An Information
It’s A Record
Bob Dylan crosses Time Out of Mind with Love and Theft and good oldfashioned Modern Times is the boogiewoogie result. Precisely who did hit him over the head in the mystic garden? - anyway, it got results. British Sea Power clear away the noise from their first Long Player, clarify the melodies, and Open Season is a witty janglefest. Gnarls Barkley's St Elsewhere conjures a Was Not Was style synthetic-but/so-real-soul record; wonderful singing as the duo belt through and bend soul genres; there's even a Grandmaster Flash manic laugh at one point, but was one track's plasticky electronica and another's necrophilia really necessary? Oh, probably. Joanna Newsom's The Milk-Eyed Mender - cranky quirky loquacious Emily Dickinson with highpitched oomph, piano and something that sounds like a heavenly harp; homespun divine!. Coarser at times (yes "surprised by the language") than Dear Catastrophe Waitress, Belle and Sebastian's The Life Pursuit : are they projecting back to sounds that never existed but should have?). Midges that die so that others might love! Beautiful trumpet addressed to the "nearly made-it" of "Dress up in you"! Steely Dan-ish (early period) guitar! A song's letter told as it's written! I'm reduced to exclamations! The lyrical fluency, articulacy, wrongfootingness: back from the pony derby, I hang my poetry spurs up and sob. Paragraph. Is Sheffield modernising the Fifties for everybody? Arctic Monkeys dust George Formby down, plug him in to an electric guitar, drum him up, and give us all Liberal Studies advice that still sounds almost 'cool' (as I believe the youngsters call it). Then Richard Hawley's Coles Corner conjures Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash, even Hank Williams (in tone and song-construction) and I'm absolutely happy to listen to the tender retrofuture. Meanwhile his old mate from Pulp, Jarvis Cocker provides lyrical input to Charlotte Gainsbourg's 5:55 a dark, tense, temptation of a pop record floating on Air. Cue ingenious Francophilic link. Well The French didn't last long (the band, not the nation) but when Darren Hayman goes solo he sounds more like the band he was in before that. Table for One is pleasingly Hefnerish (though it also shows what a tight sound The French's Local Information had). "Caravan Song" has English 'trailertrash' staying mournfully at home, a song for stray dogs is sung absolutely sincerely (no, reallly), and "That's Not What She's Like" continues Hayman's word / wired / weird dance along the man-woman divide, crooning about on the man side of what he maybe sees as the wall. Perhaps his thirst for knowledge will only be satisfied if he's reincarnated as a woman (will it be like he thinks?), but until then it's a pleasure to hear the negotiations, if at times a little disconcerting. Sadly, the Hefner double-album compilation of out-takes and other rarities, Cat Fight, doesn’t really add up (unlike the earlier, more modest Boxing Hefner which is a honed, coherent, compilation), especially as a fair chunk in this retrospective is re-engineered work from tracks that became Local Information. Another paragraph. And one last mention to Cat Power’s The Greatest – afraid I’m going to use the word “haunting” – think the timbre of Dusty Springfield or the vocalist used on a single from Io that I can’t remember the title of (quality journalism here) – yes, haunting voice of Chan Marshall with a Memphis back-up band (this Cat Power’s Memphis to Dusty’s Nashville?).
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