I mean, there’s not much to say in a weird way, is there? After an EIGHTEEN YEAR gap, and after losing one of the group’s cornerstones and founder members, Phife Dawg, and without much of a contribution from Ali Shaheed, who would be have been surprised if ATCQ would have returned with something a bit tired, a bit old, a bit derivative.
Instead, they rock up with one of the albums of the year and add a genuine new chapter to an already glittering career. Like Bowie’s Blackstar, this album is one you’d be happy to put next to their finest like their debut or Midnight Marauders.
Let’s be clear: they’re not totally reinventing themselves, and there is something enjoyably familiar about hearing that ATCQ sound. But what makes this such a thrilling listen is to hear Q-Tip and the crew sounds so vital, so passionate, so playful and so political.
It’s almost an embarrassment of riches. The first four or five songs are all stone cold classics, and almost every contribution brings out the best in everyone – the tracks with Andre 3000, Busta Rhymes, Kendrick Lamar and Anderson .Paak are all total standouts. It also rewards repeated plays, and each time I find a new track that I’ve overlooked.
If there’s a criticism, it’s maybe that with it’s a touch overlong, and with the loss of 2 or 3 tracks, it would have been flawless. But actually, there’s not really a track I dislike intensely, and I love nearly all of it.
Welcome back ATCQ. The world missed you. The world needs you.
So here’s November’s offering and I confess to be coming into this review from a fairly biased starting position. I love what Jagwar Ma do and have done since seeing them in the John Peel tent on a Saturday lunchtime at 2013’s Glastonbury with my other half and the blog’s Guy Hornsby. To sum any band up is tricky: they’re original but they steal. They have their own sound but it’s interspersed with little nuggets taken from elsewhere. They’re the embodiment of an oxymoron but boy does it work. Consequently, they’re incredibly easy to connect with, especially if you’re someone who’s easily swayed by a band shamelessly throwing back to mid-90s baggy psych one minute (Man I Need) and bringing trance-era vibes the next (Four).. Gabriel Winterfield and Jono Ma are consummate musical magpies, all about the loops and repetition, like so much electronic music that it’s wonderful to disappear into… so with much of that 2013 set it felt almost illegal to be having that much fun on a Saturday afternoon.
That brings us to Every Now and Then which, I’ll be honest, I didn’t really want to review because I’d be buying this album anyway and sometimes it’s tricky to be objective with something you’ve been looking forward to for so long. But here we are and I’ve had this album for about a month or so now (having caught them live again at the Brudenell Social Club in the meantime). Again, where Jagwar Ma just do it so well is they’re amazing with taking tropes and little hooks of other sometimes timeless tunes and textures and weaving them into their own songs. In Say What You Feel, it’s pure Beach Boys harmony and melody thrown in but it’s not immediately obvious that’s what they’re doing as it’s swirling around gorgeous twists of reverse track and backing vocals. They’re taking what they kicked off with the debut Howlin’ and expanding it, making the soundscapes wider and richer (I know many albums are but it’s one hell of a headphone listen).
The album’s first single, OB1 is pretty much a stepping stone between the debut and this new collection of songs but it’s one where it almost feels like they’re plagiarising themselves it’s so close to The Throw in feel, for instance. But with them being who they are, it’s a head nod, an acknowledgement and then straight into an immediately accessible belt-out chorus. I can’t help thinking that if they were a guitar band as opposed to synth dance they’d be quite at home doing the arena tour circuit with refrains like that in their locker.
It took me a few listens to put my finger on it but there’s a moment in Loose Ends which is pure Beetlebum by Blur and another example of where they’re the magpies I’ve been pointing towards. The song where the album’s title comes from is beautifully crafted, layered and produced; it’s as good as anything the band have done and is so wonderfully hypnotic.
Every Now and Then is a fine example of a band having found their niche and are now exploring the sound that they’ve created. They’re evolving at a steady pace and they continue to be not only a fine live act (you really should try to catch them if they’re playing near you). This second album is the sound of a band stretching their legs and hitting their stride.
So here we are, October, the last 4 months have flown by and much of the music I have been listening to has been from the blog funny enough. This in-turn has resulted in me looking back to an album that filled much of the first half of 2016 for me but I have enjoyed listening to once again. On that note, I was late to the game on this as it came out last year.
I spent much of this past weekend thinking how was the best way to say “Sure he’s in Vampire Weekend, but I didn’t know this until about two months after buying this album and it was best to approach it this way in retrospect. I think I would have been letdown if I wanted an extension of the Vampire Weekend albums that I love so much.”
The fact is that I discovered him through a Coma remix he did and my interest grew from there.
On first impressions it look me a while to get my head around Baio and what he was up to. Electro synths with melodies and at times what I though was over exaggerated 80’s vocals. That in mind I liked it, and soon the vocals that made me unsure became essential to glueing together this album.
‘The Names’ was the track that cracked it for me and strangely watching the video a few weeks after getting into the album was very similar to how I pictured it in my head.
“I was Born In A Marathon’ goes deep into the rave, and I can easily picturing myself losing my shit o this in a festival field. I ‘ve risen my hands to this song on more occasions than I can think in the Car, doing chores at home and and once in the co-op on a Sunday morning with my headphones on. I have read that he used to be a DJ and the 4/4 beats do make a strong appearance throughout this album.
In 9 songs he bounces around a bit on this album. Perhaps it’s the luxury of someone that can do this knowing you can always fall back on your main project. The versatility of the 9 songs is one of the things I like about this album… It’s got a bit of everything.
Perhaps if I was to talk about the elephant in the room ‘Sister of Pearl’ reflects a Vampire Weekend influence, but hey, it’s not a bad thing. Baio in my opinion is far from hanging his hat on his Vampire Weekend work and has released a fantastic album.
I do hope you enjoy the album as much as me. It’s also worth checking out his EP’s on Spotify.
It’s hard to believe that Michael Kiwanuka was being touted as a next big thing a whole four years ago, by BBC Introducing, hot off the back of a fantastic debut single “Home Again”. I loved that at the time but it’s fair to say I’d forgotten about him in the intervening years.
And so while we fretted about the lack of a physical Frank Ocean album, back he popped again. Not randomly: I’d seen him light up Later… earlier in the year with Black Man In A White World, above. It encapsulated why I loved that single back then and – finally – seemed like we may see more of a next big thing, before he became a “whatever happened to…”?
So what do you get with Kiwanuka? It’s not flashy or hip or cool, but that’s the attraction. Sounding like he’s got one foot in Marvin Gaye’s house and one in a smoky basement club in London, it’s modern soul at it’s best. No syrupy production, and while there’s strings, Love & Hate isn’t pastiche, it’s at it’s best an album that’s accessible from the start, with lyrics and a voice that feel heartfelt and powerful.
There’s a lot to love: from Father’s Child with it’s raw, stripped back opening, opening into a chorus of backing vocals and crisp drums. Or Black Man… a track that feels very prescient in today’s world. I’m also a sucker for a long opening track (see Station To Station or Goodbye Yellow Brick Road), and Cold Little Heart is a thing of beauty.
There’s nothing showy, but really in a world of artifice, PR, overproduction, compression, auto tune, this feels much more authentic than any of that without ever trying too hard. And lord knows we need some of that. it’s helpful that Kiwanuka is a genuinely lovely person. I just wish I’d seen him at Glastonbury now.
I’m starting to fall for this record after only a couple of listens, and that’s not something I say often. I hope you feel the same.
I’m only asking for 28 minutes of your time. 15 songs, at least half of them barely make it over 2 minutes each. Frankie Cosmos (Great Kline) is a 21 year old singer song writer and this is her 2nd full length release. I was aware of the first, slightly more aware of the EP that followed but have really taken to ‘Next Thing’. This was released around Easter but and its been a big part of my life since. It feels like I’ve had it for much longer than 4 months.
What you will hear is 15 guitar driven pretty pop songs and beautifully crafted if delightfully simple lyrics. If you can spare the time, to sit and listen with the lyrics at hand it is a great experience. Ms. Cosmos extracts heart lifting significance from the mundane and almost never fails to make me smile. I am sucker for singer songwriters, I love the focus that one person pouring their heart out provides. This is a great example.
I hope you enjoy. As I say, its only 28 minutes. You could listen to it 2.5 times for every ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’ or ‘Malibu’ so you have no excuse not to get involved if you don’t like it first time.
Look out for Floated In, Embody, On the Lips, Sinister.
Pitchfork reviews and article if you’re interested?
I don’t think I’ve ever chosen an album of the month before about which I’m still so undecided. But here we are. Erol Alkan and Richard Norris’s musical side project, Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve, has finally produced a full album, and it’s the very definition of the phrase, a mixed bag.
Let’s start with the good. It’s a real musical journey. There are almost no two songs on here that sound the same, and you really can’t fault the guys for their ambition. It’s a post iPod album that displays the duo’s rich musical tastes – and there is almost no genre untouched on here. The most obvious one is psychedelia – from the rockier almost goth psych of Iron Age to the Jane Weaver-led cutesy psych of Creation to the instrumental freak out of Finally First to the frankly tedious spoken word druggy closer, Third Mynd.
But other songs, particularly with guest vocals, live in a totally different universe. Door to Tomorrow, with Gorky’s Euros Childs on vocals, is a wisful slice of indie that could easily be a Gorky’s song. Diagram Girl (is that the Mystery Jets guy on vocals? Not sure), in all honesty, sounds more like OMD than anything else I can think of. Nothing wrong with a bit of OMD, of course. And Black Crow, when you strip it back of the psych trappings, is a very traditional song that you could easily imagine being sung by Adele. Tomorrow Forever might well have appeared on a This Mortal Coil album!
They’re clearly coming at this from an anything-goes balaeric vibe. But it’s also as an uneven experience. On a project like this, the songs have to stand up in their own right, and I’m not sure that some of them do. On paper, this should be RIGHT up my street. I’m a huge fan of 60s psych and I love the likes of guest vocalists Jane Weaver and Hannah Peel. But there are too many times on the record that you find your attention wandering or wonder if self-indulgence has taken over. The first half is great – Iron, Age, Creation, Door to Tomorrow and Diagram Girl are 4 fantastic tracks in a row. Then it goes seriously downhill. Black Crow is seriously meh, Tomorrow Forever is far far too long, The Soft Bounce is indulgent noodly bollocks, Finally First is psych by numbers and Third Mynd is a naff druggy pysch cliche. Every time I listen to it, I’m slightly cross by the end.
It’s funny that we so often want our music to show ambition and diversity, but it’s rare to see bands pulling off the trick of making that kind of ambition work in a full album. It does flow well as a record and it is an enjoyable listen. But when you consider the standout work of recent AOTM like Christine and the Queens and Anderson Paak, this isn’t even in the same league.
Reviews have been pretty glowing of this album, though I notice no one’s quite brought themselves to give 5 stars, but maybe I’m being a bit harsh on what is a pretty fun musical diversion. But I can’t see it living long on my playlist.
June has been a struggle for an album. David has used his one allowed objection of the year, some albums were only available via a digital format, and some albums didn’t feel right. With those factors I had to revisit the drawing board and pick a wild card. Brothers, may I introduce ‘Coma’ and their brilliant ‘This Side of Paradise’.
I have previously shared the Robag Wruhme remix of ‘Lora’ which found a solid place in my sets last year on the 1’s and 2’s and also became a fan favourite in our house. Naturally I went looking for more and fell in love with Coma and this album. Coma hail from Cologne and release on the amazing Kompakt Records.
There are many things that I love about this album, the first is the way it flows. It’s starts things off with ‘Borderline’ which nicely settles you in for the 8 track journey with a slow melodic build to what I can only describe as the perfect pace for a pre disco shuffle. The familiar ‘Lora’ follows which sets a good standard moving forward.
This album has found a strong place in my life around the house, at work and in the car. It’s lets you get lost in it if you let it. ‘The Wind’ is catchy but haunting. It also introduced me to the vocalist Dillion who is worth checking out as well.
Showing a slight build to the pace throughout, the likes of ‘Pigeon Power’ and ‘Verse Chorus’ remind me a little of something Mylo would make. Whilst ‘Poor Knight’ makes me want to go raving and always seems much more fast paced then in reality in actually is.
‘The Sea’ is another stand out and I highly recommend you check out the Baio remix. Another track that has found a firm home in my sets. Lastly ‘Happiness’ ties things up through grimly building before bringing itself back down and finishing out the album.
It confuses me what category to put this music in. Is it ‘chill out’, ‘deep house’, ‘electronica’? The 4/4 beats make it dance driven, but it seems to have a place within a club but also very far away from one. It’s easy to leave this album on repeat and I heavily suggest this approach as it sinks in nicely.
Hayley and Luke seem to like it as much as me. Hopefully Coma also finds a place in your lives. Enjoy brothers!
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.
For me, first and foremost this is a ‘soul’ album. There is extensive genre hopping on Mr. .Paak’s second album, but the overall impact as a body of work to me feels like soul.
As with my last AOTM (Miguel), Anderson .Paak is a mult-instrumentalist-singer-songwriter with some added rapper-ness for good measure. This is lot less ‘love-sexy’ (R&B?) than Miguel and I think perhaps an easier listen for Brother Guy? I saw a number of very good reviews for this album but I fully engaged with it when I was in London for a very long day’s work on trains and walking across town. I got to listen to the album probably 4-5 times throughout the day and it put a big fat smile on my face.
This guys singing voice is gorgeous, his singing based tracks feel organically soulful and emotionally driven. There’s a sense of humour running through the album that really resonates with me. It would take me far too long to reference all of the lyrics that hit home for me because the song-writing is so good and so mature. The album feels very socially conscious without ever feeling preachy. He’s obviously had an emotionally troubled life which he uses for inspiration in a very measured manner, never played for effect or thrust in the listeners face (ears?). Never greater than on the last track, ‘The Dreamer’ tell me you don’t love that track and it’s message?
There’s obvious Kendrick Lamar influences weaved through these tracks. You will hear it when you listen to it initially. I understand that the albums were recorded almost at the same time though so it would be interesting to understand how the artists arrived at relatively similar places independently. They both worked with Dre extensively on Compton and come from the same music back-yard. As you continue to listen the Kendrick Lamar references soften (or they did for me but perhaps cause I have not listen to Pimp A Butterfly that much) and it blossoms as something quite different.
So this is a confusing one. Christine isn’t her real name: it’s Héloïse. And she’s not straight, but she’s not gay, or she might be, or something in between. This record was a massive hit in her native France, but that was two years ago, and then it came out in the USA, but that was a slightly different version of the album – and now it’s out in the UK, but that’s a different version from both of the previous one. She’s re-recorded some of the songs in English, but not others, and there are two new songs and two less of the old ones.
As I say, you may already be confused. And just to add to your confusion, I have a copy of the original French version (the song ‘Tilted’, for example, is ‘Christine’ in French, and the Perfume Genius song is just a bonus track). I wanted the French version as I’m currently working with Canal Plus so I’m trying to listen to as much as I can! Anyway, I will TRY to review the English language version.
All this confusion aside, it all becomes a lot more simple when you listen to Christine AKA Heloise’s debut, in whatever language or form it comes. This isn’t the first female front bit of Euro electro pop I’ve put forward for the blog (indeed, my last offering was the wonderful Susanne Sundför), but when there’s so much good stuff out there, it seems a shame not to share it. This is an extraordinary debut, full of muscular songwriting, beautifully and tautly arranged. It doesn’t feel like a drum programme or a string quartet or a single sung note is out of place. But neither is it overly tasteful or bland. Christine is clearly a woman who’s struggled/struggling with her demons, and a cloud of longing and sadness hangs over many of the best songs (Paradis Perdus, Narcissus is Back). It’s so hard to write pop music of this quality and built with such solid foundations. Hype can be a terrible thing, but Chaleur Humaine is well worth its Pitchfork 8.0 and its Guardian 5 stars.
The only caveat for me is that, having bought the French version (a RIGHT ball ache – via Ebay from Germany!), I do think the original is actually better. Not becuase more of it is in French, but because two of the best songs (Chaleur Humaine and Ugly-Pretty) have been excised in favour of the two songs featuring guest artists. It’s an understandable move, especially considering Perfume Genius having a fanbase in the UK and USA, but actually, they’re the weakest songs. So if you get the chance to check out those two tracks, do add them to your listening experience.
French artists so rarely make a breakthrough into English speaking audiences. I know this only too well from research into the French 60s artists I’m doing at the moment. Gainsbourg barely bothered the UK or USA charts in his lifetime; Francoise Hardy has had one English language hit in her whole 50 year career. Who knows if Héloïse Letissier will succeed where they failed – but on the basis of this, she certainly deserves to.
For me, first and foremost this is a ‘soul’ album. There is extensive genre hopping on Mr. .Paak’s second album, but the overall impact as a body of work to me feels like soul.
thisisnothappening.net 