Fools gold

In the past I've asked for and received a little pile of new CDs for Christmas, but this year I got money towards a camera. How pretentious.

I've bought a bit of new music recently, some of which I mentioned last time - Florence and the Machine's "Lungs". "Rabbit Heart (Raise it up)" is as hugely thrilling as last time I wrote, particularly the near-silence between the bridge and the chorus (to unfairly demarcate a work of genius). Honestly, in the context of the song, or at least the two seconds either side, that silence is my favourite bit - I <3>

The new stuff I haven't mentioned before is by Maps, who are the only band/artist I've ever heard of coming from Northampton, though I'm probably just ignorant. I heard "You Don't Know Her Name" on the highly recommended "Sci Fi Lo Fi vol. 3" compilation and decided to buy 2007's "We Can Create". I need to give it a proper lesson, but listening to it driving along the M25 and home yesterday morning I kept breaking the speed limit - probs a good sign. Maps released a new album this year which leaves the shoegaze revival for a heavier dance territory, which I'll try and listen to soon.

What I really wanted to write about today was Steely Dan's "Aja". When I was starting out learning the drums in my mid-teenage years I used to trawl drumming websites and forums for hints, tips and information. Alongside the classic rock of the 1970s which seemed to have influenced so many of the people who were writing about drums on the internet, Steely Dan's "Aja" was always named as a "must listen" for budding sticks-people. I duly bought it and have always returned to what is an absolute masterpiece of taste and control. Seriously, how the FUCK did they manage to get SO MANY incredible musicians to play on one album? Reading the liner notes, it's absolutely remarkable, and the proof is in the listening - regarding the drumming, which I can't help but listen out for, it is perhaps one of the greatest ever collections of performances "playing for the song", which is what I wish more musicians would strive for.

On the title track, Steve Gadd plays an incredible drum solo (which is acceptable because it is accompanied and framed within the context of the song - no solo drum performances thanks, because they are worse than death) which, legend has it, he recorded, sight-reading from the score, in only two takes. Incredible stuff. But what spontaneously occurred to me while listening to it as we drove home from the West Country the other day, was that in the most gentle moments of the song he makes the cymbals sound like bubbles bursting on the surface of a placid pool. It's the textural richness of the music, making me think such odd things, which demonstrates the true quality and depth - to be absent-mindedly listening to a record I've heard hundreds of times before and hear something so new and fresh that it can conjure such images.

I've thought about metaphors for this before, and I like to think that some music is like fools gold. It's shiny but if you cut it open, it's all "move along, nothing to see here". If you cut open "Aja", there are 24 carats dangling there, making you salivate like a mad animal.

Steely Dan – Aja

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In praise of BBC 6Music:

I've listened to this station (available through DAB or the internet) a lot more than before over the Christmas holiday, and I've been really impressed. The presenters are, for the most part, good company, and you really get the sense they do it because they love the music they get to play. Unfortunately a really irritating track by Frankie and the Heartstrings was playlisted recently but otherwise, good work.

Check it out if you bored of shit Radio 4 daytime plays and the 5th repeat of "The Strand" on the World Service.

Lists, Spinnin' and Laura

It's that time of the year when publications, websites and bloggers make lists of the music they have listened to throughout the year. I haven't listened to enough to definitively rank "the best ten albums", "the worst number one singles" or "Rage Against The Machine's lamest moment" (oh wait, we all know what that was) so I'm going to rank all of the albums I've bought/heard, ignoring any which I haven't given enough time to to make a fair judgement (how unusually reasonable of me!) and say a few words about the top five too. In order of merit...

The XX (s/t)

I listen to music a lot of the time. I prefer to listen through my amp and speakers, but sometimes it's through headphones, laptop speakers, radios and small ghetto-blasters. A combination of the poor quality of outputs and the way that a lot of music is produced, mixed and mastered means that sometimes I want to scream SHUT UP as loud as possible an then go and sit in a quiet room while I wipe my tears and massage my head. No, I'm not a nervous wreck, it's just that too much sound coming out of a small speaker sounds horrible.

Where is all this going? Well, the XX are a band who under the power of understatement and more importantly s p a c e. I love the bravery they've shown in going for such sparse arrangements. Soft, almost whispered vocals, crisp drum programming and simple, NOT-over produced guitars answer my prayers for music which doesn't abuse my ears by being too loud and busy. The production is beautiful, the vocals in particular sounding as if someone is standing right behind you, singing just to you.

My favourite track is probably Islands, with it's great drum track, vocals traded between male and female voices and gorgeous building to climaxes. The is where the XX bring the funk the most, but in their own decidedly creepy way. The other highlight is Night Time with its huge echo as a counterpoint to the loneliness which pervades.

A fantastically dark, engaging album and the coolest looking band since Galaxie 500.

Wild Beasts - Two Dancers

This one is near the top of most lists, and deservedly so. All the King's Men in particular is brilliant, but my personal favourite is We Still Got The Taste Dancin' On Our Tongues. The song has a slightly shuffly feel. The wooping and tremulous singing lends a real playfulness which I think really suits the subject matter. So he kissed a girl? So what? It's great to hear a "traditional" rock/pop band setup doing something which sound so fresh.

Scenester moment - my friend knows this band.

Fever Ray (s/t)

It was always hard to tell who was singing on The Knife's releases due to their penchant for pitch-shifting, and Fever Ray does nothing to clarify the situation, with a number of voices appearing throughout the album, all belonging to Karin Dreijer Andersson, the female half of The Knife. If I Had A Heart, the first single which preceded the album sets out the stall - creepy and greyscale, with foreboding bass. The introduction's saw-like rumbling sounds very violent; a chill runs throughout the album which is less violent than the opener, something closer to fear. Seven is my pick, the track which sounds most as if it could be performed by a "traditional" band (though that's incidental). I think the vocal melody is actually lovely, building from the verse into the chorus, with the vocals less produced than in other places - maybe Karin at her most vulnerable.

The darkness of The Knife's Silent Shout is identifiable here but, despite the business of the programming in some parts, the whole feeling is far more minimal, and I think this is a real night-time album.

Animal Collective - Merryweather Post Pavillion

Animal Collective, indie darlings? Well, this release wasn't a crossover smash exactly, but a hell of a lot more people were talking about Animal Collective afterwards. I'm not so cynical as to suggest they wrote an album to expand their fanbase, but taking Merryweather as a whole, it is definitely a lot catchier and "poppier" than earlier material, although I was happy that the overwhelming fizzy-drink-sugariness of previous album Strawberry Jam has been toned down a bit.

My Girls is a pulsing treat of a song, with trademark trebly bleeps and high, calling voices but with massive punch at the low end - it translated excellently to the stage at the Forum and Brixton Academy when I saw them; indeed throughout, Animal Collective brought bass to really round out their experimental sound. I also really like the chanted chorus - "I don't mean to seem like I care about material things like a social status, I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls." The vocal production on this track is reminiscent of Panda Bear's wonderful Person Pitch and I wouldn't be surprised if he was mainly responsible for this one.

I also really like the understated Bluish which somehow sounds innocently childish and is so honest; it works well as a moment of relaxation amidst the energy of the rest of the album.

Andrew Bird - Noble Beast

I was a newcomer to Andrew Bird's orchestrated nuggets with this album, but this was hella convincing - the arrangements and songwriting is so lush and detailed. Fitz and Dizzyspells is upbeat, but with lovely dynamics; it pushes and pulls between feeling like a real stomper and then holding back much more delicately. Effigy is a tour de force of harmony and taste. It's very gentle but the vocal climaxes are so strong.

The instrumentation is fantastically strong across Noble Beast and I think Andrew Bird must be one of the best songwriters around now.

As for the rest of the albums I've bought this year, in order of merit:

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Excellent, and a clear step up from It's Never Been Like That, which was never going to be easy.

The Horrors - Primary Colours. Novelty band obsessed with dressing like Victorian-era goths? Not on the strength of this. Yummy overdriven shoegazey guitars and Sea Within a Sea is so so cool.

Florence & the Machine - Lungs. I'm embarrassingly late to Florence and somehow managed to completely miss her all this year, but Rabbit Heart (Raise it up) is definitely one of the best songs of the year.

M. Ward - Hold Time. Not to everyone's taste, and a bit of a pastiche of early twentieth-century Americana, but I think it's great.

Bat For Lashes - Two Suns. Well done Natasha Khan for raising your game post-Mercury Prize, Daniel is a great song.

Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions - Through the Devil Softly. 1990s indie heartthrob Hope brings the gentlest album I heard all year - deliciously whispered.

The Big Pink - A Brief History of Love. An unfair comparison perhaps, but more in debt to shoegaze and less original than the Horrors, but still good.

Girls. I'm a bit surprised by the high placing of this in other lists. It's OK, but not amazing...

The Maccabees - Wall of Arms. There's not much wrong with this, but they lot the immediacy of Orlando's vocals which for me was the main attraction on Colour It In.

Sky Larkin - The Golden Spike. I liked this when it came out, but haven't revisited it much. Fossil, I and Molten are both really good, but the rest isn't quite up to scratch. I would be surprised if they don't have a lot more to bring, though.

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Phew.

Here's a gem of a track from Mercury-winner Speech Debelle. Bouncy, natural hip-hop. Spinnin'

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Two days ago I walked past the site of where the Astoria used to, at the junction of Charing Cross Road and Tottenham Court Road. Despite a campaign to "Save the Astoria", the building has been torn down to make way for Crossrail and a shopping development (as if Oxford Street needs another one of those...). I wasn't hugely sentimental over it, but I saw some good gigs there, most notably the Bravery and the Von Bondies.

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It's good to hear Laura Marling back, even if it is with a Christmas song. I can't wait for her new album, out sometime early next year.

Ta ta for now.

X-Factor

No, not the fabulous Lauryn Hill song of a previous post, but the cultural phenomenon that has set up camp on TV over the past two months or so. The final was an extravaganza of music and lights; I've said it to anyone who will listen, but the production values of that show BLOW MY TINY MIND, it is unreal. X-Factor must be single-handedly keeping ITV afloat. I remember feeling emo last year watching Beyonce duet with winner Alexandra Burke, who totally upstaged JLS today, but not as much as watching the VTs of Olly and Joe's families... I'm becoming far too sentimental. Olly's a better dancer, but Joe deserved it for that voice.

The power of the TV talent show has been proved and entrenched by this year's X-Factor - the number of global stars who have performed on the show has been amazing.

I don't think John Lennon would have played.

Getting (Sufjan St)even

Please forgive the disgraceful pun, but all will become clear.

Yesterday, as a combined dissertation-avoidance and hangover-recovery tactic I decided to walk into town, with three objectives in mind: buying a large strawberry milkshake from McDonalds, some Old Fashioned Black Bullets, and Sufjan Stevens' new album The B.Q.E., a musical tribute to New York's Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

The first two objectives were easily accomplished, the third not. I strolled into Fopp, as I tend to on a regular basis, took a longing look at Thurston Moore's book No Wave and then checked for one of Sufjan's latest (he's released three albums in very quick succession). There it was on the rack, with it's fresh cover art (the Expressway and a graffiti-style title, how New York can you get?), just as expected. What wasn't expected was the £14 price tag. I know what you're thinking - Sufjan Stevens isn't that well known. It's not a particularly eagerly anticipated release. It's not even a hackneyed, cynical remaster of a classic album. OK, so it has a DVD, but I've got other CDs with DVDs which haven't tried to justify a nearly-50% price increase on the normal round tenner. So, "fuck you, Fopp, you shitty faux-indie re-res" I think to myself, and stroll to HMV (I stroll everywhere), thinking that, despite owning Fopp, they may just not have taught little sister how to price CDs properly. But no, there it is again, £14. The record companies are in dire enough straits as it is, without pricing the music-buying public out of the market! It's a shame, because I've been listening online, and it's a really good record. The compositions remind a lot of Michael Nyman's soundtrack to Man on Wire (set in New York as well), but less taut and more lush (said in Stacey's voice). The orchestral flourishes of his previous releases are there in abundance, though gone of course are his tremulous vocals. I suppose it's even slightly evocative of the thundering Expressway; either way, I really like it.

So, here it is, Sufjan and your label Asthmatic Kitty, I'm keeping my money in my wallet for now. I love Illinois but I'm going to listen to this one on Spotify, meaning you make less money, and then buy it when it comes down in price.

There we have it: getting (Sufjan St)even.

Sufjan Stevens - Movement VI - Isorhythmic Night Dance with Interchanges

In praise of... Lauryn Hill

Lauryn Hill first found success in New Jersey rap/r'n'b group the Fugees (the name adapted from "refugees") as the confrontational voice probably most familiar from their wonderful over of Aretha's Killing me Softly. Their 1996 record The Score was a huge crossover success, making number 1 in the USA and number 2 in the UK, probably due mainly to the aforementioned cover. Lauryn was undoubtedly a big part of their success, but I like her more on her own crossover smash The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill released two years after The Score. The album opens with some recorded dialogue apparently from an American classroom, with the teacher and students debating the subject of love. Snippets of the debate recur throughout, which irritates after a while, but when you've made an album this good, you can get away with it.

Rapping and singing, Lauryn talks about love, loss, religion and motherhood. In Zion is beautifully eloquent on becoming a mother, having taken the decision not to have an abortion. "How beautiful if nothing more, than to wait at Zion's door, I've never been in love like this before." Obviously, I have no idea what it's like to be a parent, but you believe her when she tells you that nothing comes close to that bond. It's couched in religious language, but that's less interesting or important than the spirituality (and I hate that word) evident. The beat is cool, with an unusual dragged snare roll, and Carlos Santana contributes Spanish guitar throughout.

The soulful Ex Factor charts a messy break-up, with Lauryn harmonising with herself nicely throughout. The vocal performance is so convincing, particularly from 3:25 with some hypnotic chanting. I love the way this song pushes and pulls (particularly at 1:49 and 3:00): the dynamics are really engaging. The guitar solo near the end sounds like Santana again, but I've no idea if it's him... either way it's hella good and contributes to a sound which is multi-faceted and pretty unique - he bassline sounds vintage, but the production is modern in a good way. She's even punned on a popular TV show... sheeeeeeeit.

Ex Factor and To Zion are numbers 2 and 3 on the album, but I don't think it's front-loaded at all - the quality of this record is outstanding.

Lauryn Hill - To Zion

Lauryn Hill - Ex Factor