No gif more accurate pic.twitter.com/ENWNfrq6uJ

— Miss Jenny (@Corpus_Spice) June 22, 2016

Ladyhawke: Wild Things

It almost feels like 2008’s hit ‘My Delirium’ was a mistake. Driven by a simple yet catchy guitar lick, the song took off into Pop Rock heaven, yet the rest of Ladyhawke’s début album seemed to ignore the direction of that radio-friendly gem to make a case for synth-keyboards and beats instead. When New Zealanders got the opportunity to hear her new single (first!) a few weeks back from the follow-up album Wild Things, I was excited to hear what the Masterton-born Kiwi had in store for us on her second album – more rock or more …

What?

...Urghh

Sorry … Did you say something?

...Her follow-up album.

What about it?

...Umm, Wild Things is her third album.

Are you serious?

...Yeah.

Really?

...Yeah.

I guess I should go and listen to the follow-up album then. 
Yeah.

Boy, did Anxiety completely pass the world by (or at least my part of the world). And with good reason too. While the first couple of songs start out promisingly with strong pop beat sensibilities, the rest of the album seems to struggle to find itself and has a tendency to lean heavily on ripping melodic fragments off from The Cure (‘Sunday Drive’). When the song ‘Cellophane’ comes along one can’t help wondering why there isn’t more guitar present as the arrangement’s dynamics are what attempt to propel the song while the guitars get buried by uninteresting synth. One of the great virtues of using a guitar in pop music is that it really stands out, especially if you have a riff that can be hammered out to drive the song home – something that ‘Sunday Drive’ definitely needed more of and could have made that song the follow-up hit that Ladyhawke needed (so idiots like me would know that there was a second album out!). ‘Cellophane’ in the same respect – quite a fantastic song – lacks any real dynamics, any real variety …

Okay, enough.

Onto the review of the new album. The third album.

So what does this all mean for Ladyhawke’s 2016 release Wild Things?

The album takes the synth route again.

I wasn’t particularly impressed with first single ‘A Love Song’ when Ladyhawke aired the song to her New Zealand brethren first on national television, though on subsequent listening it certainly has much to like about it. It’s a simple song that does nothing special but will be likeable for anyone who likes this brand of under-the-radar pop. ‘The River’ attempts to compete with another local singer-songwriter, Brooke Fraser, for metaphors about water and rivers, though Fraser’s ‘Something in the Water’ has so much more natural instrumentation with pop hooks appearing in every part of the song – verses, chorus, and bridges. This is essentially what’s missing from the entire Wild Things album. It’s not like there aren’t pop hooks, but much of it is derivative, and those that stand out are only one part of the song while other parts fall flat.

All over, the album feels a little homogeneous. And not just in the vocals, but in the over-reliance on one production technique. For an artist who used to bang out her pre-Ladyhawke bands on the guitar, and had her biggest hit with a guitar driven song, the one instrument that could have made this album more dynamic and interesting to listen to is at times buried or completely missing.

‘A Love Song’ and ‘The River’ start the album off on a really strong catchy pop-note, where the title song slows the tempo down with heart-warming pines of love. ‘Let it Roll’ is the highlight that gets everything right, even if the guitar is still relegated to just bridge colouring. An infectious beat, a bass groove, all propelling the song towards the chorus. ‘Chills’ is almost a direct rip-off of The Knife’s ‘Heartbeats’ in the verses while ‘Sweet Fascination’ continues taking the same cues but lacks the propulsive groove and quirky but endearing vocal approach. ‘Golden Girl’ inserts some of that Brooke Fraser acoustic guitar (or is it ukulele? ...I think it’s ukulele) in the chorus lifting the song from being just a synth-fest and adding a touch of fun.

Lyrically the entire album is an ode to falling deeply in love. Luckily it isn’t soppy and boring, but is actually uplifting and joyous which translates to the music with fruitful results, but a lack of vocal and instrument variation can really cause the songs to drag at the halfway mark. Wild Things is a good pop album, though it doesn’t stand out, but at least it’s a huge step up from the second album and almost reaches the same simple but easy fun of the début.

Hi let's be friends I live in a Sprite can on the bottom of the sea pic.twitter.com/DvCy7BpayI

— Clayton Cubitt (@claytoncubitt) May 21, 2016

Cello Suite - by W. Stubbs

This is the Cello Suite I composed between teaching from about August through to December at the end of 2015. The music progresses from a simple Gigue in 4 to a gentle Cantabile movement, before taking on some modern flavouring from the pop and rock world. The fourth movement contrasts with two alternating time signatures that develop a G minor broken chord figure before launching into a more-or-less free-form development in the fifth movement of the same theme but in a Heavy Metal style (I composed most of it on guitar as though I was playing a Metal riff).

 I. Gigue
 II. Cantabile
 III. Spiccato
 IV. Allegro Agitato
 V. Heavy Metal Riffage

Rapping, deconstructed: The best rhymers of all time

New Keepers of the Water Towers: Infernal Machine

The word ‘infernal’ refers to Hell. When someone is a nuisance, irritating or tiresome, they can be an infernal nuisance thus representing a hellish experience for you, and thus any hellish experience can be described with the word ‘infernal’.

So too can a particularly boring and insufferable experience. I’ve often thought of grinding through heavy games such as Diablo in this vein. Apparently Diablo III is super easy in this respect. Who knows. I’m confident I’d still find it boring.

Infernal Machine feels like a machine that spat out ideas without any focus, stuck in it’s own hell of second-hand parts. There are moments when you hear good ideas – surf rock’s lead slides and rhythm track chromatics (‘Tracks Over Carcosa’) – but these good ideas never go anywhere or become more interesting, and the productions not big enough to drive home dynamics that seem to just happen without any build up or force.

‘The Forever War’ is aptly named because it takes forever to get anywhere, and if you can allow yourself to be dragged along for the first five minutes, I’d be impressed if you make it another four at which point the guitar finally breaks out of its annoyingly picked chord figure, lasting a mere fraction of the time and making you wonder where the rest of that lead break went.

Maybe a black hole.

Neither the rhythm nor the lead work is interesting or catchy enough to sustain attention – and at least one of those needs to be to allow the listener greater pleasures. Most tracks will pass without you even noticing them, which, in one respect, could make great background music you don’t have to pay any attention to.

‘Tachyon Deep’ focusses more on a bongo rhythm which is a great enjoyable contrast without diverting from the band sound. Passing the halfway mark, bigger drumming seeps in and the guitar distorts away from the sustained notes, but the song never reaches any true climax, and the final chord stabs aren’t convincing enough.

In many ways this is my kind of music – stoner rock via prog and space rock with some sprinklings of surf rock. It all sounds like it’d be a good, if not interesting, mix. It is a good mix, it’s just that the ideas never rise above bog standard. I can honestly say that I like what the band is attempting, but if anything, the shortest ‘song’ (tracks are mostly instrumental with some dreary vocals moaning here and there) at a mere two minutes displays aptly what they can’t do with the simplest of ideas. ‘Escape Aleph Minor’ and the following tracks want to invoke Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma but without any of the crazy. There’s a sense of serenity at times, and there are moments of doom, but neither feel like they’ve been created through the shear abandonment of the soul towards musical ends. It all feels too safe at times.

This album has more of the feel of a band exploring music without solidifying or editing any ideas. It’s almost what I imagine Tool might sound like during rehearsals when they first start rehearsing riffs. The difference of course is that Tool spend time (actual time within the space/time continuum) working on and developing those ideas; Infernal Machine sounds like neither of those two events took place and New Keepers of the Water Towers just shrugged their shoulders and said “yeah, that’ll do.” It’s not like any of that’s particularly bad, I just can’t imagine someone who actually enjoys this album would come back for extended periods of listening.

Maybe you need to be stoned out of your brain to enjoy this music, or surfing on an acid trip; I don’t know and I don't do drugs anymore, and I'm not going to either just so I can get more out of this album.

Bloc Party: Hymns

A lot of thoughts crossed my mind while listening to this album, all of which I was going to write up.

...None of which I wrote down.¹

• If you wanted more songs like ‘This Modern Love’ here they are...

• There’s a specific hard rock Bloc Party riff that can be identified in songs like ‘Helicopter’, ‘Hunting for Witches’, and ‘One Month Off’...

• There's something gospel about this album...

And other stuff like that.

It will be easy for rock fans to dismiss this album. And I can already hear the dissenters yelling "the party's over!" But what they dismiss is what they fail to recognise.

        Where Four was a bit of a mess – ideas undeveloped, throwaway riffs at the forefront, noise for noise’s sake – Hymns is a calm affair, pursuing light rock that’s about as far from anything anyone expected after getting the mixture of music that comprises the dance orientated ‘Flux’ and ‘One More Chance’ singles, the Four album where it felt like they were attempting to get back to how they began, and the The Nextwave Sessions EP where who-the-fuck-knows what was happening. (Okay, to be fair, we saw The Nextwave Sessions coming after hearing the first two songs on Intimacy, and those songs being followed through with ‘Octopus’...)

‘The Love Within’, which opens the album like a relaxed version of both 'Octopus' (Four) and 'Ratchet' (The Nextwave Sessions), begins with a direct quote from A Weekend in the City’s ‘The Prayer’, the first line of both songs being “Lord give me grace and dancing feet” as though that’s your insight into this album: It’s about grace.

        And forgiveness.

        There’s a strong sense of religiosity that flows through these tracks without being overtly devotional. While it’s befitting of the album title, it’s also appropriate that the title is Hymns as the songs musically provide the backdrop for Okereke’s pleas towards a saving grace, whether that be God or a physical partner seems irrelevant. Okereke sings “For only he can heal me with his touch, help me overcome it” in the second song. Here the backing vocals repeat the title like they were a gospel rock choir and the guitars bring some chorus contrast during the break.

        The most lyrically devotional perhaps is the song ‘The Good News’: “I used to find my answers in the gospels of St John, now I find them at the bottom of this shot glass. Everyday I’d go down to the water and I’d pray since you left me that way. Oh Lord I’m trying to keep my sights on the good news that’s in my heart.” Meanwhile the music and melodies keep the vibe positive to reinforce the meaning behind all of it.

That positivity is what is overt, however. And while that will be off-putting for some, others will move with it and discover that the catchy vocal lines that are present in the best of Bloc Party’s work are also present on this album.

        It will just be unfortunate if those who dismiss this album view that positivity as emotionless. But that is simply mistaking depression, problems, or heartbreak, as the only emotions. Okereke is never dispassionate in anything he sings. The emotion is always there and regardless of whether you like this album or not, that has to be acknowledged – in no way does it lack emotion. Perhaps it lacks the raw emotion of a brand new band carving it up on the indie front – sure it lacks that – but that’s because the band isn’t brand new anymore, to expect that is idiotic. This is why Four feels like it never really works – even the second album was a much tighter affair. But here Okereke sings just as passionately to all his exes that he has left behind – “All these words will fall short, but I must try.” The sincerity is almost heartbreaking.

If you need one song from the previous albums that works as a reference point for what appears on Hymns, that song would be ‘Real Talk’ from the previous full length Four. The unfortunate part is that ‘Real Talk’, as simple and gentle as it is, still has a propulsive rhythm section that pushes the song underneath Kele Okereke’s heart-felt vocals. With the departure of super-drummer Matt Tong, who provided an abundance of energy on previous albums with erratic beats, and the quitting of Gordon Moakes, whose unobtrusive bass lines subtly knew when not to play and when to push their weight from underneath, Bloc Party no longer has those two elements that lifted up mediocre songs and propelled great songs to greatness.

        Russell Lissack’s guitars have been stripped of all their distortion – no more pounding out big riffs, though sometimes those riffs still peak their eyes out with a clean guitar tone (‘So Real’), while ‘The Good News’ chorus brings back the blues inspired riffs first heard at the beginning of ‘Coliseum’ (Four). Backing vocals consistently provide an uplifting feel despite the sometimes downer lyrics. And this is the album all over: where songs like Intimacy’s ‘Better than Heaven’ lament the loss with electronics, soaring vocals, and bitter lyrics that would build to a culmination of full band dynamics, textures on Hymns remain thin with atmospheric guitars, keys, and vocals that are questioning rather than angry and only occasionally rise to soar, but in these cases (‘A Different Drug’) they soar on their own. When the spirit lifts (‘Into the Earth’) clean indie pop takes over and the feel of acceptance pervades the lyrics – “Into the earth our bodies will go” – as the melody remains happy and the beat gently grooves.

        On this album the music never takes centre stage, as the lyrical themes of finding peace and moving on seem to be the focus. While that’s highly understandable considering the topics, it’s also a problem. Louise Bartle’s drums are there, but they are never really there; Justin Harris' bass is so far down in the mix you'll barely notice that there's a bass at all. The rhythm section sits in the background, tidy, polite – too polite. While this doesn’t necessarily detract from the musicians' abilities, it does speak more for the album being a Kele Okereke affair rather than a fully fledged band album.

        The one song that gets closest to their pre-Silent Alarm EP era is the song ‘My True Name’ with it’s clean guitar intro, but suddenly it takes on a heavy synth backing that feels ripped straight out of the 80s New Wave era. It is one of the stronger songs on the album, and there is something undoubtly powerful about how they have chosen to use this influence. With moments like this, it’s clear they will never truly “go back” to being the indie rock band that won so many people's hearts with their hybrid of dance and rock, but there will always be hints. You might hear a guitar riff here, a vocal line there, but with a new drummer and bassist, those frantic beats and rhythms are gone.

There’s a catchiness to the music that isn’t immediately noticeable, and is what those who have given up after a first listen will never discover; others will latch on to the straight forward beats and allow the music to wash over them as it is meant to do, rather than knocking them over like much of Bloc Party’s previous albums were wont to do.

         We’ll probably never hear songs as powerful as ‘Like Eating Glass’ and ‘Banquet’ again, or be bowled over by heavy riffs like ‘One Month Off’ and the desperation of ‘Talons’. But that’s okay, because those song are there to listen to whenever we want. Hymns deserves to be appreciated for being brave enough to wear both the pop influences and gospel inspirations on it’s sleeves, and to continue the progression of a band trying something new and different.

1 Except that sentence. I did write that sentence down! Well, technically I spoke it. I spoke it into my memo app on my cell phone as I drove down the highway listening to this album. Shut up. Don't judge me.