Bang 2003 - album reviews
THE POSTAL SERVICEGive Up
Sub Pop
Lovely, dreamy Death Cab For Cutie collaboration
When Americans do irony Brits get shamed. When Americans do whimsy it’s wonderful, and ought to make us wonder why we can’t do it without falling prey to the beast of twee. The Postal Service consist of Ben Gibbard from Seattle’s Death Cab For Cutie and the melodically-named Jimmy Tamborello of DNTEL; they’ve made a sweet and solid album that relaxes you as music made in laid-back circumstances does. The latter would every so often stick a load of delicate electro on a CD-R and post it from LA to the former, who would add melodies and vocals.
You have to love the simplicity of both scenario and record, even if the minimalist clickits and snappits of the beats wear you down after a while. No, but you really have to love sumptuous opener ‘The District Sleeps Alone Tonight’, the barmy cod-techno closer ‘Natural Anthem’, the careless spot-on-ness that comes from spare-time no-pressure projects. The distinct whiff of Ben Folds Five sans cynicism and Future Bible Heroes without the repetitiveness. Oh, the wistful cuteness of it all, it’s enough to make you . . . almost spew but in a had-too-much-candy-floss way, rather than a had-too-much-Special-Brew way. If that’s not a recommendation I don’t know what is.
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Whirlwind Heat
Do Rabbits Wonder?
Third Man Records/XL Recordings
Inspirations: Sonic Youth, The Fall, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Whirlwind Heat, of Michigan, are the first signing to Jack White’s label Third Man, and naturally there are three of them. The number three, as has been well documented, is Jack White’s slave and his God. It is his life, universe and everything, and for good reason. There is something infinitely satisfying about a three, a trio or a triptych (see? That was one just then). There is strength in it, invincibility, as well as a wilful, stubborn out-of-step-ness. It has solidity and perversion. Inside a triangle – so deliciously angular and pointy – is magic. So if three is the formula behind the White Stripes’ sparse majesty, Whirlwind Heat obey a short yet baffling algebraic doodle scrawled in broken chalk. Screeeeee.
Of the album title, singer and Moog player David Swanson chirps “We all love rabbits – they’re so innocent, you just wonder what they’re thinking about.” Aw. Cute. And completely disingenuous. If there’s a less cute album released this year, prop your doors shut with shovels.
The open spaces of the pummelling songs let your discomfort roam free. The drone of ‘Tan’ is akin to placing an ear against an idling, upended lorry. “Pretty pretty pretty pretty. . .” hisses David Swanson (do you need me to tell you this is sinister?), barged sideways by a bastard guitar. ‘Green’ becomes a ponderous choke, like a Norwegian death-metal track boiled down to its shreds. Swanson’s voice is that of a collegiate, bespectacled art-rocker possessed by a demon mandrake fiend that often wrestles the upper hand. “Now she has matted hair! Now she has mangled!” he shrieks in ‘Yellow’ as though confronted with the lopsided, dead-eyed Sadako from the original Ring. (The colour-code system is due to a certain disdain for the conventional. . .yes.) Guitar lines thinly garrotte songs, only the wispy phantoms of tunes are allowed to move. There is more tightened violence and hardboard malice in this album than anything to do with rabbits should possess.
Despite its nastiness being describable almost only in terms of horror films, ‘Do Rabbits Wonder?’ exists in a sonic vacuum. It is strangling on the blood it coughed up when it was laughing – cos it is funny. In ‘Pink’ Swanson starts to sing like Mr Hanky The Christmas Poo being flushed away. But it is also deadly serious after the fashion of all art rock. It has a right to be – it is part of a proud tradition of precision flailing, and as such can stand grumpy and fearsome alongside Sonic Youth’s ‘GOO’ from whose cover art they took their name.
Rabbits. Good God.
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SPIRITUALIZED
The Complete Works Part 1
Spaceman/Arista
Inspirations: The Velvet Underground, Jesus, H.
Jason Pierce’s first redemptive floatings in space
‘The Complete Works Part 1’ charts the early Nineties transition from the dopey dirges of Spacemen 3 to the intergalactic splendour of Spiritualized. As with any project ruled absolutely by the vision of one individual, the music of Spiritualized has taken many a voyage to the ends of its own rectum since S3 were flushed away. Of course space rock lends itself to this, being the sexier little sister of prog – it’s genetically inclined to bloat. But there are many more occasions in this collection where you can’t conceive of removing anything from a track. All is in its place, sprawlingly precise and spectacular – take out that minute tinkling in the background and it’s ruined.
The collection gathers scattered B-sides, fan-club-only flexi-discs and split singles; while compilations of this nature are generally just dribble trays for completists, this one is rather more appealing in and of itself. Containing every possible version of several tracks, it somehow manages to escape tedium. Boil-in-the-bag remixes these ain’t – they require a far more poncy term suggestive of infinite and daunting imagination that hasn’t been invented. Also it sounds less disjointed than most bundles of this sort do, the long tracks oozing over each other like one long sleepy sigh. Even the heavy blasts of brass and thunderous basslines don’t jar – everything is overtaken by eternal soothing. (Except ‘100 Bars’ which is quite chilling.) It sounds like the peace that descends among the smithereens of all your crockery after a howling fit of fuse-blowing frustration. Somehow rooted in breakdown, Spiritualized began by synthesising misery and bliss into shiny redemption, and have done that ever since.
At a time when the loutish grooves of baggy clutched culture by the crotch, Oasis on the way to give a less friendly squeeze, Jason Pierce was tinkering with stardust. This was eventually to lead to the refined, holy throbbings of ‘Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space’ and the shattered stained-glass of ‘Let It Come Down’. It isn’t always interesting to listen to a band’s initial gropings towards themselves – it isn’t often beautiful. This is. Part 2 comes out later this year; allow yourself a troubled, lopsided smile.
posted by lethalbuzzle @ 12:24 PM
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