You wait for a bus and then a few come along at once. In agreeing to have PJ Harvey’s new album as May’s album of the month – I have long found her a singular and unflinching artist that’s made music that doesn’t seem to nod to any other artists – and then Radiohead release A Moon Shaped Pool forty-eight hours later. Music’s gain is confusion for this blog. For, as much as I love PJ, and have enjoyed The Hope Six Demolition Project‘s own character, it can’t but help have taken a back seat since I heard Burn The Witch.
But this is about the album of the month, and it’s still more than worth all our attention and review. Harvey burst onto the scene with The PJ Harvey Trio’s Dry in 1992, an angry, unafraid and powerful artist that put her own life and experience at the centre of her music. Despite her never giving much care to the mainstream’s accolades or attention, she flirted with it in the mid-00s, even garnering BRIT, Grammy and Mercury nominations (the former two, she never won), but is the only artist to have won the latter twice, with Stories From the City, Stories From The Sea, and then her previous LP, Let England Shake.
So, what does an am artist that’s been making music for 30 years have still to say? While Let England Shake drew parallels between previous world wars and the messy modern conflicts we have been dragged into, The Hope Six Demolition Project deals with a much larger focus, in reality it still addressed themes and topics that are as virulent and important as any she’s taken on over the years: poverty, deprivation, loss, race, class, and humanity. It crosses the pond to look at America (as she’s done before) and is a nakedly political record, perhaps addressing the issues in a way that a US artist couldn’t. And being Polly Harvey, it was no ordinary recording, with sessions taking place live in Somerset House as the public watched.
What is the album like? You get many of Harvey’s strongest suits – raw rock, piercing vocals and lyrics, confrontational themes and the ever presence of John Parish’s gruffness – and an unflinching gaze onto America’s most troubling issues. This has resulted in somewhat of a backlash over the pond, with residents of the Washington DC area referenced in the album and commentators both criticising her subject and her opinion. But provocation is what Harvey does, and across the eleven tracks you get an album and a message that’s clear. In The Community Of Hope’s critical words and The Ministry Of Defence’s jangling guitars and chorused vocals, fans will feel at home. It’s not just a single pace or style, with Chain Of Keys’ rumbling snares and heavy sax, while River Anacostia’s haunting wail overpowers everything else. There’s definite echoes of Stories from the City… on show, so it’ll be interesting to see if it can follow up that and its predecessor’s success and resonance. Single The Wheel (above) is the most accessible and catching record, but like many of PJ’s albums, it needs addressing as a sonic whole. That’s where the power lies.
As she gets older, perhaps the one criticism of Harvey’s canon is that as she addresses weighty and important issues in her music is that she gradually retreats herself from the centre of it. Perhaps she’s earned that right. Are these views her own? Is it simply a theme of the album? We will likely never know, but it doesn’t dim the power of her music, and most likely never will. We bandy ‘national treasure’ around too much, but while she’d never agree with it herself, I’m sure PJ Harvey deserves it more than many.
What a sad, sad day. And another sudden death from an icon that crossed boundaries, race, sex, genres, and the globe. It’s easy now to look at him and think how crazy he looked and sounded, but you have to remember this was in a time when no one looked that way or sounded that way.
He played every instrument on his albums, certainly early on. A shy, introverted man that concocted an extroverted stage persona that took him to places that maybe even he didn’t know he’d reach. And what places. The fact that a guy could take r’n’b and make it funky, take a guitar and fuse rock with them both, and all at a time when someone of his race and background just didn’t succeed off their own back. He rewrote the rules, and for a time, there was no one on the planet that was as cool, as successful, as autonomous, as funky, and as star-studded as he was. He made films (fully formed in his mind before the cameras rolled), he produced five albums of unreleased work for everything that saw the light of day, he wrote for others (Chaka Khan, The Bangles, Cyndi Lauper, Alicia Keys, Stevie Nicks, MC Hammer for starters) and his legacy is 30 years of people wanting to sound like him, want to be him, and no one ever came close. And now no one ever will.
These days everything seems a facsimile of something else, but he didn’t sound like anyone, and no one sounded like him. He turned rock starts onto r’n’b and r’n’b artists onto funk, to soul, to anything he laid his hands to. His music knew no boundaries. And his style and his overt sexuality scared the shit out of middle America, and it captivated everyone else. I remember seeing his album covers when I was a kid, and it was as if he’d landed from another planet. Sometimes it felt like he had. He made kids from all backgrounds realise that they could make something of themselves, and he gave his time and money to causes that mattered, with little fanfare and publicity, and he had no qualms making those statements when it had the most exposure (search for his speech at the Grammys when he chose to support Black Lives Matter).
His output may have waned in quality in recent times, but when you have Prince, Controversy, Sign ‘O’ The Times, 1999, Lovesexy, Graffitti Bridge, Purple Rain, and many more to fall back on, you have a little leeway. He played right to the end, touring relentlessly over his entire career, with 21 famous nights at the O2 (then straight to the Indigo2 to do another show afterwards), then so many secret gigs in the last few years, even having a party at his legendary Paisley Park home last weekend. He famously said that he would make a song every day for the rest of his life. One can only imagine the size of the unreleased vaults, and the quality, but then for a man that was so private and had such control over his legacy, perhaps his epitaph will be just that: no Tupac-style re-releases. It would have him smiling down one last time, but with a back catalogue like that who needs bootlegs and secret albums?
Perhaps, like Bowie, he was ill. Stories flickered around the internet lately, but of course, no one really knew. Perhaps that tsunami of live shows of late was his raging against the dying of the light. We may never know. Even his piano tour was sold out, with no one, of course, realising it was his last. You rarely get to go out on your own terms, but it would be very Prince to be able to dictate even that. He changed his name, his style, he gave his music away in a newspaper and it was never anything less than simply what he wanted to do.
I’m no diehard fan. But nor do I claim to be. My twin brother Dave got me into him in our teens. I remember him playing Sign ‘O’ The Times relentlessly when we were at school, and while I listened and took it in, he was a full-on worshipper. But then you can’t help, as a child of the 80s, to have just been part of Prince’s world. He was everywhere: on MTV, in the cinema, on the radio, this huge, larger than life force of nature, making these amazing videos, that were barely concealing (or not at all much of the time) their sexuality. As a teenager in the late 80s, it felt like we were in on the secret as he sung Cream, Gett Off, Kiss, and so many more. He seemed everywhere, talking directly to his fans in the most colourful ways.
Much later in life, as I started playing records here and there, Prince pretty much popped up at the most fun and memorable times: I’ve dropped him at many of my best friends’ weddings (Controversy is the clear winner here), I’ve danced to many classics at Bugged Out to bring in each new year, and playing on the radio for the last two years he pops up regularly. You can’t refuse dancing to his Funkness. You never could. His music was powerful and above all it made you feel good. That’s a legacy as bright as any.
Hearing he’s gone, following so soon after Bowie, feels all of a sudden like we’ve got a big gap for genius left in the world now. It’s cliched and trite to say there will never be anyone else like him. So much feels like recycling these days in popular culture, but no one could ever sound like Prince did. This is the man that once stepped onstage with James Brown and Michael Jackson, played guitar then took his jacket off and danced, and everyone else just looked like second best. With everything so accessible now, the mystique that stayed with him all his life feels quaint and unusual, like a throwback to a more innocent time, but he was anything but innocent.
He’s probably busy covering Changes with Bowie right now, with God still sitting with his mouth open reading the back of the Lovesexy gatefold. It would be just what he’d wanted and just what we’d expect. It’s pretty hard to find someone that doesn’t like a single Prince record, because he crossed every boundary there was to cross. And that’s probably the most fitting epitaph of all.
New Shit Robot album incoming after 3 years, and it’s been worth the wait. I’m a big big fan, and after We Got A Love, which was bouncy, but a bit overproduced and ‘big’, this is a sharp turn 90 degrees. It’s apparently produced entirely on hardware and not massively reworked, but lots of live takes. It’s a much more ‘studio’ album, but sounds like proper dance music, and yet it’s still packed full of emotion.
This is the opening single, with frequent collaborator Alexis Taylor and it’s all pads and wistful lyrics. I love it. And the video isn’t bad either.
Well, I know I’ve been listening to a LOT of David Bowie lately, and I’ve been discovering his old albums, and what a wonderful adventure it’s proving to be. His Berlin trilogy particularly, is a revelation. And Low, well, the influences come thick and fast, but the first few bars of The Speed Of Life, it’s just Blur, isn’t it? Fascinating.
Well, I was going to say “who saw that coming?” but we’ve been here before. As it’s been said, when you no longer tour and live as a relative recluse, you can control whatever the public sees of you. So it’s no surprise that after The Next Day, which skewered his early years whilst nodding in reverence to them, that David Bowie spent 2015 making a follow-up, confounding us all again with the title track in November. I have to confess I took a little time to finally listen to this, as I wanted to watch the video rather than just the audio. And it stopped me in my tracks. In fact I ended up stood on Cheapside in my lunch break with my mouth open.
As a statement of intent it’s pretty powerful. While I loved The Next Day, for all the parallels to his classic albums, lyrically it was very much in the moment, skewering his character, ageing, his legacy, and proving he still has the edge that made his music so alluring when I first listened in my teenage years. But while the words on Blackstar do find some common ground with The Next Day, that’s mostly where the comparison ends. There’s been a lot (and I mean a LOT) of frothing of about how avant-garde it is, as if he’s turned into John Cage, genetically spliced with Roni Size and Miles Davis, but I’d take much of that with a pinch of salt. For anyone that’s familiar with Radiohead’s more experimental (recent) work, or the likes of Flying Lotus, or Bjork or any other more outre albums of the last two decades (let alone all sorts of electronic music), it’s not that far-fetched, but I guess the praise is in someone of Bowie’s stature and reputation still feeling so fresh, raw, and willing to experiment. After all, I can’t think of many (any?) artists approaching 70 that would do this, or do it with so much success or style. Especially when they’ve had forays into more experimental work with such varying results. I can see how die-hard classic era Bowie fans (especially those who are the same age as the Thin White Duke) may struggle with it, but really forget the hype, and just listen: this is outstanding work, a potential classic in the making, even after a few listens.
The title track’s first half echoes so much of Radiohead to me, and this isn’t a statement of either artistic laziness or pastiche, (just think Thom Yorke singing instead, and it’d be one of their best works itself) but high praise. Coupled with a deeply disturbing video that burns itself onto your consciousness, with Bowie as some sort of excommunicated (punished?) preacher stating prophetic, abstract lines as adolescents convulse and shake in the background, it’s affecting from the start. Who knows what it’s about? There’s been discussion (denied by Bowie’s team) that it’s referencing ISIS, but really it’s the ambiguity that’s the point here. The dead ‘Spaceman’ (Starman? a nice touch either way), the huge candle, the eclipsed (black) star; there’s huge, broad stylistic strokes at play and then, just as you wonder where it can go from here, it slows and shifts into what feels at first like familiar Bowie, its sax and swagger, all offset by the harsh, discordant, repeating chorus. I’m massive fan of long opening tracks on albums (Station to Station, or Elton John’s Funeral For A Friend), after all, isn’t that what albums are for? As an opener you’d think it’s hard to live up to, but it’s a case of setting the scene.
There’s almost breakbeat-ish, brash rock in Tis A Pity She’s A Whore, then a self-effacing Lazarus, which was written for a stage version of The Man Who Fell To Earth. Sue, which is Bowie to d’n’b (in a good way, thankfully) and echoes things like Squarepusher. Similarly, Girl Loves Me goes heavy on percussion and electronics, but they never take over the song itself. Dollar Days and I Can’t Give Everything Away again talk of death and loss and age and the past. Even a few listens and I’m hooked, and you can only applaud the constant reinvention of a man that could’ve ‘retired’ in 2003 and had a legacy as good as anyone in music.
Bowie continues to confound, and this may be the best thing he’s done since his Golden Years.
I have always been a fan of Roisin Murphy, since – like many of our generation – I saw her in the video for Molok’s Sing It Back (Boris D’Lugosh, we salute you). In truth by then she’d already been with Moloko for over 5 years at that point. Her voice has always been striking, so when the band went their separate ways, her solo career launched. I have to admit though that I’m hardly a ‘have everything she owns’ fanboy. I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed by anything she’s done, but when I bought Overpowered I didn’t expect it to end up as one of my favourite albums of that year. It’s hard to put your finger on her allure, but it’s more than that voice and the lyrics, even though they’re great. Overpowered is painted as a disco album, but it’s far more than that. Sultry, plush, sweeping and enticing, and with her character at the centre the songs are more than the sum of their parts. I still love it.
So, when I heard ‘Exploitation’ on 6Music, fairly relentlessly, it got in my head. I didn’t love the song, but as with much of what Murphy does, it just has something about it. The wonky lead synth, her breathy vocal almost lost in the wind, the angry piano chords. Then I watched the video, and it reminded me why she’s still one of the most interesting artists around. In fact, it’s criminal – given her creativity and skill – that she’s not as successful as more bland and less inventive compatriots. She was doing interesting female solo pop when Lady Gaga was celebrating her 9th birthday. Isn’t that the way of the music world though?
The album is like a slowly unfurling flower. When I first heard it, it didn’t really grab me like I wanted it to, but then it’s a fairly big departure from ‘Overpowered’. Musically inventive, and challenging, it’s a box of tricks that rewards multiple listens. From Gone Fishing’s almost bossa-nova beginnings, to Evil Eyes’ whimsy (backed up by a truly great video), arguably the most poppy and accessible the album gets, it’s a delight. Uninvited Guest sounds like a Grace Jones record, until that staccato vocal slides in, and it feels like a record that only she could make. There’s musicality to her vocals, in the delivery that almost works them like an instrument, and indeed her range is so huge she can go from full-on throaty top range to almost invisible. It’s central to the album, one that goes slow and grandiose, with no fear of trying to be anything other than what she wants it to be. And it’s long. Much longer song length than most artists would risk these days, but nothing feels stretched out or like filler. Unputdownable is a great example of this as it closes out the album. As a modern pop album it’s one that deserves to sell a ton, but of course it’ll just confuse people wanting three-minute ringtone stuff, but they’re missing out.
More of this: I hope it’s not her last and I hope we don’t have to wait until 2023 for the next one.
It’s a bit late this month, but I hope it’s worth the wait, Brothers. And before we get started, there’s a disclaimer here: I’m an unashamed Hot Chip fan. Since I heard The Warning back in 2006 I’ve been hooked. Back then they were a different proposition: new kids on the block, making music that didn’t really sound like anything else I’d listened to (and even more so on Coming On Strong, their 2004 debut, which I consumed the same year) and the antithesis of both the rock and electronic ‘bands’ I listened to as well. They didn’t look like pop stars, they didn’t sound like pop stars, (jesus, comparing them to Radiohead or Arcade Fire seemed odd, still does in some ways) but Over And Over clicked with something in me that I didn’t expect.
Once I got into the album, it’s clear they offered something more than everyone else: a sound that went between full-on dancefloor banger (Over And Over, No Fit State) r’n’b-tinged love songs (Boy From School, Colours) sprinkled with lovely oddities that just seemed like they weren’t trying to be anything at all other than a band just recording what they wanted (Don’t Dance, The Warning, Careful). I saw them at Lovebox that year, they were a strange experience. Playing ridiculously early on the main stage, they were a nervous-looking cadre of nerdy synth geeks, almost not engaging at all with the crowd but making a decent fist of studio-produced songs that didn’t always crossover to the live arena.
Nine years later comes their sixth album, and maybe their best yet – Why Make Sense – and in some ways they’re completely different and yet hardly removed from the collective that endeared me all those years ago. Where have they changed? Well, despite their great hooks and quirky album tracks The Warning, breakthrough that it was, felt like a band still finding their feet a little, and as a live proposition they were still green. Now, they are the finished product: one of the most inventive bands around, making records that are catchy, but intelligent, poppy but heartfelt and emotional, and somehow still sounding, well, like Hot Chip, even though in any album they’ll cross through five different genres. And live, they’re one of my favourite bands ever. Part of this is down to their development as a live act, whether it’s coming out of their shells as frontman/men, becoming more confident of their sound, honing their work from the studio to the stage much more coherently, and now crossing the tricky rubicon from making an album with synths, drum machines and all sorts, and making that sound heavy live. More of that later.
In reality, they’ve taken a step forward at each album’s release, but Made In The Dark was a watershed: they didn’t succumb to temptation to try and make hits, they just did what they did, with a few more touches, a few different synths, but never moved away from making music they wanted to. That album had more standout tracks – One Pure Thought, Ready For The Floor and Shake A Fist – all the while not treating their fans (old and new) like fools, and making repeated listens bear fruit each time. And One Life Stand was as fully-formed as they’ve got up to now. I love each album and track in their own right, but until Why Make Sense I didn’t know if they’d better it, however much I loved In Our Heads.
But Why Make Sense is a revelation. It’s Hot Chip, undoubtedly, but it just feels like another leap forward. There’s reasons for this – admitted and assumed – but for a band that’s been making records for over a decade, and in that ever-changing electronic/pop arena it’s hard enough to stay relevant and keep fresh. I think Hot Chip have managed it as they’ve never been interested in doing anything ‘cool’, and so they never have to beat anything but their own expectations. But the band’s ever-growing side projects – Al and Felix’s brilliant New Build, Joe and Raf’s 2 Bears, Alexis’ About Group, B&O, Atomic Bomb Band – have clearly let them scratch an in-between-album itch that means each new album means they’re fully focused and also more relaxed at the same time. For a band that have been going so long, (in modern terms for non-rock) they seem still to be the best of friends, and while Alexis and Joe are the hub of the band’s music and lyrics, there’s a gentle creep to a more collaborative ethos that can only be positive. But above all, they still manage to put their finger on the themes that have kept them bubbling from the start – love, friendship, the world they live in, growing old – that they manage to convey in such rich, listenable ways. Why Make Sense combines all of these brilliantly.
Musically, it’s as close to an actual band as they’ve ever been. If that seems throwaway, it’s not. But touring and their transformation into a mighty stage entity, means they wanted to make an album that could translate most directly to a live experience as they ever have. No 5 synth parts, two 909s, three guitars. With regular drummer Sarah Jones and multi-instrumentalist Rob Smoughton (The Grosnvenor) in tow on tour they are able to realise anything in their back catalogue, and their ‘warm-up’ tour this month, which I caught at Oval Space in London, was the best gig I’ve ever seen of them, and I’m well into double figures. Musically, and live, they are on the up, something that’s a rare path when you’ve been making music as long as they have.
There’s so much to love about Why Make Sense, which – to a Hot Chip first timer – would encapsulate everything they’re about as a band. Huarache Lights is an absolute banger of an opener. And all honed around fat leads (and a vocal phrase that can’t but help make me smile about the Happy Mondays’ Hallelujah, was it meant? who cares?) and lyrics that exalt getting ready, and putting on your Nikes. “Machines are great but, best when they come to life, you can’t put your finger on the pulse of the night” comes out of the second verse and is just lyrically as punchy as ever. Yet straight away they’re questioning their place in the world in their 30s, are they still relevant? “Replace us with the things that do the job better”. This song alone makes a mockery of that, but the fact they’ll openly bear such an obvious insecurity in their opening song to a new album just endears them to me even more.
There really isn’t a weak song on the entire album. Every one feels considered, meant, and all fizz with life, energy, emotion and intelligence. Love Is The Future’s staccato beats hark back to their early days, jaunty and lush, with careworn lyrics, until De La Soul’s Posdnous leaps out. Not afraid to get a few friends enlisted if it works. It doesn’t feel frivolous, and it’s a song that Green Gartside’s skills are lent to the string arrangement. Cry For You feels like a cover of a nervous r’n’b record mixed with house music – so much of their roots are in the genre, something that’s always felt obvious and therefore unique to them – but the lyrical and music interplay of Goddard and Taylor’s vocals is wonderful, with the arpeggiated synths and blocky percussive hits proving there’s nothing as simple as a Hot Chip album track.
Started Right is a surefire future single. Flipping from shuffling percussion and funk bass/notes into a mighty string-led hook it’s pure pop, impossible not to sing along to or smile while you’re doing it. But just as they’re wandering into all killer territory comes White Wine And Fried Chicken: a song that no one else could make as well. The title, the sampled vocals, the balladry wrapped up in a modern-day love song. Dark Night follows, arguably another standout track. Where five years ago you’d have had another banger, this is a guitar-led (Doyle’s influence growing as it has done over the past three albums) gem. One of the best tracks I think they’ve written, and leaning to so many of their influences, painted with their own palette. The chorus and walking bassline is sublime, as is a rare lead for Joe’s vocals. It sounds like a slice of electronic, Eno-produced pop that would’ve graced the top ten in 1986, combining their ability to write a great tune, stand with one foot in the past and the present, and write lyrics that invite you in and make you think.
Easy To Get sounds great live (much more vibrant and raucous than this slick love song) – Doyle’s licks to the fore again – and again the vocal interplay between Joe and Alexis is wonderful, at first stripped out, then – much like Started Right – lush layers added on the bridge and chorus. “Why don’t you take a rest, talking something we’ve outgrown”, again taking aim at their perceived age and place in the musical landscape. Need You Now is more proof of the polymorphic nature of their songcraft. I’d listened to it with the brilliant video a few times thinking it was a song about an imagined break-up, but it’s more resonant than that: it’s about terrorism, war, the world that’s just, well fucked up. “Never dreamed I could belong to a state that don’t see right from wrong”. It’s startlingly relevant to the next five years (did they have a bet on the election? it’s not hard to understand given Al’s recent appearance on the World At One, but they are never overt about their themes and the hammer is always in a silk glove) and shows them as a band with a conscience, not just a heart.
So Much Further To Go is as close to something that feels a little unplaced, but its lovely harmonies are a wistful sounding (isn’t that just Alexis’ voice, whatever he sings?) entree to the album’s title track. Why Make Sense – like so many late-album belters before it (think Hold On, No Fit State, Take It In, Ends Of The Earth) – is a tour de force. Distorted guitars and reverbed percussion with Alexis’ voice dual-tracked and strong, it feels as much rock as they’ve done anywhere recently. It lifted the roof off Oval Space, (many of their songs are purposely beefed-up live, and to startling effect) and is almost a mission statement of their career: “Why make sense when the world around refuses? A winner lost is one who always chooses”. Hot Chip have always gone their own way, and if anything Why Make Sense shows they’ve been right from the start. They may never play Wembley Stadium, but you also know they’ve never aspired to that. They are a great festival band without the need to play the biggest arenas, and whatever the setting, there’s an intimacy to their music and lyrics that feels like it needs walls around it to truly resonate (which is why they always seem to blow away Brixton).
This is a triumphant record by a band both aware of and comfortable in their surroundings more than ever before. They may be older, but they’ve matured. They may seem like an outlier, but they’ve always been there, knocking on the mainstream’s door. And they’ve never sounded as good as this. That isn’t a negative on their previous work, it’s a description of just how good Why Make Sense is. It’s rewarding from the off, and I know I’ll still love it in ten years. I can’t wait to see what they’re making then.
I’ve been banging on about this album for a while, so much so that I wrote about it for Pulse recently. It’s just about everything I love about slow-mo, scuzzy disco stuff at the moment. This is Birdshell, which has been around for a bit, but still, wow. Just glorious.
thisisnothappening.net 