What More Can I Say

The clue's in the title; there isn't a lot more anyone can say about Vampire Weekend that you haven't already read or seen elsewhere. Where the first album was a bit of a mess, the band don't sound like they're competing with Mark Mothersbaugh to score a Wes Anderson film on Contra.

If it ended with the final strains of Giving Up the Gun, then Contra would be an early contender for album of the year (not that this will actually stop it...) but Diplomat's Son is just too long and I Think Ur A Contra sounds like the start of Chores by Animal Collective without becoming anything like the madcap bounce of anything by the Baltimore four-piece.

The rest of Contra is solid, with lead single Cousins providing a spark akin to A-Punk and the debatable 'afrobeat' stuff that always accompanies any review of any Vampire Weekend album is really good this time instead of a distraction, as the opening salvo from Horchata through to Holiday is a freewheeling ode to the ghost of summer future. The autotune makes sporadic appearances and isn't as bad as it sounds. They still sound like they're fumbling with the keys to open the front door, but once Vampire Weekend get in to the house, they'll throw a good party.

***


They should use a pic like this for the front of Marina and the Diamonds' album instead of those weird popart things, they just make her look a bit plastic. There's a lot of girls in the 'pop' market today, they've managed to keep it just on the right side of over-saturation but things always get overplayed in music these days so rather than mill through them all, I'll settle with Marina. She reminds me of Ladyhawke but with more than one good song and there's a cattiness that isn't quite as grating as Lily Allen. GLOVES OFF!

History of a Boring Town

If the last one was somewhat obvious, then this shouldn't be too much of a surprise either. The second in the tedious series of my ten favourite albums of the decade is...

Arcade Fire - Funeral




"There's something wrong; in the heart of man."

Arcade Fire came out of nowhere. Funeral was released in the U.S. as 2004 was petering out and hit the UK in early 2005. They might not be the same band in 2009 (take Lenin from this year's Dark was the Night compilation for Red Hot) but their place in the musical landscape of this decade is assured.

The story behind Funeral is well-versed now. Named so because of the deaths of family members in the recording process, the record takes a long look at life, death and the altogether. How else do you end up with songs like Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)? A blissful look at relationships in towns: "And if my parents are crying, then I'll dig a tunnel from my window to yours." As Funeral moves up and down between emotional turbulence and excessive introspection, it climbs from wall to another, with sweet, pensive missives in Une Année Sans Lumière and Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles) to the madness of Neighborhood #3 (Power Out). As the emotion starts to drag you down the pit, a burst of life breaks out from somewhere in this discord of instruments and sets you straight again.

The spiralling angst of Crown of Love and Wake Up remain the peak of the album and the band itself. A right kicking to death on several adverts hasn't diluted the potency of the latter, which remains the best song in an Arcade Fire live set. The chugging guitar motors through the song like a tug boat, people scream and wail for some unknown loss, summer disappears... A shout of discord; "I guess we'll just have to adjust!" Whereas Crown of Love wallows in guilt and self-pity before a controlled explosion of violin takes it off the meds, Wake Up bursts forth straight after, a release of pent up hurt and woe.

The Regine-led tracks seems to get a buffeting in some circles but they are a perfect back-end road block to separate Wake Up from Rebellion (Lies)'s rallying call, "sleepin' in is givin' in, so lift those heavy eyelids." Rebellion (Lies), as with Funeral on the whole, is so intense that it seems to pass in a flash, a spark. This is dispelled byIn The Backseat which moves from a tense build of strings and piano and becomes an absolute shitstorm of noise, akin to something from Björk's Post.

What should be a mess is a swirling love letter to the people and places that inspired it. Funeral sounds like nothing else and expels years of universal anguish in less than 45 minutes. There have been imitators since, but they'll never achieve that.

Brink of the Clouds

With the end of the decade approaching, its about time to evaluate what has made it exciting. Ten records for ten years, not that this means every year will be represented, necessarily. The term best has been precluded by favourite as that makes it a bit more subjective. Which is nice. So, onwards and upwards, in no particular order. To start us off, an under-appreciated gem...

Pearl Jam - Binaural




Not a surprise. The second best rock album of the decade saw Eddie Vedder and the crew at the peak of their powers with an album that distils all of the band's influences to create something that wouldn't be out of place in the back catalogues of Pink Floyd or The Who. Sleight of Hand is a brooding, sonic masterpiece that ebbs and flows like cross-town traffic, culminating in a crescendo of Vedder's cracked vocal and wailing guitars; it sounds like it could knock down buildings. Breakerfall is over before its even begun, a smash'n'grab track, swirling by in a cluster of charged aggression and pinpoint noise.

"When we looked up the word 'binaural,' it meant to listen with both ears. So it seemed like a fitting title for the album" / Stone Gossard

Binaural sees Gossard produce some of his best work on a Pearl Jam album, in terms of feelings as well as riffs. Gossard creates polar opposites in Thin Air and Rival; as Thin Air explores the emotional release of being in love, Rival is Gossard reflecting, an attempt to understand the mindset of a killer and those they touch, on the barren aftermath of the Columbine massacre.

While the naysayers would point to tracks such as Gods' Dice or Evacuation as a sign of the album's inconsistency, it is worth understanding the fragility of the band in the face of uncertainty and change, something which is approached in both Light Years and Nothing as It Seems. While Gods' Dice is by no means Jeff Ament's key contribution to Pearl Jam's history (that would be Nothing As It Seems), the swirling mess it became is emblematic of a band cutting loose and playing their full hand.

"There is a lot of music out there that is very easy to digest but we never wanted to be part of it" / Eddie Vedder

This is not to say that the album didn't suffer a troubled genesis. Jack Irons' departure saw Pearl Jam recruit their fourth drummer in six albums, former Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron, whilst lead guitarist Mike McCready went into rehab for an addiction to prescription drugs. To top it all off, Vedder had the music for the songs that would become Insignificance and Grievance, but no lyrics. Nothing was forthcoming. Vedder swore himself off the guitar, then he set eyes on a ukelele...

Soon Forget would be forgotten, sandwiched as it is between Sleight of Hand and the focussed, destructive distortion of Parting Ways, but for its innocent uke jangle, Soon Forget is betrayed by a darker set of lyrics as Vedder waves goodbye to a man of destitute greed. He holds wealth, but he is a man without purpose, truly insignificant.

At the prompting of producer Tchad Blake (Binaural was the first Pearl Jam album not produced by Brendan O'Brien), the album focusses wholeheartedly on moods and feelings, whether those are the highest highs (Thin Air) or the crushing lows (Light Years, Parting Ways). Indeed, the mood of fan favourite Sad (originally called Letter to the Dead) was deemed too "pop" by the band, according to Ament, and was cut, as was the Blake-endorsed Fatal. Although both of these tracks would get the eventual release they deserved on Lost Dogs, its difficult to see how the album could have been considered poorer for the inclusion of these songs. A straight swap with Gods' Dice and Evacuation would see little argument about which is Pearl Jam's best studio album - Binaural by a knockout.

Binaural's original tracklisting:

01 Breakerfall
02 Insignificance
03 Evacuation
04 Letter to the Dead (Later renamed Sad)
05 Rival *
06 Grievance
07 Light Years
08 Of the Girl *
09 Thin Air
10 Nothing as It Seems *
11 Fatal
12 Sleight of Hand *
13 Soon Forget *
14 In the Moonlight
15 Parting Ways
16 Education

* indicates use of binaural recording

The pressed album certainly flows better, but whether this is due to familiarity is not so clear. At sixteen tracks, however, a cull was inevitable, as 2002's Riot Act feels bloated at fifteen; as above, whether the right tracks remained in place is an issue of personal preference, but the album's quality remains undiminished. The Guardian's dismissal of the album's "duds" in its 2000 review could well include tracks like Grievance and Rival, but the anger and emotion that is prevalent in the tracks lifts them high above Gods' Dice or Evacuation; as Vedder wails on Grievance, "you don't give blood, then take it back again. We're all deserving something more".

"Because Mike wasn't all there, and there was a 'get-to-know-you' thing with Matt, everyone wasn't on the same page" / Stone Gossard

The evolution of Pearl Jam has continued because of their embrace of the past and a burning hope for a better future and this is apparent in the use of binaural recording techniques on some of the songs, one of the most successful of which is the Gossard-penned Of the Girl. A love story brimming with sweeping guitars that sound like trains edging away from a station platform, a juddering, bluesy mid-section sees the occasional jams of a Pearl Jam live show brought into the studio. Small tremblings of guitar not dissimilar to Jimi Hendrix echo all over the backdrop; like finding buried treasure. Of The Girl is full of mystery, even after the seven or so years that I've been listening to Binaural, I've never truly gotten to the bottom of the track, never completely discerned just what it is that creates such an air of abstract detachment that draws you in completely, not unlike the album itself.

"The reason that we went with Tchad Blake is because he provides an amazing atmosphere to songs.... So, I think we wanted the artwork to represent that" / Jeff Ament

The emptiness of giant spaces and the feeling of being a miniscule something within them prompted the use of photographs from NASA's Hubble Telescope for the album's cover, inserts and liner notes. Examining these with a soundtrack of Nothing As It Seems creates a dense, crushing feeling that Pearl Jam never captured before or since, encapsulated by Vedder's mutter, "a scratching voice all alone, its nothing like your baritone".

Ultimately, as highlighted by the selection below, Binaural is about a band examining a new direction, and although Pearl Jam didn't reinvent themselves to the extent that Radiohead did with Kid A, the progression from Yield, a balls-out rock'n'roll album, to an introspective work full of elongated tracks and spacial arrangements (the beautiful juxtaposition of April Cameron's viola and Justine Foy's cello against the guitars on Parting Ways) helped Pearl Jam to create their most atmospheric work.

A fractured, aching masterpiece.

The true meaning of Light Years

To Hell with Good Intentions

The Dodos, Live@Bush Hall, London, 3/09/09

It often smacks of a lack of confidence or ability when a writer reverts to trite comparisons with a band’s larger peers in ‘the great scheme of things’ but when you’re talking about a band like The Dodos it just happens to be the sensible course of action. Sensibility does not always seem to come to the fore tonight, songs seem to stretch out and on forever when they might just be over a terse six or seven minutes (and they aren’t all Red and Purple, either). It all ends up as an over-complicated mess of simplified-folk mugging. The rolling plains atmosphere of opener Paint the Rust recalls Okkervil River or The Shins at their peak but those heights aren’t scaled again until the evening draws to a close with a peachy transition from Fools through to Walking and a furious Red and Purple.

Chances are you’ll see where I’m going with this. The critics haven’t been very loud in vociferous praise for new LP Time to Die and as an onlooker versed in the ways of their lopsided precursor, Visiter, it probably won’t get a look in at the next spotify session (just checked and the first album isn’t on there). There are times where the songs just seem to draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag and the chatter at the back of the hall becomes a little more pronounced with each passing track. Everyone quiets down when God? busts out, all picked out on Meric Long’s gross finger nail (rather long) and explodes, as they do all night, at its conclusion but all the dancing is reserved for the encore. The intimacy of the surrounds and the skills of the duo (plus friend on vibraphone!) married to their collegiate looks evokes a similarity to Vampire Weekend in every sense; the misjudged pacing of the set is forgivable but there are simply too many songs that exit the memory stage left as soon as the final strains disappear.

A conscious build-up of energy between artist and audience is rare to see these days and it does seem to take place this evening but the captivation seems, at times, wasted or, worse, ignored. Support band Coastguards had remarked earlier in the evening that this was their third night on the tour, “on the first night, they were jetlagged and they put on an awesome show, last night they were tired and tore the shit out of the place… so tonight ought to be pretty special”; the environment portended this modest soothsaying to be true but in reality it sinks into more of a dispirited ebb and flow between the magnificent and the must-try-harder. There are moments when the roof really does come close to blowing off and then it seems like lullaby time, let’s all get ready for bed. Nothing else momentous, just a tad more finger-picking and a slump into mediocrity, until an ornate construction leads into a billowing Fools and everyone involved shakes the lead out, a little late, but the crowd go ballistic anyway.

The Dodos have chosen a perfect moniker, as they come close to signing their own execution notices at the midway stage after a promising opening fifteen or so minutes, which no band can afford to do in a saturated market where the punters are starting to count their pennies. It might be a(nother) lazy cliché but… The Dodos seem to want to have their cake and eat it but that just seems like a one-eyed approach when everybody can tell you the icing is what you ought to savour. Who’s the fool now?

The Real Thing

The indie guitar template is being dispensed with! First The Horrors, now The Maccabees! There is hyperbole all over the place about Primary Colours (listen free here) but with a powerhouse independent like XL (Thom Yorke, White Stripes, Vampire Weekend) behind them then you ought to expect it. This isn't to discredit what they're doing, Sea Within A Sea is a monster, it's just a bit different with The Maccabees. The first album was chocker with poppy singles but there was a lack of bite; no real substance.

Love You Better is a new beast. They've added horns and keys to their arsenal and sculpted a track full of self-doubt and longing that makes better use of those yelpy vocals. Its a lot more fulfilling and there is a greater maturity about the band themselves. The song builds and you expect some sort of woolly, overwrought machismo to burst forward but the song maintains the tenderness of the opening bars and climaxes with a tidy flourish. Nothing over the top, no bolshy megalomania, just a well-weighted pop song. The majority of the guitar bands that have come and gone since the turn of the century have faded away because they have failed to match the initial hype/buzz/whatever (thanks, internet) or because they were always a bit crap and people just love finding new things these days rather than stuff they genuinely enjoy. Love You Better is a captivating listen and ranks with Glass and Hysteric as my favourite track of the year so far.

Shame that I can't listen to them more, but The Power of Lard is taking up the majority of my time at the moment...

Brighter Days

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

Saccharine.

Buy here or here if you want an exclusive bonus disc mixed by the band.