Funk, soul, brother Isaac

You can sometimes trace a direct lineage from seminal albums through to their modern descendants. Sometimes, though, it’s just a genetic fragment, a heartbeat or a swagger that travels through the generations. When we talk about Can’s lasting influence, we can feel the ur-krautrock’s presence everywhere. When we talk about Isaac Hayes’s Hot Buttered Soul, we have to feel the fabric of modern music between our fingers, and bring it up to our noses to inhale the waft of Hayesian heritage.

The four songs that make up the album are diverting and ingenious. They walk around you, several times, making a mockery of conventional song structure. They are arranged like masterpieces—think of the cinematic interplay between strangled electric guitar and soaring strings on “Walk On By”. They know when to ride sparse, motorik beats, and when to let the piano parts expand to fill the universe of emotions—as on “Hyperbolicsyllablecsesquedalymistic” (see above). Everything is produced in a way that suggests the studio is a living thing—especially on the wandering “By The Time I Get To Phoenix”, with its ambient, barely-there organ drone and Hayes’s “velvet sledgehammer” monologue, which eventually lead into something grander and more significant.

On the face of it, Hot Buttered Soul shouldn’t be so un-derivative. Two of the songs are “covers” (albeit in the loosest possible sense), and the album was pieced together from several recording sessions—a far cry from the deranged-genius-cabin-fever-vibe we associate with most truly original works. But, somehow, it feels vital and inspirational in the correct sense of these words: it gave life to soul as a progressive, expansive genre (consider Curtis Mayfield’s Super Fly, released three years later in 1972); and it provided a rich seam of sounds and textures that artists would tap into in the decades to follow.

Capped with Hayes’s inimitable, husky set of pipes, the album manages to strut and preen, but also to serenade and emote. It’s no wonder the music it sired was, taken as a whole, so schizophrenic.

Whitney Houston — “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay”

If you, like me, were born in 1990, there’s a high probability you were too young to remember I’m Your Baby Tonight at the time of its release, in which case your first introduction to new music by Whitney Houston was probably “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay“.

In this situation, I suppose it’s not right, and it’s not okay either.

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Pareles, J. and Nagourney, A., 11 February 2012, “Whitney Houston, Pop Superstar, Dies at 48“, The New York Times.

Junior Boys — Parallel Lines

I guess my being rooted to this side of the Atlantic meant that Junior Boys never “happened” for me. The English equivalent of their sleek, refined electro-soul was Hot Chip, and then Hot Chip went ADHD, and then they matured into something (whisper it) superior to the Canadian twosome.

But “Parallel Lines”, which is the opener to their 2009 album Begone Dull Care, is just too porcelain-perfect to ignore.

It’s jam I require

Do you remember the 1990s, when all shades of pop music briefly flourished, through the medium of the one-hit-wonder on Top of the Pops, before briefly fizzling out? Life’s constants were chiefly innocent manufactured pop groups like Boyzone, Take That, Spice Girls—trade blocs whose domination was tolerated because of their lack of offence. And, somehow, an acid jazz collective fronted by a hat- and car-lover became an actual big deal.

It might be that album-wise, the apotheosis of Jamiroquai was 1996′s Travelling Without Moving. But for their finest five minutes, you have only to look to the opening track of the album which followed this. The pre-millennial Synkronized kicks off with “Canned Heat”, which sees classic disco influences seeping into their chart-friendly jazz. An orchestral flourish ushers the listener into a heady—but ultimately innocuous—slice of funk. The strings permeate through virtually every phrase, sending Jay Kay’s distinctive vocal phrasings skywards. Phat bass-lines swap between disco octaves and a kind of synthesised slap-bass riff. Twinkles of overdriven Rhodes and Clavinet summon memories of Stevie Wonder and the acme of soul. This is emphasised in the final minute, wherein subtle bongos fill out the spaces between the four-to-the-floor rhythm.

Is it not peculiar that no subsequent scene in music has explicitly nodded to Jamiroquai? For sure, their music was utterly derivative when boiled down to its root elements—the aforementioned presence of soul and funk greats (consider the closeness of “Virtual Insanity” and Luther Vandross’s “Never Too Much“), more than a whiff of Prince in Jay Kay’s falsetto and the predominant texture of the keys. But this surprisingly compelling melange still crops up now and again: if you want to be startled, listen to Hercules And Love Affair’s “This Is My Love“, and compare it with Jamiroquai’s “Alright“. We think of H&LA as channelling decades of disco music in the spirit of the best historian—so why do the efforts of Jay Kay and his chums go unappreciated?

In fact, the only wider cultural reference I can think of having been bequeathed to Jamiroquai is a brief, pivotal scene in Napoleon Dynamite (see above video), in which the titular protagonist wins over an audience of his dubious schoolmates in order to promote his friend’s election campaign by unexpectedly boogying to “Canned Heat”. It’s essentially apropos of nothing, and maybe it is that by-the-wayside quality of Jamiroquai’s music that earned it a place in the scene. Perhaps it is the case that we just don’t think of these passing fancies of the 1990s as being created with the intention of having cultural impact down the line.

Hot Chip — “Crap Kraft Dinner”

“All the people I love are drunk.”

Hot Chip know their way around the tragicomic, which is why “Crap Kraft Dinner” is a different kind of loser’s anthem.

The song doesn’t operate in terms of verse-chorus-verse-chorus, and if it did, it wouldn’t work. The first bit is all purported scene-setting, making the listener believe it’s the guy who’s been dumped. Over melancholy FM bells and the occasional, soothing throb of bass, Alexis Taylor sounds like a down-and-out, glued to the bar stool.

“All you can hear is my refusal,
‘Cos I haven’t got the time for a jerk-off loser.”

But then, as the song enters its second act, the tempo steps up a gear. A lonely, forlorn strum of guitar is another faux amis before the song’s true intentions are laid bare. The 808 starts hitting on the off-beat, second vocalist Joe Goddard copies Taylor’s lyrics but an octave lower, and we realise that it’s the girl, previously the recipient of the titular “crap Kraft dinner”, who’s been dumped. Before you know it, with an ironic smirk, a saxophone straight out of “Careless Whisper” enters the scene, presaging the song’s final section, wherein competing synth lines rotate and murmur over a tricksier beat. Now he’s not so much singing about leaving his girl, as rubbing salt in her wounds, pretending he’s upset and heartbroken in spite of it being his decision. There’s “no more space or time / For a last supper”—though, given his previously explicated culinary skills, maybe that’s no bad thing.

The double irony is, of course, that Hot Chip know they’re geeks, and know that they’re never really the ones doing the dumping, or the salt-rubbing, or the pimping of one’s ride. After all, in another Coming On Strong cut, “Playboy”, Goddard describes “Drivin’ in my Peugeot / 20-inch rims with the chrome now / Blazin’ out Yo La Tengo”, like a particularly sad-sack gangsta from Putney.

Dionne Warwick — “You’re Gonna Need Me”

Knock-out classic from 1973, as used in J Dilla’s masterful “Stop”.

There’s a haunting tone to that guitar twang which sets the scene at the start, which then gets subsumed into Warwick’s lovesick vocals and the soaring string arrangement. Later on, the guitar returns, transformed into a brittle solo instrument, perfectly mirroring the anguish in Warwick’s voice.

The other thing you notice is the drums, which could themselves have appeared on a Dilla track. There is a viscous quality to them, which suggests they might be rolling off the beat when in fact they remain totally in the pocket.

Janelle Monáe – The ArchAndroid

It totally gets people every time I reveal this, but one of my guilty pleasures is really good R&B. Justin Timberlake, Beyoncé, even Usher – these are artists who have made some of the most enjoyable music during my lifetime, and I’ve always defended them to the hilt. The best music of this kind looks back – to Michael Jackson, Prince, Motown – yet is unafraid to take cutting-edge stylistic risks: consider how ground-breaking “SexyBack” sounded back in 2006, and how derivative all JT’s slavish impersonators sound by comparison.

And now we have a new inspirational artist on the scene – except this one’s also no slouch when it comes to about a dozen other genres. I have no idea to what extent Janelle Monáe has exploded onto the scene, but a label endorsement from Puff Daddy can’t hinder matters; neither can executive production from Big Boi. More importantly, with an album like The ArchAndroid under her belt, Monáe can practically do no wrong.

This album is epic in every way: over an hour in length; packed with bells, whistles, horns and the sonic trademarks of all her influences; skipping between brassy soul and rollicking funk and pastoral folk. Even better than this wide-eyed ambition is the quality of the songwriting – and frankly, I don’t care how much or little input she had on this front, because the quality never lets up: not in the hooks, not in the beats, not even in the city-scaping, city-aping arrangements. And, best of all, Monáe’s voice is a continual delight, keenly matching the tone of each song, from the wailing Beyoncé-plus of single “Tightrope”, to the dusky husky murmurings on “57821″. Her shape-shifting reminds me of Madonna, in a way, but Monáe’s got a considerably stronger set of pipes, and arguably her stylistic decisions are as honest as they are startling and unexpected.

This album is epic in every way: over an hour in length; packed with bells, whistles, horns and the sonic trademarks of all her influences

And then we come to the lyrics. I’ll admit, she loses me a couple of times with her Afro-futurist references, but there’s no denying that her unique vision shines through. Monáe has talked of the album as being like an amalgam of song, cinema and soundtrack, and throughout she succeeds in reaching this lofty target. Using androids as a metaphor for segregated minorities is pretty clever, mind, but it’s going to take listeners a while to digest her sophisticated, tangential, self-aware phrasing.

In the meantime, we should applaud Monáe for making what is probably the pop album of 2010. It’s catchy as anthrax, and never shies away from experiments, and if she keeps on like this, she could have a Bowie-esque career ahead of her.

Massive Attack – Heligoland

Massive Attack used to excel at taking really disparate, exciting sounds and weaving them into a tapestry of overwhelming despair, over which they spun woozy vocal melodies sung either by themselves (Daddy G, 3D) or by intriguingly chosen guest vocalists. On their finest work to date, Mezzanine, while never totally abandoning their early interest in reggae and soul, the (then) trio departed unexpectedly from laid-back, dinner party tempos, favouring an almost punishingly unhappy mood and tone. Electrical noise, squelchy bass synth and distant, distorted synths were the order of the day, along with that heavy metal guitar that cuts through “Angel”. Importantly, these crazily challenging sonics were forged onto equally sophisticated and dependable song structures – in particular, the climactic “Group Four” segued through several movements, never losing sight of its drive and mystery. Mezzanine was a knockout masterpiece; one of my undoubted albums of the decade.

Seven years on from their last effort (and it represented quite an effort to get through 100th Window), Massive Attack return as a duo, with Heligoland. Say it differently and you get “hell ego land”, possibly. Equally tenuous, sad to say, is the premise that the band have lost none of their touch, because this album is undoubtedly a disappointment. In place of the group’s formerly deft touch with textures and sonic themes, here, they seem to content to drop just one exciting sound per track, drag them out for longer than is necessary, and expect the rest to follow. It doesn’t – at its worst, Heligoland is criminally repetitive, with interesting ideas that go nowhere. “Psyche” sounds like a half-baked sketch of an instrumental backing, albeit with a notably pretty vocal performance from Martina Topley-Bird; not even a brief orchestral swell can save “Flat Of The Blade” from its interminable, ugly and atonal electronic whirrings.

On the album’s more successful tracks, Del Naja and Marshall venture further with their collection of synth presets and little chunks of melody, instead of riding along contentedly on repetitive grooves. “Girl I Love You”, for instance, is unafraid to suddenly pick up in pace, take on a gloriously filtered brass arrangement, or meld into a dissonant cloud of noise. Another highlight is “Paradise Circus”, which ebbs in on intricate bells, vibes and the softest of beats, before shifting direction, twice, replacing this arrangement with dubby bass, and then a surprisingly stirring orchestra. True, little of this progression includes a return to Daddy G-provided “blackness”, but with such thin pickings, we can hardly complain. You’re just left wishing the rest of the album was similarly risk-taking.

The other big problem affecting much of Heligoland lies in its vocals. In their earlier career, Massive Attack made careful and assiduous choices when inviting in guest singers. Shara Nelson on “Unfinished Sympathy” was an inspired move, as was the sprinkling on Liz Fraser on Mezzanine. On Heligoland, by contrast, the ageing big guns are slathered all over. You have to wait till track three to hear 3D and Daddy G for the first time; in total, they make just three vocal contributions to the whole record. That would be just about acceptable, if their replacements’ performances were particularly meaningful.

All too often, however, the individuals roped in sound either past-their-prime (does anyone really think about Hope Sandoval anymore? or Topley-Bird, for that matter?) or deeply uncaring – witness Elbow’s Guy Garvey sounding extremely disinterested on “Flat Of The Blade”. I can excuse Daddy G from being absent from 100th Window – he was on paternity leave at the time – but here, even though he has returned to the fold, his solitary vocal mark rests at a few dope-heavy lines on “Splitting The Atom”, unfortunately chained to a funhouse organ chord progression that is spun out over five minutes. Horace Andy‘s contributions are more stirring, but, in the absence of a serviceable tune, they frequently crumble into insignificance.

On the closing track, “Atlas Air”, you can tell Massive Attack are aiming for the kind of multi-section epic that was once christened “Group Four”. That they almost achieve such heights, but fall short, is an undesired shame. We all knew Massive Attack were outrageously talented producers: what we wanted was clear evidence that they were also gifted songwriters (Lord knows their outside production work has been despairingly infrequent). On Heligoland, their craft bears the undeniable mark of rustiness and laziness, to the extent that many tracks that seem superficially lovely (well of course they sound lush, given the knob-twiddling fingers involved) end up being enhanced considerably when played alongside their video treatments. What’s new on Heligoland? An unoriginal dependence on orchestral arrangements, and a surprising and crushingly saddening lack of invention and songwriting sparkle.

Pick ‘n’ mix: Girl I Love You, Paradise Circus, Saturday Comes Slow.

Hot Chip – One Life Stand

Themes of marriage and commitment work surprisingly well in music that isn’t rock. In “My Love”, Justin Timberlake asks if his girl would “date him on the regular” and refers to a “ring” that “represents his heart”, over one of the finest R&B tracks in my lifetime. More recently, Beyoncé used “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)” to implore young men to make that commitment, in order to prevent the pains of post-breakup jealousy. Conversely, in rock music, similar subjects all-too often fall flat and limp and mawkish. It’s little wonder some of my favourite music is so dark, because an awful lot of empowering music is unavoidably dull and derivative.

Hot Chip fall neatly into this marital R&B turf, boasting an array of catchy hooks and melodies that would function just as well were they not to be serviced by an arsenal of squelching synths and chart-reflecting beats. Their music veers exceptionally close to soul, and also to the idiosyncratic songwriting of Robert Wyatt and Paul McCartney, albeit with a modern instrumental bent. Following the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach taken on 2008′s Made In The Dark, the band has toured relentlessly, refocused, and emerged with a triumphantly mature new record, entitled One Life Stand. No more a bachelor, and now encumbered by the responsibilities of fatherhood, frontman Alexis Taylor has helped forge an album that is considerably more pruned down, and lacking the quirky excesses that previously plagued some of their weaker material.

One Life Stand is… solid. In places, as on the New Order-ish opener, “Thieves In The Night”, it is inspired. Elsewhere, it sees the band knuckle down and write richly melodic and warming songs about the joys of companionship and brotherhood. The album’s opening quartet of songs recall various eras of dance music – synth pop, disco, house, piano-stomping Motown. To the band’s credit, it never sounds too well-trodden, and, in the title track, they re-earn the truly great electro-pop crown previously bestowed upon “Ready For The Floor” and “Over And Over”.

Then, the band tones thing down for a middle section that some will find… slushy (sorry!), but other will cherish for its broad and smile-inducing balladry. Of particular interest is the afore-referenced “Slush”, which emerges from a bizarre vocal warm-up exercise and takes a while to get going. But when it does, it is properly good, and fashioned from a very McCartney II-esque mould. Four minutes in, a beautifully subtle brass arrangement combines with almost tear-jerking steel drum, creating a final two-and-half minutes of downbeat, melancholy yet utterly compelling music which defies genre. As the song is swallowed up by a foetal fog of atmosphere dust, you would be a cold-hearted creature not to be touched by it in some way.

The final three tracks see a return to Hot Chip’s preoccupation with electronic music. “We Have Love” is shadowy and danceable, and unfolds like a less crazy version of the last album’s “Don’t Dance”; “Keep Quiet” is sinister and rides along vaguely tropical percussion and synth glows that would not have gone amiss on the Fever Ray album. Finally, we are left with the triumphant house of “Take It In”, which performs the band’s great trick of shifting suddenly from a faintly worrying minor-key verse to an anthemic major-key chorus, with precision-honed perfection.

One Life Stand will probably bore a lot of listeners. It doesn’t radically alter the landscape of quasi-dance music; it doesn’t permit the band to indulge in their more insane electronic compositions. Instead, favouring a more subtle strategy of writing more-than-competent pop songs, the band’s new focus and concision pays great dividends. Never messy or sprawling, One Life Stand is a well-sequenced work that never outstays its welcome, and I think Hot Chip have finally created an album-lover’s album.

In the shadows of Salford…

Doves make music that’s very soulful and stirring, but whenever I think of their albums in the abstract i.e. without actually listening to them, I always feel like they’re strangely hollow, as if all the bluster is just for dramatic effect, without actually meaning anything. Luckily, when I put the record on, my fears are put to rest. Not only is their sonic palette diverse yet consistently moody, but their lyrics are also deeply ingrained in their roots – Manchester, Britain, nostalgia, industry. As their career has progressed, these lyrical themes have become more and more personal and intimate, as has the music – I can’t quite imagine them writing another “There Goes The Fear”. Their previous album, Some Cities, gained unusually high levels of popularity owing to the catchy Motown-esque lead single, “Black And White  Town”, and, on the evidence of their new single, “Kingdom Of Rust”, taken from the forthcoming album of the same name, I’m hoping they can repeat their previous success, and hopefully gain more of a respected position. Their fans adore them, but I can’t think why they don’t capture a wider audience. Songs like “Snowden” and “Friday’s Dust” may be somewhat mournful and echoey, but they speak volumes of the thematic context and – interestingly – their hooks pervade.

This new album has been gestating for a considerable length of time, and the band have reportedly taken on Krautrock influences, alongside possibly more of a country tinge. While their songwriting capability is never doubted, I just hope the lyrics don’t get more *universal*, and that they remain attached to a particular geographical landscape that has given so much to England, and yet has also suffered greatly in terms of social breakdown and industrial decay. Doves write such elegiac tributes to their hometown. For sure, the album opener “Jetstream”, released in January as a free taster, packs in a lot of varied musical flourishes – think Vangelis meets Elbow! – but I’m hoping that, on deeper inspection, it reveals similarly thought-provoking lyrical details. I’m definitely very excited about Kingdom Of Rust. I’ll be even more excited come April 6.