Ether column, December 2006

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Undoubtedly the highlight of this month’s concerts is a rare visit to Vienna by the British saxophonist Evan Parker, playing at Porgy & Bess as part of the Alexander von Schlippenbach Trio. Parker is a saxophonist like no other. Along with figures like Peter Brötzmann and the late Derek Bailey, he is one of the leading lights of European free improvisation – a movement that began in the mid-60s, taking the language of free jazz (as heard in the work of musicians such as Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman), divesting it of its rhythmic origins and extending it into the realm of pure abstraction. No two concerts of free improv are ever alike – the performers are guided by the dynamics between them on the night, rarely lapsing into the easy formularity of melody, rhythm and harmony. The results can be challenging to the untrained ear, but can also be truly spectacular. Nowhere is this more so than in the playing of Parker, whose soloing on tenor and soprano sax is possessed of a unique, serpentine beauty. Parker is a virtuoso exponent of circular breathing, a fiendishly difficult technique that enables him to play long, continuous solos without ever pausing for breath. He issues torrents of dense, fluttering notes that hang in the air like a challenge. Happy in many different contexts, from stripped-down solo to large-scale electro-acoustic ensemble, Parker’s trio with Alex von Schlippenbach (piano) and Paul Lovens (drums) is one of his most enduring musical associations.

Later this month, Slovenian industrialists Laibach invade the inhospitable surroundings of Planet Music for your average evening of eastern European totalitarianism. As founding members of the Neue Slowenische Kunst art collective, Laibach have been making a nuisance of themselves since the early 80s with their stirring blend of neoclassical and martial music. Like other groups associated with the NSK, Laibach like to privilege the collective over the individual, issuing statements and manifestos and framing their concerts as quasi-political rallies.

Laibach’s use of uniforms and totalitarian aesthetics, allied to the Wagnerian overtones of the music, have led to frequent accusations of political extremism – charges that the band dismiss, pointing to the humorous impulse at work in their militaristic interpretations of cheesy pop songs such as “One Vision” and “The Final Countdown”. Laibach adopt the trappings and symbols of state power, exaggerating them to the point of parody and thereby offering satirical comment on them. While certainly open to misinterpretation, the ambivalence of their methods can be read as an invitation for listeners to examine their own beliefs and prejudices. Their new album, Volk, is a collection of songs inspired by national anthems, further embedding Laibach’s bold interrogation of the iconography of nationalism. And you can dance to it as well. Political music was never this much fun.

Ether column, November 2006

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November is a good month in Vienna for fans of literate male singer-songwriters, with two of the finest in the world playing here within the space of three days. First up is Peter Hammill, best known as the leader of 70s avant-prog rockers Van der Graaf Generator. VdGG reformed last year for a new album and a series of triumphant concerts, but they are now on hold again while Hammill continues his remarkable solo career, during which he has released upwards of 30 albums of spiky, uncompromising art rock.

This thin, greying man of 58 is one of the unheralded legends of music – a man whose singing voice modulates from an achingly sad caress to a blood-curdling shriek, often within the same song. His songs are dense, knotty propositions, reflecting with rare lyrical eloquence on the nature of love, the passing of time, free will and predestination. Accompanying himself on guitar and electric piano, he will be joined by his regular collaborator, violinist Stuart Gordon.

Hammill plays in Vienna on 11 November, the date in 1968 on which one of VdGG’s most celebrated songs, “Darkness (11/11)”, was written. He may or may not play that song on the night, but his dark subject matter and anguished, expressionist delivery will in any event be offset by a genuine onstage warmth and a wholehearted commitment to the physicality of live performance.

From the intimacy of the Szene to the grand space of the Konzerthaus, where Nick Cave gives what is billed as a solo performance on 13 November. ‘Solo’ in this context means without Cave’s long-term backing band, the Bad Seeds, although in fact three of them – violinist Warren Ellis, bassist Martyn Casey and drummer Jim Sclavunos – will also be onstage, adding colour and depth to Cave’s finely wrought meditations on love, redemption and the power of myth.

Cave has left his formative 80s years with the Birthday Party, Australia’s foremost goth-punk ranters, far behind, and is now settled into a life of domestic bliss with his wife and children in England. He is also something of a renaissance man, having written an acclaimed novel (And The Ass Saw The Angel) and film script (The Proposition). But his remarkable gift for self-expression, in language that ranges from the potent to the delirious, is undoubtedly heard to best effect in his songs.

Cave’s most recent album, Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus, shows him at the height of his powers. He writes and sings about love with exceptional tenderness and beauty, yet he also delivers rousing anthems that achieve an extraordinary blend of rumbustiousness and articulacy. The splendid acoustic of the Konzerthaus will be an ideal setting for Cave’s elegant croon and gorgeous piano playing, and with ticket prices ranging from €45 to a wallet-sapping €125, the audience will no doubt be hanging on every note.

Ether column, October 2006

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Two very different purveyors of modern American rock come to Vienna this month. First, Pere Ubu, who have been creating a unique, uncategorisable noise for over thirty years. Formed in 1975 and sporadically active ever since, they have undergone numerous line-up changes but have always centred on the larger-than-life figure of frontman David Thomas. The band is named after the main character in Alfred Jarry’s play Ubu Roi, a forerunner of the Theatre of the Absurd – and there is indeed something absurd, yet strangely compelling, about Ubu’s music. It’s a blend of raw, punkish textures, scything electric guitar and jagged, angular discordance, with liberal bursts of feedback hovering around Thomas’s high-pitched, desperate-sounding voice.

The band’s first album, The Modern Dance, was immediately hailed as a classic upon its release in 1978, but its follow-up, Dub Housing, is often cited as their best. Later albums were poppier and sometimes uneven, but never lost the essential element of Thomas’s agitated creativity. Often seen onstage wearing a large red apron and playing an accordion, Thomas comes across in live performance as a mixture of circus clown, street ranter and fairground barker.

Thomas has a bewildering array of projects under his belt at a time. He recently reformed his pre-Ubu proto-punk outfit, Rocket From The Tombs, and has a long-standing solo project, the Two Pale Boys. His “improvisational opera”, Mirror Man, was premiered in London in 1998 and has since been performed around the world. He has acted on London stages and lectured at American universities. But the group context of Pere Ubu has always been the main platform for his wayward, unpredictable talent.

Rock critic Greil Marcus wrote: “Thomas’s voice is that of a man muttering in a crowd. You think he’s talking to himself, until you realise he’s talking to you.” Vienna has the chance to hear what Thomas is talking about when Pere Ubu play the Szene on the opening night of their European tour.

Later this month, Midlake plug into the Flex’s awesome sound system for an evening of leisurely indie pop. As fresh and relaxed as Ubu are weathered and craggy, Midlake débuted in 2004 with Bamnan and Slivercork. That album’s appealing synthesised textures immediately marked the band out as producers of whimsical, lo-fi electronica, recalling the more psychedelic elements of outfits like the Flaming Lips but adding their own distinctive layer of unhurried pastoralism.

Their recently released second album, The Trials of Van Occupanther, is a seductive amalgam of 1970s mellow moods (Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young) and contemporary mope-rock from the likes of Radiohead and Coldplay. As such, it represents something of a backward step from the quirky originality of its predecessor. Still, with their delicate, affecting and hopeful songs, it would certainly be unwise to write Midlake off just yet.

La Société des Timides à la Parade des Oiseaux: Le Combat Occulté

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Here’s a French ensemble with a decidedly unwieldy name who have amassed enough material over their career to present this 22-track collection of previously unreleased tracks, alternative versions and live recordings. Spanning the years 1984 to 1993 (it’s unclear from the information provided whether the band is still in existence or not), the set depicts La STPO as a fairly driven avant-prog outfit, situated somewhere between Henry Cow, their descendants the Art Bears and the more discordant elements of King Crimson.

The danger with presenting an after-the-fact compilation such as this is that its contents might fail to cohere as a single piece of work. And there is indeed a patchwork and rather fragmentary feel to the album, with eleven of the tracks clocking in at under two minutes. These sound like sketches of or extracts from longer songs rather than self-contained compositions. Singer Pascal Godjkian’s vocal stylings (in French), meanwhile, come across as rather too arch and declamatory for my tastes.

When La STPO hit their stride musically, however, the album becomes hugely enjoyable. “L’Explosionniste” kicks off with a deeply satisfying eruption of Ayleresque skronk from the sax of Franck Fagon, before turning to more conventional but still rich episodes for guitar and woodwind. Elsewhere, Fripp-quality splintery guitar lines are pitted against lurching avant songcraft reminiscent of the Art Bears at their most visceral. It’s in this mode, on lengthy tracks like “Avant” and “Un,” that La STPO are at their most daring and striking. Guitarist Jim B provides a marvellously detailed piece of cover art, depicting a flock of large, gleeful birds ransacking an archive. Reels of master tape dangle triumphantly from the birds’ beaks as the library’s human curators look on aghast.

(Originally published in The Sound Projector 15, 2007)

Jodie Jean Marston: Redtail

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Jodie Jean Marston’s Redtail is a near-perfect collection of contemporary American folk songs. Its ten tracks effortlessly evoke a mood of quiet, parched landscape with great precision and economy, combining the hypnotic stillness of Will Oldham (whose brother Ned plays guitar and bass here) with the cosmic stylings of Gram Parsons and The Band. Reserved and unhurried in execution, it nonetheless leaves a lasting impression of measured, strong-willed intentness.

Marston’s singing voice has more than a touch of the honeyed drawl of Lucinda Williams, but her songs inhabit a different universe entirely. Trading Williams’ expansive raunch for sweetness and modesty, Marston’s songs have an artless simplicity that is reinforced by the gentle, restrained instrumentation on display. Throughout the album, Marston’s delicately plucked or strummed acoustic guitar blends beautifully with spiralling traces of electric guitar, percussion and flute.

Several of the song titles – “Hands on the Prairie”, “Mountain Rise”, “Porchlights”, “Seedbearer” – hint at a stilled, sparsely peopled America, an evocation underpinned by the deep reserves of rural imagery on which Marston’s lyrics draw. “If the sky is a roof above me/I ask this house, will you love me”, she sings on “My Dog Will Choose”, in a voice of pure intimacy and affectlessness. Redtail’s gorgeous campfire vibe lends it a warmth and closeness that are utterly beguiling.

(Originally published in The Sound Projector 15, 2007)

Ignatz: Ignatz

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Ignatz is Bram Devens, a Brussels-based musician and certainly one of the least distinguished of the many artists in recent years who have dropped folkish acoustic guitar moves into a stew of electronic effects. Lacking the luminosity and sense of space characteristic of Four Tet, Boards of Canada and other leading lights of what has cringingly been termed folktronica, Ignatz depends on scratchy lo-fi methods in a game but ultimately doomed bid for grit and authenticity.

On this, his first album, Ignatz reaches back to Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music in an attempt to tap into that vital wellspring of unmediated expression. His artless vocals approximate to the nasal twang of many of the singers on the Smith box set, but trade their raw immediacy for a postmodern synthesis of acoustic and electronic forms. The results, almost without exception, are lame and unremarkable. The lengthy opener, “Rebound From The Cliff,” meanders on a path of fuzzed out guitar and peak level distortion without gathering much in the way of drama or conviction. Here and throughout, Devens approaches his vocals as interjections rather than as organic elements of the song, and they end up sounding sketchy and tacked-on as a result.

The title of “The Radiant Sheen” can only be ironic, since there is precious little radiance coming from the song in question. Instead, Devens lays down a bloopy rhythm track and overlays it with bloodless vocals and primitive, Velvets-y guitar. Elsewhere, “No Greater Gravity” begins pleasantly enough in its merging of acoustic simplicity and angular feedback, before losing its way with egregious processed humming sounds. The curiously titled “I Look At Her With The Euh” (sic) reveals Devens’ improvisational methods to be somewhat slack. Listening to his guitar work, one never gets the impression that he is driven to create this music; channelled, inspirational playing is not much in evidence here.

The closing and longest track, “The Sinister Snow Squaws”, is the one occasion on which Ignatz’s unstructured approach pays off. Combining just guitar and processing, the piece eschews vocals and beats and has something of the flavour of late period Swans in its slowly turning expansiveness. Devens adopts Jandek’s atonal, clanky style while bathing his guitar in a warm fog of effects. One wishes that Ignatz had adopted a similarly impressionistic approach elsewhere on the record.

(Originally published in The Sound Projector 15, 2007)

Fariña: Allotments

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As the long winter nights draw in, music lovers need something happy and generous to ward off the onset of the cold and the dark. Look no further than Fariña’s Allotments, a record filled to the brim with smart, vivacious songwriting, and one that issues a timely reminder of the virtues of literate, well crafted pop music.

Remarkably, the core members of Fariña, Mark Brend and Matt Gale, have been making music together for 25 years. They are joined on Allotments by Cliff Glanfield and Tim Conway, forming a group whose collective intuition and co-operative spirit are in ample evidence throughout this record’s twelve tracks. Free of grandstanding displays of egotism, the four band members each write some of the songs, share lead vocals and create a tone of charming togetherness.

Fariña have drawn comparisons with folk troubadours such as David Ackles and Tim Hardin, but for my money their most obvious antecedent is the refined pop of bands like the Lilac Time and the Go-Betweens. The opening “Island of Hotels” is simply a perfect song, its wistful pastoralism defined by Brend’s airy vocals and Conway’s blissed out acoustic guitar work. A gentle trumpet solo wanders in and out of the languid rhythm section, sealing the song’s timeless, summery beauty.

As the record progresses, it is Brend (the author of three books on music) who comes across as the most gifted of the group’s writers. “Island of Hotels” is one of his, and so too are most of the album’s highlights, from the witty, Lloyd Cole-esque “Never Any Good” to the moving elegy for lost love and opportunity, “B-Side”: “I may be tough, but sometimes rock’n’roll is not enough/Is this what you get/You get a black belt in regret.” The song is beautifully framed by shimmering electric guitar and an extended instrumental outro.

Things do get a little arch at times. Gale’s “Brief Encounter” is a slight, sub-Divine Comedy sketch of a woman’s illicit encounter with her lover, and the Neil Hannon similarities continue into Brend’s wordy paean to corporate salesmen, “Sales Force”, and Conway’s similarly prolix “Sleep”. Musically, Fariña have a weakness for cheap Casio synthesisers that lessens the emotional impact of a song like “She Radiates”. Despite these reservations, Allotments is still a tender, quietly impressive collection.

(Originally published in The Sound Projector 15, 2007)

Ultravox: Three Into One

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Before the Midge Ure version of Ultravox, which briefly shone with the moody, European sound of the Vienna album before descending into bombast and cliché, there was another Ultravox. This incarnation of the band, fronted by John Foxx, delivered three albums for Island between 1977 and 1979. They were an unfashionably glamorous bunch, taking elements from punk but defying the Zeitgeist by mixing in other musics from the 70s – glam, prog, even reggae.

When Foxx left the band and the Ure-led version signed to Chrysalis, Island understandably tried to cash in on the new version’s popularity with Three Into One, a compilation of the best of the Island years. There is a story that the remaining members of the band met the compilation’s cover artist, who asked them for their views as to which of various options should be used; wishing to sabotage the success of the release, they chose the worst. In fact, the cover (three ghostly figures merging into a fourth) is not a bad visualisation of the album; in any case, it can’t detract from the quality of the music within.

Chronologically arranged, the songs would describe an arc from the first, self-titled album’s stinging glam-punk, through the growing maturity and artistry of Ha! Ha! Ha!, to the clean, industrial modernism of Systems of Romance. Instead, the album is sequenced by flow, opening with the cleansing blast of “Young Savage” and moving through a range of moods from the aerated groove of “Dangerous Rhythm” to the confident swagger of “The Wild, The Beautiful And The Damned”.

Even in their earliest days, Ultravox! (their name carried an exclamation mark for the first and second albums, losing it for the last) evidenced a mastery of songform that was way ahead of the rest of the class of 1977. This compilation’s highlights include the simply gorgeous “My Sex”, a tremulous ballad delivered by Foxx in a stark, unearthly monotone; the choppy futurism of “Slow Motion” and “Quiet Men”; and the blissful, eerie quietude of their greatest song, “Hiroshima Mon Amour”.

Released only on vinyl and on the bizarre, short-lived ‘1+1’ cassette format (a side of music and a side of blank tape), the album is well worth tracking down as a summary of one of British rock’s most distinctive and underrated outfits.

(Originally published in The Sound Projector: Vinyl Viands, 2006)

Bruce Springsteen: Live 1975-1985

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Bruce Springsteen was, and remains, an artist whose sympathy and compassion for his subjects are compounded by an unerring instinct for the dramatic and, often, an irresistible sense of fun. This gargantuan box set is an epic and exhaustive trawl through the best of his awe-inspiring live shows, which in the 70s and 80s regularly hit the four-hour mark, simultaneously taking on the qualities of the party, the confessional and the gospel revivalist meeting.

Never content with giving an indifferent live performance, Springsteen approached each individual concert with a simple yet shattering aim: to give every audience the night of their lives. For Springsteen, it was unacceptable to have good and bad nights onstage, since each night would, for most of the audience, be their only chance to see him. The resulting fire, exuberance and muscle-shredding energy are in ample evidence throughout these recordings, in Springsteen’s scorched-earth vocals and in the swelling, magical orchestrations of the E Street Band.

Appropriately, the collection begins with “Thunder Road” – a song that, even more than the canonical “Born To Run”, represents the essence of Springsteen. Rarely absent from his live sets over the years, it’s a long, wordy and utterly heartfelt meditation on the ineluctable pull of the car, the girl and the open road. Far from being a cliché, this trope is so vivid, and so resonant in American popular culture, that it approaches the status of myth. And it is as myth that Springsteen treats it in this and many other of his songs.

The take of ‘Thunder Road’ here is from 1975, but most of the songs on the album are from the early 80s, after The River had cemented Springsteen’s position as a peerless chronicler of blue-collar American hopes and dreams, and Born In The USA had propelled him to superstar status. For my money, the songs from The River resonate as powerfully as any here, from barnstorming rockers like “You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)” to the slow burn of “Hungry Heart” and, especially, the heightened recollection that weighs down “Independence Day” and “The River” itself. In the lyric of the former, and the extended monologue that precedes the latter, Springsteen explores the pain and regret of his relationship with his father in terms that evoke the sacred. The E Street Band play a beatific, languorous accompaniment to the monologue, and the way that Springsteen slices through its final, lingering notes with the first, keening note of his harmonica is one of the great, jaw-dropping moments in all of popular music.

Elsewhere, Springsteen dismisses all anticipated charges of sentimentality with a blazing rendition of Edwin Starr’s “War” and with the snarling aggression of “Born In The USA”. Famously, this defiant anti-war anthem was misappropriated by the Reagan election campaign in 1984. Not one of Springsteen’s subtlest songs, its tub-thumping chorus makes the misappropriation perfectly understandable.

The final track of this life-affirming collection sees Springsteen connecting with his audience at an emotional level few performers ever come close to emulating. “Jersey Girl” is an album track by Tom Waits, but it so perfectly encapsulates Springsteen’s emotional concerns that it’s hard to believe he didn’t write it himself. It’s a safe bet that most of the audience at the 1981 concert at which this recording was made were unfamiliar with the song. And so it proves as the song unfolds; they listen in reverent silence as Springsteen sings the first lines, and when he follows up with “tonight I’m gonna take that ride, cross the river to the Jersey side”, they erupt in a moment of ecstatic sympathy. The audience responds with equal fervour to lines like “I’m in love with a Jersey girl”, as though in recognition that Springsteen, for all his superstar status, is a man who speaks, directly and profoundly, to their own lived experience. Inscribed in the sounds and signs of “Jersey Girl” is a notion of music and performance as the most precious and generous of gifts.

(Originally published in The Sound Projector: Vinyl Viands, 2006)

Attacco Decente: The Baby Within Us Marches On

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Attacco Decente were a band who slipped under the cultural radar, receiving a modest amount of critical and popular acclaim in their lifetime, but nowhere near as much as they deserved. Sporadically active between 1984 and 1996, they were birthed in the tumult of anti-Thatcher populism and gained a reputation as bolshie left-wing activists, far removed from the cosying up to Neil Kinnock of Billy Bragg and the Red Wedge crowd. Yet, as this début album shows, Attacco Decente were a far more complex and interesting proposition than shouty agitators like the Redskins. Their impassioned rhetoric, intricate harmony vocals and innovative use of unusual acoustic instruments make their slim recorded legacy a precious repository of urgent, beautiful music.

The band’s founder member and sole constant was Geoff Smith, a virtuoso player of the hammered dulcimer. Smith formed the group in Brighton with bassist Graham Barlow, releasing an initial 7”, “Trojan Horse”. Guitarist Mark Allen joined and the trio released a 12” EP, “U.K.A. (United Kingdom of America)”. Most of the songs on “U.K.A.” were brittle and callow, but “The Law Above The Law” stood out as a perfect piece of taut, socially committed songwriting. By the time of their first album, Smith had matured as a lyricist and the trio were musically at the height of their powers.

The record begins with the surging, clattering rush of “The Will Of One”. Smith’s sharp, hectoring lead vocals swell against Allen and Barlow’s sighing harmonies, the glistening timbre of the hammered dulcimer and the pounding beat of the tongue drums. This blueprint is strengthened and deepened throughout the album. The band’s razor-sharp vocal harmonies bring a hint of sinister menace and affronted outrage to “The Rose Grower”, a song inspired by the mysterious death of the gardener and anti-nuclear campaigner Hilda Murrell. On the slower songs, “Dad Was God” and the title track, Allen’s striking acoustic guitar catches a note of wounded beauty that is the perfect foil for Smith’s yearning voice. Elsewhere, side one of the album ends with the stunning “Natural Anger”, a song that culminates in a long solo for dulcimer and tongue drums that takes the breath away with its sheer vitality and virtuosity.

Smith’s lyrics articulate a philosophy in which personal will and political commitment fuse to form an overwhelming sensation of justice. It takes some nerve to write and sing a line like “public school and formal sex gave birth to their economic policy”, but Smith carries it off with consummate ease as he rails against institutions and power structures in “Fear Of Freedom”. The words on this album are inspired by romantic notions of collectivism and struggle, yet their ravishing imagery, and the passion with which the three vocalists deliver them, invest them with a power that is as persuasive as it is idealistic.

Attacco Decente released one more single with this line-up, “I Don’t Care How Long It Takes”, and then waited six years to release the follow-up, Crystal Night. Barlow having left by this time, this second and last album was a more subdued affair, replete with gorgeous love songs and foregrounding Allen’s virtuoso guitar and the silvery throb of the dulcimer. The Baby Within Us Marches On, though, remains the band’s definitive statement: ambitious, tumultuous and (to quote from an unreleased song) an attack from the heart.

(Originally published in The Sound Projector: Vinyl Viands, 2006)