Record Review | The Grain

HIPSTER SPECIAL! ‘GORILLA MANOR’ BY LOCAL NATIVES, ‘TEEN DREAM’ BY BEACH HOUSE

teendream

Usually, when a band has song titles like ‘Silver Soul’, this is a clear sign they don’t have any (soul, that is). Happily, in the case of Baltimore, Maryland dream-poppers Beach House, this doesn’t apply. Their latest album Teen House has gallons of the stuff.

Sweep aside the hipster paraphernalia – the neo-psychedelic cover, the aesthetics of teen kitsch, the stray croutons of ‘80s revivalism – and you’re left with a record of astonishing melodic scope and intricacy. Building on previous explorations into the realms of waywardness Beach House (2006) and Devotion (2008), Teen Dream offers a polish and focus that will surely, and perhaps unfortunately, lead to an avalanche of mainstream attention. Call it their Merriweather Post Pavillion.

But let’s try to focus on the songs themselves (after all, it’s not Beach House’s fault that – as wanker-extraordinaire-who-also-every-once-in-a-while-comes-up-with-a-good-cultural-observation Martin Amis says in this month’s GQ – there has never been a period of human history more emphatically obsessed with the surface world of visual appearances).

Because, friends, these are quite simply wonderful, wonderful tunes. Track 9, ‘Real Love’, I’m not crazy about, but otherwise this is the strongest suite of songs I’ve heard all year. Lead singer Victoria Legrand has a voice of such lightly jagged expressiveness, I find it difficult not to wheel out the inevitable Cocteau Twins comparisons. But this shouldn’t detract from her great achievement on Teen Dream. Again and again, a vocal nuance will fizz out of the speakers to prick your attention. This has a nice habit of happening towards the end of a tune when you least expect it, as in ‘Walk in the Park’ and ‘Lover of Mine’, both of which have startlingly beautiful outros.

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I FEEL BETTER: HOT CHIP’S ‘ONE LIFE STAND’, SOME KUDOS & A CULTURE OF SOLIPSISM

Cov

I’ve always had a soft spot for Hot Chip, based largely it has to be said on their likeably average appearance, but one always combined with a strange distance. Let’s not pretend we live in anything other than a time when image and marketing are as important to a band as how they actually sound, but by largely avoiding press coverage or even reviews of Hot Chip, I’ve managed to avoid whatever market position they have assumed (although I am aware of a vague indie/electronic/dance thing reminiscent of that [in hindsight bizarre] nu-rave moment). I’ve heard all their albums and singles, even caught a video or two, but somehow missed out on the band. In the few photos/videos I have seen Hot Chip look . . . well . . . refreshingly normal – normal like my friends look – with a dash of misfit between members, and maybe even something of the reassuringly unpretentious and unfashionable (covering the spectrum of heights and weights of averageness). I find it all quite encouraging, and although this may all be naivety on my part as their record label manoeuvres the band towards some fashionable unfashionable place, I think they essentially look like the sort of band you could be in, and therefore would want to be in.

The upside of no knowledge of the narrative or biography of the band in articles/press releases etc, including whether they have chosen or been pushed into the misfit narrative (god knows it has been used before), has left me mostly with the music and their reassuringly mundane appearance to base any judgements. And Hot Chip, fitting in with this broader view, are consistently good or quite good, without ever inducing in me the need to pay any particularly close attention. They delivered solid albums with the occasional single that betrays writing and craft at a higher level than they were given credit: hearing ‘Over and Over’ now, I’m not reminded of the numerous adverts and TV jingles that use 30 seconds of it to promote something, but the first time I heard it (which can only be a good thing). Meanwhile ‘Ready for the Floor’ and ‘One Pure Thought’ seemed to solidify their status without really grabbing you by the balls so to speak (Note: it goes without saying that these songs were also quite good and came from albums that were on the whole quite good). Why the ramble on the overall quite-goodness of a consistent band (with reassuringly commonplace appearances that do not appear to be a contrived attempt at averageness)?

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‘YO NO TANTO COMO EL’ – PEDRO LUIS FERRER

Pedro Luis Ferrer

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I’d like to believe the same is true with music: that every shit song has an equal and opposite brilliant song, although the statistics will probably prove that the ratio is slightly skewed. So, as a counterweight to the Kesha song I wrote about, I’d like to write about a song I find simply stunning; ‘yo no tanto como el’ by Pedro Luis Ferrer.

The beauty of this song comes not only from Ferrer’s huge talent, his professional delivery, his emotional yet dignified sentiment (though all these factors are major considerations for me), but that the song is allowed to operate on a number of levels (to use that most worn of musical clichés). The apparent simplicity of the song allows listeners – and I don’t just think Cuban, or even Spanish speaking listeners – to engage with and find poignant meaning in the song.

A summary of song and performer perhaps may help here – the now ubiquitous ‘back story’. Ferrer is a Cuban songwriter who has been working since the 1960’s (effectively the life of the Cuban revolution). In the 1970’s and 80’s, he enjoyed fame and, if not fortune (a difficult thing to find in Cuba) then certainly artistic commendation. His songs were well known to many Cubans through their numerous television and radio broadcasts and Ferrer was entering the tightly guarded pantheon of ‘Great Cuban artists’. However, some of his more pointed, critical social commentaries began to attract the wrong kind of attention, and by the 1990’s, Ferrer was black listed by the government. His albums are now unavailable (legally at least) in Cuba, his songs never broadcast. This song, ‘yo no tanto como el’, I assume (it is not on an album, nor can I find a date for its ‘release’) must come from around the time of Ferrer’s personal censorship. It is, on the surface, a description of the ideological differences between Ferrer and his father. Yet there are an almost limitless number of avenues of personal interpretation open to the listener to explore, hidden within the simple, repeated words.

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THE ‘REBIRTH’ OF LIL’ WAYNE AND A TOASTER

lil-wayne-rebirth

I can’t remember exactly how old I was (which does have some pertinence to the following) – somewhere between seventeen and nineteen I think – when one day, in my fairly prosaic existence, whilst enjoying some toast and looking at the toaster (intently?!), I decided to challenge a common ‘assumption’ (albeit one based on a sound understanding of the laws of physics) and confirm my own corporeality/mortality. I deciding I was going to stick a knife in the toaster while it was on, electrical current in full flow, to see what would happen.

My age is relevant, in as much as I am attempting to demonstrate this was no act of naivety carried out by a yet-to-be worldly wise toddler, with little sense of right and wrong, or danger. No I was an adult, and contrary to this anecdotes apparent message, not an complete fucking idiot (despite this being the only way anyone could really interpret this text). I was fully aware of the principles that govern a flow of electrical charge passing through a conductor (in this case the wire coils – or element – of a toaster, offering the necessary resistance to produce the heat responsible for toasting my bread); I was fully of aware of the principles of grounding that would cause the electricity to run through (some part) of my body into the earth, and that should I break the circuit inside the toaster, I would prevent it from acting as a toaster.

After procrastinating over the worth of my experiment, fully aware of the probable, nay certain, outcome, I decided to proceed. After carefully selecting an entirely metallic knife, I pushed the toaster down (read: on) breadless, before recklessly inserting the knife into the toaster’s glowing core.

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‘CONTRA’ BY VAMPIRE WEEKEND: TRUMPETS, INVERSE-INVERSE SNOBBERY, AND RAINDROP NOTES

vampire weekend - contra

Well well well. Vampire Weekend. Pretty good aren’t they?

It’s surprising how much of the press coverage surrounding Contra has focused on the issue of class. Vampire Weekend, in case you hadn’t noticed, are middle class. You might even want to describe them as (surely not?) upper-middle class. Defending the very notion of upper-middle-class-hood against god knows what anti-posh bogey has become the standard angle on the band. ‘They’re middle-class – and proud of it!’ scream the music press, with scarcely disguised glee. ‘They’re not afraid to wear preppy clothes, just like me!’ yelp public school kids up and down the land.

Let’s be absolutely crystal clear about this: there is nothing good about being middle class. If you are unlucky enough to be part of a class system, you should not brag about it, ever. If you are (like me) middle class, be proud of yourself, be proud of your many fantastic qualities, be proud of your beautiful and variegated personality, but do not be proud that you are middle class. Be ashamed, be left wing, and do something about it.

But as I was saying, Vampire Weekend are pretty good. With a vigour and a clarity that distinguishes them from their peers, they are the natural successors to the Strokes’ brand of refined retro-minimalism, only with added rhythmic sophistication, and even a hint of mild progressiveness thrown into the mix (although, in the main they are merely pastiching … sorry, being influenced by, artists a few years down the line – Orange Juice, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel – from the Strokes’ palette of Television, Ramones, The Clash). Their eponymous debut album of 2008 slayed all comers (myself included) with its timely afro stylings, its neo-classical arrangements, and its startling proliferation of sweet, sweet melodies. ‘Oxford Comma’ was the best. Read the rest of this entry »