Fever Ray – Fever Ray

It must be fun being Karin Dreijer Andersson. If virtually any artist I can think of (apart from Björk; Björk can do anything) decided to sing about a friend they’ve had since they were seven and who they have conversations on the phone about dishwasher tablets with, it would probably come across as a sad attempt at being weird, quirky and avant-garde. But not our Karin. As one half of Swedish electronica ensemble The Knife, weirdness is de rigueur for her. In fact, the absence of weirdness would probably cause some kind of mass revolt among her loyal fans (myself included).

It should come as a relief, then, that for her debut solo release under the Fever Ray moniker Karin has remained true to weird, bread-and-butter The Knife material. Though now a happy mother of two young children, Fever Ray sees Karin make a welcome return to the bleak synth landscapes and relentless vocal effects that first brought her and her brother Olof to international stardom.

To be honest, the majority of Fever Ray‘s tracks really don’t steer too clear of waters sailed by The Knife. The vocoder is still omnipresent, used for the vocal masculating effect that has become practically a staple of their sound. This can get tedious after a while, especially if you’ve already had Silent Shout on repeat for the last three years; it’s almost a relief listening to vocoder-free When I Grow Up and Now’s The Only Time I Know, for which Karin has allowed her incredibly unique, almost hauntingly harsh voice to reign free.

Across the album, extensive use has been made of instruments such as vibraphones and malletophones, or synthetic imitations of them. Many of the true synth instruments also have that same sharp-attack timbre, giving the overall impression of an aural assault from an army of musical drums.

A few tracks are refreshing for their surprising originality. Now’s The Only Time I Know veers into pop-like terrain in its form and melody, while Triangle Walks bizarrely might make you feel like you’re wearing an Armani power suit and eating a sushi lunch in an ‘80s L.A. restaurant. Don’t ask.

Stand-out tracks aside, what Fever Ray lacks as a whole is a general unifying structure. The concept of putting this on from start to finish is difficult to imagine; the songs aren’t really that distinctive when compared to each other and they all seem to involve variations of the same instruments and compositional flairs. I kept waiting for something drastic along the lines of We Share Our Mother’s Health to appear and make me go ‘Yesssss!’ but it just doesn’t happen. Everything seems to sound the same; even the aforementioned stand-out tracks don’t really stand out that much.

With that aside, there’s still plenty to appreciate in this album, even if this is your first foray into the Dreijer family music catalogue. However, despite the clear quality of the material, Fever Ray fails to explore territory that wasn’t already traversed by Karin’s work with her brother. Whether this will hold interest over time like Deep Cuts and Silent Shout have remains to be seen.

Merriweather Post Pavillion

Animal Collective
Merriweather Post Pavillion
Domino

Chemical or natural? There is a single moment on Merriweather Post Pavillion, after a few lush, watery minutes of introduction, where the music reaches out of the speakers and cracks open reality so that you can see inside, in a way that only Tibetan boddhisativas and LSD-devoted professors usually experience. That moment, called forth with an invocational ‘if I could just leave my body for a night…’ is a genuine landmark in the winding path of music’s history. There is a level of transcendence, of originality, of genius present in that moment on In The Flowers, and on Merriweather in general, that elevates it instantly to the realm of hushed tones. So, is it chemical or natural?

It doesn’t matter. It’s easier for once to talk about this album in terms of what’s it not, rather than what it is. It’s not a retread of anything that has come before. It’s not difficult to engage with, but it’s also not populist in the least. It’s never dull. In fact, over eleven tracks, it comes off as almost too short and leaves a small but inescapable feeling of disappointment that it’s over, in the way that all great albums should. But that’s not to say that it’s unfinished, or imperfect. It’s not. This is Keats’ well-wrought urn manifest, an album genuinely without low points or flaws.

But even out of this consistent brilliance, there come peaks. Besides the aforementioned In The Flowers, My Girls is stunningly beautiful and layered in Panda Bear’s signatory reverb-drenched harmonies, erroneously attributed to the Beach Boys. Lyrically, it’s an affectingly earnest account of the responsibility of providing for family. The evident singalong qualities of the refrain create a strange feeling of intrusion into Panda’s ‘four walls and abode slats’, but the ability to get such basic, instinctive emotions into a song this catchy without coming off as cheesy must be marvelled at.

Summertime Clothes recalls the lyrically-evocative Animal Collective of the days before Panda Bear was a significant songwriting influence, painting a picture of happy and naïve summer days over a seriously danceable pulse. But the next track proves exactly why it was a good idea to give Panda equal air-time. Daily Routine grows out of individual organ squeaks into an arpeggiator-based piece of everyday escapism that dissolves eventually into a slow repetition that’s almost shamanic in texture. Which then gives way to the golden melodies of Bluish. Which then give way to… you get the picture.

It doesn’t let up. The album closes with Brother Sport, tropical and trance-inducing in a way El Guincho could only dream of. After a mid-section of ever-building rhythms and a screaming Avey Tare, the tumult reaches saturation point. The clouds part and a new day dawns. With one of the most smile-inducing melodies you will ever hear, Animal Collective give you two minutes to dance and forget your troubles before the album finally ends. Merriweather Post Pavillion is an album that effects emotions in a very real way, pulling you headlong through nostalgia, hope and the forty shades of joy. I can’t think of another album that is as perfectly executed, as plain perfect as Merriweather Post Pavillion. I would be extremely surprised if this didn’t turn out to be the best album of the year. Or the decade. I’ll stop at that before I say something I might regret later.
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Electric Picnic 2008, a MySpace Tour – Sunday

Sunday’s line up explained, through a MySpace linkaggedon…. Let it be known that I abhor the use of labels, so this was a painful exercise.

[Previously - Friday's acts; Saturday's acts]

Sunday 31st

Absentee; James Ford-produced dark, melancholic indie-pop. Think The Magnetic Fields, only British.

Adrian Crowley; Irish singer-songwriter folk music stuff. Hot Press love him.

Black Lips; Flower punk. Or so their Myspace says. Rough around the edges, and all the better for it.

Candi Staton; She sang Young Hearts Run Free! And You Got The Love! Unmissable.

Céilí House Allstars; The name says it all really.

Chromeo; One half is A-Trak‘s brother. The other dresses like Cee-Lo. They sound like Prince with a vocoder and a sense of humour. A bit Marmite, they’ll probably draw a HUGE crowd.

Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band; Basically a Bright Eyes project without producer Mike Mogis, this doesn’t deviate much from his folk-tronica template. Not a bad thing, mind.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYewptydkvE]

Cowboy X; An Irish take on indie-tronica.

CSS; Brazilian flavoured pop-rock turned generic indie whine. If you’ve seen them already (and no doubt you have, you can afford to miss them). If not, they can be good fun live.

Deadmau5; Tech-electro flavour of the month. Pronounced Dead Mouse.

Dengue Fever; Indie-rock with a Cambodian twist. Hence the name, I guess…

Dublin City Big Band; I can’t find a link for these guys, but I imagine they play Glenn Miller and Gershwin favourites. Fun for all the family then.

Dublin Gospel Choir; An Electric Picnic staple, expect these guys to rouse you out of your hangover on Sunday morning.

Emmy The Great; More folk-pop. Seems to be a lot in this vein on Sunday…

Farmer’s Market; Some noodly jazz for your inner beatnik. Don’t be fooled by Famer’s Market on the Picnic website, it’s a typo.

Faust; 70s Krautrock. Important.

Florence & the Machine; Mournful, slightly distorted indie-rock.

Foals; Their Myspace says that they are SNOTTY ART SCHOOL DROPOUTS HUNGRY FOR THE DOLLAR, so who am I to say any different?

Gemma Hayes; Husky-voiced Irish indie-pop darling.

Get Cape.Wear Cape.Fly; British acoustic guitarist. Recently covered Justice’s DANCE, with surprisingly good results.

Grinderman; Nick Cave minus The Bad Seeds plus some other guys led Bad Seeds side project. Not my thing, but I think I’m in the minority.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sshpJbeNF4U]

Hadouken!; Their album title, Music For An Accelerated Culture, says it all. Comparisons to Mike Skinner aren’t that valid; think less Streets, more Street Fighter.

Ham Sandwich; Kells-based indie-pop.

Hayseed Dixie: Bar fight music. The sort of thing you’d expect to hear in the bar where The Blue Brothers do Rawhide.

Hercules & Love Affair; DFA-based future-disco. Sexy as hell. Antony (of the Johnsons) won’t be around, but don’t let that put you off. This will be great.

Iarla O’Lionaird’s Invisible Fields; Irish music. I don’t profess to know much about this kind of thing, so I won’t say any more than that.

Ibrahim Electric; Meandering Danish jazz-funk. In a good way.

Jah Wobble’s Chinese Dub; An experimental foray charting what happens when dub collides with Chinese folk music. This could be very interesting.

Johnny Flynn; The blues and country end of the singer-songwriter spectrum.

Leila; Moulin Rouge era-sounding nightmare-pop on Warp. Looks like a definite highlight to me.

Lou Rhodes; Delicate, heart-on-the-sleeve style folk music.

Mahmoud Fadl’s United Nubians; Master Drummer from the Nile. Gives world music a good name.

Martina Topley-Bird; Super-collaborator turned solo artist. One to see if you like your intelligent female pop like that of Santogold.

Mark Geary; Token Irish-American singer-songwriter nonsense. Don’t we have enough of these guys?

Micah P Hinson; Deep-voiced country warblings.

Michael Franti & Spearhead; Revolutionary Californian reggae-soul.

My Bloody Valentine; What can one say? The reason a lot of people are going I’d wager. Your friends will probably mock you if you miss this.

Pivot; Noisy, Australian post-rock-tronica. Nothing like the other Aussie acts in town for the weekend (ie Midnight Juggernauts and Cut Copy), but a little variety never hurt anyone. Worth a look.

School Of Language; Bizarre vocal experimentalists.

Sex Pistols; Probably only worth seeing if you want to tick them off the list of acts you’ve seen. Unlike MBV, I can’t see any valid reason for them to re/perform.

Sinead O Connor; Again, not much one can say on this front. She’s a bit nuts, she courts controversy, but she also recorded this.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO8JWbG6bVw]

Stephen Malkmus; He was in Pavement. Lots of people like him. Karl talked to him recently, so have a read to see where he’s at these days.

The Congos; More reggae, coming from some guys who worked with Lee “Scratch” Perry and Max Romeo in the 70s. Old school.

The Dodos; Slightly twee indie-pop tempered with a heavy dose of live percussion.

The Gossip; Apparently these guys have been around since the 90s, but only hit big with a certain anthem two years ago. Go for Standing In The Way of control. Then see what else is on.

The Roots; Hip-hop with real instruments and “music”. Drummer/producer ?uestlove is an arrogant nutter, but that hardly matters when he helps to put on such a show with this crew. All rappers should aspire to be like this.

The Urges; Dublin-based psychedlic garage music. Sounds like something you’d hear on a Tarantino soundtrack.

These New Puritans; An English indie/nu-rave/noise band who wrote a song about Elvis. But apparently not that one.

Turin Brakes; Yawn. This one is for the Franz Ferdinand fans out there.

Wolfgang Haffner; Funky nu-jazz. That’s not always a bad thing!

Yacht; Experimental noise from Portland, Oregon. Sounds like fun.

Port O’Brien – All We Could Do is Sing

You know how your English teacher in school told you not to start your story with waking up? Well, Port O’Brien don’t care what your English teacher says. All We Could Do Was Sing opens with a fantastic, cathartic track called “I Woke Up Today”, sung (or shouted) by everyone in the band in unison. It’s one of those songs that turns into the only thing you can think about for a couple of weeks. Communal and celebratory. Other than this, Port O’Brien do a good line in nautically-themed folky indie. From ‘Moby Dick’ to ‘The Old Man and the Sea’, the ocean has always been an excellent paradigm for the more solitary emotions in the spectrum. Port O’Brien sell the sea myth pretty hard, but the fact that main songwriter Van Pierszalowski genuinely does commercially fish for salmon makes for heightened fascination with his lyrics. ‘Fisherman’s Son’ is a particularly salient example of this, expressing the conflict that arises from having to drop real life and go to sea for several months. The closer, ‘Valdez’, is a short, sleepy ditty that begins with the line “Exxon, Exxon, clean it up” and sounds like it was recorded on a dictaphone buried under a large pile of laundry. The album is varied enough to be continuously interesting, and if ever you wanted a break from the stresses of real life, there are worse places to look for it than Port O’Brien.

Jens Lekman: The Village May 25th

Pic By Loreana Rushe

The last time Foggy Notions had Jens play here, it was a stripped down affair in Whelans. Just him, backed up by his guitar, a bongo drum and a very special appearance by one Owen Pallett playing violin on a few songs. It was a remarkable gig. It was intimate, heartfelt and touched with more than a tiny bit of Christmas magic, no doubt helped by the fact that Whelans was newly redecorated and smelled of fresh pine-wood. He entertained, he charmed, and he pretty much had a capacity crowd hanging off his every utterance. Tonight, Jens returns to Dublin to what is perhaps an unfair weight of expectation.

Certainly, memories of the previous performance are fresh for many of the audience here, and I’m sure friends have been dragged along in tow with effusive tales of ‘that night’. However, as any seasoned gig-goer knows, the conditions that conspire for gigs that special are mercurial and lightning sadly rarely strikes twice. This, despite the presence of Jens’ full band (dressed up in varying monochrome colours like female versions of those disturbing Aussie TV children’s characters The Wiggles) and a sampler. Thats not to say its a bad gig. It isn’t. It just feels a little flat, rehearsed, and at times the band’s twee capers make me want to watch through my fingers in embarrassment. For example, at one point they all down their instruments, stretch out their arms and run circles around the stage pretending to be airplanes. Its like watching a community drama group getting in touch with their inner children. Its just a little too much for me, a cutesy contrivance too far, and I’m an avowed Belle and Sebastian fan.

However, there are plenty of highlights. ‘Maple Leaves’ and ‘You are the Light’ are delivered in a particularly rousing fashion by Jens, benefiting from the big band treatment. The full on version of ‘Black Cab’ makes an interesting counterpoint to the hushed version we were treated to last Christmas and thanks to the sampler ‘It was a Strange Time in my Life’ comes complete with the deeply peculiar duck-child warble that spooks the shit out of me. I guess tonight is ultimately about the type of music Jens trades in and how honest he can be to that. He trades in sincerity wrapped up in showmanship. His songs demand his and our full attention. Tonight he’s possibly tired, at the end of a long tour, and perhaps going through the motions. Because of this, what felt so real at Christmas now feels a little vaudeville. The original spirit is slightly lacking, making us more aware of the shiny, showy shell.