enth album in their sixteen year career (not including self-released albums and collaborations). Athens is a town that has a reputation for having produced some of America’s finest acts over the last thirty or so years, and I definitely hear some of the same magic that I hear on early releases from REM and the Indigo Girls flowing through here.
this is an album which is gently rocky, and folky, and having been playing this record a lot over the last few weeks, one of the finest this year. Highlights include the opening ‘The Taking Under’ and the heartbreaking ‘Stranger In The Window.’ In fact, if you have any passion for gentle ‘alt-rock’ that is never aggressive nor bland, and indeed at times almost pastoral, you should own this album.
The album is dedicated to the legendary Vic Chesnutt, who was both a collaborator and friend of the band, who died on Christmas Day last year. I believe he would have loved this album; I certainly do.
The album is entitled Content and will be their first album of new material since 1995’s Shrinkwrapped. Funded entirely over the Internet, it will be release
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at The Guardian. T’would appear that sweat, tears and actual blood have gone into the making of this album. More than thirty years after the Damaged Goods EP, it would appear they still mean it man. And that’s more than you can say for Lydon these days…
to mind Fahrenheit 451 and The Nightporter (probably erroneously but I mean it as a compliment), which I find haunting, disturbing and yet beautiful at the same time.
See what you think…
And if you would like to
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the Johnsons -‘Swanlights’ (Rough Trade)
A few weeks ago, the Mercury Music Prize announced its’ winner and the usual debate(s) ensued about whether the award ever goes to anyone who does anything exciting musically, and whether it will have any positive bearing whatsoever on sales.
One man who showed that it most definitely can do both is Antony Heg
his sophomore album I Am a Bird Now. A few months previously, someone had come into the record shop where I worked at the time and I had to confess ignorance at who he
was. ‘You’ll know soon,’ said my customer, as she purchased the album. I did indeed -and word started to spread.
But awards or not, the important thing is that here we have another excellent album from Ant
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ony and the Johnsons (as he pointed out in last months Mojo, in deference to Marc (Almond) and the Mambas), and it has arrived less than two years since the last, The Crying Light. That voice is present there as always, and the music is there, but subtle for much of the time. Yet again he has produced another absolutely stunning album.
There’s a number of highlights here – the single ‘Thank You For Your Love’, ‘The Spirit Was Gone’ and for me the outstanding moment is the collaboration with Bjork on the almost nursery-rhyme like ‘Flétta’ and which could fit comfortably alongside most of the material from PJ Harvey’s White Chalk album. Sometimes his music may be dark – yet there are moments to suggest that this maybe his most upbeat
album yet; it feels more like spring than the autumn which so often permeates from and into his world.
Antony Hegarty is a true original, and a God given talent. There’s songs on here that are as good as any he’s done thus far; and whether the next album emerges in six months or ten years, I’ll be waiting, and appreciaiting what he’s produed in the meantime.
Their debut album is out on October 25, entitled The Fool and this has been made available as a free download and has a gorgeous video to go with it, to boot. It’s directed by Shannyn Sossamon, who is Jenny Lee’s sister, no less…
They are about to hit the UK, having been touring wi
Come this time of year, and particuarly given the Scottish weather, i guess a kind of melancholy seeps in.
And there’s all kinds of music that’s suitable for that, but the album I’ve been playing most over the last few days is U2’s October. In many ways it’s one of the forgotten gems of their catalogue -which now tsretch
es back thirty years. It’s not the debut, the commercial breakthrough album, the drastic change of direction album, the hello we are now the biggest band in the world album, the greatest album in their catalogue…or so on. When the first U2 best of appeared in 1998, there was only one track that appeared – ‘October’ played at the end of the best of U2 1980-1990 if you left ‘All I Want Is You’ to play.
U2 appeared at around the same time as Simple Minds and Echo and the Bunnymen. All three who produced great records (an
d some rubbish), often got bracketed together as bands who’d come out of the post-punk era, and both U2 and the Minds were never seen as being as experimental (or perhaps as cool) as the Bunnymen. And the Bunnymen’s Ian
McCulloch’s famous lips would no doubt turn into a snarl at someone still bracketing his band together with those two all these decdes later.
U2 actually made it onto Top Of the Pops with ‘Fire’ in 1981, which reached the dizzying heights of no.35 in the UK, although it reached no.4 in Ireland. Is this a classic TOTP moment? Well…perhaps in retrospect…
The band were in the midst of a spiritual crisis; all bar bassist Adam Clayton were members of a religious sect called Shalom and nearly called it a day, before deciding to leave Shalom instead. Certainly themes of Christianity and spirituality run through much of U2’s work but no more than on this album, and very much through the two singles ‘Fire’ and ‘Gloria,’ the latter must rank as one of the few singles to have brought latin into the charts (no.55 in the UK, no.10 in Ireland)
But it’s some of the other tracks that show just ho
w U2 could and would experiment. The Uilleann pipes were played by Vincent Kilduff on ‘Tomorrow’, a song that deals with Bono’s mother’s death in 1974, which had as profound effect on him musically, spiritually and lyrically as John Lennon dealing with the sense of abandonment by his mother Julia or Madonna’s loss to her mother of cancer.
‘There’s a black car at the side of the road, don’t go to the door don’t go to the door,’ sings Bono. If you don’t
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believe that U2 have the ability to move you then listen to this track at least. ‘Who heals the wounds? Who heals the scars? Open the door, open the door.’
And the title track, less than two and a half minutes long, just The Edge on piano and Bono singing. Somewhere between a lullaby, a lament and a nursery rhyme: ‘October, and the streets are stripped bare of all they wear -what do I care? October and kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall -but you go on…and on…’
I can’t speak for whether this album has the same resonance for someone living in the southern hemisphere -I’m inlined to think that spring there has the same resonance of rebirth that we have in the northern hemisphere. But the terrible beauty of the autum at the other end of the Celtic fringe, of this album, resonates in the weather nearly thirty years later.
Well, they are still going very strong in 2010 and despite the departure of guitarist Reland McFarland, the core trio of Elliott Frazier (guitars & vocals), Alex Gehring (bass & vocals), and Daniel Coborn (drums) are going to be causing
Their debut LP Colour Trip will be released in 2011, with a single ‘So High’ preceeding it. They are playing in the UK in November and December, including as support to The Wedding Present, at Edinburgh and Aberdeen, amongst other places.
This is the first taster for now – I’ve always had high hopes for this band and I can’t wait to see what’s next…
e currently on hiatus -am hoping that this is not a metaphor for split (in fact, while I’m on it, hoping that it’s just a ‘hiatus’ for Electrelane, too).
Anyway, Laetita Sadier has recently issued a solo set, entitled The Trip.
Pitchfork, for what it’s worth, loved it and I’m planning to get my grubby little mits on it, after hearing this track, courtesy of them. The album came out last month…
Meanwhile, a new Stereolab album, Not Music, which was recorded at the same time as their last album, Chemical Chords. This will be out on November 15, which is a pretty cool birthday present for yours truly…
