Bonny and bleak

No one does depressing music quite like the Scots.  Really.  The bleary-eyed ruminations of Arab Strap, the noisy melancholia of Mogwai, the suicidal doom of The Jesus and Mary Chain.  The Norwegians and Swedes don’t seem to have any better weather but they’ve embraced the high camp of Black Metal and disco pop.  It takes a Scot to really break your heart.

Last year saw the emergence of The Twilight Sad with their brooding dramatic rock opus Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters.  The Scottish accent of James Graham made them stand out even more than otherwise - and the consistency of their sound over the course of an LP made them a unique act.

Not quite so unique, now that fellow Glaswegian miserabilists Frightened Rabbit have dropped their debut effort.  FR are a bit more shambolic than The Twilight Sad, who somehow sound like they’ve been drilled into a fighting force of rock.  But they’ve got the same chiming Arcade Fire-like indie powerhouse sound and the same bleak lyrics sung in what can only be describes with words like “brogue”.

If you like your music anthemic and your lyrics full of despair, then Team Scotland is still where you have to go.

The Twilight Sad - “And She Would Darken The Memory”

Frightened Rabbit - “Fast Blood”

Statuesque

Ah, Seattle indie-pop bands, so quirky and melodic and endearing…and here’s one that’s not even signed to Sub Pop. So you’re less likely to hear them on Gray’s Anatomy, I guess.

Throw Me The Statue started off as a one-man band, featuring Scott Reitherman all by himself, but has since evolved into a bigger line-up. Reitherman’s has been doing his thing for a few years now, but the debut album, Moonbeams, only dropped a few months back.

On the single “Lolita”, it’s easy to make comparisons to The Shins or Bishop Allen. It has the jerky-but-sweet energy of those bands, anyway. But it’s such a sweet, glockenspieled number, you shouldn’t let that stand in the way.

Throw Me The Statue - “Lolita”

Into the endless unknown

Quite simply, I love Hammock. I loved their first album, their stop-gap EP, their second album, their ambient almost-album. I can listen to them when I am happy, when I’m sad. When I want to pay attention to every note and when I want to tune out or fall asleep. Their music is the perfect fusion of classic ambient, chiming dream pop and shoegazery guitar noise.

The sound isn’t completely unique - their are shades of half a dozen better-known acts in there: Sigur Ros, The Album Leaf, Stars of the Lid, the Cocteau Twins, Slowdive, Brian Eno. But it’s beautiful and otherworldly and awe-inspiring.

I was a little bit surprised on my first listen to their new album Maybe They Will Sing For Us Tomorrow, though. The first two proper albums were a 50/50 mix of barely-there ambient wash and anthemic reverb-drenched pop. This one is a lot more like The Sleepover Sessions, Marc Byrd’s album of minimalist guitar drone. There are no lyrics, no choruses or verses, no beats. On first listen, it’s so ephemeral and wispy, it feels like it’s slipped away before it’s out of the speakers.

But it pays to know the story and it pays to listen closely. This album is an attempt to capture Hammock’s first live gig, an intimate show for Jonsi of Sigur Ros (whose design project did the cover art) where they stripped back their sound to the bare essentials that two people with guitars could create. The album is basically that - two guys with guitars and pedals, playing live in the studio, with some overdubbed cello from Matt Slocum.

And if you pay attention, you can feel the painstaking attention to detail, the loving care with which the exact pitch and timbre of each note was chosen. My love affair has only grown deeper.

Hammock - “Mono No Aware”

Wistful thinking

Five years is a long time in electronic music.  Trends move so quickly and today’s buzz artist is tomorrow’s complete irrelevance.  So it’s interesting to see how a band that sounded so “now” in 2003 decides to approach 2008.

The Notwist’s Neon Golden was the undisputed high-point of the “lap-pop” revolution that-never-really-was.  Along with the Postal Service and Lali Puna and a host of lesser-known (Clue to Kalo) and lesser (Styrofoam) acts, they were united by dramatic chord changes and glitchy percussion.

Things have moved along, as they always do.  Electronic indie pop has simultaneously become more danceable (Hot Chip), more emotional (Junior Boys) and a hell of a lot darker (The Knife).  Where do a bunch of sensitive Germans who haven’t released an album (barring the 13 & God side-project) in half a decade go?

Turns out they’re just doing more of the same.  Whereas Neon Golden seemed part of a scene and part of a time, The Devil, You + Me sounds like nothing so much as The Notwist.  I guess they just worked out that no one sounded quite like them and that they get away with making only minimal changes.

It’s less glitchy, less gimmicky.  But it’s full of moody sounds and moodier lyrics.  It makes me think that The Notwist of 2013 will be more or less like this, and that that won’t be a bad thing at all.

The Notwist - “Good Lies”

The Notwist - “Gloomy Planets”

Across a continent

Having a Canadian girlfriend is going to be good for my musical awareness - especially with all the Canuck stuff that doesn’t get a lot of attention internationally.

A band that seem to be immensely popular in their homeland and a lot less so elsewhere are The Constantines.  I’m doing a bit of research to see what the fuss is all about.  I suspect the place to start is NOT their new album, Kensington Heights, since it’s getting some mixed reviews.  But it’s not a bad album on its own terms.

The track that has stood out for me is “Trans-Canada”, mostly for its driving rhythm that evokes cross-country travel nicely.  I don’t know whether driving around Australia with it playing is really appropriate, but I don’t care.

The Constantines - “Trans-Canada”

Super no more?

In my teenage years, Supergrass was one of my absolute favourite bands. They were young, they ran green, they kept their teeth nice and clean. They had energy and great songs. And they had facial hair to die for. In fact, my decision to grow sideburns aged 17 was to look more like Gaz Coombes. True story.

But a lot of time has passed since those days. I Should Coco is 13 years old, In It For The Money is 11. Even the compilation Supergrass is 10 is a few years old itself. A whole new breed of Britpop band has exploded onto the scene with a similar kind of cockiness and swagger. Bands like Franz Ferdinand and Arctic Monkeys may be little more than the aftershock of the mid-90s quake, but for today’s kids they’re just as meaningful as the ‘Grass were for me back then.

Nostalgia is a bitch, though, and I got a bit excited when I saw Diamond Hoo Ha, the absurdly-titled new album from the Oxford lads, in stores. I can’t say it’s lived up to my hopes. In their quest for relevance, they’ve unleashed a first single (”Diamond Hoo Ha Man”) that starts off something like “Blue Orchid” and ends up sounding like…Jet?

Lucky for you and I that there’s at least one kickarse pop song on the album - latest single “Rebel In You”. Let’s hope there are still more where that came from.

Supergrass - “Rebel In You”

Intergalactic Autobahn

German techno wasn’t something that I ever expected to embrace - so I suppose I had to come at it a back-route via the catchier realms of Erlend Øye singing 80s pop over Kompakt microhouse tracks or Apparat’s 3 minute electro-glitch anthems.

Apparat was my entree to Ellen Allien, the brains behind cooler-than-cool label Bpitch Control.  Allien is getting some attention for her new DJ mix Boogybytes Vol. 4 and will no doubt get some more when her latest artist release Sool sees daylight shortly.  And she worked with Apparat on the brilliant Orchestra of Bubbles album from a few years back - a perfect synthesis of laptop pop and underground techno.

Sool is the album that I’ve been spinning lately and I’m waiting for it to yield its secrets.  Like a lot of people working at the minimalist end, Allien won’t use two melodic themes per track when one will suffice.  Sometime’s there’s almost nothing to grab hold of.  But this kind of music usually rewards closer attention.

One of the more accessible moments is “Elphine”, which bounces along with a nice house-y rhythm and gives a good entry point.  But there’s nothing as grab-you-by-the-ears immediate as there was on Orchestra of Bubbles.  Which is slightly disappointing to these ears.

Ellen Allien - “Elphine”

Ellen Allien and Apparat - “Jet”

Can’t stop, won’t stop?

Are the Anticon crowd even slightly hip-hop anymore?

Those crazy Oakland nerds started out at least rapping over samples, even if they were pretty disconnected from hip-hop culture. Now it seems that their headline acts have gone wholly over into the world of whacked-out pop. Given the fact that I’m a completely un-hip-hop indie rock nerd, this isn’t a judgement. I quite like the new direction, but it makes me wonder who’s going to keep the spacey edge of beats and rhymes going without them.

Why? was probably the first act to jump ship - Elephant Eyelash a few years ago was pretty much a Pavement album with loops and added misanthropy.

Then there was the collaboration by Themselves with the Notwist as 13 & God - there was rapping sure, but the music was much more Germanic lap-pop than anything else.

Enter 2008 and Why?’s new album Alopecia is in a similar vein to his last, with lots of fractured melodies and strange nasal vocals. It’s all pretty weird and catchy and memorable. And Subtle’s new ExitingARM seems to have a similar direction.

These groups never really caught on with the purists, so there won’t be any outcry. And if you’re just a lover of adventurous pop music, then this might be just what you need.

Why? - “The Hollows”

Subtle - “ExitingARM”

Sometimes, words fail

It looks like all the people who judged The Pipettes for being “manufactured” can have the last laugh now.  Or possibly the first.

They’ve just released a press statement to announce that RiotBecki and Rosay have left and been replaced.  Yes, that’s right - the two original members.

I don’t actually think I can make a joke about this, since the band themselves have made the obvious one about the Sugababes.

Oh well - we still have the music.

The Pipettes - “I Love You”

Borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered 80s

Something that most critics writing about M83s new album seem to miss (and I did too) is that Anthony Gonzalez’s 80s fixation isn’t a product of his own experiences.  He’s only 27, so like me he was in kindergarten when John Hughes and Tears for Fears were ruling the world.  In fact, he talks about it here in an interview with Drowned In Sound - most of his 80s reference points were picked up as a teenager in the mid-90s.

I’ve noticed this a lot about people my age.  We’re actually a lot more fixated on the 80s than the 30-somethings who actually experienced it.  Perhaps they remember how bloody awful a lot of it was.