Author: GuyHornsby

What to say about this album? Or the man behind it? His story is at times harrowing, sad, joyous, in fact the very fact he’s made a new album and put it out given what he’s gone through in the last year is an achievement in itself. A former frontman, beset by a lack of faith in his own skills and voice, time spent int he musical wilderness was saved by American outfit Midlake when they persuaded him to record an album with them. The result of that was the fantastic Queen Of Denmark, which layered piano and velvet, dual-tracked vocals, disguising the extremities of emotion in almost MOR style balladry. But underneath the surface of the standard musical structure lurks darkness at every turn. And The Queen Of Denmark was about his happiness spent with a partner, then Pale Green Ghosts is the bleakness of post-break up, taken up a notch with the announcement, onstage, that he was HIV+. Others would have retreated into solitude, but Grant simply confronted this head on, and the result is an album that’s accessible immeadiately, then gradually snares you, as the emotional impact the words hits home.

Made with Biggi Viera of Gus Gus, there’s an electronic slant on it, but it’s much more than just some synths added to Grant’s syrupy voice. For me, I’ve actually become obsessed with the album. I tend to listen to new albums three or four times over to get to know them in the first week, but occasionally I end up with a mild addiction, and in this case I’ve listened to it over 30 times in the first two weeks. I find myself waking up in the night and the morning with songs stuck in my head (the fist in a velvet glove GMF, or the ehtereal title track) and it’s pretty much taken me over this month.

There’s a brilliant interview with him in the Guardian that’s worth reading too:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/mar/03/john-grant-interview-singer-songw…

Laid bare, Pale Green Ghosts is one of the albums of the year.

Brother David – Deptford Goth – Life After Defo

Similary sprung on me this month, by a friend and while at first impression it just sounds a little like identikit male-voice, lots of reverb, dubby Croydon stuff, it’s a real grower. It’s not so much the vocals or the fx, but the melodies, and they’ve really stuck with me. two of my favourite albums this year so far. There’s a good interview with him in the Guardian as well. Enjoy!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/mar/15/deptford-goth-life-after-defo

Slightly late brothers, but the December album is Josh Rouse – Nashville. It came out in 2005, and I got alerted to it by my girlfriend at the time. It was something I’d have never really gone for without guidance, but don’t be fooled by the title, despite the odd steel guitar, it’s not a country album. It’s just a pitch-perfect slice of songwriting that tugs at the heartstrings. It grows with each listen, and it’s written distinctly with vinyl in mind, even when I had the CD it was listed as ‘side A/B’.

It had some emotional resonance with me, as it straddled the breakup of the relationship that brought it to me at the time, but that’s years in the past, and its effect hasn’t lessened, even though the association to that time’s now in the distant past. It’s also something I’d go – knowing the Brothers’ cd collections (and how hard it was to select something outside them) – as far as to say may just not fit for you, but if it does, it’ll be worth it. That’s the risk with new music. 99% of the albums I like, one of us has, so this is something different (it was between this and a Ben Folds Five album, but I chose this as it was more rewarding in the long term for me).

It sounds pretty timeless. It could’ve been made in 1975, or 1995, and it’s rare to find a modern album like that that hasn’t aged at all. I saw him perform it live in 2005, and it was just as powerful.

So, listen, digest, critique, and lay it all back on me. Only a cold soul could fail to be moved by Sad Eyes. An absolutely heartbreaking record.

Here’s one of the album’s lighter moments, My Love Has Gone.

While I know there’s a distinct love of the electronic on here, we’ve not really had an out-and-out electronic album up for the Brothers yet. And I’ve come across one this summer that I’m really really enjoying. It’s not a whack-you-over-the-head one like Justice or Daft Punk, nor is it uber-cool soundcapes a la Shed or Something Else. But I’ve been a fan of Simian Mobile Disco for a while, but never delved too much into their music up to now, not in album form. They’ve done a pop album a while back that had some intersting tracks on it, but appalled fans of their dancefloor stuff. Then they did Delicacies, which was the opposite end of the scale, and a bit too growly for me.

But James Ford and Jas Shaw are two lovers of analogue, and that I like very much. They’re two endearlingly nerdy, very English guys, and when I saw them at Sonar talking about the album and their music, it was hard not to get drawn into their own take on it. Jas Shaw’s pet project is a wardrobe-sized modular synth, which they take out on the road at times, and live, they’re actually an outfit that really can claim to create pretty much everything on the hoof, far away from laptop/ableton jockeys. Their music’s across the whole spectrum, but listening to Unpatterns, there’s a proper actual knowledge of the past that comes through and colours everything they do. The music is warm, plump, punchy, solid….. they know what they’re doing, basically.

So, enjoy. I didn’t get blown away by this, but I didn’t want to be. I just wanted a collection of electronic tracks that crossed the genres that were made by people that gave a fuck and that wanted people to listen as well as just dance.

While you’re there, I highly recommend their RA Exchange interview, here:

http://www.residentadvisor.net/podcast-episode.aspx?exchange=101

And not just because I was sat there, hungover, nodding, all the way through.