So I thought I was done with Vampire Weekend. I bought and enjoyed the first two albums, but as with many albums I’ve bought in the last decade, they didn’t feel like they sustained my interest and eventually I stopped listening. I was ready to file ‘Oxford Comma’ and ‘A Punk’ under tunes from a certain era, and then move on. And when I first heard new single ‘Diane Young’, it confirmed my waning allegiance. It sounded irritatingly hyperactive, like a throwback to their first album. One trick ponies that got found out, I thought to myself.

And then the reviews started coming in. Huge leap forward, they said. New maturity, they said. Surprisingly introspective, they said. And I listened to the minute long previews on iTunes, and within 5 minutes I’d bought it.

The reviews are right. This is an album that states that Vampire Weekend are not just preppy boys playing Graceland-style pop. It starts off with with the downbeat Obvious Bicycle (still need to work on those titles now and again, boys), with its repeated imploring to ‘listen’, as if the band are insisting we reconsider them. And then we go on really quite an odd journey, that feels both like a crisis of identity set to pop music (Ya Hey, surely one of the album’s highlights, appears to be a bleak exploration of  faith and Jewishness), mixed with beautiful tunes (Step’s brilliant Bach steal, the gorgeous Hannah Hunt – probably my favourite song – and the album’s small, melancholic closer, Young Lion) and in amongst them, some reliable bops from the old school Vampire Weekend – such as Unbelievers and the single, Diane Young. The latter suddenly makes so much more sense in the context of the album as a necessary shot of fizzy sugar in amongst all that wistful existential angst.

And its funny that the band started off with Paul’s Simon’s Graceland as a template, because it’s Simon’s songwriting that most comes to mind – both his late work with Garfunkel and his early (brilliant) solo albums. That’s quite a comparison, but I think the songwriting on this album is that good.

So yes, a great leap forward and a sign that these boys are hear to stay. I hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am.

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