Nick Drake - Bryter Layter

I wonder if the sweet, otherworldly strains of Nick Drake have become somewhat derelict in all the buzz and bug-eyed excitement of contemporary music. I imagine him contently pulling at his guitar strings in a secluded corner, unperturbed and ignorant of the bedraggled neon maelstrom of the world swirling around him.

Bryter Layter certainly gives this impression of Drake. As a musician who is typically tied to the folk genre, he doesn’t limit himself to the traditional thin guitar and raw unfinished sound of the folk of Seeger, Dylan, or Cohen. Drake stakes his claim as a musician who will do whatever he wants with his art, and one who uses his influences as a contribution to his own talent and not as a one-way linear channel to his music.

Drake’s guitar work produces a soft, deep, wooden timbre which easily befriends the established dreamy ambience of leisurely oboe and clarinet, hocketing piano and the odd scat flute solo. Such is the departure from the common notion of folk that the album may feel more at home in one of the jazz sub-genres. The pulse and rhythm are positively riddled with jazz influence, and sometimes the only folkish ties that remain are the 2/4 time signature and one-man-and-his-guitar image on the cover, disguising the one-man-and-his-five-piece-band reality.

His unmistakable airy, golden voice seamlessly slides between acting as a third string instrument with the violins and guitar, and a piping woodwind with the flute and saxophone. So smooth is the harmony between voice and score that at times, his finely articulated lyrics get lost in the sonic forest around them.

Despite its 1970 release date, Bryter Layter may as well have been written and recorded today. The album has a timeless sound that failed to follow musical trends of the time that could date it, another testament to Drakes independent attitude. Let’s not forget about dear Nick, even if you’ve never heard him before, on first listen you’ll how much you’ve missed him.

Album Review: The Living End – White Noise

The Living End had a bad case of writer’s block before entering the studio to record their fifth album White Noise, and the finished product doesn’t hide it very well. While not posing any serious offences to the listener, White Noisedoesn’t exactly produce excitement either. The three-piece hasn’t ventured far from their standard sound, or in that case tried anything new at all… Odd, considering the circumstances. While tired bands such as Coldplay are trying so hard to resuscitate their sound, you’d think The Living End – who have a decade of experience under their belt – would be attempting to exorcise their musical demons by exploring new territory.

While there may not be any evidence of experimentation, the same cannot be said of the band’s attempt to produce a quality punk-rock record. Yet, again the overall outcome seems hesitant, held-back and uncertain as though the End were trying harder not to fuck up than to make awesome music. Their usual bite, the wild do-whatever-the-fuck-we-want attitude is absent. The very opening distorted guitar riff on ‘How Do We Know’ is pretty cool, but sadly acts as the premature high-point of the album. Seventh track ‘Loaded Gun’ seems to be taken from the AC/DC111 textbook, and ‘White Noise’ the single can very easily sum up the album: clean-cut, shiny, unthreatening pop-rock.

Again, unusually for the End, the lyrics don’t take aim at popular political topics: although there is a vague theme of politics throughout the album, this may come just as much from forceof- habit as intention, as Chris Cheney fails to vocalise any depth behind his lyrics. The exception to the rule is ‘21st Century’, on which the End hate on Bush and global warming. The track is just as much cringe-worthy as political as Cheney sings “Mohammad Ali, Kurt Cobain, there’s no such thing as cheap cocaine” …cool. ‘Prisoner of Society’ seems a long, long time ago.

White Noise is a 50:50. Sure it’s pretty boring and may as well not exist for the impact it makes. But it’s not bad music either. It’s well written, well performed, and well produced; it just doesn’t offer a lot. I’m sure to the intelligent university music lover White Noise will be a swing and a miss, but it will be beloved by your 14 yearold sister. As they say, take it or leave it.

A Low Hum Inc. aka The Scene that Celebrates Itself

In early 1990s London there was an exceptionally small and exclusive pool of musicians, producers and journalists who promoted each other’s gigs, played together, drank together, and cast themselves into the spotlight of the media and music fans. This was The Scene That Celebrated Itself. Such mutual support within a scene – although a charming idea – should be a prospect that is horribly familiar for most Wellingtonians, seeing that our music scene is embedded with the most self-promoting, self-glorifying and incestuous bad blood to ever plague New Zealand music DNA: A Low Hum.

A Low Hum (ALH) was born when ‘Blink’ (Ian Jorgenson) began organising tours for small indie bands around New Zealand. The first ALH tour featured Ejector and Degrees K in September 2003. After a Batrider tour the following April, Blink continued to tour bands almost every month or so until 2007, and it was awesome. During these early years A Low Hum held a light to the unexplored abyss of New Zealand music. Not only did it promote small bands by touring them, it also released compilation CDs, catalogues, and a local knowledge publication to educate anyone interested of the unknown potential New Zealand music holds.

A Low Hum gigs gained a reputation of being unique and chaotic, where the barrier between celebrity performer and grateful audience were smashed down. The music offered by bands such as The Phoenix Foundation, Cut Off Your Hands (aka Shaky Hands), So So Modern, The Shocking Pinks, Connan and the Mockasins, and Die! Die! Die! was so very different, so very original, and so full of fresh untapped energy which was unleashed live, and poured into the audience through electric waves of ecstasy. Provoked by yet another DIY revolution The Mint Chicks and This Night Creeps had initiated, bizarre previously unheard music escaped the bedroom and entered the spotlight, with A Low Hum as its mentor.

For a while it was beautiful. A new movement, so full of promise was in motion; the future of New Zealand alternative music away from the insipid New Zealand On Air funded bands looked bright. A Low Hum gained momentum, and the first Camp A Low Hum festival was held in February 2007. A shambolic, folkey festival, Camp was all about the music: musicians in trees, people strumming guitars, singing and dancing, music was always happening somewhere: it was small, peaceful, and wonderful. Camp 2008 would prove to be very different.

Their live spectacle at the 2007 Camp combined with over a year of extensive touring saw Wellington’s So So Modern begin to lead the pack as they became the quintisential Low Hum act, and kings of the Wellington indie scene, and not undeservingly. Why? Because they were fucking amazing. More than possibly any other Low Hum act, So So Modern released a beast on stage. Their music was powerful, forceful, and out of control. Through this band ALH and its followers found a central identity, a force strong enough to carry the movement, be it’s Jack Skellington and see ALH endure. With all the love, trust, and potential of the movement placed in this band, So So Modern and it’s Wellington sub-scene became a figure which if corrupted would corrupt everything.

As well as flowering a new scene, So So Modern set a benchmark for all ‘indie’ bands that came after them, and brought maturity and concreted credibility to ALH. This is what ‘indie’ looked like, and this is what A Low Hum could do: start an entirely new movement of explosive sounds, bright clothing, and awesome feelings. Little if any thought was given to the fact that So So Modern, sooner or later, would have done it by themselves, and consequently A Low Hum has been given nothing but support from a Wellington scene which has lapped up everything ALH likes, recommends or masturbates over and heralded it as law. So So Modern were the new shit, and everybody wanted to be like the new shit.

In early 2007 things were already changing. This Night Creeps had broken up the year before. The Sneaks and Connan and the Mockasins moved overseas, and most importantly The Mint Chicks and So So Modern’s live performances started to seriously deteriorate. In the sense of the former, perhaps they had just passed their New Zealand use-by date and needed to move on, but in the case of So So Modern there is little excuse. In the absence of such live whirlwinds that once exercised the underground fans of New Zealand, ALH and its subscenes in the cities grew fat and bloated.

The scene extended to include a network of copy-cat wannabe bands who retained little of the original force and ethics of the ALH movement and thus ushered in a very lazy fat-cat indie scene, crystalised through the medium of ALH which was beginning to change character.

The result has been a surge of psuedo-alternative acts riding off the strength of the A Low Hum scene, and its fresh, trendy ‘indie’ image. Bands such as Teenwolf and Brand New Math in Auckland; Frase + Bri and Bang! Bang! Eche! in Christchurch; and the now departed Holiday with Friends, and Little Pictures here in Wellington have wriggled their way into popularity by playing the right-sound to sedated-ALHloyalists and befriending their way through the right channels. But in reality these bands are no more than the crusting semen of New Zealand underground music after the orgasm that was So So Modern. It felt good at first, but now we’re all just covered in wank. Especially here in Wellington, what we are left with is a scene that simply cannot think for itself and question the quality music that is produced. Instead of playing music for the pleasure of communicating ideas, feelings, and experiences (which music is supposed to do) ALH bands it seems now play for the sake of being seen and being scene.

Camp 2008 only highlighted this fact. So So Modern were the prize celebrities of the event, alienated from the audience by their extensive network of leech friends, and scene bands, the barrier only contributing further to a deterioration of their live act. Little attention was paid to the actual quality of music present, and special attention was paid to the quality of ‘party’. Music is meant to be a party: the motto of the new ALH scene.

Fortunately this is just the tip of the iceberg and New Zealand is riddled with a wealth of promising bands, full of potential and waiting to be discovered. Bands such as Death in Gaza, New Friend, Sora Shima, and Amy Racecar are continuing to show an absurd amount of awesomeness, and absolutely rip apart Wellington-ALH-scene bands live, but are still struggling for recognition. Granted, some of these bands have played at the Campfestival but the four days’ attention they’re given there compared to the years of attention a band like Shaky Hands was gifted is hardly compensation. And so unfortunately these bands are not attaining the attention and credit they deserve, and the fat-cat indie scene refuses to roll.

A Low Hum’s purpose in New Zealand is dwindling. Early ALH celebrities have either grown too big for their boots and moved offshore (The Sneaks, Cut Off Your Hands) or have been forgotten and left in the dust in the shadow of more successful and profitable acts (Yokel Ono). Its future will probably involve a more concentrated focus on the Camp festival and on the record label (which has already signed three artists), while Blink casts his eyes overseas to see what international talent he can dig up. Blink probably never predicted the monster that his movement has turned out to be, but like it or not we’re all stuck with it. New Zealanders have loved the emergence of an institution that has brought the undercurrents of kiwi music into the light, but now maybe it is time for ALH to step aside, release its tight grasp on the power it holds, and a let a new movement arise.

Weezer - Red Album

As they’ve swung from album to album Weezer have managed to evoke an entire repertoire of despairing knee-jerk reactions from their fans. From ‘this isn’t like their last album’ to ‘what the fuck were they thinking!?’ to ‘who are these yokels and how can I get them to stop aurally molesting me?’ On their third self-titled Red album they’ve finally landed on the heartbreaking ‘I just don’t know anymore’. Weezer have at last gone full circle and made music that is not much a shadow of their former awesomeness as more of a suicide note.

The album is a case of an old dog refusing to learn new tricks: lo-fi quality songs produced by a high profile band on a high-fidelity record. This approach was never going to work, and it doesn’t. The sound is too polished to be appealing. Weezer’s dirty guitar riffs that were once raw and captivating have been so heavily doused in varnish that on first listen they slipped right off me.

Tracks Troublemaker and Pork and Beans display that if anything Weezer’s music has actually diminished in maturity. They no longer have the credibility to get away with childish lyrics, unattractive rhythms, and a cute demeanour. It’s stupid, and it would help Weezer a great deal if they decided to just grow the fuck up and move on.

The slow soulful Heart Songs is as close as the album comes to producing four minutes of honest music. While seeming sincere, the soppy lyrics that reflect back to Weezer’s glory days of the early ‘90’s have little more effect than to present a pathetic apology for the rest of the album.

So this is not an album oozing with originality. This is an album of Weezer trying to be influenced by their own sound, and inevitably failing. It is an album of Weezer becoming a bad Weezer cover band.

However I’m willing to forgive all of this if only because the last track is the best cover of The Band’s The Weight I have ever fucking heard; the nerve of these guys to annoy the shit out of me for ten tracks only to give me the puppy eyes! Daw, Weezer your album might be intolerable and on the intellectual level of a commerce student, but you’re alright. Actually, I kind of feel like listening to it again.

Sigur Ros – Með Suð í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust (‘With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly’)

Sigur Rós have turned over a new leaf with their fifth album Með Suð í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust (‘With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly’). The record’s sound is comparatively stripped alongside its predecessors, a transformation the band claim is influenced by a series of acoustic performances they held throughout their native Iceland in 2006, as documented in their film Heima.

It can be said that the sonic language of Sigur Rós is one truly unique in the realm of music. Their desire to deliver the true essence of their craft has seen the band’s music earn a reputation of being breathtakingly existential, and too beautiful to be described with justice in any human tongue.

Indeed, the idea of communication resonates throughout Með Suð, the opening track even being titled ‘Gobbledigook’, which from its first bar betrays that Sigur Rós have been re-evaluating their approach to music. It is a song featuring a sporadic acoustic guitar riff favouring the offbeat and rivalling pounding war-rhythm percussion. This foundation layered with hissing hand claps and Jon Birgissons sweet, shrill vocals creates an illusion that the different instrumental parts truly are speaking gobbledigook to each other in the search for some sort of cohesion.

Strikingly, ‘Gobbledigook’ is missing Sigur Rós’ trademark backdrop of whining fluid noise (created by the use of a cello-bow on electric guitar) that has so shaped the entire ambience of the bands sound, making the music naked and youthful in comparison with their earlier work. This revelation is consistent throughout the album, and when the bow-guitar technique is used, such as during the reflective ‘Festival’ it is done so in moderation. Every note is now heard with crystal perfection and it is as though after four albums a dense fog has lifted from Sigur Rós’ music, and it can now be viewed with a clarity not previously possible. The sound has become grounded, at times following a strict verse-chorus structure. The songs no longer follow their own will but are more controlled, plotted, and nursed.

Still, being Sigur Rós, the album cannot save itself at times from grandiose indulgence; the nine minute ‘Ára bátur’ climaxing in a finale featuring a boys’ choir and a 67-piece orchestra. Although the music is as absurdly beautiful as ever, the construction of such a thick sound is not exactly continuous with the rest of the album. However it would only take one listen of Með Suð for it to be apparent to any Sigur Rós fan that the band is undergoing development, making discontinuity somewhat excusable.

Perhaps then we can view their musical progression in a linear fashion, and state that debut Von (1997) through to fourth LP Takk (2005) were a progressive first chapter in Sigur Rós ‘ musical journey. With that experience in hand, Með Suð it seems is the first page of another.

Let there be no two ways about it, this is a gorgeous album. And although it may not be as musically accomplished asTakk it is delightful to see Sigur Rós reach this point. In its fifty-five minutes Með Suð captures such a carefree and euphoric enchantment at not only in the disappearing beauty in the world, but that their music is a justifiable representation of it. With the still churning melodies of their untitled album and Ágætis Byrjun and the roaring passion of Takk behind them, Sigur Rós it seems have finally decided they’ve smashed down enough walls and are looking in a new direction; a turning point in their musical career.

Live: Here's To Future Days

Here’s to future days”: the title for the three-day music festival was an idealistic and optimistic toast to the undercurrents of New Zealand’s music culture that are supposedly going to flower into beautiful things. Thought Creature, Malenky Robot, Cherry’s Gemstones, Bastard Sons of Greypower, Big Flip the Massive, This City Sunrise, and Dial all featured in the line up, and by the end of the festival had worked me into a state of near alcoholism.

I had to admire the spirit behind the event, as it truly was a good attempt at promoting small bands that (for the most part) show promise, but honestly I was shit-bored the whole time. The music offered was at times ridiculous and degrading to the intelligence of the onlookers, and most of the few dozen people that were there had left Bodega well before the 1:30am finish.

Heat Like Me, the synthesised dance quartet were the apex of the entire ‘festival’, playing early on the second day, but after that the experience of “Future Days” was one giant fucking fingernail screeching over a blackboard. I don’t know what two-piece Goodbye Galaxy (feat. the event organiser Bernie “Galaxy”) would describe their genre as, but it certainly isn’t anything near music. Their awful synthesised space sounds, and vocals of a girl screaming “you mother fucking slut” as shrill as possible, wasn’t ‘art’, it wasn’t even a novelty, it was shit. Tommy Ill’s effect on the Wellington scene is also wearing off. You can only witness him attempt irony at rapping about how famous he is, to an audience made up entirely of his friends so many times before what used to be “fun” just becomes stupid. The majority of the rest of the sets passed without really offering anything special. Malenky Robot, however, are always a treat and the bland acts surrounding them made their set all the better, although I was a little sad to realise that their once quirky post-punk has now dissolved into plain hardcore. This City Sunrise were another highlight, if just comparatively.

Honestly I don’t know what else to say about the festival except I felt deflated and incredibly cheated. If these really are to be the ‘Future Days’ then I thank Thought Creature for composing music so insipid, bland and depressing that spectators will kill themselves before these bands are ever popular. ‘Here’s to Future Days’? I’d sooner say ‘Here’s to Global Warming’, at least that will be a quick death.

Magnetic Fields - Holiday

Holiday, released in 1994, shyly sits in the cobwebbed corners of The Magnetic Fields discography. Its importance to the formation of modern-day synth-pop is rarely doted on. Not only is it a blueprint for the structure of modern synthpop, it was recorded during the crossroads of alternative music, when the twin obsessions of the 1980s, rave and post-punk were past the apex of their popularity and more alt-rock orientated scenes were gaining momentum. Such is the strange overlapping of historical genre that can be heard in Holiday: the long, churning vocals of Stephin Merrit reflect those of post-punk artists Ian Curtis and Ian McCulloch. The synthesised foundation, drum machine and simple (but nonetheless effective) melody draw reference to the influence of 1980s rave and synthesised music, culminating in an original blend of flavour were so unlike anything else at the time.

Synth-pop that is solely ‘fun’ is one dimensional but Holiday delivers fun with wicked intelligence. We are introduced to Holiday with ‘BBC Radiophonic Workshop’, a 22 second track of clean, upbeat, synth fun which immediately captures any wandering interest in the listener and pins it to the stereo (think Grayson Gilmour’s short synth tracks). The following ‘Desert Island’ illustrates the reoccurring theme of irony as Merrit sings “I’ll be the madness that carries you away / I’ll be the sadness to light your darkest day”. The strange but delightful abandonment of reason in the quest for irony would well suit as a vibe that is continuous throughout Holiday as Merrit’s vocals carry and softly fade alongside rhythms that are impossible to grow tired of, and outlandish stories of life.

The brooding ‘In My Secret Place’ is a wonderful orchestration of diverse musical elements and styles. The slow, longing, almost depressing vocals are strangely backed by an upbeat tempo, a colourful synth line, and Commander Keen-esque effects during the chorus. The track twists the album’s mood slightly, taking it down a notch as if starting a long slow breath out, setting the scene for one of the masterpieces of The Magnetic Fields entire discography ‘Take Ecstasy With Me’.

A melancholy but triumphant piece ‘Take Ecstasy with Me’ closes the album. This is a track that can proudly stand side by side with Joy Divisions’ epic ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’; Not only does Merrit’s voice sound all too reminiscent that of Ian Curtis, and does the synthesised pipe line sister that of the infamous synth riff of LWTUA, but it successfully manages to spark that dormant bed of existentiality in the listener that only awakens of true enlightenment.

Holiday demonstrates that synth-pop does not have to be glitz without the theory, and have provided a sublime blueprint of how to accomplish depth within synthesised music. The Magnetic Fields, and they’re musical design may come as a bit of a shock to the modern synth-pop fan. Indeed it may be a bit of reach to truly understand the bizarre variety in Holiday but I believe we owe it to ourselves to, for once, meet music halfway and make the effort to educate ourselves on what can be beautiful music, and beautiful synth-pop. It does exist.