June: A Summary
JUNE: This Month’s Releases In Full
words: Jamie Milton
The highlight of my month was seeing the lead singer of Friendly Fires sweat it out on the new turf of the Glastonbury Other Stage with the campest dance routine for some time. It worked, and the crowd loved it. It goes to show, all you need is energy, enthusiasm and people will find it difficult not to warm to you. Even though the greatest entertainer alive has passed, there’s still room for his take on wowing an audience. Hopefully in time, the crop of stars who merely look uninterested, staring down blankly will be abolished. It’s not one of the biggest problems in music, but it might be for live music.
In the recording studio however, things have brightened up. June has been our busiest month to date, releases coming in from all sides. Results vary, but the uniting feature of all, bar a couple, is this sense of determination to make something not just special, but vastly different. This was highlighted first and foremost in our album of the month, Dirty Projectors’ ‘Bitte Orca’. Dave Longstreth incorporated an “accessibility factor” into the record which I declared “makes the whole listen stick in your head rather than forcing you to scratch it in bewilderment.” Kasabian, a less likely act to twist and turn in such style, also produced a forward-thinking record that made no mistake of attempting to abolish a lager-swigging status thrown at them so early in their career. However, I saw it as an unsuccessful move: “It’s when the band stick to their guns that they become a more formidable prospect.”
A couple of “veterans” did indeed stick to their guns, with mixed results. Eels returned to some hostility and criticism towards his latest ‘Hombre Lobo’ concept album. Often deemed safe and restrictive, for an album that covered one single subject, ‘desire’, more could have been made of it. On the EP front, Deerhunter returned after only a short while with their surprisingly tight and coherent ‘Rainwater Cassette Exchange’, a project that provided an “even more accessible Deerhunter than the band exposed on the last record.”
Debut albums came thick and fast, artists ranging in the size of hype that upheld them. La Roux produced the finest debut of the year to date, a real shock to the system, a record refusing to be dictated by a couple of hit singles. We Were Promised Jetpacks followed a trend of emotional, Scot-bred songwriting, tweaking the sound of Frightened Rabbit and producing something more damaged and edgy. Let’s Wrestle released their first album proper: one “prolonged, aggressive but intelligent chant of triumph.”
The surprise of the month came in the form of Jack Penate – a previously interesting pop star but never one to make a fuss about, his Paul Epworth produced sophomore album inhales African guitars, drums and spirits, carrying the soul and confidence he exited with from his debut. Future Of The Left also turned more heads that previous with their latest. Matt McDonald put it best: “Future of the Left are still nowhere near a headline slot at Glastonbury and a multi-million pound sponsorship deal with Pepsi. But each and every one of their songs communicates the idea that they would never want to be.” That was June.
JUNE’S RELEASES, IN SCORE ORDER:
Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca 8.8 [mp3: Two Doves // alt ]
La Roux – La Roux 8.8 [mp3: Colourless Colour // alt ]
Jack Penate – Everything Is New 8.3
Future Of The Left – Travels With Myself And Another 8.3
Deerhunter – Rainwater Cassette Exchange 8.0
White Denim – Fits 7.9
We Were Promised Jetpacks – These Four Walls 7.9
Broken Records – Until The Earth Begins To Part 7.9
Sunset Rubdown – Dragonslayer 7.8
Eels – Hombre Lobo 7.6
Let’s Wrestle – In The Court Of The Wrestling Let’s 7.5
Dinosaur Jr – Farm 7.1|
Amazing Baby – Rewild 6.7 [mp3: Invisible Place // alt ]
Regina Spektor – Far 6.7
Kasabian – West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum 6.1
Little Boots – Hands 5.0
The Gossip – Music For Men 4.3
Difficult to ignore the MGMT comparisons – the Brooklyn five-piece embrace last year’s sound of the summer and attempt to give it one last push. It doesn’t yet sound dated, but nor does it sound nearly as imaginative and groundbreaking as ‘Oracular Spectacular’. There are still, however, just a small pick of songs that truly take you a-back: ‘Invisible Place’ and ‘Headdress’ most notably.
More ‘Weird Era Cont.’ than ‘Microcastle’, Bradford Cox’s imagination runs a-mock once more, immersing itself in more energy than perhaps ever before, resulting in an even more accessible Deerhunter than the band exposed on the last record. This is exemplfied in the streamlined, Strokes-esque ‘Disappearing Ink’, a gorgeously simple pop song if the band ever wrote one.
J Mascis and his fellow founding fathers prove that experience counts, even after a prolonged hiatus. Someway beyond…erm, ‘Beyond’, their last record released in 2007, the maintain the kick and the edge that somehow didn’t flee their sound since the 80’s, in fact they maintain pretty much everything, but it’s difficult not to bow down in respect. Such progression from the uninspired releases of the late 90’s, you get the sense they’re back for good.
Simplified indie guitars and basic songwriting somehow become all the more intelligent under the brilliant album title and the disturbingly dark themes emerging at times from lyrics. Carrying the swagger and the charm of The Wave Pictures’, this “breakthrough” debut, within a few listens, is one prolonged, aggressive but intelligent chant of triumph.
There’s more to ‘Hands’ than just the pathetically direct and turgid new single of Victoria Hesketh’s, ‘New In Town’. Heavy synthetics and dreamlike atmospherics displayed in aforementioned stinker are replenished and polished, transferred into something more enjoyable, particularly through the experimental, provocative moments of ‘Meddle’ and ‘Stuck On Repeat’. This artist has ideas, but through the bandwagon-jump to the electro sound, she sounds restricted, only occasionally free to roam within her own comfort zone.
It’s depressingly difficult to decipher whether ‘Far’ is a step up from ‘Begin To Hope’, or a defeatist step down. Depressing, because Spektor made something mainstream and pop in her last record, on ‘Far’ she continues this to some extent, but whilst not producing anything as instantaneous and lovable as ‘Samson’, she’s also nowhere near her experimental best as of ‘Soviet Kitsch’. It’s directly in between, coming across as indecisive, rushed even.
Spencer Krug, as per usual, enjoys the freedom to roam and express, as he did on this side-project’s previous two records. Whilst ‘Dragonslayer’ is devoid of the uplifting, overwhelming individual triumphs such as those on ‘Random Spirit Lover’, he’s removed the filler of that record and emerged with a piece more consistent and bold instead of something regulated and tied up.
The elaborate range of ideas arranged in debut ‘Workout Holiday’ have quickly followed up by something equally diverse in thought and movement. On ‘Fits’, whilst occasionally representing the basking hot Texas sound, cover the Spanish culture in ‘El Hard Attack DCWYW’, go warm, smooth and acoustic on ‘Regina Holding Hands’ and go gung-ho with relenteless, energised lo-fi rock ‘Radio Mild How Can You Stand It’. As of previous, they still haven’t mastered making a concerted, coherent record but you get the gist, that was never the plan.
MFM @ HYPEM
