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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The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street (Deluxe Edition)

The Rolling Stones made Exile on Main Street for somebody's sins, but not mine. It's a double album in the same way that London Calling and Daydream Nation are double albums: they don't fit onto two sides of vinyl, the dominating format at the time. Double albums often come at the peak of a band's creativity, a time when to put out another dozen or so songs seems like a facile endeavour - it's surprising that the late 60s produced as few as it did, it being at time when an album a year was standard.

Exile on Main Street is many people's favourite Rolling Stones album, but I'll take its predecessor, the concise ten song set Sticky Fingers over it any day. Exile lacks the restless eclecticism of London Calling and with Keith Richards as chief songwriter, doesn't play host to the warring personalities of its members as does The Beatles (The White Album). It doesn't even bother with a concept, as The Wall did, and not much of it is given over to experimentation. Pared down its best tracks, Exile makes a very good single album, but still not one that matches Let It Bleed or Sticky Fingers. "Tumbling Dice" vs "Brown Sugar"? No "dice". "Sweet Black Angel" vs "Wild Horses?" Fuck off.

The Deluxe Edition comes with a bonus disc out outtakes. The quality is surprisingly high for such a disc and demonstrates that the Stones weren't the best judges of their own material; Exile could have been improved by replacing some of its duds with some of these songs, especially "Plundered My Soul".

You might be wondering why I hate Exile on Main Street. That's a question I can't answer, because I don't hate it. I actually like it quite a bit. I just like some other Rolling Stones albums a hell of a lot more.

Hunters & Collectors - Horn of Plenty box: The Way to Go Out/Under One Roof/Natural Selection (DVD)

"But I know you want more!" as Tim Shaw would have said 17 years ago, and as it so happens, although I've reviewed all 14 CDS in the Horn of Plenty box, there are still the 2 DVDs to go.

The Way to Go Out (1985) is an appropriately raw-sounding show, originally released on VHS as well as CD. It's not for casual fans, but it's a good one to have if you love The Jaws of Life as much as I do. You could probably find better bootlegs on the internet these days though.

Under One Roof (1998) is a Sydney show from the band's farewell tour. The sound and picture are superb and the set is a decent representation of the band's entire career. Mark Seymour's voice had smoothed out considerably by this point, but he was able to revisit his 1984 self and belt out a convincing "42 Wheels".

Natural Selection contains every promo video the band ever did. Whoop-dee-doo. It's best for multiple sittings if you're likely to get weary watching 18 videos by the same band. There's not much else to say except to note that "Carry Me" is same version (both the audio and video) as that featured in "The Way to Go Out".

Well, now I've reviewed the entire contents of the Horn of Plenty box. I'm going to go to sleep for a month.

Hunters & Collectors - Horn of Plenty box: Cargo Cult/Mutations/Spare Parts

We're into the odds and ends now, but that's by no means a bad thing. Cargo Cult (2008), exclusive to Horn of Plenty, rounds up three EPs: World of Stone (1981), Payload (1982) and Living Daylights (1987 - a tribute to Timothy Dalton's first outing as James Bond from the same year, perhaps?). The CD actually contains a fuckup: it stars with "Run Run Run" instead of World of Stone's title track, then crams "Watcher" and "Loinclothing" into one track. That EP is a dry run for the slightly better structured Krautrock-aping style of the debut; the title track basically repeats itself until it passes the seven and a half minute mark. Payload (1982) is presumably made up of Fireman's Curse outtakes, but the latter two songs would have been more than welcome there. It's a sonically fascinating EP more than anything else, and Doug Falconer is at his heavily percussive best. Fast forward five years and Living Daylights gives you even more options besides the Fate tracks for imagining how much better What's a Few Men? could have turned out, or perhaps Human Frailty if they'd waited a bit. "Inside a Fireball" is some catchy shit right there, and either album would have benefited from its presence.

Mutations (2005) shares its name with a Beck album that was disingenuously marketed by Geffen as not being "officially" the next entry in his catalogue. Hunters & Collectors' Mutations is accurately described as such, however, given that it is a b-sides and rarities collection. It's better than most, too. "I'm Set Free", unlike "Run Run Run", is a Velvet Underground cover, and a creative one at that. "Know Your Product" is more perfunctory and a more predictable choice of cover; just as The Saints probably felt obliged to cover Motown classics when they availed themselves of a horn section, Hunters in turn probably thought it was a waste not to cover the horniest of Saints songs. "Mind of an American" is a disappointing way to finish off the collection. It's an unimaginative jab at US foreign policy - better leave that to Midnight Oil and stick to local concerns.

Spare Parts (2008) is the far less substantial and far more asterisk-ridden of the two rarities collections. Everything here besides the original 1984 version of "Throw Your Arms Around Me" is either a live recording or a remix. Meh.

Hunters & Collectors - Horn of Plenty box: Living in Large Rooms/...And Lounges

Given Hunters & Collectors reputation as a live band, the Living in Large Rooms and Lounges 2 CD set (1995) is a valued possession amongst completists, a group that technically includes me now. The problem inherent in all live albums, though, is that the better they are, the more they remind the listener that they are no substitute for having actually attended the concert in question or one like it. People who have seen Hunters & Collectors live, a group which will probably never include me, will likely tell you that about these albums. Hell, the audiences at the two shows in question will tell you as you listen by way of their rapturous applause and sing-along shenanigans.

Living in Large Rooms documents a typical pub show from 1995. As such, the early stuff is fairly represented; the period of 84-89 accounts for roughly half the set. "42 Wheels" explodes through the speakers, demonstrating that the band was still capable of an extraordinary performance at this late stage of its career, and it makes me wish they'd included "The Slab" and "Inside a Fireball" among others. The later stuff demonstrates that the band was able to judge the relative merits of its own material, or at least its suitability to a live setting; see "Easy" in particular.

...And Lounges is a strange album indeed. An acoustic Hunters & Collectors show, eh? To paraphrase Dr. House, "that makes sense...if you don't think about it for more than two seconds". The conceit necessitates the balance to shift towards the band's later, more ballad-heavy material ("True Tears of Joy, "Courtship of America") and greatly renders inert the earlier stuff ("When the River Runs Dry" loses its electric thunder and "The Slab" makes no sense at all). "Betrayer" and "Holy Grail" sound fine, and of course it would have been baffling to exclude "Throw Your Arms Around Me", but I prefer the Human Frailty version. The most confounding aspect of the album is the inclusion of "Say Goodbye" as a secret track, having already included it in the main set as well as that of its sister album.

Hunters & Collectors - Horn of Plenty box: Cut/Demon Flower/Juggernaut

Cut (1992) is a far better welcome to the 90s for Hunters & Collectors than it could have been. It's a conscious step away from the last couple of albums, with a harder sound and more interesting beats. "Holy Grail", probably the best known Hunters song next to "Throw Your Arms Around Me", is about the band's failure to crack the US market; helped by its tried and true chord progression ("More Than a Feeling" transposed to a different key), it's ironically the closest thing they had to a hit over there. Oddly, "True Tears of Joy" is, according to Wikipedia, the band's biggest hit, yet I'd never heard of it until I bought the box set.

Demon Flower (1994) ushers in the band's "ho-hum" period. Their lives show justified their continued existence well enough (see forthcoming reviews of Living in Large Rooms/And Lounges), but Australians, particularly the youth, were looking to You Am I, Silverchair and Powderfinger for their fix of local music. "Betrayer" holds its own amongst the best of the Hunters catalogue and claims some of the best brass work since the early days, but the most of the rest of Demon Flower is fair to middling at best.

Juggernaut (1998) is no improvement over its predecessor. Mark Seymour had by now smoothed out the gravel in his vocals to the point where he was hardly recognisable as the same that graced any of Hunters' early albums, so when the band steers away from the middle of the road to rock, it's not as effective as it once would have been. When they do make it work, such as in "Mother Hubbard" and especially "Wasted in the Sun", which combines the slow-burning intensity of some of the downbeat entries in the band's early catalogue with the pop sheen of Cut, it really works. However, this doesn't happen often enough throughout the album to distinguish it significantly from Cut or Demon Flower, nor make it a worthwhile sendoff for such a locally lauded and globally under-appreciated band.

Hunters & Collectors - Horn of Plenty box: What's a Few Men?/Ghost Nation

What's a Few Men? (1987) is the point at which Hunters & Collectors had completely transitioned from Krautrock fanboys to pub circuit mainstays. The almost Midnight Oil-sounding single "Do You See What I See?" is strategically positioned as the second track, and it still is, and was then especially, one of the band's biggest hits. What's a Few Men was re-released in the US as Fate, a calculated but unsuccessful move to try to break into that elusive market. The tracklist is also different: four tracks are missing, with four added in their place, and the tracklist has been shuffled around. The album's proper title is taken from A.B. Facey's memoir A Fortunate Life, and the title track is one of those missing from Fate, which is a shame; it stands out of context as a decent World War I song and is a better ballad than "Around the Flame". Also missing are the decent "Still Hanging 'Round", the excellent, bluesy "Give Me a Reason" and the so-so "Breakneck Road". Fate's extra tracks, appended to all CD versions of What's a Few Men? vary; "Back on the Breadline" and "Something to Believe In" genuinely deserved an Australian release (and, having said that Fate failed to appeal to the US market, "Breadline" did receive a lot of airplay on US alternative radio stations), but "Wishing Well" and "Real World" don't stand out here and I don't imagine they would if I were to recreate Fate with some iPod programming.

Ghost Nation (1989) starts with a bit of a red herring. The verses of "When the River Runs Dry" are led by the rhythm section, like in the old days, while the choruses are of the catchy variety that fans were used to by then. It was their biggest hit at the time, deservedly so, and another song on high rotation on many alternative radio stations in America. As with some other Hunters 7 Collectors albums, Ghost Nation starts off well but then loses momentum, but at the moment I consider it a notch above What's a Few Men?.

Hunters & Collectors - Horn of Plenty box: The Jaws of Life/Human Frailty

The Jaws of Life (1984) is the point at which Hunters & Collectors started fashioning their jams into traditional song structures. I'm totally on board with that; hmmm, what's that other band I listen to that's influenced by Can and Talking Heads and named after a song by one of them?

"42 Wheels" kicks off with - you guessed it - the sound of a car engine starting, bringing to mind the noise experiments of Sparklehorse a decade later, before that glorious rhythm section stomps out an almost "Rebel Rebel" type rhythm, accompanied by slide and tremolo guitar that goes on to punctuate most of the album. Highlights include the downbeat "Hayley's Doorstep" and an excellent cover of my favourite Ray Charles song "I Believe to My Soul" (shortened to "I Believe").

Human Frailty (1986) takes definite steps towards the Hunters sound that would pack the pubs throughout the remainder of the 80s and 90s, streamlining the songs into more radio-friendly fare. 1985 single "Throw Your Arms Around Me" shows up here and was again released as a single (not for the last time); though barely charting in the top 50, it became one of Australia's most beloved songs of all time, although it sounds out of place here, being Mark Seymour's first attempt at a sensitive pop song. Falconer's drumming is calmer here, but interestingly, Archer changed his bass style little, and didn't really need to.

Hunters & Collectors - Horn of Plenty box: Hunters & Collectors/The Fireman's Curse

I got this recently for $50, which I'm pretty sure is about $150 cheaper than when it came out. It's ridiculous value, really - 14 CDs and 2 DVDs. Everything the band recorded over its 16 year career is in there. I intend to review all of it piece by piece, starting with the self-titled debut and its follow-up The Fireman's Curse. I was already familiar with these two albums, having bought the first (with the World of Stone EP appended) and downloaded the second, but the rest, barring certain popular singles, will be all new to me.

I was surprised to learn that Hunters & Collectors took its name from a song by Can from its late era that I haven't yet familiarised myself with, but the first two albums more than elucidate the connection. Hunters & Collectors is bookended by its two best tracks, "Talking to a Stranger" and "Run Run Run". Both revel in the locked groove motif of Can, but "Talking to a Stranger" filters it through Gang of Four, sounding a lot like "What We All Want", only better - a big call considering that that's my favourite Gang of Four song. Hunters & Collectors is one of the best Australian albums of the 80s - another big call, as that was a great decade for "Oz Rock" - and John Archer and Doug Falconer were together a greatly underrated rhythm section.

The Fireman's Curse is slight step down from its predecessor. It's less consistent and the lyrics are more oblique than ever (not that the lyrics were the point at this stage). Still, it begins and ends as strongly as the debut, and is probably already one of my favourite albums of 1983.

Four Tet - There is Love in You

There's a 12 second track in the middle of this album called "Pablo's Heart" which consists entirely of an in utero baby's sampled heart beat - I assume Pablo is Kieran Hebden's then unborn son. If that's the case, the early days of the Olsen Twins pale in comparison with this blatant exploitation. Poor Pablo will have to endure cries of "hey, it's that heartbeat kid!" for years to come. Those twelve seconds will define him, even though any doctor who hears later samples of his heartbeat will be able to tell you that it's much stronger and measurable by a stethoscope. I hope he at least sues for royalties on the grounds that the sample was used without this authourisation.

But let that not overshadow the fact that there is a new Four Tet album, because Hebden likes to take his time in between those things. The cheesy "folktronica" tag is less applicable to There is Love in You, as the beats are straighter and it's full of sampled vocals and digital glitches, but just when you think it's going to be an entirely non-organic affair, some free range guitar shows up towards the end. There is Love in You begins and ends exceptionally strongly, but lacks variety and dynamics in comparison with previous Four Tet albums, suggesting Hebden might have been better off making an EP out of the best four or five tracks and aiming to release a new full length later in the year. It's still, however, a worthy if not exceptional entry in his catalogue.

Bill Callahan - Rough Travel for a Rare Thing

You couldn't walk far without tripping over a live album in the 70s and 80s. They were quickly made and usually ugly, usually featuring an immodest photo of the performers on the front and a tracklist and very little else - sometimes not even the venue or date - on the back. Many were unceremoniously transferred to CD in the 80s and can be found for $5 in bargain bins; the original vinyls are even cheaper. The fact that hardly any of them ever sold in great numbers didn't seem to matter, but now that anyone can make a bootleg and soundboard recordings aren't hard to come by, they're finally becoming less common. Some live albums are actually very good, and Rough Travel for a Rare Thing is one of them. If we gain nothing else from the fact that there is now an official Bill Callahan/Smog live album, it's that the excellent show it documents, from a small club in Melbourne, is now beknownst to more than just a few hundred Bit Torrenters who may have already downloaded it.

So what makes a great live album? An excellent performance? Check. But of course any band capable of delivering such a performance should be able to do so on a regular basis, and presumably there are many shows that could have stood in for this one. Well chosen set? Check. Five of the eleven songs here are from the classic A River Ain't Too Much to Love, the final album released under the Smog name - it's therefore not a well balanced set, but the inclusion of any songs from that album is always a very very good thing. The set also features the great earlier songs "Bathysphere" and "Held". Creative re-arrangment of the material? Check. The instrumentation is all acoustic, yet "Bathysphere" still rocks and a clever string arrangement stands in place of the electric riff in "Held". Breaking down the divide between the performer and the listener? Check...er, wait. How does one do that in a way that a studio album doesn't, despite occupying the same medium and being just as "live" in your lounge room? Amiable banter between songs? There's hardly any of that here, but neither is there in Nirvana's Live at Reading, and both that and this are, in my opinion, two of the best official live albums ever released. No, the trick is that the divide between the best artists and their listeners doesn't exist. That was always the point with Callahan, but here you know the songs were recorded in the kind of venue you probably frequent yourself whether there's a band playing or not, and if you close your eyes, you can pretend you're there.

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Nathan Oliver - Cloud Animals

Nathan Oliver's self-titled release of 2007 was one of the year's most telling debut releases. Part pop classicist and part folkie, Oliver and his collaborators demonstrated a remarkably assured sense of arrangement over a 10 song set of restrained pop in the Jeff Mangum/Elliott Smith vein.

Their arrangement skills have only improved on Cloud Animals. Oliver downstrums Sebadoh style on the first two tracks "Icicles for Fingers" and "Under Lock and Key" while the rhythm section adopts a Tennessee Two gallop, both songs indicating what you're in for; to borrow a metaphor from Oliver's day job (which he must be sick of people doing by now), a balance of intrusive drilling and pleasant, numbing novocaine. Oliver's rock side surfaces a bit more here; "Icicles for Fingers" and "Red Panda" are full-blooded rockers, while even the sugar rush of "Playground Lies" is visited by some fucked up guitar that reminds you that its lyrics aren't really all that sweet. Conversely, "Red Panda" is tempered by a repeated organ interlude that temporarily transports it from its contemporary space into quaint, Shocking Blue territory.

There are missteps here and there. "A Dark History" is a strange marriage of unrealised love and accidental death. Oliver evoked a similar mood on his debut with his brilliant cover of Ace of Bases's "All That She Wants", but here it doesn't ring true. "How Small We Have Become" is based on a demo from Oliver's pre-debut days, and is a bit thin musically.

Missteps aside, Cloud Animals is an excellent release by a songwriter with a surprising early mastery of his craft.

Nathan Oliver performing State Lines Part 3 in his native North Carolina:


Cloud Animals

Alela Diane - To Be Still

Alela Diane knows her limits and knows how to expand them. Her songwriting hasn't changed at a basic level, but knowing a third album of stripped down folk music just wouldn't cut it, she's hired some musical muscle to deliver some more elaborate arrangements. She now has the voice to carry such tunes, too; perhaps last year's Headless Heroes covers project forced her to approach her vocals in different ways, but in any case, a song such as "White As Diamonds" just wouldn't have worked two years ago.

Here's Alela in the "White As Diamonds" video. Purdy, ain't she?