A Justification

So much of Dear Science's brilliance hangs on a single song.

Family Tree guts me. Listen to Adebimpe the first time that faltering, flickering piano falls out of the mix. How many layers are there? One syllable behind himself with each layer, it sounds so insecure, so vulnerable. It sounds genuine. Maybe he was reluctant about such a seemingly personal, wrenching song appearing on a plastic disc so many would buy, so many would "identify with". How did he force himself to sing the words in front of friends in a studio, let alone live.

That it sticks out like dogs balls on an album so obviously filled with funk, soul and jazz grooves makes it even better, even more bald. And beyond the centrepiece there is almost too much to digest.

I initially thought there was plenty to support the idea that Golden Age was the obvious core of Dear Science. Don't get me wrong, it's a brilliant song and here's why.

A) Lyrics like this: "Some light being pulled you up from night's part/said, clap your hands of you think your soul is free/and the silence was astounding."

B) It's a dance song that makes you dance. In a time when so much dance music does nothing more than bore the shit of you this music revitalises, it captivates the heart, the mind and the feet.

Folk of theory and prediction like the idea of being able to see around the corner. That is what TV on the Radio does so well. They seemingly capture tomorrow's zeitgeist.

A List

Ten albums, in order, from 2008.

10: Fucked Up - THE CHEMISTRY OF COMMON LIFE

9: Hercules and Love Affair - HERCULES AND LOVE AFFAIR

8: Willard Grant Conspiracy - PILGRIM ROAD

7: The Mountain Goats - HERETIC PRIDE

6: Death Cab for Cutie - NARROW STAIRS

5: No Age - NOUNS

4: The Hold Steady - STAY POSITIVE

3: Portishead - THIRD

2: Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu - GURRUMUL

1: TV on the Radio - DEAR SCIENCE

Day & Age

I always wondered how The Killers were so instantly brilliant. Brandon Flowers seemed to be born at his zenith, as if it was a constant state of evangelical fever that owned him. There was no early indie-EP, just a blaze of promotion and pop - as if manufactured at Island HQ.





It's unfair using a word like manufactured when Flowers is so interesting a rock star. Last time he sighted Springsteen for the black and white, fuzzed guitar of Hot Fuss, this time, on Day & Age it's surely The Pet Shop Boys - who for too long have been ignored by indie-scensters who've already gone through the Beach Boys, Depeche Mode and Fugazi.

The opener, Losing Touch, should be a single but won't be. Horns backed by thumping rhythm let Flowers begin with "console me in my darkest hours". It's safe to say his lyrics have rarely made any sense at all but it doesn't matter overly. Lennon and McCartney wrote some truly nonsense words, good pop has never relied on the lyrics but on the hook.

While we're talking hooks it's obvious to consider the lead single - Human. It's cracking radio pop that even manages to apparently reference Hunter S Thompson with it's refrain "are we human or are we dancer". And its bridge is perhaps the most obvious Pet Shop Boys reference across 10 tracks. There's plenty of air in the mix thanks to producer Stuart Price and that allows the psuedo-spiritual Flowers to fill the song.

Elsewhere A Dustland Fairytale shows off a classic Elton John piano ballad resplendent with an actual story - supposedly about Flowers' parents.

I dig The Killers because they're pop, because they're rock and most importantly because they're led by a charismatic rock star who makes it all matter even when it so clearly doesn't.

The Contenders - A List of 2008 albums

A long-list ahead of the short-list.

Portishead - Third
The Black Keys - Attack and Release
Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs
No Age - Nouns
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu - Gurrumul
Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair
Nine Inch Nails - The Slip
The Dodos - Visiter
Opeth - Watershed
The Donkeys - Living on the Other Side
TV on the Radio - Dear Science
Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
Willard Grant Conspiracy - Pilgrim Road
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
The Lucksmiths - First Frost
Conor Oberst - Conor Oberst
Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer
The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride
You am I - Dilletantes
Augie March - Watch Me Disappear
Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life
The Hold Steady - Stay Positive
Danielson - Trying Hartz

Steve Earle - Live

Usually I hear an album, love for it is rarely instant. I usually spin it once while wandering aimlessly between the kitchen and my study - the music is in the lounge room.

Four weeks before seeing Earle a friend gave me a copy of his Washington Square Serenade and a bunch of songs tacked on the end of the disc. I ignored it for three weeks then decided I'd best get familiar. It appeared a solid folk-rock album with a dash of country and funk in the catchy and seemingly mindless Satellite Radio.

I heard the LP again on the roadtrip to the gig, set between live Neil Young bootlegs and a dodgy bluegrass compilation. But it didn't register as anything glorious.

Earle walked on to the Enmore Theatre's stage about 9:30. Just a guitar and his greying beard to keep company. And he unleashed a phenomenal canon of songs that ranged from the now spiritual yelp of Satellite Radio to the fever of Transcendental Blues. It's rare for me to be won over by a live performance but Earle was and is undeniable. He is the rare singer-songwriter that plays alone. Too many seeming solo artists seem afraid to play on their own. Maybe they're afraid the songs won't stack up, maybe they know the songs are shit and need the protection of instruments. Earle knows his songs stack up. Part of that comes from playing for decades but it also arrives out of hard work - in every song the 30 songs that didn't make it can be heard.

Pilgrim Road

The difficulty in leading a 16 piece band is touring.

Robert Fisher of Willard Grant Conspiracy has put up some dates for an Australian tour in late September. The problem it's a solo tour and so much of what makes Pilgrim Road such an astonishing album is the subtle, powerful orchestration. Listen to Vespers' finale or the gentle, awkward squeeze box in The Pugilist and you find hushed rewards.



But I shouldn't complain, Fisher's voice is worth the ticket price alone. As all the magazine critics have already pointed out, Pilgrim Road is the genre's best this year. What frustrates me is the lazy and wrong comparisons to Nick Cave. Fisher's roots lie in a very different place, deep in the heart of the bare-floor boards and picket fences of the South.

Cave seems to owe his influences to things beyond music - most obviously literature. His journey from punk savant to gothic grandeur has been so long and pockmarked by throwback (Grinderman) that it seems to my youthful eyes that Cave's only musical influence is his own artistic journey.

Uncut got it right by declaring Pilgrim Road the Americana album of the month. It's there in the plucked strings of The Great Deceiver and in the softly warbling voice of Iona Macdonald when she backs and then gently pushes past Fisher's baritone.

Certainly Pilgrim Road's ten tracks and 40 minutes have caught me off guard and vulnerable, I'll admit I wanted to fall for it as soon as I read the first glowing review. And so I will take the album inside and now defend it whenever necessary. But even if I hadn't decided to like it before hearing it I dare think Pilgrim Road would be incredibly hard to push away. Just when a moment in a song threatens to drag, to remind you of another song, Fisher allows in a single instrument or voice - crafting a new and entirely honest experience.

Controller

I came home from Pathology Lab No 2 today and decided it was time to get some work done on the slowly rising pile marked "to review with mild cynicism".

Unfortunately it's just not easy being cynical about Misery Signals. Produced as they are by my university bucket bong buddy Devin Townsend, this third album from the Canucks is pretty fuckin' awesome. And I'd be cheating myself if I didn't admit part of my love was a pure sugar kick from hearing decent metalcore for the first time since Norma Jean's Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child way back in War on Terror Year 2. Not that there's much in common between these two albums. Where Norma Jean wanted to stretch themselves and the listener Misery Signals goes in something of a different way by sticking intently to short sharp bursts.

Coma is a shimmering bit of wonder. Somehow the Townsend production only touches the guitars, leaving screamer Karl Schubach to himself. It makes me feel a bit better about a genre ready to die. I buy-in to the genre, the sub-culture and all of it because of the initial approach, yeah the fashion, yeah sometimes the sound but ultimately because I was always a bit player when it came to my obsessive hardcore and heavy metal buddies. It's the music I'd play if I could play.

Controller isn't the album I'd write but it is a fine riposte to much of the shit pedaled as somehow decent or even "groundbreaking", "massively heavy" and "brutal". And A Certain Death reminds me of the best band I never got obsessive about, Katatonia.

Overboard and Down

One day I'd been out buying a shovel and a pH testing kit and I heard The President's Dead on the radio. Rapid fire narrative, cheap trick emotions, it has no right to work. But as with most of what Okkervil River offers it works wonderfully.

I only bought the song tonight, tracked it down after months of fitful searches. $10 for a song, well five songs but I was only buying it with certainty for the opening cut. The four others are fine but not as immediate as President with its imagining of Kennedy's head buckling as "black dressed agents" move fast to a dead man. Not that the song is necessarily about Jack, it's more about the phrase "the President's dead' and what happens on the day it's first stuttered and by day's end typed in 72 point print. Will Sheff sings the words forcefully, there is no disbelief in his repetition or his story when he talks about "lying in bed with my girlfriend" until he heard "three words they said, like three shots to my head, the President's dead".

It gives thought as well, in the context of now, to that Obama factoid of his secret service detail being the largest of any nominee.

The first time I heard the song it seemed so much longer than it's 2:42 minutes. Hearing good songs for the first time is always a chance to slow the space time continuum, to catch breath and always to go to another place. To remove myself from the worry of having spent too much on my steel shovel, to ignore the fucking idiot refusing to use indicators when changing lanes on the Parkway, to smile.

Live From a Shark Cage

Papa M’s Live From a Shark Cage is playing at the other end of the house.
I’m lying in bed listening to the beeping of a blood pressure monitor, waiting for the spearing pain to start so I can note it on a chart for the doctor.
Earlier today the X-ray beams of The CT scanner punched through my head, the whiring medical machine dissecting a brain in pain.

I’ve been listening to old music lately. Not for sentimentality and not because there is nothing that inspires in 2008. Simply because it’s worth returning, worth re-comprehending why certain songs make me feel. Much music nowadays makes me feel nothing. When I’m in the gym the confected rage of my youth doesn’t boil over during 104 point whatever’s ad free 50, anyhow I have a soft spot for Coldplay. When my girlfriend surfs through the four commercial radio stations here it pisses me off because I can’t hear a full song, not because all the songs I hear are shit.

So when a song does prick the emotional conscience it does it in a tremendous way. Pajo’s Crowd of One did it to me after coming home this morning. It’s buzzing angst was most likely nailed as pre-millennial tension originally, for me it worked just as well in feeding my “there’s no need to worry anxiousnees”. Confused, telephoned voices blip in and out while Pajo mumbles with his guitar.

Then there's the first voice: "we're calling to give you the day for the test, can you give us a call at 75-803-90 and we'll let you know the day".

Calenture

The latest in a growing list of reissues for The Triffids, it was obvious that Calenture, more than any other of the West Australian band's works, would benefit immensely from box-setting, remastering, glossing up.

Bury Me Deep In Love somehow appears thicker, if possible more enveloping and Kelly's Blues is wilder, more forlorn.

But 21 years on what remains is Dave McComb's songwriting. I've been partial to Unmade Love for a little while now. McComb's ability to walk between esoteric and poetic is singular and what initially drew me in. It's only one thing that keeps me listening. Listen again to this song and hear the occasional caterwauling in the background, the reverb on McComb's voice and the distant organ aching. All this works against the screwed tight drumming with McComb: "I'm not getting any stronger, just let me sleep a little longer" telling us his destiny.

It's a welcome delight to see The Panics and others willingly embracing a legacy of literature and song and making music that is peculiar to the land of the Nullarbor and the Earth's most isolated capital.