Are You Serious - Andrew Bird

Track list:

1. Capsized
2. Roma Fade
3. Truth Lies Low
4. Puma
5. Chemical Switches
6. Left Handed Kisses
7. Are You Serious
8. Saints Preservus
9. The New Saint Jude
10. Valleys of the Young
11. Bellevue
12. Shoulder Mountain
13. Pulaski

Running time: 49 minutes
Released: 2016

What is it with my 2016 purchases all falling in to A and B? This is another that shunts overdue posts further down the list. It is the third Andrew Bird album to appear on these pages and this is my first listen to any of the tracks. I skipped one in a shuffle an evening or two ago because I was primed to do this, and because Bird didn't fit my mood at the time - I can be picky like that. However now it is his game in town. I have the "deluxe" edition with 2 bonus tracks.

One of the first things I note in the booklet as I open the physical package is a thank you to Fiona Apple, who guests on one of these tracks... very interesting! But enough of the physicalities (deluxe is overselling it), and on to the listen. It catches me off guard with a rocky opening, electrified, nice cadence. Strong start. There is a funkiness to the rhythm, the roll of the piece, that I really like, and although it becomes clear that the song lyrics are less than inspired the vocal style and the overall feel of the track keep it interesting. 

Roma Fade is more immediately recognisible as an Andrew Bird track - his distinctive staccato violin picking and whistling combination opening the track. There is a liveliness in the tempo here too, and some low-fi guitar work in the background, but here the initial star is Bird's voice. It becomes a bit lost in the other sounds as the track progresses, which is a shame but a sign of a growing and varied supporting cast of instruments rather than his performance tailing off. The track ends rather suddenly and we are pitched in to Truth Lies Low, which ... well, I can't find words to describe the odd effect here. It works, rather, but its a sort of low background hum plus voice. The dominant sounds are really hard to articulate. As the song builds it becomes a little more appreciable - the violin part coming in to give some top end. I find I like it a lot, though it touches on some sounds that make me think of cheesy lounge music or incomplete demo recordings in different places.

Andrew Bird isn't the first name that comes to mind when thinking about my favourite artists, but at the same time, his name on something makes it an instant buy from me by now. He is varied, which is one of the things I really like. The three songs so far have all felt very different in tone, and that continues to be the case with Puma, too. This is a man comfortable with several styles, rhythms and arrangements. In general this album seems to share a harder low-end sound than some others. The guitar work forming much of the structure a bit of a darker, tougher sound than the top end and influencing the overall sound of the songs more, without swamping the fiddling. It takes a while for the whistling to be broken out in full, but it is there on the intro to Chemical Switches, albeit in a slow, subdued fashion, subservient to the twang on the guitar. This track is really stripped back, acoustic only. Its the best yet - a really nice, clear melody and the right kind of feel for a Tuesday evening alone after (for the second day running) evening plans got cancelled. The song ends meekly, dropping out a little, but that's the only bad point.

Now we get a duet with Apple, whose first couple of albums are amongst my all time favourites. I am not sure that I would recognise her voice here if I didn't know it was her though... it is lower, older (no surprise some 20 years on from Tidal). Her voice here is lower than his in places, in tone if not in pitch. I find, though that the song is a little disappointing - not much to it, and I missed too many of the lyrics (that old problem) to get a sense of the point. The deficit in arrangement is shown up by what came before and what comes after.

I zoned out for a little bit, brought back around by a neat change of tempo mid-track in Saints Preservus (why the concatenation?). The pace injected is suddenly lost again and the piece turns almost classical, before the momentum is picked up again. Nicely done, and another sign of Bird's comfort across a range of performing styles. 

I am trying to find more to say but I keep falling back on one cliché or another or something I have already said. Not my finest, clearest thinking tonight I am afraid. I would be lying if I said I was as engaged by this point as I was at the commencement of the album, but at the same time I am sort-of sinking into it, losing track of my thoughts because the space Bird creates is comfortable and pleasant. I am into the bonus tracks now. There is a bit of a hint of The Leisure Society about Shoulder Mountain, which is no bad thing at all, more present in the verse than the chorus. I really like this number. Pulaski rounds us out with an Asian-ish sound to the opening, though this is quickly lost for the vocal sections it returns for an instrumental insert later and makes for an interesting tune.

Overall I think this is a pretty strong album without ever really being stellar. It felt a bit like slipping into comfortable clothes after a day dressed up for work - relaxing, reassuring and taking a weight off. Like its creator, I doubt it will ever be consciously thought of as a favourite, but it hits a large number of notes that I really appreciate. Very glad I picked it up.

Birds of Fire - Mahavishnu Orchestra

Track list:

1. Birds Of Fire
2. Miles Beyond
3. Celestial Terrestrial Commuters
4. Sapphire Bullets Of Pure Love
5. Thousand Island Park
6. Hope
7. One Word
8. Sanctuary
9. Open Country Joy
10. Resolution

Running time: 40 minutes
Released: 1972

Random Jazz time. This came in the same big box of jazz classics that yielded albums by Weather Report and Clifford Brown that I have already listened to. I know sod all about it other than it falls into fusion. Could be good, could be terrible... only one way to find out.

This is a mixture of some very long and other very short tracks, some may drag whilst there is a blink and you miss it to others. An odd combination, but that pretty much sums fusion up, eh? The first track combines a gong or cymbal clashes with a prog-like guitar lead and loop, but quickly devolves down to a complete mess - none of the constituent parts being bad per se, but it is clear that they should not have been combined together. Just when I thought it could not add more elements, strings of some sort appear briefly, before vanishing. Too much is the simple summary, and I find myself distinctly not caring.

So, not the strongest start. It's Saturday, late afternoon. I should have dragged myself out gardening today but the energy and the will to tackle overgrown grass, unsupported rose stems and too many weeds to count is not there yet. Hopefully tomorrow - since it is supposed to stay dry. Miles Beyond takes a bit of time to come to life, but is immediately more promising than my first exposure (apparently I had never listened to any of these tracks before; per LastFM I had no scrobbles of Mahavishnu Orchestra prior to this post). This tune is more melodic, and the elements all seem to actually relate to each other this time, which is a plus point! There's a bit of a bum note with a drum solo, leading into guitar solos though, and what had been a nice build up culminates instead in a worthless hodge-podge of sound.

That seems to be this orchestra's (hah!) modus operandi. Too much sensory overload, not funky enough to be funk and not crafted well enough for me to appreciate it as jazz. It is all in stark contrast to The Cinematic Orchestra, whose contemporary jazz (well, I guess its mostly noughties jazz now, right?) is carefully considered.  As I type that, two quick tunes have disappeared, and Thousand Island Park is playing; this is better - a Latin guitar inspired number it manages to stay well away from the OTT-ness of the material that preceded it. Not exactly a diamond in the rough, but a small value coin, at least.

Hope is fleeting, though. By that I mean the track is less than two minutes. At this point I don't really have any hope that the second half of the disc (in terms of tunes, not time - still most of that left) will be better. One Word is the true centrepiece of this album, comprising 25% of its length. It starts well enough and despite my scepticism I feel that if the excesses of earlier tracks are kept in check there could be a good tune here. However I really don't feel it is likely and we'll have to get well past the half way point before I begin to believe in any positive signs. That said, there's a really nice bass on this, a snappy rhythm. A solid platform to build from, and at 4 minutes in the track has matured alright. The weird modulated sounds that then pick up what passes as a tune are, alas, harbingers of less interesting bits and pieces from earlier, though in credit there is the fact that here there is generally only one in action at a time.

Drum solos. Have I said how much I dislike them? I can only think of one that I credit in any sense on record - in Limp, by Fiona Apple (which will appear here in, oh... 10 years or so at current pace!). I can see them being effective in a live performance, but for home listening they generally signify lifeless stretches of the recording. I suspect they only even exist as a thing because of the ridiculous "every sucker needs a solo" thing that jazz carried for so long. Again, in a live music environment, where individuals needed to show their skills to ensure work it made some sense, but it just doesn't by the time you are talking about established bands playing together regularly and selling records. Anyhow, the epic long piece has ended, and the feared over-stimulation never arrived, and despite the grumpy tone of this paragraph I think it is probably the best thing on the playlist so far. Better too than what follows immediately in its wake. There is more sense of time and space about Sanctuary - suitable for the title, but the track is lifeless along with it, sterile and boring, and seeming to last forever though what came before was twice its length.

The last couple of tracks then. Open Country Joy certainly conveys the open and joy parts of the title well enough, but I struggle to see the country, despite the employment of a fiddle. The first phase dies out and then we get a groovy guitar picking up proceedings. It falls very flat for me until that line dies, replaced by the fiddle and a high pitched tinkly keyboard picking up the joyful sense again. A real pity - take out the ham-fisted attempt at being something else in the centre of this tune and I would like it a lot more, but as it is... no thanks. The final number is also promising to start... a thrumming, dangerous feel to the tempo with the repeated bass and beats combining to set a nice stage. The track grows nicely too - they saved the best for last. Best by quite some margin - even though the pieces repeat they never grow old. The end of the track introduces a little light, which probably wasn't needed, but its a small slip up in what was otherwise a great and unexpected close. Overall, I found this poor, but a handful of enjoyable tracks rescue it from being a complete waste.

The Beautiful Lie - Ed Harcourt

Track list:

1. Whirlwind In D Minor
2. Visit From The Dead Dog
3. You Only Call Me When You're Drunk
4. The Last Cigarette
5. Shadowboxing
6. Late Night Partner
7. Revolution In The Heart
8. Until Tomorrow Then
9. Scatterbraine
10. Rain On The Pretty Ones
11. The Pristine Claw
12. I Am The Drug
13. Braille
14. Good Friends Are Hard To Find

Running time: 54 minutes
Released: 2006

It has been a week since I posted - not a case of not having the time, more not having the right frame of mind. Time enough to need to force this one or risk losing the drive.

Ed Harcourt. For a time he was a real favourite and I am still very keen on the odd song here and there, but in general I found the quality of his output to deteriorate album by album. This is not the last of his albums that I have but it probably should have been. Looking at the track list, it starts strong and then drops off markedly into the sort of nothing songs he became prone to. Or so my impression is to begin with.

I love the hook in the opening track, and whilst I am less keen on what goes on around it until we hit the chorus it is enough to engage. The more audible vocal on the chorus makes it work in a way the ethereal nature of the signing in the verses does not quite match. The outro loses the plot a bit, subsuming what was good about the song to a noisy presence that, for me, adds nothing. Visit From the Dead Dog is the one song from the listing that I recognised immediately as a favourite. It's a strange title and a strange tale but the vocal performance harks back to the Ed Harcourt I first got interested in, the melody is accessible and the arrangement comes together nicely - its a lazily lovely song: never demanding, just supplying. It harks back in another way too - the trumpet; I went through a period in the late 90s, early 2000s of really liking the use of a trumpet in "pop" music and Harcourt's work with (I think) Hadrian Garrard was one of the drivers for that.

The tone turns maudlin now, slower and more orchestral initially, I recall this song as having a horrid end - chanting the title over and over. I wonder if I am conflating it with something else as what I hear now does not at all match my recollection of You Only Call Me When You're Drunk. In fact it puts me in mind of a TV show, orchestral, slightly sad. Oh, no... I was right. It goes harebrained and scattershot, a sonic mess that is really not pleasant. At least on the bright side my memory (so often exposed as fraud in these pages) is proved correct for one, and thus not wholly useless! The maudlin returns and this is the abiding emotional association I hold with The Beautiful Lie. As someone who has never smoked it takes a lot to make me care about cigarettes and this song does not manage it either, especially when Harcourt's voice goes all strained in places - like the perfect embodiment of my disillusionment with his later works.

My thoughts turn away from Ed Harcourt and to Fiona Apple because I cannot see the title "Shadowboxing" without thinking of Shadowboxer, which is a vastly more compelling track. This one is jingly percussion and muted melodies. The delivery of the chorus is pretty good and saves the song from being a complete waste, but all it has really served to do is make me wish I was listening to Tidal instead. That won't be for several years though - not in this context anyway.  So why have I not been able todo any more posting this week? Honestly I am not sure; going back to work after a week off was not particularly stressful, but I did end last weekend feeling that I had not done enough with my time. Being busy Monday through Wednesday evenings did not help, and the drive to come here to write and listen simply did not appeal on Thursday, when I was writing up game notes instead, or Friday when I deigned to shoot digital tanks. I have decided to ditch the Bloodbowl league for the time being though; stresses of scheduling are better avoided now I am GMing again, and a terrible final game left me cursing the overly dicey nature of it. That happens every now and again and the tanking has a similar problem. Both together is a recipe for stupid frustration and misplaced anger so only one persists.

Another song drifted by whilst I was whittering on there, the sort of nothing tune that Harcourt seems to have drifted toward over his career, but there is something more palatable playing now as we hit half way through. Unfortunately I dislike the chorus and bridge that follow - the composition and arrangement toward the start of Revolution in the Heart is great, but the harmonies in the singing and the devolution into "shanananana" that follows is a terrible progression. Time for an execution of the track, I feel. Spooky black and white movie music: that is what Until Tomorrow Then feels like - but somehow it works. A fuzzy not-quite jazzy arrangement and a pained but controlled vocal which is charged in the chorus to the point of desperation... its really well done. Maudlin but not depressing, hard to listen to but not unpleasant and above all pretty darn evocative. I can just see those 1930s cityscapes and old cars, downbeat bars and femmes fatales.

Unfortunately the jumpy and inconsistent nature of this album which allows for such interesting little tracks is the same nature which produces awful songs like Scatterbraine. It is, I think, Harcourt's career in microcosm; capable of genius but pulled in so many directions that the output suffers for it. This was true even on Here Be Monsters and Maplewood, but less so. Thankfully Scatterbraine is sandwiched by two of the better examples as Rain on the Pretty Ones is also nicely crafted, tugging at the heartstrings in a way that some of the earlier tracks tried to do unsuccessfully.

Hmm The Pristine Claw was not a name I associated with anything, but when the song starts it is immediately recognisable and it is one I rather like. It is a very simple string melody and a very softly sung lyric but unlike some such songs it trades on its simplicity for good effect. Tonally speaking Harcourt is all over the place on this disc. It is not a new sort of inconsistency but it is a source of frustration both from the standpoint of wanting something more cohesive to write about and tie together but also from the perspective of jumping from mood to mood along with the changes of tempo and life when consuming it. He can, however, be beautifully eloquent at times, very effective at pulling you around emotionally. Braille is a fine example of this, and again trades off the aural equivalent of soft focus in the voice recording. It belies my preconception that the album drifted out to nothing but providing a track that leaves you feeling like you have nothing. It is crafted to make you feel empty, lost, bereft... well, probably not, but such is the skill with which the song has been put together that it really had an impact on me hearing it now. It is a glorious track that I had never appreciated before. The final song plays on similar emotions but not nearly so well - the playing, the singing, the arrangement... the same triggers are present but they just will not pull. This does end up the nothing song I expected and even the trumpet cannot save it.

So I now have to pick over the track list and spit out the casualties. I thought I would be removing more that I will delete in actual fact, but actually it comes out to just over half the tracks being jettisoned even so. Many of them not bad (only 2 were actually unpleasant), but simply not good enough for me to want to listen to again given the wide array of other things I could be hearing.

I will try not to make it a week before the next post; if I got into that habit, I would never finish.

Aw C'mon - Lambchop

Track list:

1. Being Tyler   
2. Four Pounds in Two Days
3. Steve McQueen
4. The Lone Official
5. Something's Going On
6. Nothing but a Blur From a Bullet Train
7. Each Time I Bring It Up It Seems to Bring You Down
8. Timothy B. Schmidt
9. Women Help to Create the Kind of Men They Despise
10. I Hate Candy
11. I Haven't Heard a Word I've Said
12. Action Figure

Running time: 44 minutes
Released: 2004

Following the largesse of Christmas (way down on previous years; very little alcohol because I was driving home at the end of each day; not over-stuffed with food) I have split out the double album into its constituent parts. No You C'mon will appear much later. I fell in love with Lambchop's alt-country sound with Is A Woman, but recall being less than impressed with either part of this as a follow-up release. I remember virtually none of it, to be frank, and whilst I must have heard plenty of the songs here on random play over the last decade I am drawing a substantial blank on anything past that initial opinion. So this could be interesting.

The opening is different from what I would expect, a lot more orchestral. I like it - strong melody with a busy and well constructed general sound to back it up. Only... well, I keep waiting for it to grow, change and flourish. Whilst it does change, it feels too little too late, or in the wrong direction. It is a nice piece, but it disappoints through inhibition - a failure to go on to the grand things the opening lines hinted at. Ah well. It is an instrumental piece, and we do not get to hear Wagner's voice until track two. This is a short number, which works really well. It has an old movie score feel to it, and is gone before you know it whilst leaving a good impression. More songs should do that: impress a strong image on the listener and leave it with them rather than drawing it out, diluting the effect.

Lambchop are pretty recognisable through tempo as much as anything, a gentle sway, a hint of swagger in the cool of the vocal and separation between the melodies and the main structure of the songs. It is the vocal that really sells them for me, though. The strains and refrains are nice and all, but there is something about the delivery of their words that sticks with me and warms the cockles of my soul a little. Of course. With this project no sooner have I typed a paragraph based on the songs to date, the next one starts and blows my words out of the water. The Lone Official sounds nothing like what I expect from Lambchop and has very little in common with the attributes I just listed as their identifiers. I like that. That sense of surprise, that constantly having my opinions and thoughts challenged and changed. That seems to be the primary joy in a lot of these listens, quite apart from actually taking the time to try to appreciate what I have. That said, I do not like the tune much. It is another instrumental, a bit faster, but with a dull structure and the same repetition and failure to evolve as was evident in Being Tyler, so I am grateful when the vocals come back with Something's Going On.

I glance at the track list, and find we are entering a zone of interesting titles after this song which, whilst lyrically very boring, does return to the exquisitely crafted musical space that originally sold me on Lambchop. Soft strings, percussive guitar, laid back gravel voice - they add up to a comfort sound. I find myself surprised that I do not listen to them more, and have not picked up any releases since Aw C'mon/No You C'mon. Maybe I should remedy that but there seem to have been quite a number...

I think maybe some  of the reason is that the bits I like are the bits that tend to the samey. This runs counter to my normal self-image of my musical consumption, but as I age and examine what I like and why, a sense of familiarity is definitely one of the traits I now find endearing. I guess there is at least a grain of truth to the idea that you fix your musical tastes somewhere in your 20s - ancient history now; I have never liked that idea, but it is certainly true that I find less new stuff now that I used to. That idea saddens me.

Meanwhile Kurt has continued serenading in his distinctive style, the strings have continued somewhere over his shoulder and guitars and drums encircle him loosely and time has passed agreeably. The tracks whistle by - and not in an Andrew Bird kind of way - as most are fairly short and sweet. That, too, is a nice touch that distinguishes it a little bit from Is A Woman, where longer tunes lent a different overall vibe. My inclination is to say that album is better than this one, but at this point it would be entirely based on memory and assumed familiarity; certainly it is fair to say that I appreciate the differences, even whilst liking this most based on some of that which is the same. Another difference here is the blend of instrumental pieces amongst the songs. Some work better than others, but it is a good way of changing up, breaking the mood and preventing every track blurring together.

Blurring together... hah. The second time I have been immediately contradicted by the experience. I have just somehow lost 1-3 tracks in a blur as my mind went elsewhere for a while and now the disc is almost done. I do not begrudge it that though, for though it is certainly not a quality that one would actively look for, the fact that nothing bad jumped out to break the reverie I found myself in at least means that a consistent level was maintained. I am thinking though that blurring is probably one of the reasons that I have not listened more. To contrast, I have been listening to Fiona Apple's early albums in the car over Christmas and there is no way those songs blur at all. Two albums of superb songs with a strong voice and distinct characteristics, both Tidal and When the Pawn... are discs that I return to time and again because they offer something more than just the familiarity that is the biggest draw here.

I have, in the end, decided to pick up some more Lambchop releases, but I left others based on reviews of the same sameness that I have identified as liking here. The problem with sameness is that it is OK within an album, but I do not need it across albums. Sameness is a reason to stick, not to twist. I hope the purchases will justify themselves, but if not they will likely slot in to a nice comfortable place to blur into what I have just been through.