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.
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?
Don't Weigh Down the Light is available from Drag City in LP, CD, mp3s and FLAC formats from 23rd June.
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.
Simple Songs is available from Drag City in LP, CD and FLAC formats from 19th May.
