmaker’. Live, it verges on being Arcade Fire anthemic, but on record the band’s combined vocals sound shorn of their power and energy. The instrumentation doesn’t fare much better. Sure, the snare and tom rolls punch their way through the mix to acceptable effect, but the guitars lack both warmth and fuzz, while the additional keyboard plinks are rarely audible enough to make much of a meritable impact. There’s no denying frontman Adam Ladley’s pop sensibilities though. Pretty much all of the tracks have a sharp hook or a well deployed build-up. ‘In-Transit’ is probably the highlight, with a despairing chorus backed by an irresistible keyboard lick and some smart moments of guitar interplay. Still, I think a group with seven members and such a solid live pedigree should sound, well, bigger. Perhaps the Family Cactus’ most fundamental problem is in fact Ladley himself. For all his meticulous song craft, his actual voice lacks the personality of a Win Butler, or the adventurous energy of a Kevin Drew. Too often he ventures into boring Chris Martin territory, when a bit of attitude and risk taking might serve him better. Furthermore, lead vocal duties could perhaps have been shared around a little bit more democratically. From what I can make out, Nina Siegler has a pretty decent voice, but she never really gets enough of the limelight to attempt a Leslie Feist-style lead ala ‘Almost Crimes’. One of the reasons I enjoy Broken Social Scene so much is the reckless sense of abandon that you often hear in the vocal performances, and in comparison Ladley just sounds stuck in middle gear.

The snarling guitars on ‘Barbed Tongue’ attempt to redress this issue somewhat, but unfortunately Ladley opts for the largely superficial option of singing through a distorted mic, when an energised vocal performance and a few swigs of Laphroaig might have suited the track better. It’s a shame really, because as a collective the Family Cactus have some undeniable talent. After all, a glimpse at their CVs makes for impressive reading: The Accelerants, The Brunettes, The Nudie Suits, Grand Prix, The Cosbys and The Bonnie Scarlets. Moments like the bouncing guitar intro of ‘Mariachi Stomper’ and the raucous deconstructed midsection of ‘No Magic’ promise much, but under Ladley’s lead, the Family Cactus never quite manage to push them far enough to create anything that sounds truly magical.

Mainstream: 3
Indie: 6.2
Kim: Disposable

Family Cactus
Come Howling
(Sony)

“April, I have spent on the floor of my grandmother’s house, sleeping and recording some new songs. I was going to spread this release out into like a double album thing replete with comprehensive liner notes, detailed notes and references, photographed lyric work sheets, and alternate versions on a bonus disk. Something triumphant.

I didn’t really complete the album, and its not really an album.”

Nocturnes is the latest release by the now British-based but Christchurch-bred Jonathan Phillips (aka Mount Pleasant). As you can tell by the above blog post, Phillips isn’t particularly good at finishing things off. His short attention span extends into his songwriting as well. A typical Mount Pleasant track is less than two minutes long, and generally meshes together several fragmentary ideas or jarring juxtapositions, before fading out into a nothingness that guarantees the containment of any moment of melodic uplift to a fleeting burst, and little more.

This might sound like it would be incredibly frustrating to listen to, and at times it is, but generally speaking, Phillips’ striking vocals and gift for delicate arrangements ensure that even his briefest songs contain moments that captivate the ears and move the heart. Although Nocturnes is far from being “something triumphant,” it does find his songwriting at its most focused, and with a running time of 28 minutes, it’s also his longest EP to date.

However, despite his newfound distance from the ex-lovers and bleak landscapes of his native Mount Pleasant, Christchurch, Phillips’ lyrical modes and concerns (longing, regret, introspection and passive observation) remain largely consistent with those of his earlier EPs. Once the three minutes of droning bass-notes on opener ‘Prepared Piano’ have ebbed into the ambient swells of ‘Lisa Stranfield’, his first words set a clear tone for the rest of Nocturnes.

“Why am I always crying? / Why do I look so cheap?”

In an earlier interview with Salient, Phillips declared that Mount Pleasant was principally “music marked by [location and memory]. It’s not like a pity party or whatever, it’s just the way I write.” Shorn of his original location, Nocturnes finds Phillips emphasising the memories, perhaps even contemplating them with a new sense of calm and perspective. Sometimes this calmness might manifest itself melodically, like the delicately plinking xylophone of ‘An International’, while sometimes it can be heard in his vocals, as on the quiet nighttime musings of the downright gorgeous ‘Reverie, Reverie.’ In fact, I think there might even be a sense of hope (false though it may be) buried among some of the muffled lyrics and strained cries of Nocturnes. Take the closing lines of ‘Lisa Stransfield’ where he envisions a future in which his lost love might still be requited:

“Some day I’m coming back and it won’t be long before you call me / Call me. “

Let’s hope that she does.

Mainstream: 1
Indie: 8.0
Kim: Makes the iPod

Nocturnes
Mount Pleasant
(Self-Released)

On 18 July Dimmer are headlining the VBC’s final Re-Orientation gig at Bodega. Tickets are available for $20 from utr.co.nz. This show is also doubling as a release party for Dimmer’s latest album, titled Degrees of Existence. In anticipation of the show and of the album’s release, Salient’s Kim Wheatley spoke with Shayne Carter, Dimmer’s frontman and principal songwriter.

Salient: If the advance singles (‘Degrees of Existence’ and ‘Cold Water’) are anything to go by, it would seem that you guys are forging ahead with the direct nature that you tapped into on your last album, There My Dear. How reflective are these two singles of the overall sound of Degrees of Existence, and do you have any stylistic surprises in there for us?

Shayne: I wanted to get the sound of the band because this version of the band has been together for a while now—we’ve toured the world together, we’ve shared a lot of experiences—we’re a pretty hot band! I can think of only one genuinely stink gig in all our time together, and that would be Bodega on new year’s eve when we were overwhelmed by gear breakage and other random factors. I wanted the record to sound like two guitars, vocals, bass and drums. But you know, interesting guitars, vocals and bass and drums. I wanted a few more ‘up’ songs too. There’s plenty of sad guy ruminations in the Dimmer back catalogue and there’s a couple here too, but generally I wanted to capture something a bit more live, a bit more exuberant.

Salient: What insights can you give us into Dimmer’s recording process for Degrees of Existence? Any favorite studio tricks that you might share with us?

Shayne: With Dino our drummer then residing in Wellington we’d fly him up, spend a couple of days learning new songs then go into the lab studio up here and put down basic backing tracks. We did a few blocks of recording. Then I’d take the tracks back to my room and…er…fiddle with them. James [Duncan] would sometimes take them back to his place and fiddle with them as well. I’ve got plenty of little tricks and concepts but I spend so much time contradicting them… Singers never do more than five or six takes of a tune cos after that you’re just mouthing words. Forget about what’s ‘technically’ correct or what engineers tell you—if it sounds good then it is good! No amount of pro tooling will ever replace feel or soul. There is no such thing as an ‘x factor’ or ‘soul’ plug in. You’d get rich if you invented one for sure. Never make a record imagining what the public/ radio stations/ record companies would like. That’s a one-way ticket to disaster or terminal mediocrity at the very least. If it doesn’t sound true to you then it won’t sound true to anybody else. If it sounds shit now it’s not all of a sudden gonna sound really great in three years’ time. I don’t know if they’re studio tricks but nevertheless these are good things to keep in mind while you are there!

Salient: Gary Sullivan, who helmed the kit with Dimmer on 2001’s You are a Star, has returned to the fold. How did this reunion come about, and what new dimensions can Gary bring to the live Dimmer experience?

Shayne: Dino went to live in Berlin. We miss him and love him as a musician and a person. But Gary is a great friend and drummer too. He slotted straight back in. He knows what the Dimmer ethos is. That whole quiet vibe of the first Dimmer album was developed by me and Gary jamming for a year before we made that record. We’d both come from loud rock bands and were sick of chest beating over Marshall stacks. Our practices gradually got quieter and quieter. It got ridiculous. You could almost hear us breathing! But we learnt a lot about space and a whole other dynamic. Dimmer’s been going a while now though. I’ve got over the anti-rock thing. Nice noise can be transcendent and uplifting. Live we can rark it up with the best of them.

Salient: In May a rare left-handed Gibson SG was stolen from you. Has it been recovered? And if not, do you have a message for the perpetrators of this most heinous of crimes?

Shayne: No, I haven’t got it back. Thieving from other people is such a mean-spirited and miserable thing to do. Yes I do have a message—give me my guitar back you fuckers! What are you going to do—paint it with racing stripes and turn it upside down! Nah—that hurt. Ask any guitarist. It’s losing your baby. I’d had that guitar 20 years. We went through a lot together.

The Crackhouse 5 are a splattery, Beastie Boys-esque hip-hop group consisting of Brian (B Cool), Matt (BB Gunn) and Kelvin (Shorty K). Salient’s Kim Wheatley met them for a chat over some coffee at the Paramount Theatre. You can also find an audio version of this interview on the Salient website. Our conversation began with a discussion of Crack Wednesdays, their weekly Wednesday night show at Mighty Mighty.

Salient: Crack Wednesdays, what’s the deal?

Kelvin: They started because me and Tommy Ill wanting to do something, just put on a night. We talked to Mighty and they were really keen.

Brian: But it’s getting hard for us to find people to play because we don’t really want bands with drummers or instruments as such just because of cost of sound engineers, etc.

Kelvin: We’re going to try having them monthly so they can be bigger and so that we can actually afford to get bands with drummers.

Salient: Is there any new CH5 music being recorded?

Kelvin: Um…. Yeah!

Salient: What can we expect?

Brian: Metal Riffs. Seriously.

Salient: Auto-tune?

Brian: Nah.

Kelvin: Auto-tune for our joke raps, but not for CH5. We are going to record more things, today in fact. The first group of songs that we did which we made into an EP were made over a couple of months in the Crackhouse when we lived there. But then we all moved out and it was kinda hard. It was so easy there because we were all in [Matt] Buck’s bedroom and we’d just wake up and walk in and Buck would be making a beat and we’d just start writing songs.

Salient (to Matt): So you make most of the beats then?

Matt: Yes. But because these guys are drummers and I don’t have any sense of rhythm, they help line up stuff.

Salient: That’s quite an interesting way of doing it—what do you use, can you reveal any secrets?

Matt: Just Cubase, and samples. Lots of breaks.

Salient: Favorite thing to sample?

Matt: ‘Funky Drummer!’

Kelvin: How many songs is that in?

Matt: It’s only in two. Oh wait, it’s only in one song.

Salient: But it feels like it’s in more.

Matt: It’s in every other hip-hop song.

Kelvin: We’ll probably use it again.

Kelvin: We’ll have a new EP that you can download.

Matt: But hopefully there’ll be no samples in it.

Matt: Drum samples, but nothing else. Played instruments [instead].

Kelvin: The thing with us is we couldn’t give a shit about being good at rapping; we just want to have fun.

Brian: I see us as a party band, a party starter, rather than a hip-hop group as such.

Salient: It seems as though you’ve thought about it though?

Matt: Yeah, we’ve definitely considered the songs. We’ve thought about the words we’re saying.

Kelvin: And also because we all played in bands, we’re not retarded at writing songs or anything.

Salient: It’s not like you were drunk and mumbled into your MacBook right?

Kelvin: Well, we didn’t do it in one take, even though the recordings aren’t that good quality, and our delivery isn’t awesome, we still put a little bit of time in it.

Brian: You think about our recordings and how old are they?

Matt: The ones on the MySpace are really old.

Kelvin: We haven’t changed the lyrics or the structure since the very first night we recorded them. We did that EP in September (2008) and then we went on making songs and realised we got better at delivery, so we went back and did it again.

Salient: So the next recorded output might have higher fidelity and be a little tighter?

Matt: I don’t know if it’ll be higher fidelity.

Brian: It’ll definitely be tighter.

Kelvin: And the songs will be better.

Matt: We just need a good microphone.

Salient: Do you really though?

Matt: Definitely.

Kelvin: The beats sound scratchy in a really cool way, which I really like, and they’re all over the place in a good way I think.

Salient: Like the Go-Team!

Matt: They make really good hip-hop beats.

Brian: That’s a good comparison, I hadn’t thought of that before.

Matt: Especially [CH5 track] ‘What’cha Gonna Get,’ that’s real Go-Team I reckon.

Salient: I haven’t listened to the Go-Team in ages. Somebody put that on at a party please.

Kelvin: We probably can, at Crack Wednesdays.

Matt: They had problems with samples on their first album. They redid that album for the American release. All those samples are really wicked, those chants are all from rallies in the 60s.

Brian: I heard something awesome that we could sample that was similar to that. Tom showed me this website that has amazing chantey sort of old bluesy stuff that has chants that we could take. Take the chants rather than the actual song.

Matt: Yeah. Do it.

Listen to the interview here.

The bass was binary. A pulsing post-punk rhythm that went on/off, on/off, forming a tight lockstep of synchronicity with Moses Archuleta’s propulsive drums. And over the top, the haze. Bradford Cox and Lockett Pundt are clearly disciples of the Kevin Shields school of guitar tone. Though Cox’s guitar may have been a touch more abrasive, and Pundt’s perhaps a little more melodic, on the whole they sounded united, and generally switched between two modes of operation: ambient wash or distorted churn. Given all the hype about dresses, self-mutilation and fake blood I had expected some kind of visceral visual experience, but the band appeared focused and professional, not punk-rock and provocative. Even Cox’s gaunt physique (he suffers from Marfan syndrome) was softened by a large jacket, which he wore throughout the entire set.

The gig was never really going to be about visuals though. Mesmeric music was what we had come for, and Deerhunter did not disappoint us. Cox’s voice, which he occasionally augmented with sustain and delay, was a thing of beauty. Although he generally blended in with the guitars, almost like another instrument, he would sometimes push his vocal chords up into a higher register, and soar above the instrumentation to powerful effect. He claimed to have a cold, but still sang with conviction and intent. Favorites like ‘Fluorescent Grey’ and ‘Nothing Ever Happened’ brought delight to the crowd, and although we didn’t need any winning over by the time the encore came around, Cox, who spent a good five minutes engaging us with cheerful and entertaining banter, even made the wonderful gesture of asking us what we wanted to hear for their final songs. Somebody requested ‘Operation,’ a jangly, disturbing number from Weird Era Cont, which they duly delivered, followed by the title track off Microcastle, which concluded proceedings for the evening. Seldom have I seen a band treat their audience with as much generosity and warmth as Deerhunter did last night. They were remarkable. In fact, they were so remarkable that I almost don’t want to clean my scarf, in vain the hope that a few last remnants of their arresting sonic formula might somehow still be preserved within its gentle fabrics.

The last time I felt this much anticipation for an album I was downloading live Radiohead bootlegs during the weeks and months that preceded the release of In Rainbows. I’d imagine that anybody else who watched Grizzly Bear’s advance live performances of ‘While You Wait for the Others’ and ‘Two Weeks’ on YouTube experienced the same sense of hope and excitement about what the rest of Veckatimest might have to offer as I did. Both songs are remarkable works of songcraft, with meticulous arrangements that balance unconventional chord progressions with moments of pure melodic grace.

At the heart of Grizzly Bear’s sound are the four-way vocal harmonies, which are put together with an impeccable sense of structure and timing. Everything, as Yorke would say, is in its right place. The musicianship, the quality of the vocals and the synergy with which the band combine these, and other components, is without peer. As much as has already been written about ‘Two Weeks’, I still can’t help but add a few words of my own. This song is a remarkable encapsulation of baroque pop beauty. I particularly like the way in which Ed Droste’s vocal effortlessly interchanges with the rest of the band’s harmonies (as well as with the backups provided by Beach House’s Victoria Legrand).

“Would you always / Maybe sometimes / Make it easy / Take your time.”

It’s a chorus so beautiful, with a melody so timeless that it’s almost absurd that no one else has come up with it before now. And that’s sort of the key to Grizzly Bear’s genius. As straightforward as their basic formula might be (vocal harmonies + a mix of conventional guitars, bass, drums and keys) they somehow manage to create music that feels familiar while still retaining a sense of striking singularity. It’s a rare blend, and one that we should savor. Compared to their preceding album, Yellow House, Veckatimest sounds more immediate, thanks to a greater emphasis on Christopher Bear’s complex, off-kilter drumming and a more driving set of contributions from Daniel Rossen’s guitar. But that’s not to say this isn’t still a dense work, because after all, anything created with the kind of attention to detail that Grizzly Bear always maintain is bound to take several listens to wholly absorb and appreciate. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Mainstream: 4 stars
Indie: 9.0
Kim: Genius

*****

Last week I promised to fill the music section with another round of hip-hop related content. Unfortunately, I encountered a few teething difficulties. First of all, Eminem’s album was so bad I couldn’t even get past the first song, let alone attempt a review of it. Secondly, after much deliberation (and a timely read of Juliet Buckler’s column from last week), I came to the conclusion that Lady Gaga, rather than Kanye West, is the greatest pop star of our generation.

Unfortunately she hasn’t been around for long enough for me to be able to argue her case with any serious amount of conviction, as I believe I would have been able to do for Mr. West. What about that Crackhouse 5 interview then? No luck there either, I’m afraid. In the end I just couldn’t be fucked emailing them. Perhaps next week? I guess it’s time to add Kelvin on Facebook…

That leaves me with the promised unconventional review of Jay-Z’s classic album, The Blueprint. This at least, I have managed to complete. I opted for the Haiku form, since it required the least amount of effort. [KW]

Jay-Z

The Blueprint

Jay-Z claims the throne
with Kanye’s sampled soul and
a watertight flow

Mainstream: 5 Stars
Indie: 10.0
Kim: Genius

Heartthrob indie kid makes EP. Gives EP to girlfriend as a valentine’s gift. Word gets around. Bloggers blog about it. Pitchfork gives it a 7.9. The single gets played on the HypeMachine a lot. Things go viral. You know the deal.

Right, that’s the banal backstory out of the way.

Passion Pit’s debut album is out now. It’s called Manners. The heartthrob, Michael Angelakos, has a band to support him this time around, so things are a little more muscular than on the Chunk of Change EP. Fuelled by live drums, sleek production and whirling oscillators, Manners is an exhilarating step forward. The original synth-pop formula remains largely the same though, and, as on Chunk of Change, the centerpiece is Angelakos’ attention-seeking caterwaul. It’s all heart-on-sleeve, high pitched and yelpy, blending Gibbard, and Mercer with enough neuroticism to make the Royal Tenenbaums seem like the Brady Bunch.

Some of you will hate him. I really thought the whole electronic-synth-indie thing was on the way out, but there’s something so damn fun about Passion Pit that makes me glad that people are still attempting this kind of stuff. Angelakos really shouldn’t be able to get away with it, but his impassioned earnestness and penchant for writing weird yet catchy chorus hooks carries him past the point of cliché and into the realm of pop glory. Sure, things start to get pretty overwrought by the end of the album, but moments like the sugary 80s chorus of ‘Kingdom Come’ and the immense open high-hat disco slam of ‘Little Secrets’ are so irresistible that you just can’t help but let Angelakos twist your heartstrings into an awkward indie-twirl dance. You should know better, but you enjoy it anyway. That’s what makes good pop. And that’s what this is. Nah-Nah-na-na-na-Nah hey-hey-heys and all.

They say that desperate times call for desperate measures. And these are most certainly desperate times. That essay on self-reflexive hip-hop mixtapes still needs to get written, nobody but the ever-reliable James has sent anything in this week, and my attempts at reviewing the new (and incredible) Bat for Lashes album keep getting sidetracked by my own tendency for overly obvious Kate Bush references. Sure, I went to a fantastic gig on the weekend, but unfortunately I was far too drunk to take in any of the details. Consequently, I am only able to report the fact that Diana Rozz = Amazing.
But wait!

There is one thing I could do.

***REWIND***

At the start of every week I poke my head into the Salient offices, remove my iPod earbuds and collect a stack of free sample CDs that god-knows-who sent in. Granted, there have been a few gems in the rough (DOOM, Melanie Pain and, uhhh, The Game), but generally speaking they’re just a bunch of drum-‘n’-bass mix CDs and the odd badly recorded independent release from somebody’s best mate’s mate’s band. Yup. Exciting stuff! At least the album covers are colourful. In fact, they are so colorful that in my desperation I’ve decided to round out this week’s music section by reviewing a stack of free CDs without even bothering to listen to them.
Never judge a book by its cover?

Fuck that!

I have neither the time, nor the patience, nor the inclination to listen to the absurd amount of mediocre music that arrives in the Arts ‘in-tray’ each week. I figure I might as well just judge this mountain of CDs, which I have been steadily accumulating over the course of the trimester, purely on the basis of their covers, tracklists, band names and album titles.

Savage—Savage Island (Dawn Raid)

Skulls? Savage Island? Bulging forearms? A FUCKING TIKKI TORCH‽ I bought exactly the same one for under $12 from Mitre10 in order to make the entrance to my large orange tent at Camp a Low Hum appear slightly more imposing. It didn’t work. And it doesn’t for Savage either, but fuck it. I love self-parody. The hilarity of this cover is more than enough to earn the man a solid mainstream score.

Mainstream: 4 Stars
Indie: 3.2
Kim: Disposable

The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band—Polkapocalypse (Monkey Recordings)

I would hate to have to try to guess what this sounds like. Thankfully, there’s a song called ‘The Attack of the Desert Sharks’ on the tracklist to help me formulate a clearer mental picture. The cover is downright hideous though. Just look at those brushstrokes! But maybe, just maybe, there’s a hint of self-deprecation, a flicker of irony buried in there somewhere. Hidden where only the most discerning of eyes can find it. My eyes! Perhaps it has something to do with the phallic point of that church spire?

Mainstream: 1 Star
Indie: 5.2
Kim: Genius

3OH!3—Want (Warner)

Fucking godawful name. Wikipedia says it’s pronounced “Three Oh! Three.” Like TB303 (that’s a type of synthesizer). DUDE! THAT’S SO, LIKE, APHEX TWIN, MAN!

Wait.

Wikipedia says it’s actually a reference to the area code for Boulder, Colorado. That’s still not much better though, is it? I do have to concede that I kind of like the cover. Its clever simplicity pleases my eyes. Still, they’re called 3OH!3. Unacceptable.

P.S. Caustic Window fo lyfe.

Mainstream: 4 Stars
Indie: 5.1
Kim: Disposable

Optimus Gryme—Eclipse LP (Optimus Gryme Recordings)

Oh no you didn’t.

Oh no you didn’t.

OH NO YOU DIDN’T.

Oh yes you did…

Mainstream: 3 Stars
Indie: 2.1
Kim: Disposable

This Theory of Static—Electricity (Creepshow Productions)

Tracklist:
1) ‘Set the Controls’
2) ‘Seven is Exploding’
3) ‘In Absentia’
4) ‘Stay Afraid’
5) ‘The God Shaped Hole’
6) ‘Seconds’
7) ‘Resurrection Song’
8) ‘Planets Align’
9) ‘To Ruin’
10) ‘To Walk Beneath Falling Bullets’
11) ‘[d_d.s11]’
12) ‘Oceans of Ashes’

I rest my case.

Mainstream: 1 Star
Indie: 0.0
Kim: Disposable

Cinema 90—Cinema 90 (Monkey Recordings)

I like the mysterious cover; it could easily contain a masterpiece. However, after digging a little deeper I am now of the opinion that the artist’s name is dubious, and that the appearance of the words ‘So Sweet – Feat. T Minus’ on the tracklist all but guarantee mediocrity.

Mainstream: 3 Stars
Indie: 6.2
Kim: Disposable

P.S. If anybody out there wants to rebut my highly uninformed opinions via a review then by all means get in touch, and I’ll hook you up with some free music. Likewise, anyone who wants to review anything new should also get in touch. Your help would be massively appreciated as we don’t have enough people contributing to the music section, which inevitably leads to things getting ugly (ala this week), or to me writing exclusively about my favorite topic: Hip-Hop.

Coming up in next week’s music section:

1) Why Kanye West is the greatest pop artist of our generation.
2) An interview with The Crackhouse 5*
3) An absolute evisceration of Eminem’s new album, Relapse, which I haven’t even heard yet, but is, according to Jackson (AKA god), terrible.
4) An overly hyperbolic review of Jay-Z’s classic album, The Blueprint, written in the style of either:

A) A Haiku
B) Iambic pentameter
C) Ebonics
D) Plain prose, but without using the letter E.

(I haven’t decided which yet. Any preferences?)

* Status of interview provisional, pending their acceptance in writing (I only pitched this idea to them in slurred speech at Mighty the other weekend. They’ve probably forgotten about it by now, and rightly so, but they seemed like nice lads, so I’m sure they’ll come through for me).

But I digress; these five musicians had it bad. Real bad. Collectively they got in brawls, spent time in jail, suffered from alcoholism, had two car accidents, two abusive stepfathers, multiple broken families, a heroin addiction, numerous breakups, were diagnosed with epilepsy, probably had bi-polar disorder, and definitely had five eye operations (the last of which was botched, damaging the eye permanently). Together they also attempted suicide several times, and were successful twice. One died by hanging himself with the clothes rack that was used to dry his baby daughter’s clothes. The other stabbed himself in the chest with a kitchen knife. Twice! Nasty.

Joy Division: Twenty Four Hours
“So this is permanence, love’s shattered pride / What once was innocence, turned on its side.”
For some reason, the scene where these two lines are read aloud by Sam Riley in the Curtis biopic Control has stuck in my mind more than anything else from that incredible film. They are the opening lyrics of ‘Twenty Four Hours’, a veritable “how to” for capturing feelings of depression, hopelessness and despair in four minutes and twenty-six seconds of music. Hope is almost completely absent. Only the last line, where Curtis sings Gotta find my destiny, before it gets too late, hints at a possible escape. That we know what Curtis’ destiny was to be doesn’t make the lyrics any less powerful either. The tension created between the sped-up verses and slower midsections is almost unbearable. Joy Division may have written a number of more memorable songs, but none were quite as sad as ‘Twenty Four Hours’. Poor Debbie. Poor Natalie. And poor, poor, poor Ian.

The Mountain Goats: No Children
“I am drowning / there is no sign of land / you are coming down with me / Hand in unloveable hand / and I hope you die / I hope we both die.”
Lyrically this song is fucking miserable. Thankfully John Darnielle was singing about a fictional couple, rather than a relationship of his own. Even with this knowledge it’s still incredibly unsettling to listen to, particularly because of its deceptively upbeat acoustic arrangement. Note to self: don’t ever play this song to prospective girlfriends.

Elliott Smith: Needle in the Hay
“I can’t beat myself / And I don’t want to talk / I’m taking the cure / So I can be quiet wherever I want / So leave me alone / You ought to be proud that I’m getting good marks”
Forever will this song be associated with that Wes Anderson suicide montage. It’s a shame really, because for all its misery there’s a moment in the song where Elliott Smith switches into his fragile falsetto in order to deliver the second half of the chorus, that still sounds as achingly beautiful to my ears as the first time I heard it.

Radiohead: No Surprises
“A handshake of carbon monoxide”
It might seem odd that the song featuring what might be Radiohead’s most cheerful melody ever is the one I’ve selected for a place on this list, but then again, that plinking glockenspiel had to be cheerful. Otherwise, lines like “A heart that’s full up like a landfill, / a job that slowly kills you, / bruises that won’t heal” would have been even harder to stomach. Radiohead fans might suggest that the heartbreaking Romeo & Juliet ballad ‘Exit Music’ would have been an even more depressing selection, but I actually find ‘No Surprises’ wallowing sense of resignation even more depressing than that “Hope you choke” line.

Kanye West: Say You Will
“I wish this song would really come true / I admit I still fantasize about you”
Ah, the controversial choice. I know this might sound strange, but Kanye’s been through a lot. Seriously! In the year before 808s and Heartbreaks was recorded, he split up with his fiancé and his mother died as a result of complications from a breast reduction and tummy tuck procedure. Simply put, her son’s fame led to her death. And if you’ve ever heard Kanye’s gorgeous tribute to his mother, ‘Hey Mama’ (which was written a couple of years before all this happened), you’d know that she was probably the most important person in his life. Sure, Kanye can be insufferable at times, but it’s also that same ego that makes so much of his music compelling. In Ye’s own words, “It’s lonely at the top.” As for the song itself, it’s six minutes of wandering agony and haunted choir backups. It’s also the song in which Kanye’s controversial auto-tune exercise comes off most successfully. His de-humanised vocals are left painfully exposed by its stark arrangement. A combination of thunking Japanese drums and weird sampled sonar pings drive the song inexorably towards its empty conclusion, like an icebreaker, plowing a lonely furrow through frozen arctic waters. And this was the guy who wrote ‘Gold Digger’?

Oh, and if you must know, honorable mentions go to Scott Walker, Nick Drake, Nas, Jeff Buckley, Beethoven, Steve Drozd, Cat Power, Kim Deal, 2Pac and Jim Morrison. Miserable fuckers the lot. No Kurt though, sorry Nirvana fans. Blame Gus Van Sant. I’m still pissed about the 97 minutes of my life that I wasted watching Last Days…

De La Soul, Busta Rhymes, Big Daddy Kane, Stevie Wonder, The Beastie Boys, Dee-Lite, Talib Kweli, Kid Kudi, Bob Power, Nas, Mobb Deep, Kanye West and many more.

I was particularly impressed with the way J.Period has seamlessly melded Tribe’s early minimalist jazzy production with the more polished ‘Ummah’ style that was used on their later records, as well as on Q-Tip’s solo work. J.Period drops in the odd sample here, and the occasional bright beat there, but generally speaking his M.O. is to simply keep things flowing steady, and then to get the hell out of the way once the MCs start doing their thing. And rightly so, after all, it’s pretty hard to improve on perfection…

Take J.Period’s ‘Excursions (Tribute Remix)’ for example, where the original Tribe beat is plainly augmented with the sound of B.I.G. saying “Remember back in the days.” This sample emphasises the first two lines of Q-Tip’s classic first verse, which J.Period splices in and out teasingly on his decks:

“Back in the day when I was a teenager / before I had status and before I had a pager.”

Out goes Tip, and in come De La Soul, whose MCs trade off over the original beat in classic Tribe style, spitting out new verses that pay a syllabically stunning tribute to the now instantly recognizable originals. Like all the collaborators, the De La Soul MCs are perfectly on point, but it’s still Q-Tip who steals the show. His mischievously optimistic pep remains one of the most distinctive voices in all of hip-hop, and the 49 (!) tracks on The [ABSTRACT] Best are sequenced in such a way as to be a perfect showcase of his pure talent. Whether you’re hearing a classic verse off ‘Award Tour’ or a high tempo, post-millennial workout like ‘Move’ you just can’t help but feel a sense of intense magnetism towards Tip’s charisma and crystal smooth flow. I think I’m pretty safe in saying that anyone with even the smallest amount of appreciation for hip-hop will enjoy The [ABSTRACT] Best. It’s a truly remarkable work, part documentary, part showcase, part tribute, part best of, and all genius.

Minus the MF, DOOM is back with his first full-length release of new material in three years, and what’s more, he’s come back sounding angry. Politcal angry. DOOM’s rasp is as muffled as ever, while his wordplay retains its obtuse polysyllabic complexities, but once you fully immerse yourself in the raw productions (courtesy of DOOM himself, regular contributor Madlib, Jake One, and the deceased J-Dilla, whose volume of beyond the grave product is starting to venture dangerously into 2Pac conspiracy theory territory) you’ll start to filter out occasional moments of irony and vitriol from the stream of consciousness muck and nonsense.

So what happened? Well, apparently the man discovered Bukowski, whose bleak apocalyptic poem Dinosauria, We (sampled on key cut ‘Cellz’), provides the album with its title. DOOM’s absurd humor is still present, as are the old cartoonish samples, but DOOM has done more than just recycle old tricks. Rather he’s using them as a kind of mask, enabling him to practise a newfound technique: subversion. A verse from the warbley-beat highlight ‘That’s that’ demonstrates the potency of DOOM’s newfound mix of humor, lyrical genius and scathing social critique nicely:

“Star like Obama, pull a card like oh drama! / Civil liberties / These little titties abilities riddle me, middle C / Give a MC a rectal hysterectomy / Electron removal of the bowls, foul technically / Don’t expect to see the recipe / Until we receive the check as well as the collection fee / More wreck than section Z / What you expect to get for free?”

To DOOM’s credit, he keeps things brief (the album is only 40 minutes long), and manages to steer clear of tirade territory. Well chosen guest appearances help add some effective variety too. Wu stalwarts Ghostface and Raekwan both make appearances, as do underground legends Freddie Foxxx (credited here as Bumpy Knuckles) and Slug. Of that quartet, Rae makes the biggest impact, rolling back the years with a menacing verse over DOOM’s vintage, RZA inspired, beat on the standout ‘Yessir!’

Unfortunately, DOOM makes a serious misstep with ‘Batty Boyz’, an unfortunate homophobic rant that automatically costs DOOM some points. Lines like “Becomes a problem when they try an attempt to go straight / And raise the monster rate in the whole population” are disgraceful pieces of macho bravado that give it instant throwaway status. Still, the rest of the Born Like This is so compelling that I can’t quite bring myself to flat-out dismiss it, so I guess I’m going to cop-out and instead label it a strong, though flawed, comeback.

“Street’s disciple, my raps are trifle/I shoot slugs from my brain just like a rifle/ Stampede the stage I leave the microphone split/Play Mr. Tuffy while I’m on some Pretty Tone shit/Verbal assassin my architect pleases/When I was twelve, I went to hell for snuffin’ Jesus”

Nas was 17 when he recorded ‘Live at the Barbeque,’ but many of his trademarks, which would later resurface on Illmatic, were already on display—internal rhymes, violent ghetto imagery, religious references and a flow as smooth as the aluminium chassis of my MacBook. The secret lay in Nas’ clever phrasing, which he used to convert his meter into a nicely flowing 10-syllable pattern. As good as ‘Live at the Barbeque’ was, Nas took things to another level on Illmatic. By opting to MC over low-tempo beats he created space for extra syllables, and consequently was able to construct some of the most complex and dexterous rhyming schemes ever committed to tape. Compare these lines from ‘The World is Yours’ to ‘Live at the Barbeque’ for a sense of what I’m getting at:

“I sip the Dom P, watchin Gandhi til I’m charged/Then writin’ in my book of rhymes, all the words pass the margin/To hold the mic I’m throbbin’, mechanical movement/Understandable smooth shit that murderers move with”

On Illmatic, Nas’ flow became more complex, his use of internal rhymes more frequent (smooth shit/move with) and his meter more fluid. Lyrically, the album demonstrated a remarkable amount of maturity for a 19-year-old (Nas’ age for most of the recording process). Sure, Nas might have a had a different kind of vocabulary to Shakespeare, but that’s because he was speaking in the language of his native Queensbridge projects. After all, the guy dropped out of school at the age of 14, and literally grew up pushing drugs on street corners. At the age of 18 he had to deal with the experience of a close friend getting shot dead, and of his brother getting shot in the leg. Consequently, Nas’ ghetto memories lent colour to, and provided the foundations for, the stories told on Illmatic. And despite his gritty experiences (not to mention the resulting financial gain achieved as a result of some of the more nefarious ones), Nas never really glorified the violence either. Instead, he was able to see the world in terms more complex than black and white, than good and evil. Recounting the good times as well as the bad, Nas was always aware of his mortality. As a consequence, Illmatic can get pretty dark (“I never sleep/‘cause sleep is the cousin of death,” “Life’s a bitch, and then you die”), but thankfully Nas never quite lost hope. The turning point can be heard on ‘Life’s a Bitch’, where Nas paired down his future to four possible outcomes (“get rich from the game, end up in jail, get shot, or find a way out”):

“Now it’s all about cash in abundance, niggaz I used to run with/is rich or doin’ years in the hundreds/I switched my motto—instead of sayin’ fuck tomorrow/that buck that bought a bottle could’ve struck the lotto”

Fittingly, Illmatic would become the real- world manifestation of Nas’ metaphor—it really did end up being his avenue of escape, his “[buck] that struck the lotto.” Ironically, it also ended up looming like a monolith over everything else he’s done since. Nas would never again manage to consistently capture and bottle the inspiration that produced Illmatic. Jay-Z called him out for having “one good album every ten-year average,” and although Nas has since managed to disprove that thesis thanks to some solid post-millenial releases like God’s Son, The Lost Tapes and The Nigger Tape, Illmatic remains his only true classic. But what a classic it is. Sure, it doesn’t have the kind of stunning pop hooks you might find on The Blueprint or Late Registration, but it doesn’t have filler like ‘Girls, girls girls,’ or ‘Celebration’ either. Rather, Illmatic is more of a cerebral experience, with productions that serve to shine a spotlight on the lyrics, rather than to steal the show, and consequently, run the risk of relegating the MC to a placeholder on the verse and a hook-source for the chorus. The hidden defence (which, for some strange reason, Nas never employed during his beef with Jay) was that, when it comes to pure hip-hop lyricism, nobody has ever managed to top Illmatic.

Sadly, Begone’s songs rarely manage to get out of the languid, mid-tempo beat rate that the Junior Boys seem to have decided is their natural state of sonic equilibrium. The closest Begone comes to getting interesting is probably on ‘Work.’ Once all its synthesised elements have meshed together, singer Greenspan decides to make the effort to warm himself out of his glassy frostbreath state for just long enough to produce a moment of sex-charged swagger, declaring “Work it baby / Work it” in a manner that vaguely recalls his delivery on ‘In The Morning.’ Unfortunately, ‘Work’ falls short, because the Junior Boys never manage to deliver a payoff comparable to the REACH-FOR-THE-LASERS-BITCH synth bleep that helped turn ‘In The Morning’ into a club-floor-classic. Having listened to Begone a few times I can’t help but think that the Junior Boys are stuck between a rock and a cold place. Simply put, none of the tracks are propulsive enough to really make me want to dance, and their attempts at balladry are never affecting enough for me to want to care. They could do a lot worse than seek inspiration from their more dynamic compatriots Faunts, whose stunning new album, Feel.Love.Thinking.Of., keeps sounding better and better the more the temperature of my bedroom drops. Then again, they might run the risk of sounding like copycats, and that wouldn’t be very cool now, would it?

Conundrum!