Sex, War and Robots: 2017

Saturday, November 11, 2017

RIP Chuck Mosley

RIP Charles Henry Mosley III

December 26, 1959 - November 9, 2017

Monday, October 30, 2017

Queens of the Stone Age - Villains

Queens of the Stone Age have carved out a comfortable position as elder statesmen of rock. Nobody expects them to flip their sound on its head at every turn. They could, if they wanted, give it just enough of a perfunctory tweak to avoid being accused of repeating themselves, but of course they don't want to do that. Josh Homme is a songwriter's songwriter, always seeking new approaches even after having worked within his idiom with one band or another for nearly 30 years. The knee-jerk reaction is to call Villains QOTSA's pop album, given that Mark Ronson is producer, but if that's the case, they've arrived at it on their own terms. The album is full of the serpentine twists that have become the band's stock in trade, and the more floor-ready beats recontextualise familiar QOTSA tropes without compromising the muscularity of Homme's riffs. The result is less "Uptown Funk" than decadent disco. Villains forgoes the band's tradition of inviting high profile guests, which is not a decision that the first and so far only band to unite Trent Reznor and Elton John in the studio would make lightly. It shows they don't need a lot of help to pull off stylistic shifts such as this one - not that there's any reason to doubt it.

Monday, October 23, 2017

Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn - Echo in the Valley

Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn's personal r elationship goes back a decade and their professional relationship almost as far, but they hadn't recorded as a duo until 2014's self-titled album. Strictly a dual banjo and voice affair, it was more a showcase of their musical interplay than songwriting as they navigated how to work in that context, and it settled the question of whether Washburn, an excellent banjoist and Fleck, a virtuoso, could work as a duo. That's not to diminish its value as a fine collection of songs, but the point was occasionally a bit laboured - I personally didn't need a four and a half minute rendition of "Railroad" ("I've been working on the railroad...)".

Echo in the Valley builds on what the duo learnt the first time around and brings their songwriting to the fore. The first time around, Fleck and Washburn both wrote the bulk of the album, but did so separately on all but two songs; on Echo in the Valley, it's a collaborative effort all over. There's less reliance on both traditional material and traditional influences in general, but the album evokes a bygone era in less tangible ways.

Sunday, October 22, 2017

Spotify Playlist: I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

Friday, September 15, 2017

RIP Grant Hart

RIP Grantzberg Vernon Hart

March 18, 1961 - September 14, 2017

Spotify Playlist: I See Manchester, I See Bordeau

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

RIP Holger Czukay

24 March 1938 - 5 September 2017

RIP Jaki Liebezeit

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Happy Possibly 100th Birthday, John Lee Hooker!

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Torres - Three Futures

Torres doesn't seem interested in staying in one place musically for too long, and it was anyone's guess what her third album was going to sound like. A focus on synths (and guitars run through synth pedals among other things) most obviously delineates Three Futures from its predecessors, but what strikes me about that move even more than its seamless and non-perfunctory integration is how necessary an evolution it was in order to convey Scott's ideas. Even if she could have conceived of "Concrete Ganesha" before, there was no way to render such a textural, glitchy piece with her old palette. Recognisable guitar lines don't prop up any of the songs, but rather snake in and out.

Torres' self-titled debut established Mackenzie Scott as a talented songwriter straight out of the gate; Sprinter expanded her purview and gave her many places to go. Three Futures isn't a step forwards, backwards or laterally, but downwards; it drags you down and traps you in its world and doesn't let you come up for air until it's over.

Saturday, July 15, 2017

Spotify Playlist: We Live in a World of Stuff

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Slowdive - Slowdive

So there's a new Slowdive album in 2017; it almost seems too pure for this sinful Earth, but I'll take it.

Of course, you don't want a Slowdive album compromised by two decades of cynicism and the world generally going down the shitter, so it comes as a relief that Slowdive, though recorded last year, could have been from 1994, a missing link between Souvlaki and Pygmalion, perfectly preserved in amber and discovered just when we need it most. Slowdive shouldn't be penalised for sticking to what works, because it does work; there hasn't been a time between their formation and now when their simple yet layered and meticulous compositions wouldn't have seamlessly blended into the musical landscape aesthetically while standing out in quality. Though it's no mere nostalgia trip, Slowdive nonetheless serves as a reminder of a time when there was assumed to be preordained limits on human ego, hubris and stupidity - that if we weren't already as low as we could go, we'd at least know when we got there. It's the album we need right now, even if it's not the one we deserve.

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Benjamin Booker - Witness

A recently posted Instagram photo of Benjamin Booker from Christmas 2005 shows Booker with a Stratocaster. "My first Fender! White for Jimi and Kurt. Smashed on stage at Lollapalooza in the summer of 2014." Booker believes music is eternal, but instruments are ephemeral. That, or he just likes smashing shit. In any case, Booker embodies Cobain's punk spirit while being a student of classic rock, soul and blues. The sound of his debut could be compared to that of Chuck Berry fronting Nirvana, although his voice defies easy comparison. On Witness, Booker tempers the garage-punk sound on which he built his name, favouring those older influences, especially on the gospel-infused title track.

On his debut, Booker sang that "the future is slow coming", which recalled "A Change is Gonna Come" by Sam Cooke (who is evoked on Witness in the string intro to "Believe"). He wasn't contradicting Cooke's message, but adding "it's gonna take longer than we thought". Booker is the change he wishes to see in the world, and Witness is the sound of him settling in for the long haul.

Thursday, May 18, 2017

RIP Chris Cornell

RIP Chris Cornell
July 20, 1964 - May 18, 2017

Spotify Playlist: I Wish Chris Cornell Wasn't Dead

5 Bands That Should Have Been Nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame This Year

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Spotify Playlist: No Music Too Roxy, No Ballet Too Spandau

Spoon - Hot Thoughts

A band that released its first album in 1996 shouldn't sound this vital in 2017. Hell, not in 2007. Having got this far with only one genuine aberration (2010's Transference), Spoon has earned the right not to be expected to still deliver era-defining albums and only needs to vary its sound just enough to avoid staleness.

Hot Thoughts incorporates synth elements that have existed in the Spooniverse (I'll see myself out) since Britt Daniel and Dan Boeckner's Divine Fits, but wisely doesn't mess with what's always worked about Spoon. Spoon's best songs are low key and moving in an esoteric way. "I Ain't the One" carries on this tradition with its simple keyboard chord sequence and swirling synth. Likewise, the centrepiece and the closing track, which are of a piece: "Pink Up", a slowly building composition of keys and thick percussion and "Us", a meditative brass jam on the former and a great finish to an album that consistently delivers and occasionally surprises.