Francis - Wake Up! Review

In his debut album Francis presents a cacophony of genres and themes to his already well established audience and, although a studio creation, it includes many excerpts of live performances giving it a unique hybridity. It was a surprise release from a man who has built his career solely on the strength of these performances, never having even a fleeting worry that he would struggle to fill a venue. Although yet to embark on a full blown stadium tour the artist regularly fills outdoor gigs in his hometown and his sparse international dates are always in high demand.
This truly international album features collaborations with artists worldwide. Francis, clearly confident in his fan base’s reception, has no qualms about including a multitude of languages in the track list including English, Spanish, Italian and Latin. Such a bold move gives the opportunity to appeal to a worldwide market but also carries the risk of alienating some who will not garner enjoyment unless a song is only in a language they speak fluently.
The eclectic nature of the album is also rather experimental with slow tempo songs such as "Por Qué Sufren los Niños?" making extensive use of the string section with a recurring choir breaking up the spoken word nature of this piece. In stark comparison to the bon-jovi-esque intro to the first single dropped back in September. “Wake up! Go! Go! Forward!” continues with the simplistic high-hat allowing the listener to appreciate the keyboard melody just long enough before the reverberating guitar notes ease in leading to the inevitable drum fills and power chords. 
It is annoying that this is yet another ‘artist with one name’. Prince, Lulu and Madonna have all beat him to it and it’s no longer a unique feature that can attract people to something outside the mainstream. Francis with his outlandish fashion sense, unfortunate failure to highlight his many collaborators well enough and almost preachy nature does seem to scream “Me! Me! Follow!” rather than “Go! Go! Forward!”. He may be in good company with this self-absorbed public image however, as it has more than worked in favour of fellow musicians such as Kanye West. No matter how harshly some detractors may shout him down.
I recommend you stream the single and then decide whether the album will be at all your scene. Also I’d advise you to keep a lookout for live performances in your country as they can be few and far between. Francis to headline Glastonbury 2016: 3/1
Nathan Beck

Joanna Newsom - Divers Review

It has been 8 weeks since I reviewed Joanna Newsom's "Sapokanikan". The single, buzzing with delightfully cryptic lyrics and lavish instrumentation, won me over immediately and served as a savory aperitif to her first album in almost five years - Divers. Indeed, Newsom had kept herself far out the studio for longer than ever before following the release of Have One On Me.

Following up the huge success of Ys, a genre defining (or perhaps defying) critical smash, Have One On Me proved Newsom's ambitions stretched farther than ever anticipated. At 124 minutes it was her longest release by far, and her infatuation with simple polyrhythmic harmonies and stripped back production had been replaced with a flurry of fiercely elaborate melodies and a general desire to "sound big". The album incorporated world music with classic orchestral sounds while courting notions of Jazz and Blues, and pulled it off spectacularly. It soon became one of the standout albums of 2010, and after that? Nothing.

Albeit, this half-decade of artistic quiet was not wholly silent. Joanna tried her hand at acting, and various high profile performances and collaborations with both classical icons (Philip Glass) and indie darlings alike (Thao and the Get Down Stay Down) further whetted the music world's insatiable appetite for another album.

Now said album has arrived, and it is relieving to to say that Joanna's impeccable reputation remains untarnished.

Firstly, this is her most concise record to date - no two-hour runtime, no 17 minute-long ballads; rather a selection of 11 perfectly crafted songs each fine tuned to sound as tight as they possibly can. Therefore the high production values from Have One On Me Have returned, bringing with it the rich arrangements and overdubs which made it sound so expansive in the first place. A Spector-esque approach to production is used to combine multiple layers of instrumentals and tones to make a towering Wall of Sound. The first half of this album is particularly vibrant, and tracks like "Leaving the City" and the aforementioned "Sapokanikan" build to such cinematic heights in the closing moments that it becomes almost cathartic.

Jazz influences seep through the cracks once more in the form of complex guitar and drum sections, and the juxtaposition of these with the archaic folk sounds of fiddles and accordions bridges the gap between Joanna's contemporary style and her older, rootsier material. Her distinctive harp playing remains the centerpiece for most of the album though, and for good reason. Her skills as a harpist have been well documented since Milk-Eyed Mender, her very first foray into the musical world, but the level of expression that Joanna manages to convey each time she steps behind the instrument continues to impress and inspire. At a certain point in listening it becomes more than just a musical tool; it becomes a conduit of every feeling, thought and emotion Joanna possesses; serving as a sharp looking glass into both her artistic and real life personalities.

There is more here than just impressive musicianship, however. Lyrical and thematic elements play just as integral a part in the makeup of this album as any other, and this is [or at least appears to be] a highly conceptual album. A principle theme throughout is the concept of time, or rather the ever fluctuating perception of time regarding where we are in our lives, who we are with, and what we are experiencing at that point. Joanna explores these concepts by throwing out any notion of chronology and instead using each song to delve into a specific topic or thought, ultimately playing out like a collection of small vignettes - each telling of a different story or memory. The opening song, "Anecdotes" actually sums up this theme perfectly.

By a single play-through of the record you have already spanned centuries and travelled through various settings and time periods: at one moment you are witnessing the genesis of New York at the hands of the "Dutch Masters", the next you are mourning a lover lost to some futuristic civil war. I haven't the words to describe the sheer enormity of this album, or the true message of everything found within it it, though it is very clear that Joanna has a lot to say and a lot to ponder. It eventually comes clear that, despite the seemingly unrelated nature of the songs, the overarching themes of time and space remain firmly attached to each track. With every song you are merely turning the page in a very old and very long scrapbook full snapshots and pictures of seemingly disparate and isolated memories which end up coming together as a document of life itself.

And if you aren't impressed by that then I don't think I can say much more.

With Divers Joanna Newsom seems to have found a perfect equilibrium between the romantic mysticism of her early work with the frenetic energy of Have One On Me. Add to this the dense, beautiful lyrics and intriguing subject matter and you have one of my favourite albums of the year. Check it out.

Jack McGlone

Half Moon Run - Sun Leads Me On Review

“Sun Leads Me On” was certainly released at the perfect time.  Being the musical equivalent of a warm hug from a friendly bear means it can raise the spirits of anyone who hears it all the way through Winter.  From the moment the absolutely gorgeous flute tone of “Warmest Regards” starts, a sense of overwhelming euphoria washes over the listener like a wave of thick marijuana smoke.  It becomes transfixing as it ascends above its own hazy fog during lucid moments in which horns and

strings take the reins.

The driving acoustic guitars and soulful harmonies of “I Can’t Figure out what’s Going On” feel somewhat out of place behind Devon Porteilje sinisterly singing about poisoning all his friends.  The primarily electronic “Consider Yourself” is one of the more distant and cold songs on the album, and actually my least favourite, substituting syrupy strings and acoustic guitars for rigid piano and distortion.  Fortunately it’s followed by the stellar “Hands in the Garden”, one of the brightest songs I’ve heard this year, with the main lyrical refrain being “I never thought I could be this happy”.  

“Turn Your Love” is a perfect example of how to make electronically tinged music personal and intimate.  The Fleet Foxes-esque harmonies are simply exquisite on this track.  It falls down somewhat at the chorus where it incorporates a more distorted guitar and somewhat ruins the enclosed feeling of the verses.  Once again any faults are redeemed by another acoustically driven track “Narrow Margins”, which may be more sinister in tone than previous tracks, but maintains its charm through temperate keyboard and string instruments.

 

The title track is another optimistic track that I find myself captivated by.  It encapsulates all the nuanced emotion this album has to offer.  However I can’t help but feel that for every heartwarming acoustic serenade, there is a less connected, bleak throwaway track.

 

It’s certainly the perfect album to lift the spirits of anyone who listens to it, and that in itself is admirable.  Despite it having a fair number of tracks that I can’t find myself involved in, I’d say it’s worth downloading for yourself.

Charlie McCartney

James Parenti - Don't Be Gone Long, Ellen Album Review

The world of dark, inward looking indie folk is one which is graciously reaching its popular and musical peak in this decade and the end of the last. For better (Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens) or worse (The Lumineers, Passenger) the rise is both interesting and obvious. Its genius is in its simplicity, a lack of instrumentation lets other parts of the music take centre stage, namely vocals and lyricism.

James Parenti, admittedly adds little to this formula but in all honesty anything that would bring significant change to this formula would see this shift away from the genre that Parenti seems so comfortable and adept at.

On this record “Don’t Be Gone Long, Ellen” it would be a lie to say that Parenti isn’t as skilled, melodic and haunting as any of the masters of the genre.

The first thing to note from this record is that it is bitterly, devastatingly miserable, and that is ok. His emotion comes off as real and he has a belief in his lyrics and in what he is saying. The themes of love through the troubles of mental illness are a rarely explored vessel for, at times, deeply affecting music.

“Cave in Burn Down” is one of the most challenging, troubling songs on the record, its accessibility masking the soul crushing lyricism and I would struggle to imagine anyone being at least somewhat affected by this.

Although some of the lyrics I feel could be a bit more nuanced throughout the record they convey the message just as strong and effective. “Sleepwalker” is a prime example of this. Throughout the record although heavy handed at points the songs create a distinct aura that is undeniable. It feels like Parenti may be best appreciated in a live setting where you can really connect to him.

My highlights of the record would likely be “Back to Sleep” and “Lucky Star.” They affect the 

most with the almost childlike appearance of “Back to Sleep” and the musically visible descent in “Lucky Star” ending the record leading to a both hopeful, beautiful and in the end realistic conclusion on the realities of the situations and events in this record which convey a tragic yet magnificent narrative.

For fans of sadder works in the indie folk genre like some of Bon Iver and Elliot Smith’s releases I would certainly recommend James Parenti’s “Don’t Be Gone Long, Ellen.” It is certainly a difficult listen that may require a lot of contemplation but this may be worth it to appreciate everything that James has to say on this record.

Dominic Allan

Get this album on Bandcamp here : http://jamesparenti.bandcamp.com/

Beach House -Thank Your Lucky Stars Album Review

When is a surprise album not really a surprise? Probably when it joins an ever increasing list of them over the last 3 or for years. From Wilco to Drake, Radiohead to Beyonce surprise albums are becoming less of a surprise every time another clunks out. This surprise album however is by far the most surprising. Why does this record exist? Two scenarios could have occurred and both are equally baffling. One if Beach House recorded this album alongside their 2 months old effort Depression Cherry there is the question of why bother with 2 albums that would purely statistically be worse than one. The other scenario is them rushing to release a 2nd album over a time period that must have been a little over a month. Both are confusing but one of the main reasons for the success of the surprise album is in its instantaneousness. Gone are the need to release a single, wait, release a video for that song, wait, announce and complete a pre album tour and hype your upcoming release at the biggest festivals and in my opinion most importantly gone is the need to answer endless monotonous questions about Taylor Swift and Kanye West to place yourself in the right demographic for people to head out on release date...and probably pirate your album anyway. The surprise album gives a freedom from this and allows a group to solely place their music as the focus and for this the surprise album is admirable.

Unfortunately for Beach House focusing on the music exposes many of the frailties of the group. Their dream pop frothiness has by now over the course of the previous albums reached the highest peak it will ever hit and for this band to ever reach any sort of higher status they must deviate.

However 'Thank Your Lucky Stars' is not the album in which this happens.

The album does have many highs. The organ sounds throughout are nothing short of exquisite and some of the songs do stand out as notable. In particular tracks like 'All Your Yeahs' show them at their staple dream pop peak with a great musical breaks that you can really get carried away with and float on. The partner pieces 'The Traveller' and 'Elegy to the Void' are certainly the highlights of the record. Musically and lyrically they hit all the right place and Legrands vocals are at their best even approaching a different sort of sound that would be excellent to hear more of.

The rest of this album unimpressed me. With a lot of filler very few tracks hit any sort of memorableness.

This record is a real shame, its not untruthful in saying that taking the best of this album and Depression Cherry could have produced a really excellent album but instead we are left with 2 average albums, a lot of question and no way in sight for Beach House to match or better 'Teen Dream.'

Dominic Allan

Kurt Vile - b'lieve I'm goin down... Review

In the world of music marketed towards social introverts, Kurt Vile is a beacon of self-awareness and ingenuity.  Lyrically he weaves unusually long winded tapestries, wandering in and out of coherence but never once breaking flow or character, and always extraordinary, as exemplified on the opening track of his stellar 2013 album “Wakin’ on a Pretty Daze”, “Wakin’ on a Pretty Day”, a nine minute odyssey through country, dream pop and folk, that remained transfixing from start to finish. 

While none of the songs on “b’lieve I’m goin down…” reach such lengths, they capture everything that made “Wakin’ on a Pretty Day” fantastic, that being trippy stoner jams accented by Vile’s sharp acoustic guitar finger picking.  “Pretty Pimpin’” opens the album with succinct guitar tones layered over one another, and a driving beat backing up Vile’s usual meandering lyrical landscapes, in which he tackles identity in a confident and often humorous way. 

On “I’m an Outlaw” Vile assumes the personality of a charismatic cowboy, and leads the listener through a four minute desert rock voyage, with banjos taking the reins at the forefront of the instrumental part.  Electric organ provides a twist on the usual formula on a number of songs on this album, but on none is it more prevalent than “Dust Bunnies”, another sleazy pilgrimage into the verdant psyche of the observant stoner.  Vile channels Nick Drake’s intricate acoustic guitar work on the stripped down folky “That’s life, tho (almost hate to say)” as well as “All in a Daze Work” and the haunting “Stand inside”, the only difference being his rich baritone.  He returns to the more ambient aspects of “Smoke Ring for My Halo” on the sombre “Wheelhouse”, tackling religion and belief. 

The tone stays consistent proceeding into “Life Like This”, with a piano providing the basis for the songs instrumental, and the transcendent harmonising electric guitar lines hovering often out of range above it.   The piano returns for the catchy “Lost my head there”, on which Vile laments a recent comedown with the lyrics, “I don’t wanna sit around, walk around all day, I’d much rather levitate”.  However the whimsical waltz time piano of the instrumental “Bad Omens” is without a doubt the highlight of the album for me, with the otherworldly distortion of the guitars floating in a mesmeric haze in the clouds above somehow able to convey more emotion than Viles great lyrics. 

As someone who considers “Wakin’ on a Pretty Daze” to be one of the best albums of 2013, it stuns me to say that Vile has surpassed himself here, proving himself to be at the forefront of indie folk and introspective music in general, and creating an album that is not only worth buying on vinyl, but a contender for my album of the year.     

Charlie McCartney  

Joanna Newsom - Sapokanikan (track review)

Joanna Newsom's latest offering to the indie-folk world comes in the form of Sapokanikan - five minutes of solemn baroque pop splendor. A continual piano trill accompanying Newsom's distinctive voice gradually builds to a subtle crescendo full of muted pipes and stirring string couplets, and as Joanna's wailing vocals reach higher it begins to sound like a tiny, scaled down opera, scored by a pint sized orchestra of talented Lilliputian virtuosos.

(Honestly this is the best possible way I can describe the sound of this track)

The beautiful instrumentation is also combined with intelligent lyricism packed full of scholarly, historical and geographical references - there are enough obscure literary shout-outs here to leave one annotating each line for days. This makes for an incredibly satisfying listen.

There is no doubt that this is an excellent song, and I recommend you get a hold of it in hard copy - especially if you are a fan of similar artists such as Beirut or Sufjan Stevens.

Jack McGlone

Beach House - Depression Cherry Review

Formed in 2004 in Baltimore, and comprised of vocalist and organist Victoria Legrand and guitarist Alex Scally, Beach House have been a prominent and regular contributors to the dream pop and shoe gaze scene that re-emerged in the mid 2000’s, with bands such as A Place to Bury Strangers and more recently Eagulls championing a more aggressive and distorted version more reminiscent of the Jesus and Mary Chain than any dream pop band.  Beach House inhabit a more tranquil space on the spectrum, a choice which I find has led them to more engaging and creative consequences. 

Their eponymous debut album was released in 2006, to a muted commercial response but generally positive feedback from most critics.  Beach House have continued to hone and cultivate this abstract sound over the next three albums, “Devotion”, “Teen Dream” and “Bloom”, sculpting it into a vibrant and accessible vision, influenced by classic dream pop bands while maintaining an original and modern insight.

The first glimpse of Depression Cherry the band released was the single “Sparks”, which begins with what sounds like a tuneless vocal sample, but as the guitar bursts onto the scene it soon becomes an integral part of the overall tonality of the song.  What is most notable about the guitar tone is the harshness of the effects conscripted to enhance its abrasive presentation.  This is one of the few times that this form of distortion has been used so prominently by Alex Scally, and when this is coupled with the distant and reserved vocal melody the result is and song that is the closest thing to 90s shoegaze that the band have ever produced, it having clearly been inspired hugely by My Bloody Valentine.  
 

This was the sense I continued to garner when I eventually listened to the initial track of the album.  The vocals have generally taken a back seat, muffled by overdubs and more part of the instrumental than the prominent melodic feature.  Unlike “Sparks”, however, the first few songs of the album are far more subdued in their instrumental composition with the guitar being extremely effective in creating a thick surreal haze around the keyboard and drum machine parts, which play surprisingly potent parts, stripped of most of their effects.  On the track “Space Song” the guitar riff meshes beautifully with the keyboard arpeggios and staccato stabs played by Legrand.  Legrand’s vocals have been altered in “Space Song” to create an even more intense feeling that they’re simply another instrument intertwined in the music.  However, there is a marked reduction in the atmosphere produced by the reverb and other effects used to modify the songs.  This is a notably less dreamy album than its predecessors.   

“Beyond Love” finds Legrand behind the keys of a more electronic sounding keyboard, while Scally has altered his guitar settings to replicate more closely the sound heard on “Sparks”, and this is generally the direction the rest of the album takes, with the guitar being far clearer than on previous albums. 

In general Beach House have altered their sound enough to make this an improvement on Bloom, but they still seem unable to reach the same heights as found on Teen Dream.  This album is far less dependent upon effects to create a dense wall of sound, relying more on the duo’s individual talent and collective creativity.

  I personally feel the album fails to live up to the hype produced by Sparks, but I would certainly say this album is worth downloading if you’re already a fan of Beach House.

Charlie McCartney