| THE YEAR THROUGH THE EAR
In a year of music technological landmarks; like a million downloads,
a million ringtones & live concerts on mobile phones, upon reflection
my favourite albums of the year have focused on that most human
of all musical instruments; the voice.
And the human voice was never more high- profile
than on TV ON THE RADIO’s RETURN TO COOKIE MOUNTAIN, featuring
2 singers & a multitude of vocal friends channeling chants,
work songs, gospel, harmony, acappella, doo wop, barbershop quartets,
the Beach Boys, rap & free jazz into a skittering abstract magical
noise of drums, guitar, keyboards & samples & then shaped
into dense uplifting abstract lyrical songs that sound like no other
record this year. They yearn for the ecstatic & take you with
them on their journey to get there. And David Bowie makes his most
worthwhile musical contribution in over a decade!
TOM WAITS’ voice has never been a more dominant
than on the 3 CD, compendium ORPHANS, an idiosyncratic 3 hour conducted
tour of his wet mouth as it croons, moans, groans, growls, purrs,
yells & whispers over 56 tracks. The Brawlers CD itself justifies
the price of admission alone, the most powerful hour of his unique
post Beefheartian blues blurt ever released, while Bawlers captures
his more lyrical & melodic side, his magical ability (like Shane
Mc Gowan) to write a new song that sounds comfortably familiar;
while Bastards gives vent to his eccentric almost indecipherable
word mutations.
Surely the loveliest vocals this year wafted from
WHITE BREAD BLACK BEER the comeback record for post punk hero SCRITTI
POLITTI, which Green Gardside wrote & performed & recorded
in his lounge room, giving a lush intimacy to his deliciously languid
vocals & delicately constructed intensely personal songcraft.
LAST DAYS OF WONDER by THE HANDSOME FAMILY contains
the most literate lyrics of the year, Rennie Sparks crafts not songs
but pieces of literature, beautiful short stories cleverly constructed
so that they can be sung by her husband Brett’s relaxed hickory
smoked baritone & framed with sparse musical accompaniment.
The contemporary & the ancient, the rural & the urban, the
personal & the mythic combine in her lyrics at a level of sophistication
& ambition that no one else in music this year came near.
The black Buddha of soul SOLOMON BURKE journeyed
to the country capital on NASHVILLE, a set of relaxed less well
known covers with guests like Emmy Lou Harris & Gillian Welch,
his voice is so wide & deep that they’re dwarfed by his
vocal presence & his deep reverence for the emotional nuances
buried in the lyrics.
Dirty, distorted, loud & live in the studio,
CHRIS WHITLEY’s final recording REITER IN is a joyous overamped
electrical noise as he romps through raunchy cover versions of The
Stooges, The Flaming Lips, The Passions & Gary Numan & his
straight from the soul originals. Remember him this way.
The criminally ignored dub blues funk reggae gospel
outfit LITTLE AXE (singer songwriter guitarist Skip Mc Donald &
a band that he’s worked with for over 20 years) released their
5th excellent album STONE COLD OHIO, a set of gospel tinged spirituals
sung & played with such emotion & conviction that the listener
can not help but be uplifted & moved by their sincerity &
rocked by their deep supple groove.
You’re going to love or hate LOVE depending
on your reverence for THE BEATLES’ originals, but this 26
track mash up, drawn from over 100 hours of original tapes, with
only one moment of new overdubbed strings, does sound remarkable
.The new remastering by George Martin & his son brings a new
dimension to the already excellent originals, Ringo’s drumming
in particular is a revelation & makes it all the more amazing
that the band & Martin put such care & detail into the original
recording back in the days when they would only be heard on AM radio
& rudimentary record players. These songs have never sounded
so good! They’ve been almost over - reverent in the album
length mix; as a matter of fact when they mash up 3 or 4 songs into
a new combination, the disc is at it’s most exciting, even
if for some it may be like drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa.
It rekindled my Beatlemania!
There’s a playful innocence & a deft
lightness of touch about THE SAND PEBBLES on ATLANTIS REGRETS NOTHING,
as they experiment with their keyboard & guitar powered psych
pop rock that never apes the past but draws upon it & has fun
with it. Play
BLACK CAB ‘s debut Altamont Diary is still
one of my favourite records & their follow-up JESUS EAST draws
from that disc & broadens out their musical spectrum with motorik
beats, (real) Indian instrumentation, psychedelic relic Sam Cutler
(an Altamont veteran) improvises on the inspiring “ Valiant”.
After the smell of Napalm & bad acid on the last disc this one
reeks of incense & opium. Take the trip.
And here’s a few more personal favourites
from the year just passed that you might care to investigate.
The self titled debut for South London producer
BURIAL sounded like nothing else in 2006, a totally immersive listening
experience, subsonic bass, drum clatter, white noise, static &
random noise conjure up a strangely emotional alternate universe.
A post Massive Attack / Tricky sonic stew that I play at home for
muzak ambience, while at high volume all the details emerge from
the murky mix like timid creatures peeking out from the dark drone
for the first time. Addictive.
American male/female duo’s self titled BRIGHTBLACK
MORNING LIGHT shuffles from stoned stupor to surprisingly funky
in the puff of a joint. Sounding more stoned than you could ever
be playing guitar & Fender Rhodes piano, every song sounds like
a mantric meditation on the same horizontal groove. Imagine Cowboy
Junkies on psychotropic drugs.
West Australian multi vocal multi instrumental
posse KILL DEVIL HILLS upped the ante from their average pub country
rock debut, and dug into a deep vein of gothic country melancholy
on THE DROUGHT, the sepia cover & it’s images reflecting
their sense of the ancient & loss.
Perfect for those of us afflicted by musical ADD,
Greg Gillis AKA GIRL TALK treated musical history as raw material
for his micro samples & loops that came & went as quickly
as you could recognise them, like post modern musical homeothapy.
He defied the over & over laziness of many of his sampledelic
contemporaries by potentizing the minimal on the endlessly amusing
& entertaining NIGHTRIPPER album.
Instrumental guitar music was alive & well
on WINGS OF DESIRE the debut album for English band EINSTELLUNG,
a virtual homage to Kraut Rock (A band member wearing a Neu! T-shirt
on the backcover is a dead giveaway), they meander & march across
long slabs of time & space with fanboy enthusiasm.
American dark sludge droners SUNN0 & Japanese
post psych outfit BORIS pummel together ALTAR, a massive monolith
of slooow loud & dark drone metal instrumentals (aside from
a charming totally out of place post Mazzy Star vocal track) that
both intimidate & invigorate with their inexorable physical
power. Like an avalanche heading your way
Who would have thought that 2 bands from the same
neighbourhood & together for over 20 years would produce albums
that summed up each of their strengths & charms in 2006? SONIC
YOUTH on RATHER RIPPED concentrated all their best bits into concise
song structures & Kim Gordon has finally learnt how to sing!
Bookended by 2 exhilarating extended guitar wig outs that emphasised
all their contemporary musical power, I’M NOT AFRAID OF YOU
& I WILL KICK YOUR ASS by YO LA TENGO tears through their pop,
country, almost funk & children’s songs as if sampling
their own history of idiosyncratic good-natured tuneage.
Records that demand active attention, deny any
sense of an easy listen, defy the trends & reward the effort
are always welcome in my house .For an angst ridden outsider SCOTT
WALKER has had an amazing career trajectory from pop star to crooner
to the outer edge of vocal music, But it’s always been about
the incredible voice, throbbing with pent up emotion, warbling in
love torn anguish that has guided his muse. That voice is more torn
& stripped bared than ever on THE DRIFT, a harrowing lamentation
to the early 21 st century barely accompanied by electronic &
organic noise that leaves him alone under the cruel spotlight THE
ROSE HAS TEETH IN THE MOUTH OF THE BEAST by American sound manipulation
duo MATMOS is a series of sound montages utilising everything including
the kitchen sink to create sonic portraits of people like writers
William S Burroughs & Patricia Highsmith, madman producer Joe
Meek, punk Darby Crash even King Ludwig II Of Bavaria & more
. It’s a fascinating a musical assemblage that comes packaged
in a cover that includes postcards of each of the characters by
various cutting edge visual artists that reflect the abandon to
invention & innovation contained on the sound disc. Music yes,
only music? No.
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