St Vincent, aka Annie Clark, has returned to us with an overdriven battalion of twitching guitars, leading the charge from the front with her haunting vocal dives and unpredictable lyrics. Strange Mercy plays on the gaps between retro ambiance and guitar crunch, the synergy of the catchy and the complex, the meeting of vintage jazz style and modern electronica and the contrast of playfulness and sincerity. It’s an album that is worth spending time on because it just might surprise you.
So this is music to seduce with. This is pulsating and palm-moistening. This is atmospheric R&B that revels in the nocturnal. An assured depiction of those infernal, uncontrollable city nights that wells with a smoothly calculated sensuality, leaking into the room as you listen. The vocals are suave and sexy, writhing playfully and the instrumentation is laced with a reverb that gives the synths, samples and drums a languishingly dark tone - the songs moan into life, swaying like the tide at twilight, and you can almost feel yourself swaying too.
Imagine that your long-term lover has just broken up with you - that it was messy and painful (and probably via Facebook) and that you’re ‘Help me I’m drowning in a sea of Petrarchan love sonnets’ heartbroken. Now imagine that, the poetry failing to quell that aching in your chest, you decide to drown your sorrows in that old companion of yours - the friendly bottle of Baileys. Of course, kids, drowning sorrows in alcohol never works and, having lost all control of that lovesickness due to the wanton consumption of the now not-so-appealing liquor (as well as heading towards the well-explored realms of alcohol-induced sickness) you decide to watch a film to cheer you up. You choose Bambi. Of course, Disney will cheer me up, you say to yourself, this will make me feel much better - this is a children’s film, it’s meant to be blissful and euphoric. You sing along to ‘Drip drip drop little April showers’, slurring the lyrics and straining pitifully to reach the high notes, and then disaster strikes. The winter. Bambi’s mother is shot by a hunter. You’re distraught. You can’t understand why anyone would do that. You’re almost in tears when that gammy VCR you were using conks out and the film stops. It pushes you into fully-fledged weeping. You’ll never know what happens to Bambi without his mother - he’s alone just like you. You cry yourself into a sleep in which you are assailed by grim hunters with loud, angry guns… Ok, so maybe I got carried away with the overly long, ridiculously contrived metaphor, but that was the only way I could get you to understand the sheer power of Hospice. Yes, I realise I’m supposed to be reviewing Burst Apart, but the previous release is of great significance when we’re assessing The Antlers’ fourth album. The coma-inducing heartbreak that defined Hospice stemmed from the story that Silberman wove so delicately into the lyrics - and this is where the problem of progression lay for The Antlers . Hospice was a concept-album so perfectly moulded by its writer that once the story was exhausted, he was always going to struggle in ever matching its searing brilliance. But clearly The Antlers aren’t a band that shy away from a challenge - they opened the song writing responsibilities up to the entire band and didn’t even try to make an album that could be compared to the debut. Burst Apart is a new album. It’s not the follow up to Hospice. It’s not a continuation of Hospice. It is Burst Apart - en entirely separate entity, where we see The Antlers growing into a new band free from the defining brush strokes that Hospice swept across their image. Before you start to panic, though, we are still graced with the operatic beauty of Silberman’s falsetto - the defining sound of The Antlers. It soars in opener I Don’t Want Love, both delicate and cutting as he croons ‘You wanna climb up the stairs, I wanna push you back down’. However, in terms of sound, they have progressed quite considerably. There is less of the apathetic urgency that we heard in Hospice and the instrumentation is more ambient - a variety of echo-laden synths swelling in the tracks. The album, in this sense, feels far less burdened with the need to tell a story - the whole band knows that there is no need for the songs to follow on or to fit, and so they seem far more relaxed in their composition. There is no Sylvia in this record, crashing through the album in a deluge of unclean energy - neither the vocals nor the instrumentation ever seem stretched. Yet, even though this album doesn’t have some of that raw energy, it is less of a ‘depressing’ (for want of a better word) album. This may well be due to the lyrical content of Burst Apart. The lyrics are more abstract, and though each song tells its own story they are not defined by that story. These lyrics don’t force the listener into understanding any pattern behind the album - you can comfortably project your own ideas onto the songs of Burst Apart. Something that was restricted significantly by the debut’s back-story. However the lyrics aren’t as good as Hospice’s. It’s understandable really, as it’s generally easier to develop lyrics around a series of events and ideas that make up a sequence. While the lyrics of Burst Apart are by no means poor, they lack the devoted attention to detail that made Hospice one of the greatest albums, lyrically, that I’ve ever heard. I suppose, though, you can’t blame them. After being trapped with the narrative lyricism of Hospice it must have been a joy for the band to try out some more experimental, simpler and more figurative angles. Album opener I Don’t Want Love is based around a plain concept, yet retains some quite earnestly evocative lyrics and is propelled by the simple instrumentation and the contrast between falsetto-fettered verses and lower choruses. Hounds builds slowly into a cascading waterfall of echoing sounds, washing over your body as you listen, and Putting The Dog To Sleep’s conceit is a metaphor as shallow as the Abercrombie and Fitch employment team, yet it still retains emotional credibility thanks to the perfect punctuation of the drumming, and Silberman’s once again magnificent vocals. Burst Apart is the kind of album that you put on your mp3 player when you’re out on a midnight walk and you need something to keep you company. It is warming in its melodies, and soothing in its vocals. Though the lyrics might not be as substantial and the emotion not so bared, it is another brilliant album. They didn’t try and make another Hospice - instead The Antlers produced the lilting, lonesome, nightcap-lullabies of Burst Apart.
There are two types of songs on Native Speaker, Canadian quartet Braids’ debut album. Both types manage to shimmer, delicate in their retina-searing brilliance, and yet, there is a marked difference between the two. This difference is a peculiarity in itself. It’s a difference that you don’t usually find within a selection of songs meant to be sold together. It’s not shallow - say, just in the style of vocals or the instruments used - and it’s not even in the song-writing or the layering of sounds or the tone of the songs. What separates Braids’ 'great' songs from their 'good' is their unsuppressed - and, arguably, unsurpassed - sexuality. Seriously. This is no joke. Braids bring a whole new meaning to the term ‘aural stimulation’. In fact, at moments, their music is so awash in a tide of sensuality - so fulsome and flirtatious - that it's near impossible to keep your cool as you listen. This, at first, seems just like a difference in the composition and tone of the music, but the smouldering atmosphere that Braids create on these tracks is mesmerising. The raw tension that builds in these songs - in Native Speaker and Lammicken- seems to flood the remainder of the album in latent sexuality. It’s these songs, humming with desire, that create a foundation for the rest of the album to be built upon. This sexuality, however, is not that NIN 'Closer' sexuality we are all so… fond of. I can assure you there's no 'I want to fuck you like an animal' here. Well ok - so there may be a hint of 'I wanna feel you from the inside' but Braids’ style of music is somewhat more refined than NIN. Though you may catch Raphaelle Standell-Preston singing 'Have you fucked all the stray kids yet?' or 'Of having you inside me', she lives up her name - her voice soaring with the purity of an angel both in tone and innocence. Even when unashamedly exploring sex, the band maintains what is almost a pure promiscuity (a saintly smuttiness, perhaps?). What I'm trying to say is that there is nothing dirty about Braids music (though I can't vouch for Braids themselves) and you just can't help but feel that the tone of the album comes not from sexual debauchery, but from their total honesty in handling emotions and desires. On a more basic level, though, Braids' sound is all about rolling, tidal, undulation - whether in obvious vocal and instrumental patterns or in the slow climax and anti-climax of their song structures - and they use soft, subterranean instrumentation to produce the hazy twilight of desirous tones that perpetuates their music. Though some songs are more upbeat and self-propelling, you can always feel that undercurrent of motion - the rhythmic, rapturous progression of their love. Don’t get me wrong - the entire album isn't just one sexual fantasy. I don’t even want to get into the difficulties of sexualising Same Mum. But, regardless, there is a perceivably amorous atmosphere. I might be coming across as some kind of hormonal teenage boy right about now, but before you judge me listen to the album. Just listen. Lammicken is bone-tingling; passionately moaning into life; shuddering with inevitability as the song’s single lyric 'I can't stop it.' is transformed - Preston playfully experimenting with her heady vocals. This stuff is porn for your damn ears - building slowly and subtly into a shrieking climax, then subsiding, leaving you, emotionally spent, to reflect upon its ecstasy. The title track, Native Speaker, is also titillating in every way - from its lurching, velvet backing, to its sensual lyrics - and once again the vocals writhe with delight. When Raphaelle croons ‘But my my my my my... it feels good.’ it’s as if she is pouring her sweat-inducing fantasies into your eager ears and you‘re trapped - unable to do anything but lap up her rapturous secrets with the insatiable appetite of an illicit lover.
Confronting head-on the onset of second-album syndrome, the critically acclaimed Seattle sextet have returned to once again woo us with their luscious vocal harmonies, gentle guitar and lyrical eloquence. Helplessness Blues is unquestionably a Fleet Foxes album - their base sound has changed only in the use of more layered instrumentation - however it develops the simplistic joy of their debut into something marvellous - a mature, multifaceted ecstasy that unstoppably wells up inside you as you listen. The title track and debut single is a simplistic celebration of ’serving something beyond me’ and is compellingly, unashamedly earnest in its values. Grown Ocean is a self-propelling four-and-a-half minutes of euphoria, Pecknold’s voice rising purer than ever over the background layers. ‘I’ll be so happy just to have spoken’ he sings, and it is this which defines the album - the record seems to hum with the band’s happiness; their joy seems to permeate every song. Even when the lyrics are pensive, sad or self-depreciating the tone remains upbeat. It’s this kind of music that stays with you for life.
The video for Comet, the first single off Cocoon’s UK debut Where The Oceans End, contains what is essentially a white, fluffy, flying, clockwork whale. Uh huh. Yep. A whale. A white and fluffy whale. Stuff of fairytales, huh? Well that, it seems, is the point. Oceans End is a concept album based around the idea of a whale joining the band, with each song designed to be representative of another part of their journey. This may sound slightly baffling but, of course, I’m not here to judge the band’s (admittedly bizarre) creative sources - only the resulting production. The thing is, though, that the band’s source of inspiration is rife in their music. Oceans End, I should warn you, is an unapologetically youthful record - with song titles like Mother, Yum Yum, In My Boat, Baby Seal and Baby Tiger it would be obvious even to that rare creature, the deaf music aficionado, that Cocoon are perfectly satisfied with their innocently juvenile approach to making music. Don’t, however, let this put you off of listening to the record. Oceans End is a beautiful album, perfectly poised around the harmony between Daumail and Imbeau’s delicate vocals. The guitar and piano intertwine effortlessly, presenting us with an uplifting progression of fairytale fanfare. There is a subtle counterpoint between the merrily rollicking tunes like Dee Doo and Dolphins, and the softer, pensive likes of In My Boat and Cathedral. However, there is undoubtedly a consistently magical atmosphere pervading every song - it’s crafted by the slight accent of the singers, the effortless harmony, the gentle chime of piano and the patter of the drums. This is an album of mysticism and momentum - a monumental journey has been recorded in these fourteen songs, and there is something wonderful about listening with that knowledge in your mind. Music, if anything, is a fine example of an art where juvenile productions are slated without reservation - immaturity seems to be considered synonymous with lack of sophistication - and there is an inherent snobbishness with which critics address albums that exhibit any sign of even reminiscently childish tendencies. Maybe, though, it’s time to leave such preconceptions behind when you listen to Cocoon. Some may argue with me, and maybe Where The Oceans End is fantastical, ecstatic and emphatic. Maybe it is childish and chimerical. But I can tell you the child in you will love it.
Even us mixed-race music geeks love a bit of skinny, white indie trash - and it doesn't get much more skinny and white than Kurt Vile. Just seeing him hunched over his guitar with his fingerless gloves and long, face-obscuring hair is enough to misguide the inattentive listener. Don't get me wrong, though, I wouldn't chuck Kurt into the 'trash' category - in fact, Smoke Ring For My Halo is the best album I've heard this year.
Vile, who was guitarist for indie rockers The War on Drugs, has been producing solo music since 2008, but Smoke Ring has seen him shoot into the limelight with unusual velocity. Receiving an 8.4 and the coveted 'Best New Music' label from Pitchfork, as well as (almost) entirely unanimous positive reviews elsewhere can't have hindered his rise, but it's more than that. Smoke Ring has a depth of character that far surpasses any album I have heard in recent times - Vile creates and inhabits a new persona for each song, adding emotional credibility to his American drawl.
In Baby's Arms he is a naive, love-forsaken soul trying to convince himself he'll 'never ever be alone'; in Peeping Tomboy, Vile sculpts his character contrarily: 'I don't want to change, but I don't want to stay the same.', 'Now I want to go but it's a one way street with me.'. What links all his characters is an underlying sense of innocence and inexperience - Vile's music is undoubtedly endearing and heartfelt. The pinnacle of his songcraft is On Tour, a green-fuelled haze of guitar and vocals. Vile sings out 'I got it made... most of the time.' not with anguish or joy, but with deadpan accuracy. What makes the song so effective is that the rise and fall of the melody matcheswith the lyrical content.
This is not an album that you listen to when you want to wallow in your despair. It's not an album you listen to when you need a pick-me-up. It's an album you listen to in carefree admiration - an album you devote attention to. It's an album that will no doubt be a stoner favourite, but it's also an album that everyone (including Pitchfork) has seriously underrated.
