Alela Diane featuring Alina Hardin, ‘Alela and Alina’

Released in January, US folk/country singer Alela Diane’s beautiful second album To Be Still has been swiftly followed by this EP (or ‘companion album’) featuring Alina Hardin. Alela’s voice is astonishing, and is perfectly complemented by Alina’s, and by the simple accompaniment. Three songs are covers, including ‘Matty Groves’, a ballad perhaps most famously covered by Fairport Convention on Liege and Lief. To say Alela and Alina more than do justice to a song that most people will know from that version, sung by the great Sandy Denny, should give some idea of how good this record is.

I want to plug To Be Still too, as well as mentioning the covers album Ms Diane recorded with Joey Waronker, Gus Seyffert, Leo Abrahams and Woody Jackson as Headless Heroes. The Silence of Love includes covers of more contemporary songs. I present their cover of the Jesus and Mary Chain’s ‘Just Like Honey’, which seems to suit a country feel – though this video was clearly done by GREAT BIG SOPPY HIPPIES – and for my co-blogger there’s also a version of Cave’s ‘Nobody’s Baby Now’.

Alela Diane featuring Alina Hardin – ‘Bowling Green‘ -  Alela and Alina

Headless Heroes – ‘Nobody’s Baby Now‘ – The Silence of Love

Headless Heroes – ‘Just Like Honey’ – The Silence of Love

Buy the EP from Amazon or iTunes or there’s a limited 10″ version that might be available through Rough Trade.

JKneale

Micah P. Hinson: All Dressed Up And Smelling Of Strangers

Micah P. Hinson, everyone’s favourite Texan and honorary native of Burnley, returns with a double album of covers. When I saw this I thought a) Micah had put something out fairly quickly so that he could tour and b) he might have over-reached himself. He does have a fantastic voice and a classy sense of how to arrange and perform, but could he cover such karaoke classics as ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ and (gulp) ‘My Way’? What about ‘Suzanne’? And could anyone do justice to ‘Running Scared’?

Well, it’s an almost flawless covers album – which puts it in the same company as Kicking Against The Pricks in my book – and the answers to those questions are ‘not bloody likely’ and ‘yes’. Though accompanied only by the extraordinary musical all-rounder Nick Phelps - MPH’s one-man touring band last time I saw him – and a couple of friends, this sounds nothing like a space-filling record. It continues the experiments with Link Wray distortion and surf guitar heard on Micah P. Hinson and the Red Empire Orchestra with clever cello to fill out the sound. And while the better-known songs benefit from a bit of volume – ‘My Way’ sounds best when MPH is singing quietly, loudly, if you see what I mean – there are some superb covers here. ‘Running Scared’ is particularly impressive, because Micah has Orbison’s clarity, if not his lungpower. ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ sounds different enough to work.

But the other standouts are, for me, in the standards and in the more obscure choices. I could listen to these versions of ‘Kiss Me Mother, Kiss Your Darling’ and ‘In The Pines’ all day – the latter sounds like Blixa Bargeld has turned up to add the requisite noise+weirdness. And the cover of Pedro The Lion’s ‘Slow and Steady Wins The Race’ is this album’s prize, as far as I’m concerned – that strange matter-of-fact oddness you only get from straight-faced examinations of faith.

This is a handsome-looking album (or rather 2 CDs running to 50-odd minutes) and you should go out and get a copy.

Micah P. Hinson – ‘Running Scared‘ – All Dressed Up And Smelling Of Strangers

Micah P. Hinson -  ‘Slow and Steady wins The Race‘ – All Dressed Up And Smelling Of Strangers

Buy here – I did. Nice mug, too!

JKneale

At the gates of silent memory…

In advance of tomorrow…

Happy  Samhain, Hop-tu-naa or All Hallow’s Even.

With respect to the beloved departed and dead.

Alien Sex Fiend – Now I’m Feeling Zombified

Bauhaus – Double Dare

The Cure – The Hanging Garden

Fields of the Nephilim - Last Exit for the Lost (Live)

The Cramps – Goo Goo Muck

angrybonbon

Fuck Buttons: Tarot Sport

I take it all back, the kids are alright. It seems they are enthused by the future enough to collect from car-boots and connect bits of tech to give us a soundtrack of what might become. Fuck Button’s Tarot Sport is thus the perfect youthful accompaniment to Moebius’ Kram.

Before my first encounter with Tarot Sport I was slightly worried. I’d heard phrases and words such as ‘accessible’, ‘mainstream’ and ‘cross-over hit’ bounded about. Understandably, I think, this produced concerns that one our artists of 2008 had watered down their sound. This anxiety was underlined somewhat as I came to realise that the brilliant ranting-cum-speaking-in-tongues that added so much to Street Horrsing had been jettisoned.

And I still miss the indecipherable fuming. However, this album has won me over in three ways. First, there’s a real sense of arrogant independence on show here: for example, not many combos could get away with a 10.32 opener (‘Surf Solar’). Second, with a flick of a switch they have the ability to mesmerise with an utter grandeur and massiveness (for want of a better word). Third, the now seemingly signature fuzzed guitar/organ drone is still apparent and as warming as ever.

Take ‘Olympians’: the sense of space and enlargement on this track is so convincing and hypnotic that it can make you feel both godlike and irrelevant at the same time. If you don’t believe me, just stare at the sky when you listen to it. No, try it.

So give it time (if you have enough). It’s an album of expanse and scale that at first can make you feel a bit lost, a bit insignificant. But then you give up any sense of control or possible importance, and you come to realise that being lost can be a wonderful thing.

The Lisbon Maru

Olympians

Just buy it.

angrybonbon

Five years on: John Peel, 1939-2004

Hey there, DJ, the nation needs you.

‘The Nation Needs You (Extended Mix)‘ – Cuban Boys

Have I done this before? Anyway, cheers John.

JKneale

Pixies, Brixton Academy

It’s hard to say very much about seeing one of your favourite bands for the first time in about fifteen years. You know all the words; even if they start with a series of B-sides you can sing along. Everyone else does the same, even the ones who weren’t born when Come On Pilgrim came out. At times, like the first few lines of ‘Hey’, the Academy sings louder than Frank Black, hits all the notes, gets the timing exactly right. It’s powerfully affecting. It’s great.

But: if they’re only playing Doolittle, and you follow the heresy of thinking it’s not their best album, what do you do?  OK, it’s a great record and it hasn’t dated and everyone loves it and there’s a book on it and everything. And I guess this was the point of this evening in a Don’t Look Back way. But when you’ve written so many great songs it does seem a bit odd to lock them away. Or to choose those B-sides – you do need something else to pad out Doolittle, as no Pixies album breaks the 40-minute mark , but all three of ‘Here Comes Your Man’s backing tracks instead of ‘Velouria’, ‘Ed Is Dead’, etc etc?!

Anyway, it was great and they sounded fantastic; ignore my moaning. Kim Deal’s little asides stole the show, as usual, especially her warning that a ‘doddery old fella’ named Vaughan Oliver was lurking in the crowd. Here’s some live Pixies, from one of the CDs from the 2004 reunion tour: ‘Goodnight Kim!’ ‘Goodnight Charles!’

‘River Euphrates‘ – Pixies – NYC December 18 2004 (late)

‘Where Is My Mind‘ – Pixies – NYC December 18 2004 (late)

‘Gigantic‘ – Pixies – NYC December 18 2004 (late)

Buy the very good digital download of the gig here – it’s where I got the image above.

JKneale

Moebius: Kram

Why does it take 65 year old Dieter Moebius (ex-Kluster/Cluster and Harmonia) to produce a proper soundtrack to our collective futures? I mean, what are the bloody kids up to? It’s all very well them shooting hordes of robots dwarves on their I-Boxes, but shouldn’t they be connecting piles of analogue electronics together and providing us with a soundscape for what is yet to come?

As my vision of the future involves more than just a smattering of retro-futurism, and thus includes jet-packs and hover-cars, perhaps it’s a little unfair to criticise the kids in this way. Having said that, surely we all share a vision of the future that involves jet-packs? Hover-cars I’m not right bothered about, but there must and will be jet-packs – that much we must agree on. Right?

Ok, let’s put the jet-pack issue aside for a moment and get to grips with Kram. In short, this is retro-futuristic analogics at its finest. All sorts of machines warmly throb and pulse.  On ‘Schwizt’ and ‘Markt’ technologies are caressed with emotion until they verge on sentience. These washes of tenderness are replaced on ‘Lauert’ by slashed shards of sound that put you on edge and sharpen the senses. On the wonderful ‘Womit’ a soundtrack of the future city at night is envisioned, where only those machines essential to its 24 hour maintenance are left to pulse.

The standout tracks are the twinned ‘Rennt’ and ‘Rast’ – with ‘Rast’ distinguished only by the sense that the tech that seems so in harmony on ‘Rennt’ might break down, splutter out of power or develop into something more sinister. Plus they’re ripe for an Orbital remix – simply add a few breaks and you’ve got the bonus tracks for Snivilisation.

Womit

Rennt

Rast

By what means of transport do you get down here to buy it? You know the answer to that…

angrybonbon

Let Our Enemies Beware: Against Karate

Oh yes, this is a beauty.

The first time a heard this Against Karate I was truly taken back to the time of the late and legendary John Peel. Somewhere between a set of lank fringes moaning about their bedroom wallpaper, DJ Slipmatt and his chipmunks, and something untraceable from Malawi, Peel would throw in some noisenik angst that would prick the ears and make you think ‘fuck, what was that?’ Let Our Enemies Beware are in the final surprised expletive category. Excellent.

On the further listens you begin to calculate the sum of their influences, but realise with delight they far and ingeniously exceed them. My best approximation is that Let Our Enemies Beware are post-rock-metal-progressive-punk-hardcore, but I’m not sure. They can be Mogwai just as easily as they can be Fucked Up. They can do Godspeed with as little effort as they can do Faith No More. They lurch, they soothe and they shred. Lovely.

All this comes together in Adam Elwin’s vocal. At times he barks and growls like Pink Eyes (‘Pow! Right in the Kisser!’). At other moments he sounds likes Mike Patton at his more screeching and intense (‘Fools! Philistines! Heretics and Whores!’). On occasion he can sound almost tender, but then jerks into pure punk sneer and youthful torment (‘Noise equals Death’). Marvellous.

If you need to take a breezeblock to your current musical malaise then look no further than these tunes below.

Pow! Right in the Kisser!

Fools! Philistines! Heretics and Whores!

Noise equals Death

Super, eh? Well go and buy it then – here would be good.

angrybonbon

Cave: Psychic Summer

There’s a lot of Kraut influenced combos about at the moment – every man and his musical dog seem to be referencing Can, La Düsseldorf and the like. I read recently that Julian Cope would do unsavoury things to himself and others around him if he heard another sixth-form band trying to sound like Neu! or Cluster. To try and call it a new scene is a shit endeavour that only (wannabe) music journalists would attempt.

As with all these things there are those that cite Kraut because it seems to be the right thing to do (that would be Kasabian then) and there are others who creatively engage with their forbearers. It will come as no surprise that I believe Cave fall into the latter category.

Cave’s inventive commitment to all things Kraut varies from being implicit to explicit. With some skill they manage to sound both contemporary and historically accurate. In so doing, this becomes an album that slowly and subtlety works its way into your ear-ways and awareness, and onto your listening devices. Again and again, at a loss as to what to listen to, I’ve ended up with Psychic Summer and felt all the better for it.

‘Gamm’ opens up with a subtle yet infectious riff layered with synth sweeps, then takes off into something much more wigged-out, before settling into a driving bass that makes the head nod and generates a desire to get mobile. Second tune, ‘Made in Malaysia’ introduces a math element to the mix and some wonderfully bizarre and indecipherable chanting. Elsewhere, ‘Requiem for John Sex’ keeps the sense of pace and itinerancy, and introduces some shredded guitars and feedback for our pleasure.

So, are Cave part of what we might want to call a nu-Kraut movement? Oh ferchristsake and arse…

Made in Malaysia

Requiem for John Sex

Buy it here and listen without attempting to be a sub-Pitchfork hack.

angrybonbon

Orbital: Academy 1

We’ve been lacking words of late as our regular reader will have noticed. This trend is likely to continue as I struggle to express just how good Orbital were last night.

There were grown men and women hugging strangers and grinning like they were firmly entrenched back in the day. I’m sure I saw grown men gently weeping.  Today, this grown man has a sore right arm, legs like lead and is asking politely all around him to speak up just a little bit.

Clocking in at two hours this was a no-nonsense set of hits and highs. The reaction from the assembled was deafening. Every time a Hartnoll brother punched the air from behind the mixing desk and assembled bits of machinery (including something Raymond Scott must have invented) we dutifully did likewise. I just couldn’t stop myself from dancing like an idiot and carving some air-shapes.

I’m struggling to remember exact tunes. There was ‘Impact’ and ‘Belfast’. There was a blistering ‘Satan’.  The cheeky sample in the wonderful ‘Halcyon + On + On’ was as welcome and transcendental as ever. ‘Chime’ required the sturdiest of footwear. By the time ‘The Box’ had segued into ‘Doctor?’ I was literally speaking in tongues.

Words are still failing me. Let the brothers do the talking:

Lush [Euro-Tunnel Disaster ‘94]

The Box [Live at Glastonbury]

Doctor?

Walk now down here to buy.

angrybonbon