It's hard to know what to say about this new album by Flying Saucer Attack. I first heard FSA at uni in the mid to late '90s, and they had a vague and faintly cosmic mystique unique to pre-internet bands. All you had to go on might be the album cover and a review in the NME or a mention by John Peel. Back then, FSA were a duo (David Pearce and Rachel Brook) who stirred faint beats and vocals into their mix of atmospheric languor and MBV-esque guitar-storms. Instrumentals 2015, the first FSA album in 15 years, is just Pearce, his guitar and effects.
I don't know if these pieces have been tinkered with over the years or if they were all recorded recently. The title would suggest the latter. But it doesn't really matter either way. The context is fairly meaningless. All there is is the music. And it has the same vague and faintly cosmic mystique as it had in the mid to late '90s.
There's certainly no lack of this kind of guitar-driven ambient music around. Chuck a rock and you're bound to hit someone who plays the guitar through a string of effects pedals. However, it's rare to find someone who plays the guitar in such a beguiling way. Pearce isn't reinventing the wheel, but he does create a yearning, melancholic atmosphere akin to Windy & Carl at their most minimal and forlorn.
Describing how each of these 15 pieces sound is beside the point, really; they begin and end as though they're drifting in and out of the room, making sure they colour the air without drawing too much attention to themselves. Pearce's sound is purposefully hesitant and ambiguous.Whether the individual pieces fade out after a couple of minutes or stretch on for six, seven, ten minutes, there's the sense that in leaving the music sounding unfinished, Pearce has expanded the music's horizons, leaving it open to interpretation.
Repeat listens to this album bring fresh perspectives on the music, but no definitive answers. In that regard, Instrumentals 2015 feels so open-ended that what you take away from it largely depends on what you bring to it. I started with faint fond memories of their self-titled debut album. I walk away with a nagging sensation that there's something there worth unearthing, just beyond my grasp. So I keep coming back to explore.
As far as I can fathom, the motivation behind a lot of experimental electronic music is to take sounds that have obvious beauty, then manipulate them to such an extent that their heavily degraded character has an irresistible pull on our emotions. It's like hearing something with nostalgic resonance irreparably damaged by time, but still bearing some grains of its former radiance. You have to burrow through the noise, squint into the glare, let your ears fall out of focus. Something lost always seems sweeter in retrospect.
On Woodwork, Swedish artist Andreas Karperyd occasionally brings to mind the muted throb of Loscil ('Natural Nature', 'Woodwork'), the awe-inspiring grandeur of Fennesz ('Correlation and Dependence') or the recent wave of dark industrial ambient ('Low Light Conditions'). However, there's sufficient individual character – plenty of grain and craft in this Woodwork – to prevent any accusations that Karperyd's music is derivative. Indeed, according to his label Novoton, Karperyd has been releasing music since the late '80s, including a collaboration with Wire's Graham Lewis, so he's had plenty of time to evolve as an artist – which you can hear in Woodwork's lived-in atmosphere.
What makes this album worth returning to is the depth and pliability of sounds Karperyd deploys: the deeply satisfying rhythmic beds of 'Natural Nature'; the aching EBowed guitar snaking its way through 'Winter Tone'; the glimmering, light-filled tones of 'Villovagar'. The eight tracks never feel rushed or forced. These parallax soundfields take their own sweet time to flex and warp around you.
For a couple of years I worked as a booker at a rehearsal studio cum venue, where we would host acoustic acts on a Saturday night. I soon learned there's a particular kind of acoustic music people flock out to see on a Saturday night – and it's not the kind of music I tend to enjoy. Upbeat, bluesy, rootsy stuff, with proficient musicianship and singalong bits, gets people out drinking and dancing on a Saturday night – which was my job, really – but the music itself bores me rigid. The few interesting acts I found (such as the staggering Alkali Fly), I couldn't book on a regular basis because they were too introspective, fragile and downbeat. Meg Baird's spectral folk music is in this vein. Earnest, unsullied, and occasionally very beautiful, it invites close listening and deep engagement – but can float past unheeded if you're not tuned into its subtle, autumnal flavours.
Having released four albums with psych-folk band Espers, along with two previous solo albums, Baird is a commanding singer-songwriter, projecting her compositions with conviction, while allowing a wavering vulnerability into her voice. Most of these songs are built from strong, resonant, fingerpicked acoustic guitar and Baird's high, keen vocal, with additional instrumental colour from electric guitar, organ, piano, bass and percussion played by Baird and her partner Charlie Saufley. The album cover immediately brings to mind Joni Mitchell's Blue, which is a bit of a red herring – Baird looks serious and a little haunted. A closer comparison is probably Nick Drake at his most minimal and deathly (circa Pink Moon, perhaps), though Baird's compositions rarely approach Drake's in depth or complexity (whose do, really?).
Don't Weigh Down the Light (great title) is certainly lovely, and its tone is affecting, but for the spell to be sustained over the course of an album, I can't help feeling like the songs need to spark off each other more than they do here. Or perhaps this just feels like an album from an earlier, less distracted time?
There he is (I assume it's him). There's his back, anyway. He's shunning us. Or is he musing on something that lurks within the cover's inky black expanse? Either way, he's smoking a ciggie, dimly lit in red and green (is he stopping or going?). Bucket hat on. Cardigan snug. Oh Jim, you probably hate this new album already and it's only just being released...
He may be notorious for disowning his musical output, including my beloved Eureka, but I trust Jim O'Rourke. I trust that whatever musical direction he goes in – whether one-time member of Sonic Youth, collaborating with experimentalists like Oren Ambarchi, or releasing ambient drone via Bandcamp – there'll be something going on I can sink my teeth into. His Drag City releases have always been the most accessible, and Simple Songs is probably the most palatable of the lot. Exquisitely palatable, in fact. I like the way Jim is unashamed of pulling classic '70s rock and MOR moves. Admittedly, the melodic flourishes he throws in here and there are probably tongue-in-cheek references – I'm sure I picked up some direct 'quotations' of Led Zeppelin's 'The Rain Song' and Queen's 'Don't Stop Me Now' on 'End Of The Road' – but it's all handled deftly, so it never comes across as pat. With typical O'Rourkian verve, these songs are far from simple. Knowingly absurd at times, but never resorting to cheap shots. He's too damn good for that. On a purely sonic level, Simple Songs is delicious – and eminently crankable. Jim's spoken at length about his working process when it comes to recording acoustic instruments, and Simple Songs has the same wondrous instrumental depth as The Visitor, mixed with some of the playful Southern boogie of Insignificance. Then, when you start registering his usual wry, misanthropic lyrics, laying low in the mix to keep you guessing, the sour balances out the sweet and the whole cake slips down real smooth. The thirty-eight minutes fly by.
Straight out of the gate, 'Friends With Benefits' and 'That Weekend' are two of the most immediately satisfying vocal-led songs he's yet released. He riffs all over the shop, cramming in enough melodic ideas to fill an entire album. The Supertramp-esque 'Half Life Crisis' lays on the snark ("I can tell from your face you're a degenerative case"!) and some tasty unison guitar leads from the Thin Lizzy songbook, before 'Hotel Blue' and 'These Hands' dial back the groove for some wonderfully languid piano and pedal steel.
There are no production tricks to generate interest; the songwriting, arrangements and dynamics hold me rapt. There's something deliciously immersive and pillowy about the way the album flows, but when Jim lets rip, you know about it. His throaty roar of "All seats are taken!" during 'Blue Hotel' sounds genuinely impassioned, and the second half of finale 'All Your Love' is basically an excuse to go full-prog on the drums – in a very precise and musical way, of course. It's been a six-year wait since The Visitor, so a new Jim O'Rourke solo album is a cause for celebration. Thankfully, Simple Songs is an achingly beautiful salvo from a master craftsman. No doubt this will be my favourite album of 2015 – or I'll eat Jim's bucket hat.
When Escape From Evil was posted on NPR's First Listen a week ahead of its release, I couldn't get into it at all. I love Lower Dens' previous albums Twin Hand Movement (2010) and Nootropics (2012), so to find myself disappointed with this long-awaited third album was frustrating. My reaction was similar to when I first heard Wild Beasts' Present Tense – what the fuck is it with bands I love suddenly employing 80s synth sounds and production?! Thankfully there was a lot to enjoy about Present Tense once I got past my objection to the synths – and there's a lot to enjoy about Escape From Evil, too.
Now the album's out and I've had the chance to live with it for a week, the over-riding impression is that Lower Dens have learned how to successfully adapt their sound yet again (the change-up from Twin Hand Movement to Nootropics was, in itself, pretty striking). Following the departure of guitarist Will Adams and miserable sessions working on new songs, Jana Hunter sought a new direction that favoured immediacy, clarity and emotional directness. The best way to understand this evolution in sound is to compare the version of 'Non Grata' that appears here with the version that appeared on a split 7" with Horse Lords released back in 2013. The earlier version has a similarly icy aesthetic to Nootropics, betraying a clear debt to Kraftwerk; the new version on Escape From Evil introduces buoyant layers of instrumental counterpoint, edging it more towards the lurid synth-pop of the 80s. It's certainly the track on the album I found it hardest to warm to, despite the fact it's superficially catchy.
While Nootropics was stark and initially forbidding, these new songs are bright and muscular. This is partly thanks to production help from Chris Coady, Ariel Rechtshaid and John Congleton – which brings the synths to the fore and makes the rhythm section really pop – and partly down to some striking guitar work from both Hunter and new member Walker Teret (Arbouretum, Cass McCombs). At the heart of it all is Hunter's smoky voice, as alluring as ever, but intoning what are, for the most part, some pretty lacklustre lyrics, such as this clanger from 'Electric Current': "I only want to dance with you, all night, on the street". What rescues it all from becoming a shallow, neon nightmare is the conviction of the execution and Hunter's sharp songwriting instincts.
First single 'To Die In L.A.' is, inevitably, one of the peppier cuts, but the aforementioned 'Non Grata', the galloping 'Company', with features a seasick, serpentine guitar solo, and stunning closer 'Société Anonyme' are just as upbeat – the latter akin to The Smiths, with nimble guitar lines worthy of Johnny Marr. Gorgeous second single 'Ondine' is an early highlight, while 'Your Heart Still Beating' introduces some steamy breathing space into the middle of the set. The closest this album gets to the Lower Dens of old is probably the morose torch song 'I Am The Earth' and opener 'Sucker's Shangri-La', with its prominent, echoing guitars.
Ultimately, though, I feel ambivalent about this release. It's easy to be cynical about the band's new direction when you think of the recent success of fellow Baltimore bands Future Islands and Beach House. If this album wasn't by Lower Dens, would I spend as much time with it, testing my aversion to 80s production? I think what keeps me intrigued is Hunter's vision: a balance between the stark and the flushed; between distance and intimacy; between the affected and the guileless. I'm conflicted, which is part of what keeps me coming back for more.
Even though Fred Thomas has released dozens of albums, whether solo or in his band Saturday Looks Good To Me (plus numerous other outfits), I'd not heard any of them before All Are Saved, his latest on Polyvinyl. If any of his previous albums are even half as good as this gorgeous, warped gem, I'll have a long and fruitful time digging back through his discography.
Listening to this album feels like rooting around under the sofa cushions for the remote control, only to find a photo of your beloved departed dog, an unopened bottle of beer, a dusty cassette compilation made by an old friend, a dog-eared journal, and a pack of gum. It's surprising, ridiculous, hilarious, infuriating, brilliant, silly, beautiful, profound, knowingly throwaway and deadly serious. All Are Saved is truly an unexpected delight.
It starts and ends with songs about dogs, littered with tape hiss, cymbal crashes and tape echo. The lyrics – some of the funniest and most heartbreaking I've heard in ages – either tumble out in torrents of half-remembered ideas and f-words, or are measured carefully in Slint-like cadences, half-spoken, half-sung. So all the words don't become too much, Thomas throws in juicy instrumental synth confections 'July' and 'Thesis (Lear)' to keep things spacious and radiant.
While offering up a few reference points helps me understand where this fits in my personal history of musical enthusiasm – 'When They Built The Schools' is Radiohead's 'There There' half-asleep on the couch; 'Cops Don't Care Pt. II' is a prime Tobin Sprout cut from a lost '90s Guided By Voices album; and 'Monster Movie' is Elliott Smith with a backbone – the baffling thing about this album is that the deeper I dig into what I love about it, the more elusive its appeal becomes. All I can do is put it on again, writhe around in its warm recesses and itch-scratching edges, and let Thomas's inspired outpourings work their dark magic.
I'd like to think I'm an omnivorous listener, open to many genres and styles, but really, who am I kidding? I'm inexorably tied to the music of the mid to late '90s, when I was in my late teens and early 20s: Yo La Tengo's I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, The Flaming Lips' Clouds Taste Metallic, Sparklehorse's Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot. I rarely listen to those particular albums any more because they're so familiar, but their enduring appeal lies in the balance between songcraft and soundscaping – there's always a tune to hitch your ear to, plus plenty of interesting stuff going on within and around the songs to explore on repeat listens.
Michael Orange mines the same rich seam, and his debut album as Feather Beds, The Skeletal System,is a short, sweet distillation of this aesthetic. Nothing is played absolutely straight, but nothing is showily odd. The video for 'Animal Fat' visualises this effect nicely:
I know it's a kaleidoscope; you know it's a kaleidoscope. But can you look away? No. It's hypnotic. Understanding something doesn't necessarily make it less alluring. I hear what Orange is doing and it all sounds just right to me. I appreciate the craftsmanship that gently eases the album from more focused, melodic passages into ambient washes of sound. There's a lightness of touch, a gentle flexing of arrangements to make reflections glint off surfaces. A blurring. The pleasure of parallax as you stare out of a train window. Although I could happily zone out to tracks like 'Airbrushed' if they were two or three times as long, the restraint demonstrated on this lovely album keeps me coming back.
