Tag Archives: Mute

Barry Adamson – Brighton Rockers (Central Control single, 2012)

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single // Brighton Rockers

central control | postcard-flexi/dl no cat ref | 03/09/2012

Barry Adamson released ‘Brighton Rockers’ on his own Central Control label in September 2012. Released as a single track download and also as a limited-edition flexi-postcard record, all profits and additional donations are donated to the charity CALM, the Campaign Against Living Miserably, which seeks to reduce the suicide rate of men. More information on CALM, its aims and its plans to deal with the biggest killer of men under the age of thirty-five can be found at their website.

The ‘sleeve’ shows an idyllic Brighton blue sky and a pedestrian taking a break on one of the benches dotted along the promenade. The music is a nice heavy slice of solid dub reggae, all thunderous bass, staccato piano and reverb-heavy rhythms and interludes, with some authentic horns and organ lines washing into the mix at times. The inclusion of some soulful, meditative sax and tinkly jazz organ stops this from becoming too dub-derivative, creating a typically noirish Adamson take on the genre, and a hitherto under-explored area of Adamson’s musical interest. The result is something that sounds like an authentic, well-researched take on the dub template, whilst retaining an identifiable distinctly Adamson groove (and, in the title, his trademark wry sense of humour) at the same time.

The summer may sadly be all but over, but this track is just about the best soundtrack I can think of for kicking back and relaxing on Brighton’s pebble beach in the sunshine.

postcard-flexi/dl:
1. Brighton Rockers

First posted 2012; re-edited 2015

(c) 2015 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence
  

A Conversation With Erasure’s Andy Bell

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I recently spoke to Erasure‘s Andy Bell about his role in Barney Ashworth’s musical theatre show Torsten – The Bareback Saint. The show ran during the 2014 Edinburgh Festival and was accompanied by an album of the songs from the production, released via Strike Force / Cherry Red.

Upon the release of Variance, a collection of remixes and new versions of songs from the album, and ahead of Bell treading the boards again next year for the follow-up instalment, Torsten – The Beautiful Libertine, I interviewed Andy for This Is Not Retro. The conversation can be found here.

Anyone who knows me remotely well will know that Erasure have always been, and always will be, my favourite band. To get the opportunity to talk to someone whose work you’ve literally grown up with is always a privileged moment, and I am continually grateful for such chances.

I had always intended to write up a review of the performance of Torsten that a friend and I watched in Edinburgh last year, but never did. In its place, these are the rough notes I took at the time, along with a text message to a friend, all of which would have become a review if I’d just bothered to finish it.

Andy Bell – Torsten The Bareback Saint, Edinburgh 13 August 2014

In the introduction to the programme that accompanied Andy Bell’s first Edinburgh Festival show, he described taking on the role of Torsten in this song cycle as a challenge. As he climbed up the stairs to the small stage in full top hat and tails while singing the song ‘Teacher Teacher’ it was pretty obvious to the twenty or so people in the lecture theatre-cum-studio that this came pretty naturally to Bell.

‘It was really good. He came on in hat and tails, at one point was in heels, a vest and a sparkly pair of pants and ended up killing himself in a dressing gown. Very dramatic, quite funny, stirring and emotional. Boy can he sing! Only about twenty of us there.’ – text to a friend immediately after watching Torsten The Bareback Saint on 13 August 2014.

Suicide. Robin Williams.

Sax

Showgirl headgear.

Snarl. Disgust. Rage.

Weston-Super-Mare.

(c) 2015 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence // interview (c) 2015 This Is Not Retro

New Order – Music Complete (Mute Artists album, 2015)

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New Order release their tenth studio album – their first for Mute Records – on 25 September.

I reviewed the album for This Is Not Retro. You can read my review here.

(c) 2015 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

Nitzer Ebb – NE + HH Live At The Markthalle (Major Records DVD, 2012)

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dvd / 2 x lp // NE + HH Live At The Markthalle

  
major records | dvd 1nepdvd2012 | 02/12/2012
2 x lp edition: emmo.biz/kompuphonic | 2 x lp ezr011 | 02/02/2013

NE + HH Live At The Markthalle is Nitzer Ebb‘s first live concert DVD and was released by Major Records, a German imprint, in late 2012. The film captures the trio of Doug McCarthy, Bon Harris and Jason Payne at the Markthalle in Hamburg (Hamburg’s city code on car registration plates being HH, hence the title) on 30 December 2011 as part of a worldwide tour to promote Industrial Complex, the band’s first album since 1994’s Big Hit. The DVD was released as a limited, numbered edition of 500 (mine was #479) swathed in a black sleeve with bold, This Total Age packaging and a booklet of photos and credits.

Nitzer Ebb have always had a very definite image, mostly through their sleeve designs and use of simple but bold logos, and there’s something about the way the trio are dressed on stage that doesn’t quite seem to fit with that. Doug is dressed in a suit and tie, slim-fit white shirt and sunglasses, looking youthful and effortlessly cool, like he’d walked into the Markthalle straight from a Ferrari parked on the curbside after a long day of directing a movie in LA; Bon and Jason on the other hand are both wearing baggy slacks and braces, for all intents and purposes looking a little like extras from The Untouchables. What’s most remarkable is that Doug manages to keep his tie and shades on for the whole show – I have to loosen my tie just from the exertion of sitting at a desk writing emails all day, let alone leaping about a stage for nearly ninety minutes.

Throughout, Doug stalks the stage menacingly, every word delivered with an aggressive confrontational air; Jason casually bashes out percussion and percussion like he’s not really concentrating; Bon smacks pads and various percussion instruments with the same rude grace that a kid would approach a toy drum, waving his sticks aloft and generally looking like he’s having a lot of fun.

‘Let Your Body Learn’ is all aggressive, faithful urgency while ‘Shame’ has a real sense of the emphatic, even if it seems a bit lightweight delivered straight after the set’s opener. ‘Hearts And Minds’ becomes a minimal electro funk track, with Doug pointing a finger at the crowd every time he he shouts the word ‘you‘. Industrial Complex‘s ‘Once You Say’ includes synths that sound like pure electricity, blended with a tight rhythmic strictness, Doug and Bon commanding the crowd with the lyric ‘move that body‘ like they needed any more encouragement.

Alongside a particularly energetic ‘Control I’m Here’, two of the set’s highlights are the classics ‘Lightning Man’ and ‘Blood Money’. ‘Lightning Man’ sounds as noir as ever, the jazz / latin fusion and aggressive chorus at the centre still sounding unexpected after the muttered prose of the verses. ‘Blood Money’ is approached with a much harder edge than the album original, with Doug appearing to be taken over by the sampled religious talk of spirits toward the end, body jerking manically, just as it does on the cynical ‘Payroll’, only here interspersed with lewd gestures when he sings ‘you better suck it‘. The same sense of sexuality appears on ‘For Fun’ with Doug emphasising the point with some dubious hand gestures and by holding his crotch for most of the song.

‘Ascend’ is given a plaintive, emotional reading but the dense build of the music seems a bit lost as Doug’s vocal is just a little too loud. Most of ‘Join In The Chant’ is true to form – a series of shouted motifs over a thudding drum track, metallic percussion and a sluggish, funky bassline – but it’s spoiled by some percussion sounds at the start and end that make it sound like a PWL pop track; I genuinely thought it was going to open out into ‘The Locomotion’ by Kylie. Perhaps it was intended as a tongue in cheek reference to PWL mixmaster Phil Harding having worked with the band on This Total Age, but despite my reservations, the crowd clearly love it.

After a very long wait for an encore, we’re rewarded with a storming version of ‘Getting Closer’, Doug and Bon prowling the stage and flinging their lines out into the audience like cluster bombs, followed by ‘I Give To You’, which sounds as majestically sinister and harrowing as ever.

My only criticism of what is an otherwise good film is the over-emphasis on crowd footage. There are so many shots of the tall blonde woman in the front row that I’m starting to think she’s actually part of the band. Overall though, it’s a small gripe for what is a good, if not lavishly-produced, document of Nitzer Ebb on stage.

The DVD also includes murky versions of ‘Let Your Body Learn’, ‘Shame’, ‘Hearts And Minds’ (sounding a little like a proto acid house track) and ‘Lightning Man’ recorded at the Blackfield Festival in 2008. Doug – complete with military jackboots – appears to have been in a bad mood that day, and only really seems switched on when delivering a particularly emphatic version of the last track (though he also seems to miss some of his cues to start singing). Also included is an interview with Bon, Doug and Jason sitting on the end of a bed in someone’s very basic hotel room. Bon and Doug do most of the talking, and subjects vary from stuff about how demoralising it can be to go out on tour, to how chilled out it is to live and work in LA, and to Bon and Jason’s then-current work developing characters for stop-motion animation. The most interesting chat comes when they discuss how various tracks on Industrial Complex came about, including an amusing deadpan comment from Doug about roping Depeche Mode’s Martin Gore in to do backing vocals on ‘Once You Say’ because they wanted ‘a big, busty black woman sound’. There’s also a frank acknowledgment that trying to write a song like ‘Down On Your Knees’ in the style of ‘Let Your Body Learn’ is really difficult and that it’s ‘hard to regain that naïvete again in the studio’. Bon goes on to admit resignedly that it took two months to come up with a simple bassline for the track.

Since I started writing this, it’s been announced that Emmo.biz/Kompuphonik will release a limited-edition audio version of the Markthalle gig as a double LP in February 2012. According to the press release the album will be released as a limited edition of 500 copies in a gatefold sleeve, 400 of which will be pressed on transparent vinyl while the remaining copies will be issued on red vinyl inside a box containing a t-shirt, flag, badge and poster. Undoubtedly one for the Nitzer Ebb completist only.

Thanks to Hayo at Major Artists for the review copy of the DVD, and also to Jürgen for the vinyl press release and for reminding me about German number-plates.

dvd:
1. Intro
2. Let Your Body Learn
3. Shame
4. Hearts And Minds
5. Once You Say
6. Lightning Man
7. For Fun
8. Hit You Back
9. Blood Money
10. Payroll
11. Godhead
12. Ascend
13. Down On Your Knees
14. Murderous
15. Control I’m Here
17. Join In The Chant
18. Getting Closer
19. I Give To You

Blackfield Festival:
1. Let Your Body Learn
2. Shame
3. Hearts And Minds
4. Lightning Man

Interview:
1. Jason Payne, Doug McCarthy and Bon Harris interview

2xlp:
A1. Intro
A2. Let Your Body Learn
A3. Shame
A4. Hearts And Minds
A5. Once You Say
B1. Lightning Man
B2. For Fun
B3. Hit You Back
B4. Blood Money
B5. Payroll
C1. Godhead
C2. Ascend
C3. Down On Your Knees
C4. Murderous
C5. Control I’m Here
D1. Join In The Chant
D2. Getting Closer
D3. I Give To You

First published 2012; re-edited 2015

(c) 2015 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

Goldfrapp – Head First (Mute Records album, 2010)

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mute records | lp/c/cd/i stumm320 | 22/03/2010

Head First finds the duo of Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory abandoning not only the hippy etherialism of last album Seventh Tree but also the confrontational, over-sexed electronica – in the vein of, say, Peaches and Client – in favour of a pure pop sound. At first you’d think that this is intended to permit Goldfrapp to drop neatly into the current trend for female-fronted synth pop acts a la La Roux, Little Boots, who are intent on sweeping up the vast electronica vistas of the Eighties and claiming them as their own; but this is released on Mute, which has been producing quality, credible and enduring electronic music since before the Eighties were even born. Specifically, I’d suggest the influence of Vince Clarke during his late Eighties analogue renaissance would be a principal marker for the noises offered up on Head First.

This is synth pop at its shimmering, shiniest best. I’ve not listened to an electronic pop record for many years (probably since Erasure‘s last) that’s had me so captivated from the opening seconds. In Head First‘s case, that opener is the sublime first single ‘Rocket’ and is quickly followed by ‘Believer’, which starts with minimal pulsing beats before snapping into a huge sing-along chorus the likes of which Goldfrapp seem set on nurturing across most of Head First.

The second single, ‘Alive’ is a ballsy, disco-y track (in the vein of, say, Stock Aitken and Waterman’s take on the genre with Big Fun perhaps) which neatly encapsulates the vibe of Scissor Sisters. ‘Dreaming’ is probably my personal favourite song here – beginning with pulsing synths and breathy words that I can barely decipher, it’s the pleasantly uplifting chorus which provides the core emotional hook of the track. Title track ‘Head First’ sounded to me like an Abba cover with its simple piano lines and grandeur-filled bridge, and I wasn’t surprised to see journalists reviewing the album citing the same similarity. It’s a beautiful love song that the Andersson-Ulvaeus could feasibly claim as being descended from one of their own.

‘Hunt’ is less pop and more like something that the Goldfrapp / Gregory duo may have delivered up on Felt Mountain. The electronics sound submerged and minimal and Goldfrapp’s vocal reminds of how broad her sonic range can be. ‘Hunt’ shares some similarities with the only dip across the whole album, closing track ‘Voice Thing’, which, as its name suggests features Goldfrapp’s voice (wordlessly singing as she did on the Orbital records from years gone by) as a textural instrument. It’s clever, certainly, but a bit low-key compared to the rest of the album. ‘Shiny And Warm’ – a fast-paced and fairly minimal piece – is a song I’m not especially keen on, but it’s growing on me gradually. ‘I Wanna Life’, however, with a few more Abba overtones and a massive dose of Fame-esque optimistic cheeriness is much better.

Overall, this is a brilliant album, setting the duo off on an exciting new course. A couple of below par tracks aside, this really is essential listening for anyone looking for authentic electronic pop music from this consistently inventive pairing.

A cassette version of Head First was released by Mute for Record Store Day 2010.

lp/c/cd/i:
1. Rocket
2. Believer
3. Alive
4. Dreaming
5. Head First
6. Hunt
7. Shiny And Warm
8. I Wanna Life
9. Voicething

First posted 2010; re-edited 2015

(c) 2015 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

Josh T. Pearson – Last Of The Country Gentlemen (Mute Artists album, 2011)

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album // Last Of The Country Gentlemen
  
mute artists | lp+cd/cd/dl stumm326 | 14/03/2011
rough trade shops edition xcdstumm326 released 21/11/2011

Last Of The Country Gentlemen, Josh T. Pearson‘s much-anticipated début album, garnered all manner of positive reviews in the run up to its release. In a climate where everyone seemed to be focussed on the retro punk stylings of The Vaccines, it was pleasing to see that an album consisting mostly of heart-wrenching confessionals delivered by a singer over simple accompaniment (mostly guitar, some strings) could get so much positive praise. The album was preceded by a piano version of the track ‘Country Dumb’, the album version resplendent with guitars and violin instead of piano, a towering yet fragile ballad that stirs something deep within.

On a personal level, Last Of The Country Gentlemen‘s gentle, emotional grace is deeply affecting. I listened to this over a weekend where we had sold or given away some clothes, toys and other ephemera belonging to our two girls, in itself a moving experience, and Pearson’s songs of transition seemed to heighten the fragile mood I was in over the weekend.

Pearson’s voice is a beautiful thing to listen to. Occasionally whispered, occasionally rising with clarion quality, the consistent aspect is that he makes every single syllable, every word and every line count; everything that comes from his mouth is freighted with depth and sentiment. Though his Texan twang is a million miles away from Antony Heggarty’s vocal gymnastics, the two singers share the same talent for soaking their most basic utterances in something indefinable which can leave you feeling affirmed, tearful and empty after listening to their music; you will need to invest almost everything you have into listening to these songs, and you will feel utterly spent at the conclusion. One song is hard enough; eight songs is nigh on torturous.

Last Of The Country Gentlemen was, according to The Times review, written during a period of heartbreak, and there is a definite theme of separation running through the eight songs here (three of which are well over ten minutes in length). However, with the exception of the bitter (yet controlled) statement of intent ‘Woman, When I’ve Raised Hell’, soaked in strings arranged by Dirty Three and Bad Seeds / Grinderman violinist Warren Ellis that amplify the mood palpably, the theme does not appear to be one of regret at his loss; more, there is a resigned air of Pearson almost forcing a separation, for the benefit of his lover. The twelve minute ‘Sweeheart I Ain’t Your Christ’ is a case in point – throughout this song, Pearson is effectively advising his lover that she’d be better off without him. That sense of setting someone free, for their benefit, especially if they don’t realise it, is just about the hardest damn thing to do, a selflessness that is gut-wrenchingly moving.

That theme is somewhat at odds with the sleeve, which appears to show Pearson trying to prevent his lover – whose face is blank, emotionless, detached – from leaving. He is grasping her legs, eyes closed, as if he would rather be dragged across the gravel rather than let her go, but it fits with the heartbreak and torment evident in the songs here. The track ‘Honeymoon’s Great! Wish You Were Her’, is a song about marrying someone but still being in love with someone else; this is the closest Pearson gets to being frustrated with his lot (albeit, it seems, of his own doing), and there is a section where the strings come up in great big swells that make you sympathetic toward his conflict, not angry at his infidelity. ‘Sorry With A Song’ is Pearson’s apology, of sorts.

Something about these songs encourage you to believe that Pearson is telling you his story here; like a début novel, the roman a clef tends to be written mostly from personal experience and emotions, containing thinly-disguised autobiographical aspirations more than pure fiction. These songs seem so honest, so genuine, that you want to believe that this is Pearson’s own story being articulated across these eight songs in spite of the desperation, frustration and sorrow contained here. We would be faintly disappointed if this songwriting was found to be fictional.

Last Of The Country Gentlemen was recorded in Berlin, and mixed in London by Gareth Jones (although a couple of tracks were mixed by David ‘Saxon’ Greenep). There is a sense of hands-off production on these tracks, a sense of respect for the songs themselves and the outpourings contained within them. Presenting the songs ‘just so’ is a brave, yet powerful thing to do; the album thus has a stark innocence that leaves me well and truly floored whenever I listen to it.

Special edition: Rough Trade Christmas Bonus
  
mute artists | xcd stumm326 | 21/11/2011

Mute released Last Of The Country Gentlemen again in November 2011 with a second disc of Josh T. Pearson performing a selection of Christmas songs, the occasion being Rough Trade Shops placing his album at the top of their 2011 album chart. The expanded version was only available from Rough Trade. To celebrate the release of Pearson’s Rough Trade Christmas Bonus, Rough Trade East printed up a special rubber curtain containing the picture from the Christmas EP’s sleeve to cover their front entrance.

The thing with Christmas carols is that they can often have an air of sadness about them; few have an obvious joyousness, though all have an inherent beauty. As such, Josh T. Pearson is well-suited to delivering the five songs he intimately performs here. Last Of The Country Gentlemen had few naturally uplifting moments, though – as evidenced by the live LP (again, only released through Rough Trade Shops) The King Is Dead – Pearson himself is actually pretty light-hearted and self-deprecating. Here we find him struggling while trying to pluck the notes to a lovely rendition of ‘Silent Night’, unaware that his musings are being recorded, cocking up the introduction to ‘Angels We Have Heard On High’ and delivering a faultless accapella rendition of ‘Away In A Manger’, which masterfully rescues the carol from thousands of painful school nativities. Likewise, his bluesy rendition of ‘O Little Town Of Bethlehem’ moves the song away from the tuneless butchering of this carol by assembled toddlers and into masterful, graceful territory. In defiance of his image as a humourless misanthrope, he even adds a wee coda of ‘Jingle Bells’ at the very end.

‘O Holy Night’ is testament to how Pearson can take a song that’s not his own and add his own distinctive style to create something utterly original. Here his reading sits somewhere between the melancholy grandeur of Last Of The Country Gentlemen and the more introspective aspects of the Rufus Wainwright back catalogue. In a burst of seasonal goodwill, an alternative version of of ‘O Holy Night’ was made available for free from Pearson’s own website.

lp+cd/cd/i:
1. Thou Art Loosed
2. Sweetheart I Ain’t Your Christ
3. Woman, When I’ve Raised Hell
4. Honeymoon’s Great! Wish You Were Her
5. Sorry With A Song
6. Country Dumb
7. Last Of The Country Gentlemen (lp/i bonus track)
8. Drive Her Out

xcd:
1. Silent Night
2. Angels We Have Heard On High
3. Away In A Manger
4. O Holy Night
5. O Little Town Of Bethlehem

Note: this CD was packaged with the CD copy of the album as a Rough Trade Shops exclusive

First posted 2011; re-edited 2015

(c) 2015 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

Josh T. Pearson – The King Is Dead (Mute Records album, 2011)

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album // The King Is Dead

 Josh T. Pearson 'The King Is Dead' LP artwork 

mute artists | lp lstumm326 | 05/09/2011

In 2011, my wife and I went to see Ryan Adams at the Barbican for what turned out to be an excellent acoustic solo show. Adams’s musicianship has never been questioned, but what was surprising was how comedic and downright funny his story-telling and banter was; for an artist with a history of issues and a reputation for cantankerousness and volatility (only in evidence once that night), to see / hear this side of him was totally unexpected.

Later on in 2011, we’d had a plan to see Josh T. Pearson, also at the Barbican, for what was billed as a solo acoustic show (with special guests); unfortunately, we wouldn’t make it to that show thanks to a suspected burglary at a relative’s house. When we booked the tickets, Mrs S said ‘He’s supposed to be really funny on stage,’ which seemed totally implausible; the songs presented on his album Last Of The Country Gentlemen were so uniformly maudlin, intimate and personal that any possibility of a lighthearted side to Pearson seemed remote. But, at least at the start of this audio document of his performance at Union Chapel in Islington on 11 May 2011, what’s revealed is a man who’s not afraid to send himself up, making jokes about his appearance (‘I totally forgot to shave this morning,’ he quips, referencing his copious facial hair) and generally acting the clown; he comes across a lot like Loudon Wainwright III in the self-deprecating, all-too-honest way he speaks.

The King Is Dead is described as an ‘official bootleg’ and is presented in a way that does indeed look like a cheeky crowd recording (i.e. a simple white sleeve with the track details glued on). The 6-track album was released on LP only and was exclusively available via Rough Trade Stores and their website, where it was described as ‘future eBay gold’. For some reason, the rear sticker on the sleeve includes the old Mute Czechoslovakia logo. The album was sensitively mastered in Berlin by Stefan Betke, aka minimal techno musician and one-time Mute artist Pole, regarded as one of the best vinyl masterers in the business these days. Betke’s pressing manages to successfully capture the quiet, almost silent, sections of Pearson’s delivery. It is not, as I found, an album to be listened to on a train whilst commuting; this is one for the evening, at home, when the house is near-silent, with or without a herbal tea. Or possibly a glass of bourbon. And most definitely to be consumed on your own without people around you. Especially anyone you may have wronged at some point.

Last Of The Country Gentlemen was a moving album and Pearson’s live delivery of the outwardly simple, but inherently complex, emotional outpourings of his debut’s tracks – all of amorphous length, volume and with tempos often varying throughout – highlights the assuredness with which Pearson owns these songs. The addition of gentle orchestration (on ‘Woman When I’ve Raised Hell’ and again on ‘Country Dumb’, with additional piano by Dustin O’Halloran) subtly raises the moving dimension of these songs. The section of ‘Woman When I’ve Raised Hell’, where the orchestra swells above Pearson’s strummed guitar, is one of the most rousing moments in a set which could otherwise be depressing.

‘Devil’s On The Run’, included here and unavailable elsewhere, features the audience taking over singing duties toward the end – and, as this was recorded in what used to be a church, the assembled voices have a natural choral effect, which is a beautiful thing for your ear to experience. Appropriately enough, given the setting, Pearson also does his familiar blending of ‘Rivers Of Babylon’ with Last Of The Country Gentlemen‘s opener, ‘Thou Art Loosed’ and its one of the most sublime moments on The King Is Dead, particularly at the very end when Pearson’s guitar gets wildly fuzzed-up. Also included here is the upcoming next single, ‘Sorry With A Song’, which is exactly that – an apology, in a song; here it’s a somewhat more rambling affair, but it’s shorter than the other five tracks. The whole thing – all six tracks – runs for a grand total of fifty minutes; Pearson doesn’t do brief.

Listening to this on the way to work back in 2011 had an unexpected effect on my outlook for most of the morning; it may have been tiredness and nothing to do with listening to this, but I found myself thinking introspectively for most of the day, I couldn’t concentrate and I found myself apologising for things I knew weren’t my fault.

lp:
A1. Sweetheart I Ain’t Your Christ
A2. Woman, When I’ve Raised Hell
A3. Sorry With A Song
B1. Country Dumb
B2. Rivers Of Babylon / Thou Art Loosed
B3. Devil’s On The Run

Originally posted 2011; edited 2015

(c) 2015 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

Yeasayer – Fragrant World (Mute Records album, 2012)

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Yeasayer 'Fragrant World' LP artwork

mute artists | lp+cd/cd/i stumm346 | 20/08/2012

If 2010’s Odd Blood was Yeasayer‘s attempt to have what the band’s Chris Keating described at the time as a ‘dialogue with pop’, third album Fragrant World is more or less a reaction against the dominance of that album’s deliberately anthemic sound. On Odd Blood that approach yielded huge tracks like ‘Ambling Alp’ and ‘O.N.E’ but it also left Keating and the others – Anand Wilder and Ira Wolf Tuton – feeling a little dismayed that the audience at their shows really only knew and cared for those songs.

Taking its seemingly pastoral title from a vision Keating had of a dystopian, Ballardian world devoid of smell, Fragrant World was recorded in the band’s Brooklyn home at the studio of Daniel Lopatin, also known as experimental musician Oneohtrix Point Never. Whilst it may sound much more electronic than its predecessor, with little unprocessed guitar to be heard, during an interview with Keating that I did for Clash, he insisted that the record was created using plenty of guitar and bass sounds, but that those were used to trigger samplers and various sound sources alongside pure electronics. When I suggested that actually it isn’t a very electronic record at all, he challenged me to rethink my concept of what makes an electronic record, it not being necessary to think of such a record as being dominated by traditional keyboards and synths.

One of Yeasayer’s more characteristic facets, namely tracks which seem capable of being depressing and uplifting at the same time, is never very far away. Opening track, ‘Fingers Never Bleed’ is a case in point. Built on a jerky rhythm, Anand Wilder delivers a strained vocal complete with resigned observations on people who want to take the easy option of playing air guitar and committing corporate fraud (an interesting slant that suggests both are equal sins) so that their ‘fingers never bleed’. Sonically busy, the song sets the tone for Fragrant World with lots of loops, skittering percussion, relaxed guitar and piano, the elements coalescing into a vaguely uplifting chorus blended with whining electronics that leaves you characteristically unsure how you should be feeling. ‘Demon Road’ is another track with an Odd Blood feel, albeit one that is dubby, steady, regretful and anguished. ‘All hell is gonna break loose,‘ sings Keating, the track having that same, complex, anguished anthemic quality that defined Fragrant World‘s predecessor. The conclusion sees vocodered vocals blended with straight harmonies, something about the stridency of the combination feeling like an electro-country missive.

Keating told me about his enthusiasm for late Eighties Chicago house when I spoke with him. Like many of the echoes of other musics that get filtered through Yeasayer’s sonic lens, it’s not something that overtly features on Fragrant World. Nevertheless, tracks like ‘No Bones’ hint at that interest. After some stop-start robotic beats, there’s a point in Keating’s ‘chorus’ where the beats become a sticky 4/4 mesh, much like a breakdown in a DJ’s set, sending the not-quite fontman into rapturous, housey euphoria. Stand-out track ‘Reagan’s Skeleton’ has a droning bassline, and even features the classic ‘ah yeah‘ sample, once the staple of early dance music records. Over thudding beats, Keating delivers a vocal about the evil red-eyed skeleton of Reagan coming at you, horror-film stylee, in the moonlight. It’s urgent and slick, blending evocative Eighties sounds with classic dance music synths and altogether more modern sensibilities.

If Keating’s songs aim for some sort of transcendancy, Wilder’s songs are altogether more introspective. ‘Blue Paper’ opens with processed sounds that could have been lifted from an Indian cinema soundtrack. Wilder here delivers a cynical tale of a rich girl who suddenly decides to reconnect with nature, moving away from her spoiled life, something Wilder can’t ‘buy for a second‘. Musically, it’s subtle, gentle pulses and shimmering sounds until the middle eight of the song, where things get a bit wonky, the track concluding with a retro electro rhythm and some nice vocal harmonies about writing something on blue paper. Live highlight ‘Devil And The Deed’ has fractured electro beats, electronic slide guitar and occasional synth interjections; the track maintains a minimal footprint until the chunky, desperate chorus, which seems to be about sexual pressure, declining moral standards, and difficult, agonised decisions. There are also two beautiful instrumental sections which have an electronic musicbox melody, evoking warm memories of Depeche Mode‘s ‘Shouldn’t Have Done That’ from This Broken Frame.

Two of the most unusual songs close out the album. ‘Folk Hero Schtick’, is, on the surface at least, a joyous, upbeat jangly electro pop with a vocal that sounds suspiciously like Wilder doing an impression of Level 42’s Mark King. It seems to be a tired plea for a famous folk hero (Dylan?) to call it quits. Lots of big electronic sounds and a fair amount of processing make for a sprawling, but engaging skewed pop highlight of Fragrant World. Album finale ‘Glass Of The Microscope’ starts as classically low-key end to the album, with wistful vocals reminiscing about nice days and sweet memories. After some beautiful, serene ambience, sympathetically processed vocals take a turn toward the unexpected with the misanthropic line ‘in truth we’re doomed‘. It’s wryly humourous with its Dad’s Army-style sense of panic, but as an ending point it’s pretty depressing, even if the track’s final moments are among the most stirring on the whole album.

In the US, the album was released as a special edition LP with a free 7″ of the non-album track ‘Fragrant World’ backed with an exclusive remix of ‘No Bones’ as well as a t-shirt. Here in Blighty, Mute didn’t opt for such shenanigans, and the bonus track was only made available as a iTunes pre-order exclusive. Later in the year, at the Rough Trade East Mute showcase with high-end personal audio equipment manufacturer Bowers & Wilkins in December, the indie music chain ran a promotion to get a free copy of the 7″ if you bought any Yeasayer release. (Apparently there are two versions of the 7″ – a black one and a glow-in-the-dark one). Quite why the band decided to leave ‘Fragrant World’ off the album is something of a mystery, particularly as it was part of their live set, as it’s a really good track – lots of deep electronic sounds, organic percussion, really evocative, weary vocals from Chris Keating and even some quirky guitar and electronic sax tones. The Helado Negro mix of ‘No Bones’ is a bit of a mess, a jumble of snatched sections from the original assembled into a weird collage.

Yeasayer 'Fragrant World' 7" artwork

Videos for all eleven songs from the album were put on various websites for around 48 hours at the start of August 2012 under the banner PSCYVOTV (PREEMPTIVE SELF-COMMISSIONED YEASAYER VORSTELLUNG or TRACK VISUALIZER), allowing those with plenty of time to kill a wild goose chase around the farthest corners of the web to see director Yoshi Sodeoka’s vignettes and hear the album before its official release.

Track listing:

lp/cd/i:
A1. / 1. Fingers Never Bleed
A2. / 2. Longevity
A3. / 3. Blue Paper
B1. / 4. Henrietta
B2. / 5. Devil And The Dead
C1. / 6. No Bones
C2. / 7. Reagan’s Skeleton
C3. / 8. Demon Road
D1. / 9. Damaged Goods
D2. / 10. Folk Hero Shtick
D3. / 11. Glass Of The Microscope
12. Fragrant World (iTunes bonus track)

7″:
A. Fragrant World
B. No Bones (Helado Negro Remix)

First published 2012; edited 2014.

(c) 2014 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

Anita Lane – Dirty Pearl (Mute Records album, 1993)

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Anita Lane 'Dirty Pearl' LP artwork

mute records | lp/cd stumm81 | 10/1993

Dirty Pearl is a rag-bag collection of newly-recorded Anita Lane tracks produced by Mick Harvey as well as older material, the entire Dirty Sings EP and collaborations with Die Haut, Einstürzende Neubauten, Barry Adamson and The Birthday Party. The album is as much a collection of Lane’s work as it is a showcase for the seemingly unlikely cross-pollination of scenes that emerged when The Birthday Party moved from Australia to the UK, followed by a brief and fortuitous sojourn in Berlin; that productive Kreuzberg stop-over was responsible for Nick Cave‘s Bad Seeds being swelled by the likes of Neubauten’s Blixa Bargeld and Die Haut’s Thomas Wydler, as well as some of Cave’s most inventive and inspired early musical work.

The collection covers the period 1982 to 1993 and presents the tracks in reverse chronological order. Overall, the compilation shows just how integral Lane was to the whole scene that formed between London and Berlin in the mid-Eighties, with characters such as Chrislo Haas and Adamson appearing on various tracks. As Nick Cave’s girlfriend and muse, Lane co-wrote a number of The Birthday Party’s songs, including the likes of ‘Dead Joe’, and was credited as a founding member of Cave’s subsequent Bad Seeds though her participation in the group was never exactly clear. What’s also immediately apparent from this collection is just how little music Lane has herself released – over half of Dirty Pearl was already released by the time this compilation was released, and Lane would only come to release her first (and to date only) ‘proper’ LP in 2002 with Sex O’Clock. Whilst Dirty Pearl provides a comprehensive overview of Lane’s music, one notable omission is 1991’s collaboration with Adamson on the excellent cover of Lee Hazlewood’s ‘These Boots Were Made For Walking’ which Adamson crafted for his Delusion soundtrack.

Opening track (and therefore most recent) ‘Jesus Almost Got Me’ is a countrified, Triffids-esque song of drunkenness, cruel love and regret, beautifully carried forward on Harvey’s sensitive drumming and ‘Evil’ Graham Lee’s genteel slide guitar. Immersed in the background are spirals of grainy feedback and some lovely vocal harmonies from Harvey. ‘Jesus Almost Got Me’ has a tired, resigned quality to it. In contrast, ‘The Groovy Guru’ is a funky, psychedelic trip, filled with wild face-melting guitar and wayward organ creating a vibe that felt about twenty-five years old too late, the lyrics describing a sort of pervy Cassanova character with a number of Satanic traits.

The cover of Marvin Gaye’s ‘Sexual Healing’ was produced by Mick Harvey with artist Johannes Beck and Sven Röhrig, finding Lane cooing girlishly over a sick, phasing breakbeat, shimmering vibes from Barry Adamson and some leaden (and less-than-romantic) backing vocals from Beck and Moritz Wolpert. At times Lane sings with a strained needfulness that can feel quite uncomfortable at times, but it’s quite hard to think of this as being too serious. Both ‘Blume’ (from Neubauten’s Tabula Rasa LP) and ‘Subterranean World (How Long…?)’ (from Die Haut’s Head On) highlight how well Lane’s voice matches Blixa Bargeld’s distinctive own. Bargeld’s transition from the howling, shredded vocal style displayed on Neubaten’s earliest material to the sensitive, half-spoken, almost Scott Walker-esque voice of their later material is continually surprising, and that softer side shines through on these two songs. ‘Subterranean World’, with its duet chorus of ‘How long have we known each other now?‘ brings to mind those clips in romantic films where couples explain to camera how long they have been together, except that by the end of this darkly humorous song Lane and Bargeld decide that they’ve never actually met before.

‘Picture Of Mary’ is an atmospheric piece written with Bargeld, dominated by Lane’s ghostly singing and a backdrop of dramatic piano, mournful violin and jangly Latin guitars (from Blixa) which threaten to swell up in the mix but never quite do. The only thing that lets this track down is Lane’s vaguely tuneless musings which bring to mind some of Nico’s material, but that is more than made up for by the intricate backdrop. Latin guitars and strings also colour the maudlin ‘Stories Of Your Dreams’, which possesses a strong narrative and theatrical mood. The song was co-written with Neubuaten’s Alexander Hacke, who also plays guitars on the song, while Crime And The City Solution founding member Bronwyn Adams plays violin.

The CD release of Dirty Pearl also includes ‘A Prison In The Desert’ by Nick Cave, Mick Harvey and Bargeld, taken from their soundtrack to Ghosts… Of The Civil Dead. The piece sees Lane mostly wordlessly singing over a backdrop of droning strings, industrial sounds and high-pitched noises, her voice providing a gentle counterpoint to what is otherwise a reasonably harrowing piece of music, a bit like a Graeme Revell soundtrack.

Eschewing all the released tracks from The Birthday Party canon that Lane contributed to, Dirty Pearl instead offers ‘The Fullness Of His Coming’, an unreleased track which features Lane on lead vocals, serving as strong reminder of why The Birthday Party were a musical force to be reckoned with at the start of the Eighties. The song is dominated by grinding guitar riffs from Rowland S. Howard that sounds like they might have been fed through an organ, Tracy Pew‘s ludicrously prominent bass and insistent and quickening drums from Mick Harvey. Lane murmurs and squirms provocatively through the track, particularly as the pace begins to quicken, the assembled Party members providing a nasty mantra of the track’s title while Lane writhes rapturously in the foreground.

Track listing:

lp/cd:
A1. / 1. Jesus Almost Got Me
A2. / 2. The Groovy Guru
A3. / 3. Sexual Healing
A4. / 4. Blume (Einstürzende Neubauten feat. Anita Lane)
B1. / 5. Subterranean World (How Long…?) (Die Haut feat. Anita Lane)
B2 / 6. Picture Of Mary
B3. / 7. The World’s A Girl
B4. / 8. Stories Of Your Dreams
9. A Prison In The Desert (Nick Cave / Mick Harvey / Blixa Bargeld feat. Anita Lane) – CD bonus track
10. If I Should Die – CD bonus track
11. I’m A Believer – CD bonus track
12. Lost In Music – CD bonus track
13. Sugar In A Hurricane – CD bonus track
B5. / 14. The Fullness Of His Coming (The Birthday Party feat. Anita Lane)

First published 2012; edited 2014

(c) 2014 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence