And I don’t sleep, I don’t sleep, I don’t sleep ’til it’s light

We’re back: that at least is cause for a cheery, surreal music video to kick things off!

Apologies for the delayed hiatus: a long summer of indulging in too many pleasures has come and gone with no word from us on the cultural world! I don’t know how I made it through. Back at university, though, has as usual set my creative soul free from its chrysalis and with it I intend to bring a host of pointless opinions on all things that might me deemed “cultural”.

I intend to kick start things with a few videos and reviews of some of the things I managed to enjoy over the summer, as well as a few retrospectives on older favourites. After that, we’ll be counting down to the end of the year, release by release: there’s plenty of things to get your taste buds going yet this decade!

In the meantime, if you’re looking for something unbelievably exciting to look forward to, here is the only link you need. There is a God, and his name is probably Steve Jobs. Or possibly Lee Unkrich.

YACHT – Psychic City (Voodoo City)

Jona Bechtolt is an intriguing proposition – part electronic artist, part PowerPoint-wielding humorist. His musical entity, YACHT, recently became a DFA-based duo, with the assistance of the dazzling Claire L. Evans, and their new album, See Mystery Lights, is a release that I am eagerly waiting (Amazon UK’s shipping estimate is three weeks; no joy on Spotify as yet). I’ve been tipping them for glory in much the same way as I did Hercules And Love Affair two years ago, having heard earlier incarnations of “Summer Song” floating around cyberspace.

In any case, that’s not why I’m writing all this. I listened to new single “Psychic City (Voodoo City)” this afternoon for the first time in a while, and ever since, its catchy and endearing vocal chant/hook has been ingrained in my head, bugging me constantly. I’m pretty certain it’s been borrowed/lifted from somewhere else, but I really can’t think where. My guess would be a Talking Heads song, but I could be wrong.

If anyone can solve this mystery, please provide your answer in comment-based form, and you will receive my profound thanks and gratefulness.

I need your help, Dearest Internet!

The Big Pink – Dominos [FGHOTS 2]

The second of my Feel Good Hits Of The Summer bears, according to Pitchfork, an uncanny resemblance to MGMT’s “Time To Pretend”, which is in my mind an inferior creature. Much-vaunted duo The Big Pink release their debut, entitled A Brief History Of Love, next month, but in the meantime they are treating us to a free single, “Dominos”, which should be blitzing through summer playlists like a falling block of ice. Over the top of a crisp, pumping beat blasts through romping, fuzzy synths, and a ludicrously catchy vocal hook, delivered in a voice that is equal parts whiny as it is memorable.

There’s no video, and there isn’t likely to be one anytime soon, but grab the free download while it lasts, because this song is a scorcher. It manages the previously unimaginable, channelling the spirit of shoegaze through the raw energy of great pop music. Let’s hope they’re onto a winner.

The Big Pink – Dominos

Friendly Fires – Kiss Of Life [FGHOTS 1]

This evening I have two official Feel Good Hits Of The Summer about which to briefly extoll.

The first comes from the finest dancers in St. Alban’s, Friendly Fires, who I have already heaped praise upon on previous occasions. They release new single “Kiss Of Life” on 31st August, which if anything is a bit too late to win the hearts of summer festival-goers, who will already have been grooving away to the song’s feel-good samba rhythms all season. The video, filmed in Ibiza, ties in perfectly with the song, which pits a flowering romance against the impermanence of lines drawn in the sand, waiting to be washed away by the tide. The music is unflinchingly euphoric and dancefloor-friendly, a fact impressed upon us by Ed MacFarlane’s inimitable beach-front jiving. My my, he has rhythm.

If this song isn’t a hit, I will despair. It is fully ready for the radio, and yet it doesn’t miss a beat in providing sophisticated, shimmering pop music for music connoisseurs. Expect Friendly Fires to be officially elected as rulers of summer by 2011 at the latest.

Muse – Uprising

After last month’s protracted treasure hunt and resulting download-only ‘treat’, “United States Of Eurasia”, today’s radio waves were dominated by exclusive first plays of Muse’s official lead single for The Resistance, entitled “Uprising”. That this new song is the album opener suggests that it is a definitive introduction to the prevailing themes on the album; judging by what Matt Bellamy has said in a video interview with Zane Lowe, we can definitely think of The Resistance as a set of songs that are carefully structured to tell a story. From Mr. Bellamy’s intimations, this unifying conceptual story is one of a conflict-defying romance taking place amidst the geo-political strife of the 21st century, replete with corrupt governments and shady transgressions of democratic ideals.

You may have read just how much of a hammering “United States Of Eurasia” received from music writers, myself included. This criticism was completely justified – it’s a messy, thoughtless, overblown piece of work that does nothing to play to the strengths of the band. “Uprising”, then, has been dealt an easy hand, for to trump the only previous sneak preview fans have had of the band’s latest creation requires no great effort.

The song begins with a neat sonic trick, with the bass emerging from the sound of a record accelerating up to speed. From there on, we are plunged head-first into a glam-rock schaffel, where an octave-skipping, gurgling bass line dovetails with a Doctor Who-aping synth melody. It’s catchy, enjoyable and instantly more edifying than “United States…”, with periodic hand claps leading into a solitary, tasteful squeal of guitar that is much more in keeping with Matt Bellamy’s style, and certainly does not digress into Brian May-style stupidity.

The vocals, when they appear, fifty seconds in, are nonetheless surprising and out of character, with Bellamy singing in a substantially lower register than he is famous for. Perhaps more alarmingly, his pronunciation and intonation is all over the shop, with many of the lines slurring into the kind of gloopy drawl I last detested on Green Day’s “Boulevard Of Broken Dreams” – a song that ingrained in me a deep-seated hatred of Billie Joe Armstrong. Lyrically, we’ve got all the traditional Bellamy-isms: shady government propaganda; drugs being pumped into the water supply; the unspecified “truth” being kept from the public. It’s all there, and it’s all unintentionally rather amusing in its naïvety. For me, there’s always been a substantial gap between Matt Bellamy’s undoubted curiosity and intelligence (look at the books he reads, and the stuff he quotes in interviews) and his ability to write sophisticated lyrics that mirror these concerns, and “Uprising”, sadly, is going to do little to dispel this notion.

Musically, the song is definitely a good egg, in a perfectly harmless manner. Perhaps the Devon three-piece really do believe they are pushing the boundaries of rock music with their tasteful synth arpeggios and crisply distorted bass tones. If so, they’re sadly mistaken, because “Uprising” breaks fewer genre conventions than a non-stick frying pan. Nevertheless, the song is solidly written (complete with entertaining interplay between guitar solo and synth backing) and efficiently executed, with minimal flab, and a well-constructed structure that builds effectively, and leads to a satisfying conclusion. Just don’t expect too many surprises.

Humbug – An early trip to the confectioners.

With very little ado about something, Arctic Monkeys have quietly sent the world a five-song “Web Transmission”, offered as a preview of their forthcoming third album, entitled Humbug. With much-analysed trips to the Mojave Desert, and a length of time spent in the company of a certain Mr. Josh Homme, the band have certainly raised expectations a notch – whereas no-one realised what a change of style Favourite Worst Nightmare would herald, the general perception of Humbug is that it’s not exactly going to be eleven re-treads of “I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor”. Lead single “Crying Lightning” confirmed this: four minutes of eerie, muggy and fuzzy desert rock, with siren-like guitars wailing behind Alex Turner’s typically evocative lyrics (this time with added confectionery!).

The webcast, then. There’s nothing too spontaneous about this – Radiohead’s Scotch Mist this certainly is not. The band are silhouetted in a shadowy warehouse environment, with numerous video screens showing looped close-up footage of a woman’s eyes. Now blessed with an additional fifth musician on-stage, contributing additional guitar and keyboards, the band launch into “Pretty Visitors”, where a carnival organ collides with jagged guitars. The chorus locks into a loping waltz, before a second guitar kicks in halfway through with kind of Queens Of The Stone Age-style slide work that we have come to expect. Then it’s back to the spooky waltz for the outro. The song is sprawling in its ambition, and yet tight in its musicianship – the perfect opening salvo, I suppose.

Next, the band tackle “Crying Lightning”, with a rendition that is less dependent on that intense, brain-mashing bass, and more open to improvisation with the desert-y wailing guitar. My reactions so far to Turner’s vocals are that he’s not so much singing, as attempting a kind of lurching, viscous style of rapping. Throughout, he remains resolutely sombre and dark – one has to wonder how such a tortured and complex individual tessellates so well with Alexa Chung.

The third song, which is called “Potion Approaching”, begins in a simple manner, with a repetitive, chugging riff on both guitar and bass. This whining, strangled lead guitar sound shows no sign of abating, and it’s difficult to compare it to anything else except the majority of Lullabies To Paralyze. A sludgy, psych-y refrain boasting the portentous lyrics “Yours is the only ocean that I want to hang onto” leads into a slowed-down, glammy bridge, and then back to the original chug.

Now, here comes a real highlight, as Arctic Monkeys treat us to their cover of Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand”, with its Jarvis Cocker-esque lyrics that speak of viaducts, mills and stacks. The organ is mournful, and a humid middle section eventually explodes into an angry, angry outro.

The final song, for which I have no name, sadly, is a beauty. Beginning with a plinky piano intro, over which Alex Turner adds some wonderfully appropriate guitar, it alternates between a pretty, dance-y beat, and a half-speed Scott Walker ballad, with starry-eyed melodies and coo-ing backing vocals. And then, far too quickly, it’s all over, and the screen cuts to black.

First impressions? It’s not such a huge step away from the more sinister second half of Favourite Worst Nightmare as the Chinese whispers would have us believe. There’s a lot of organ, of a variety more akin to The Doors than The Horrors; the lead guitar tone appears to be fixed on a sound last heard wailing through Queens Of The Stone Age at their most tortured; and of course, Matt Helders’ drumming is characteristically enviable. The general ambition displayed in the songwriting is definitely a step forward, with sprawling song structures and a lot of effort being paid to making each minute of each song different from the last. Undoubtedly, Humbug is going to be more of a grower than its two predecessors – in all likelihood, it will alienate some of the band’s least intellectually-minded fans. Which is no bad thing, judging by the typical crowd at an Arctic Monkeys gig. I suppose the hope must be that some impressionable young people who got into Arctic Monkeys as a gateway into indie music will hear the sophisticated craft of Humbug and use it as a gateway into a whole host of interesting and challenging rock music, which the band is clearly locked into right now. I’m going to have to wait till August 24th, when the album is released, but I do think I’m going to like it, as a uniquely dark and turmoil-filled creature.

I’m seeing double and triple: does this ever happen to you?

Yo La Tengo are one of those bands that I really should have got into around the time I got into Wilco, Modest Mouse and Sonic Youth. They’re one of the great cult indie groups of the last twenty years, and I regret not hearing wonderful albums like I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass and And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out earlier on. Many critics would say that the band are at their strongest when exploring polar opposites in quick succession – witness the 11-minute freak-out of “Pass The Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind” being followed by the succint pop of “Beanbag Chair” – and, on recent evidence, their forthcoming twelfth album, entitled Popular Songs, will be a continuation of their present form.

Two tracks have been released on the sly, for free, into the wider cybernetic community, and each reveals a very different facet of the band. The first to be tentatively revealed was the tight, bluesy “Periodically Double Or Triple”, which contrasts Ira Kaplan’s nervous, hushed vocals with a storming organ groove and an insistent, shuffling beat. Halfway through, in place of a middle-eight, the song suddenly cuts to a burst of dissonant lift-music in one of those unexpected about-turns that is sure to leave some listeners scratching their heads. For me, it’s the perfect antidote to what has gone before it in the song, and when the regular riff cuts back in, I felt pleasingly refreshed, an effect intensified by the barbershop backing vocals.

The latest track to be set free is the opening track of Popular Songs, entitled “Here To Fall”, and it couldn’t be more different from “Periodically…”. Emerging from a noisy squall of reverb and wah-wah reminiscent of The Verve at their prime, a buzzing bass guitar leads into a beautifully evocative psychedelic passage, with soaring strings and lilting electric piano. Here, Kaplan’s vocals are equally anxious and lacking in confidence, which fits perfectly with the tentative exploration and frontier-breaking of the music. The percussion is intricate and precious, and washes of effected noise break out between the channels. The chorus, offering the dubious opening couplet of “I know you’re worried / I’m worried too,” is a thing of wonder and amazement, with the lyrics falling between gaps in the music in a manner that could so easily have been messy and ill-thought out. There are lovely little passages of instrumental virtuosity, and the song finally resolves into a neat string arrangement that sets up the rest of the album perfectly.

I really can’t wait for Popular Songs and I encourage you to check out these two early gems. Yo La Tengo’s finest albums are known for veering between wildly divergent styles without compromising on a consistent feel and thematic link, and I dearly hope that their twelfth LP will deliver on these qualities. I don’t think I’ll be disappointed.

Yo La Tengo – Periodically Double Or Triple

Yo La Tengo – Here To Fall

Jarvis Cocker – Discosong (Pilooski Mix)

Shame on the Mercury judges for not nominating Jarvis Cocker’s refreshingly urgent Further Complications. While you digest that lamentation, you can also frazzle your brain by listening to the recent Pilooski remix of the album’s closing track, “You’re In My Eyes (Discosong)”, which is highly recommended, and is free.

The acclaimed French electronic artist re-imagines the song as a hushed, slithering dance track, with a lobotomising bass-line complemented by a crisp beat and inventive whistling percussive noises that leap out unexpectedly. Virtually nothing remains from the original – even the vocals are tampered with and re-ordered, occasionally warped into minor explosions that blurt out of the speakers. About two minutes in, a strange, whining, groaning synth hovers perilously between the channels, and the distant chiming of a guitar whispers through. A minute later, there is a wonderfully unexpected breakdown with a sweep across a harp, after which the rest of the instruments cut back in with greater intensity.

The whole remix is beautifully crafted, charting the mournful depths of the song in an insistent, nagging manner. By the end, as the harp winds down to a whooshing gurgle, there is absolute closure. It’s a remix that evokes the very best of former DFA remixes, in particular the closing minutes of their liberal interpretation of Gorillaz’s “Dare”, and it bodes extremely well for Pilooski’s remix of LCD Soundsystem’s 45:33, due to be released on September 14 as part of the aptly titled 45:33 Remixes.

My mercury’s in retrograde

In traditional style, this year’s Mercury Prize shortlist has impressed and confounded me in equal measures. Congratulations are due to Florence & The Machine, Glasvegas, Friendly Fires, Speech Debelle, Bat For Lashes, La Roux, The Horrors, Lisa Hannigan, Led Bib, Sweet Billy Pilgrim… and, I suppose, if pushed, lad-rock terrace-chant favourites, Kasabian. Token surprising commiserations are also due to Doves, Manic Street Preachers, Jarvis Cocker, Patrick Wolf, Future Of The Left (who were never really going to be nominated, but still, I loved their album, and so did plenty of others), and everyone else who may conceivably have had a chance of making the shortlist.

Merely being mentioned in conjunction with the prize often has a helpful effect on sales figures, and of course, winning the prize is often seen as more of a curse than a blessing – after all, what became of Gomez, Talvin Singh and Roni Size? Here, then, is my brief rundown of the list, with some thoughts, feelings, and woeful predictions.

Bat For Lashes‘ sophomore album, Two Suns, is arguably the most consistently enjoyable entry on the shortlist. Musically stunning and frequently emotionally troubling, a victory for Natasha Khan would certainly be richly deserved.

Florence & The Machine has given us Lungs, which is a sonically diverse carnival of Kate Bush-esque gesturing and Bat For Lashes-lite. It’s the bookies’ favourite.

Friendly Fires produced one of the most entertaining albums of this twelve-month period with their eponymous debut, which combines percussive, frenetic, funk reminiscent of Talking Heads with a starry-eyed shoegaze surprise lurking in the guitars and synthesisers. My joint favourite to win, because I loved virtually every minute of it.

Glasvegas were hyped-up beyond all proportion by the most irritating man to ever write for the Guardian, Alan McGee, who said they were “more important than My Bloody Valentine” or some similar nonsense. They’re not. Their self-titled first album hints at shoegazey affectations, but does not marry this aesthetic to any particularly memorable tunes. Also, frontman James Allan’s vocals sound weird, as if they’ve been accidentally Auto-Tuned.

The Horrors have surely committed one of the great acts of musical reincarnation by following up over-hyped pesticide Strange House with this year’s stunning Primary Colours. Their undoubted love of great music has now been translated into a misty-eyed and thrilling set of songs that touch on krautrock and shoegaze as much as they do garage rock. Faris Badwan has also searched around in his cupboard and located his true voice – that of a doomed and tormented Robert Smith-style romantic. Music as miserable as this has never sounded so exhilarating. Along with Friendly Fires, this must surely be my personal favourite to win.

The Invisible have also named their first album after themselves. Unfortunately, it’s not on Spotify and I don’t own a copy of it, so my judgements of it are based on the contents of their MySpace music player, and the myriad interviews and articles they have inspired within the music press. A three-piece comprised of talented and knowledgeable session musicians and collaborators, The Invisible’s songs travel along wildly different vectors, from the hushed jazzy funk of single “London Girl” to the cut-up guitars of “OK”. From what I’ve heard of it, it’s pretty impressive, understated stuff, and these guys could pull of an unexpected victory and take home the prize.

Kasabian, having romped through the glammy electro-rock of Kasabian and Empire, return with West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum – an album of slightly unfashionable glammy electro-rock, now sealed with the production stamp of Dan The Automator. Why oh why?

La Roux have, imaginatively, named their debut album La Roux. A prime example of this year’s crop of female electro-pop artists, Elly Jackson has constructed a somewhat robotic album of new-romantic 80s pop songs, dealing with emotional breakdown and relationship breakups. It’s less cheesy than Little Boots, but boasts some of the biggest-selling singles of the year. Probable winner, much as I’d rather it didn’t.

Led Bib have secured this year’s token jazz vote with Sensible Shoes, a noisy and raucous offering. It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and come on, it’ll clearly never win, but, being an outsider to the world of modern jazz (the closest recent album I can testify to owning is Antibalas’ thoroughly excellent Security), I’m not really in any position to suggest an alternative to this. If the judges wish to nominate a jazz album every year, why can’t they at least give one of them the prize, which would provide some level of vindication?

Lisa Hannigan, formerly backing singer for Damien Rice, spent two weeks making Sea Sew, and it’s a predictably lulling, folksy listen. Hannigan’s voice is particularly honeyed and soothing, in an agreeable, likeable way. The music is reminiscent of a more minimalist Belle & Sebastian. Without wishing to sound cynical, this is the token folk nomination, but it sounds like a lovely album of laid-back, idyllic music with interesting orchestral flourishes.

Speech Debelle has an interesting back-story that has been talked about elsewhere, and she draws on her childhood experiences in Speech Therapy, which is presumably the most exciting thing in British hip-hop right now, if you can look past the mainly tawdry offerings of commercially viable grime. At times, the backing music veers into lift-music territory, and her choice of words may sometimes seem a little platitudinous; again, I’m not really possessed of enough knowledge of the genre to suggest a better hip-hop album.

Sweet Billy Pilgrim’s bewildering Twice Born Men is actually available on Spotify. Just like The Invisible, the band is comprised of three session musicians; unlike The Invisible, which was produced by avant-garde meister Matthew Herbert, Twice Born Men was cobbled together in a shed with some duct tape, one microphone, and a laptop. The album is surprisingly polished, but in a breathy, close-mic’ed way, and it takes in a variety of acoustic genres. I haven’t really had time to formulate a definitive opinion on it, but I’d be willing to bet that I won’t prefer it to some of the other albums that have missed out on this year’s shortlist – Further Complications, The Bachelor &c.

So, if you’re a betting man, you’ll probably want to go and place money on Florence & The Machine’s Lungs. I’m not, but come September 9th I will be sitting at home rooting for Friendly Fires and Primary Colours. I think Two Suns is probably a more accomplished album than both of those, but I personally was more entertained and emotionally moved by the first two. We’ll probably all be proven wrong though, and the world will have to face up to the fact that Kasabian are apparently bona-fide album artists.

Muse – United States Of Eurasia

I’ve defended Muse in front of a fair bit of criticism over the years. While sniffy critics have derided them for their populist, stuck-in-the-past approach, I insisted that their craft was accomplished, ambitious and never lost touch with enjoyability. And now they have unleashed “United States Of Eurasia” on us…

So! The first six rounds of Muse’s latest treasure hunt have been completed, and with this success for the notoriously fervent and geeky Muse fan-base comes the prize: the complete upload of “United States Of Eurasia”, the fourth track on their forthcoming fifth album, entitled The Resistance. A lot has been written on fan-sites with each successive upload, but I’ve mostly reserved judgement on it, preferring instead to wait for the whole song to emerge – after all, it’s a bit ridiculous to assess a song based on a 30-second clip.

Sadly, for all its massive-grin-inducing pomp and bombast, I’m finding it difficult to endorse “United States Of Eurasia”. The song is an almost four-minute long romp through the more unpalatable reaches of Queen’s œuvre, with the cavalcade of multi-tracked vocals, wailing guitars and thumping drums only slightly tempered by some tasteful East-European orchestral arrangements. It’s very low on subtlety, it’s very very BIG, and I’m still not sure whether I like it, or am simply smiling along with the undoubted audacity Muse are showing by creating such a throwback of a song.

The song begins with a light romantic piano accompaniment to Matt Bellamy’s vocals – at this point taking on an oddly gentle timbre – which is surprisingly reminiscent of the kind of supermarket dross conjured up by Coldplay. After a minute, soft, regular, percussion breaks into the mix, recalling memories of woeful 80s stadium ballads. Then, suddenly, at 1:17, a Brian May-style lead guitar line storms in and everything goes very Queen. Lest we get too comfortable, an actually pretty interesting orchestral arrangement is then unleashed, and before long the whole thing is rollicking along at a pace somewhere between “Knights Of Cydonia” and “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Predictably, it’s insanely catchy and hook-laden, and by the time the song explodes in a confetti-shower of multi-tracked vocal harmonies, screaming out “Eura-sia! Sia! Sia Sia!”, it’s bound to be pretty ingrained in your mind. Who knows? In a questionable indictment of the state of British music, it will probably be hailed as a novelty hit and roam around the higher reaches of the charts for weeks. I’d prefer to salute it as a relentless pastiche of an oft-trodden path, but whether or not I can actually approve it, I remain unsure.

Leaving Muse to their own devices, sans external producer, trapped in the basement studio of a villa on Lake Como, was never going to result in an album low on bombast – and only time will tell if the rest of The Resistance is similarly schizophrenic and cheesy. Reminiscing back to the days of Absolution, Muse were many things: pretentious, portentous, musically ambitious. But in “United States Of Eurasia” I see very little melodic accomplishment and a tendency for the band’s strengths to be overwrought into mere comedy, for all the ominous subtext of the song’s theme. That well-worn grin on my face is starting to hurt.