Dr. Giraffe's Cellophane Cruise Ship: Paul Banks - Everybody on My Dick Like They Supposed to Be (2013)

Everybody on My Dick Like They Supposed to Be (seriously?) is Paul Banks' stab at a mixtape. Released for free most of the way through the gap between Interpol's self-titled album, its most poorly received to date, and El Pintor, its best in a decade, it didn't renew any interest in Interpol, nor spark any in a potential new creative avenue for Banks. Perhaps it's unfair to judge it by the fact that it's outside Banks' milieu. It's a bigger leap than Dylan going electric - closer to Dylan going dubstep - but keep an open mind.

On its merits, Everybody on My Dick Like They Supposed to Be is not terrible (besides that title), but it is amateurish and forgettable, and only the names attached to it distinguish it from the same sort of stuff you'll find on Soundcloud. Banks doesn't rap, which is almost certainly for the best - instead, for the most part we get instrumental hip-hop a la J Dilla, but Banks is no Dilla. What little rapping there is comes courtesy of guests El-P, Talib Kweli, High Prizm and Mike G. Banks would go onto release an album with RZA under the name Bankz & Steelz. Its genesis predates Everybody, but Anything But Words didn't come out until 2016.

Run the Jewels - A Christmas Fucking Miracle

Sarah Jarosz - Gypsy (live)

Throwing Muses - Purgatory/Paradise

Looking at the running times of each track on Purgatory/Paradise, a third of which hover around the one minute mark, it could be a film score. In a very real way, it's is the soundtrack to the last ten years in the lives of Kristin Hersh, Bernard Georges and Dave Narcizo, the book that comes with it being a treatment for the script.

Throwing Muses have always been an example to other bands; they had a whole scene built around them in the mid 80s, and when they settled into the mid 90s alt-rock scene, a scene they had a big hand in creating, they settled near the top. Another decade after that, Kristin Hersh became a pioneer of crowdfunding for music. The better part of another decade later, Purgatory/Paradise sets an example that not many are likely to follow, albeit the same one being set this year by a number of veterans, including My Bloody Valentine, Richard Thompson and Wire: how to make a great rock album in the early 10s.

 If the film to which Purgatory/Paradise could be a soundtrack existed, it would be a disjointed, meandering narrative, telling the story out of order. Before the 32 song, 67 minute long album can take hold, what does make an impression is the sound. It's not lo-fi, but it's far from slick. It's very real, very human; the drums sound like drums rather than someone bouncing a basketball in an empty church. The album was mastered with an uncommonly light touch, and given the number of soft-loud transitions, it was the only way to do it. If the sound is human, then accordingly the music is direct. Whether it's a quiet, contemplative number or a strident rocker, you can imagine three people in the studio playing those instruments, and if there's any singer who sounds as if she might crawl through the speakers Ring style at any given moment, it's Kristin Hersh. Each of the songs carves out its own space while functioning as part of the album as a whole. Paradoxically for an album with so many songs, Purgatory/Paradise should be able to remind any willing listener of a time before they had thousands of albums and when their relationship with a song was deeper because of it. In 2013, releasing 32 songs that are worth listening to would have been enough, but it wasn't enough for Throwing Muses; these songs demand to be listened to.

Related:

50 Foot Wave - With Love from the Men's Room EP
Flux Capacitor: Throwing Muses - Untitled
My 200 Favourite Albums of All Time

Polvo - Siberia

"No bell will chime to celebrate an aspiration past its prime" - so wrote Ash Bowie in Polvo's "Time Isn't On My Side" in 1993. Siberia calls bullshit on that. Ash Bowie is in his mid 40s, which admittedly seems like nothing when I see that my top whatever for this year will include My Bloody Valentine, Deathfix (ft. Brendan Canty) and Richard Thompson and makes it read more like a list from 1991. In any case, Siberia sounds like the work of musicians who mentally travelled back to their 20s and got to make an album that captures their youthful exuberance while benefiting from everything they've learnt in the two decades hence. 2009's In Prism was a worthwhile comeback album after 12 years broken up, and it, too, built on Polvo's past without lazily rehashing it. Siberia, however, is more fully realised. The songs are sturdily structured, but manage to find a place for Ash Bowie's circuitous guitar playing, whether he's going off on Neil Young-esque tangents or taking his time and anchoring the song with an arresting arpeggio. His voice, too, has matured and come to embody the wisdom he's accrued over the years. Siberia is one of the strongest cases for bands reuniting; if you can be this good after more than 20 years on and off, why wouldn't you?

Bill Callahan - Dream River

I was going to say that my first listen to Dream River wasn't the first time Bill Callahan's music had evoked a dream-like quality - and it's probably true - but more often it's a daydream. This is true of Red Apple Falls, A River Ain't Too Much to Love, Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle and parts of most of his other albums. Dream River, however, definitely sinks into the subconscious. Callahan staples such as acoustic guitar strums, sparse arpeggios and snare cracks are de-emphasised or excised entirely in favour of phased electric guitar and hand percussion, the latter courtesy of Thor Harris, and a world away from the crazed thudding I was lucky enough to witness him perform with Swans earlier this year.

The first and last song take place in the "real" world while the others are dreams of the protagonist, or least take place inside his head. The reality is mundane - in opener "The Sing" we learn he's been sitting in a bar all day with a single purpose ("the only words I've said today are 'beer' and 'thank you' ") and "Winter Road" even tells us what's on the radio in the car ("a Donald Sutherland interview"). However, the real world concerns that occupy the reality also permeate the dreams. There seems to be a consensus that 2009's Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle draws its themes from Callahan's last breakup, or at least was influenced by it. Accordingly, Dream River could be the flipside, its writing having begun a year into his relationship with his now fiancée. But that's unimportant. The meta text isn't the point even with a teen pop idol such as Callahan and I shouldn't rehash what is no doubt all over the gossip rags. Either way, the importance of other people in any person's life is a significant theme. Callahan has claimed in the past that he "feels like an ex-con trying to make good", but if there's one universal truth to gleaned from Dream River, it's that being out of step with the world doesn't mean you have to navigate it alone.

Related:
Bill Callahan - Apocalypse
Bill Callahan - Rough Travel for a Rare Thing
My 200 Favourite Albums of All Time

2001-2013: Celebrating The Mars Volta

Meh.

RIP Alan Myers

Alan Myers, formerly of Devo, died of brain cancer on Monday at the age of 58. Meyers was Devo's drummer from 1976 to 1986, playing on the band's first six albums, including the classic first three Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (1978), Duty Now for the Future (1979) and Freedom of Choice (1980).


On this song from Devo's second album, the verses are in the highly unusual time signature of 11/8.


The original version of "Jocko Homo", released as the b-side of Devo's first single "Mongoloid". This is also in an unconventional time signature, being entirely in 7/8 (the band added a bridge in 4/4 for the rerecorded version that opens Are We Not Men?).


This version is in the style of the "stiff" version found on Pioneers Got Scalped: The Anthology. That mostly means "faster".

Happy 20,000 views, SWR!

20,000 views in just under 5 years - not too shabby, if you have a poor understanding of the word "shabby". In honour of this milestone, here is a photo of an adjustable spanner.

New Bill Callahan album!

     gif creator unknown.

Torres - Moon & Back (live)

Related:
Torres - Torres

Extempore #11: YouTube guitar pedal reviews

Rules for reviewing a guitar pedal on YouTube:

1. If you can't make a decent quality recording, don't bother. A scratchy webcam video isn't going to give people an idea of what the pedal sounds like.

2. People are watching the video to hear the pedal. Nobody wants to watch you unbox the fucking thing,

3. You know how action movies usually start with an action scene before they spend some time building the story? Play something before you start talking.

4. If you're reviewing with one or more other people, spare us the comedy routine.

5. Refrain from playing 10 minute blues jams and play some fucking chords once in a while. This is paramount if you're reviewing a distortion pedal.

6. If you're reviewing anything other than an overdrive or distortion pedal, shows us what it sounds like in tandem with one or both of those effects.

Torres - Torres

Torres is the most absurdly assured debut I've heard so far this decade. A full band's worth of musicians played on the album, but much of it is just Torres' electric guitar and voice, backed as much by reverb, hard panning and other devices as by the musicians. However, the band isn't there for perfunctory arrangements, nor are the sonic details a mere bag of tricks; in fact, one of Torres' talents is knowing how much of each a song needs. "Come to Terms" is an outlier; it's the only song to feature an acoustic guitar, and it's arguably the most lyrically conventional. Hear it out of context and you might peg Torres as an entirely different songwriter, one of a sort that aren't in short supply. Hear it in sequence as the penultimate track, however, and you've already heard the arrangements and songwriting and recording nuances that make her float to the top. You know she recorded it with an acoustic guitar and little else because she already had something to say and decided it was the best tool to help her convey it, as opposed to too many young songwriters who have nothing to say, but think that everything will fall into place if they strap on an acoustic and folk shit up.

The whole album expertly negotiates the line between self expression and self indulgence thanks to Torres' sense of restraint and her lyrics, which are emotive, but never lapse into simplistic "Dear Diary" cliches. Torres puts herself out there without burying her vocals in the mix or obscuring her lyrics with obliqueness, which would be a risk if she didn't have the talent and assuredness of a songwriter several years into their career. The bigger risk would have been to put in anything less than total commitment and hope nobody would notice.

Related:
Torres - Moon & Back (live)

Richard Thompson - Electric

When I reviewed Richard Thompson's last album, the live document Dream Attic, I pointed out how ridiculous it was that a man the same age as my mother was putting out better rock music than 95% of young bands. I'll give them a pass on technical ability, and obviously lacking Thompson's nearly 50 years' experience is a handicap, but there's no excuse for them to be outdone in the category of raw enthusiasm. Young bands, you had three years to get your shit together, but Richard Thompson has owned your ass again!

Thompson assembled what he calls a "less powerful power trio" - less powerful than Cream or the Jimi Hendrix Experience - but then who isn't? The similarities begin and end with the fact that the Electric trio is led by a guitar virtuoso whose rhythm section can not only keep up, but easily so. In the EPK he described the music therein as "funk folk", and while that might not be entirely apt, Michael Jerome's drums make many of the songs inspire dancing, which Thompson will be the first to tell you people didn't always consider a separate activity from listening to music. Like other drummers such as Janet Weiss and Dave Grohl who are accustomed to playing in trios, Jerome knows how to sound "big".

While the standout track here is "Stuck on the Treadmill" - strange how Thompson's songs with the most epic solos tend to be my favourites - the real revelation is how inspired some of the quieter numbers are. Some slowly build ("My Enemy"), while others such as "The Snow Goose", nothing but acoustic guitar and vocals, stay tense and still for their duration. That one sounds like something Thompson could have written in the 70s with Linda's vocals in mind. Instead he takes the lead while Allison Krauss provides backing vocals.

Thompson isn't constantly reinventing himself at this point in his career, and individual thresholds for variations on what he's been doing for decades now will vary, as will where Electric fits in with his recent albums. For my money it's no Dream Attic, but it would still be a hell of a year in which it wasn't a highlight.

Related:
Richard Thompson - Dream Attic
My 200 Favourite Albums of All Time

Lady Lamb the Beekeeper - Ripely Pine

Ripely Pine is 23 year-old Aly Spaltro's first studio album, but she'd recorded a handful of lo-fi albums starting in her teens. These recordings display a rare confidence, an approach beholden to nobody in particular and a preponderance of ideas, but are stronger conceptually than in execution. They are the sound of Spaltro finding her voice and honing her craft, and the reason Ripely Pine sounds like an audacious third studio album by an established artist.

Spaltro wrote many of the songs while still in her teens, and there are drafts of some of them among her early recordings, but she already had a knack for striking imagery, such as leprosy on the moon's surface tainting its glow. Although she played many of the instruments herself, she's taken advantage of having extra personnel and hasn't skimped on arrangements. Strings elevate some songs to a level just shy of operatic, while mariachi horns turn "Aubergine" into a song that is at once jaunty and harrowing. Songs that were made to rock, such as "Bird Balloons" do exactly that - in fact, Ripely Pine is primarily a rock album, albeit one made by someone with a folk singer's heart.

My Bloody Valentine - m b v

Maybe I'm showing my age, but when I ordered the CD of m b v and downloaded the accompanying digital copy in less time than it takes to listen to it, it still didn't feel as if I was really looking at a new My Bloody Valentine album. I mean here it is on a medium that didn't exist when Loveless came out, obtained by means that didn't exist as we know it. When Loveless was new, CDs had just snatched the market share from cassettes. To put it in terms of the musical landscape, it was a time when Kurt Cobain was alive and Justin Bieber wasn't.

The band's fans have a couple of legitimate fears regarding m b v - fears which, if they share my opinion, they can put to rest. Firstly, m b v isn't a retread of Loveless (or Isn't Anything or any other My Bloody Valentine release for that matter). It's a product of the same band mining the same ground, but it's not the same album. To call it so just because it trades in sheets of fuzz and buried vocals would be like saying Rain Dogs is the same as Swordfishtrombones because they both have growling and marimba. One fortunate similarity is the preservation of dynamics in the mastering.  Secondly, well, I'll just come out and say it: the album is damn good. No, probably not Loveless good, but damn good. Welcome back, it's been too long. There's beer in the fridge, help yourself.

m b v eases listeners into the idea of a new My Bloody Valentine album over the course of its first third. On the opener "She Found Now", the waves of distortion and a clean, tonally unambiguous guitar are both at the forefront as the drums, though barely audible, punctuate the tidal effect of the distortion. "Only Tomorrow", a likely single, reminds us that the wait has been even longer for an album featuring Colm Ó Cíosóig as a full time participant. Ó Cíosóig's drums are mixed to various levels throughout the album; they're pretty quiet on this one, yet they drive the song, which in this case is an upbeat number that reminds you that My Bloody Valentine can engage you physically as well as mentally. It also ups the stakes sonically, as a distorted lead guitar emulates brass. "Who Sees You" guides the listener further out into m b v 's strange world while sounding familiar thanks to Kevin Shields' whammy bar shenanigans.

While Shields is necessarily all over this album, it's far more of a band effort than Loveless, and the next three tracks serve as a welcome back to Bilinda Butcher, who sings on all three. It's a pretty gentle trio of tracks; all three emphasise Butcher's vocals and some interesting modulation effects over distortion and feedback, and the last one is built on tremolo'd guitar, a danceable beat and some of Debbie Googe's most audible bass work.

The last three tracks cease the hand-holding completely. Vocals are almost entirely absent ("Nothing Is" is completely instrumental) and all three tracks are rambunctious numbers driven by whims and, like most of the album's best material, the drums. The album ends with a "jet plane" flange sound, and if that signifies the end of a journey, it's one that gets less familiar as it goes while at the same time making it increasingly clear why the band still thought it was worth taking us after all this time.

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My 200 Favourite Albums of All Time