Sex, War and Robots

Monday, April 22, 2013

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

Thursday, March 14, 2013

RIP Clive Burr

Clive Burr, Iron Maiden's drummer from 1979 to 1982, died Tuesday at the age of 56. Burr suffered from Multiple Sclerosis during the last two decades of his life, a cruel irony for a man who distinguished himself through his physical power and dexterity.

Steve Harris: “This is terribly sad news. Clive was a very old friend of all of us. He was a wonderful person and an amazing drummer who made a valuable contribution to Maiden in the early days when we were starting out. This is a sad day for everyone in the band and those around him and our thoughts and condolences are with his partner Mimi and family at this time.”

Bruce Dickinson: “I first met Clive when he was leaving Samson and joining Iron Maiden. He was a great guy and a man who really lived his life to the full. Even during the darkest days of his M.S., Clive never lost his sense of humour or irreverence. This is a terribly sad day and all our thoughts are with Mimi and the family.”

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

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.

Saturday, March 2, 2013

For He's a Jolly Good Fellow

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

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.

Related: 5 Artists Who Should Have Been Nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame This Year
My 200 Favourite Albums of All Time