Come On Die Young - Mogwai

Track list:

1. Punk Rock:
2. Cody
3. Helps Both Ways
4. Year 2000 Non-Compliant Cardia
5. Kappa
6. Waltz for Aidan
7. May Nothing But Happiness Come Through Your Door
8. Oh! How the Dogs Stack Up
9. Ex-Cowboy
10. Chocky
11. Christmas Steps
12. Punk Rock/ Puff Daddy/ Antichrist

Running time: 67 minutes
Released: 1999

As much as I love Mogwai, I've never really got on with CODY as an album. It has always been down the pecking order for me. Probably because I came to the group late, and picked this up by going backwards not forwards. Still, now it's time to listen properly.

Punk Rock: isn't, but the synergy of the voice with the gentle wandering guitar is better than it has any right to be. The louder moments of the sampled voice track (TV show interview I guess) are less effective, crowd noise is not particularly engaging. It is snowing outside, I have not been sleeping well the past week or so and I have been overly social in that time, too - only one weekday evening and today, Sunday afternoon, to myself. I need that alone time to recharge, and hopefully the next hour or so can contribute to that.

I suspect I will enjoy the listen more than I anticipated when I wrote the intro (a long time back given the sparse postings and need to fill in As and Bs that I bought), and come away with a new appreciation for this record, but still - 67 minutes is a marathon, not a sprint. The listen is putting off consideration of how to handle a complex scenario in the RPG I am running, the washing up and various other things I don't really feel like doing right away, so the gentle meandering of the title track is a rather apt form of procrastination. I am actually pretty familiar with track Cody from the live album Special Moves, which I listened to a lot whilst driving in the couple of years after it came out.

Thus far the tone of the disc is subdued, placid, with a tempo to match. It's really rather relaxing, a long way from the quiet/loud dichotomy or the wall of guitar noise that crops up in many Mogwai offerings. The most interesting factor so far has been the use of American TV soundbites. One actually spans two tracks, linking Helps Both Ways to Year 2000 Non-Compliant Cardia. This latest tune has the most body of anything so far, but is still in keeping with the easy overall tone.Not having ready up on the album, I don't know if this continues throughout, whether it was a deliberate choice by the band to mellow out, or whether the longer tunes coming up in the second half are more immediately recognisible as Mogwai.

To be fair, I'd like to think that if I heard any of these tunes in isolation without knowing them I would still be able to guess the creators because its not a million miles from their signature either.

I am enjoying this little oasis of calm. I am half way through per the track list, but a lot less than that in truth. The back half contains 4 tracks over 8 minutes and 2 at around the two-minute mark, whereas the first half was made up, generally, of standard radio song length pieces. The first of those long tunes does not shake up the formula, the easy-paced, light melodies. It does introduce some more strident strumming, but still within a slow paced formula. At this point the form is starting to wear a little thin for me in some respects. Whilst I appreciate the overall tone I am increasingly finding my mind is wandering because it is all a little too samey. Then Oh! How the Dogs Stack Up comes in with a weird old voice sample and and being completely out of place - old-timey, slightly off-key piano, and a sort of screeching background. I think that tune has to go.

Three epics back to back now.

For some reason when I see the track title Ex-Cowboy, the cattlemen of the American west is not the first thing that comes to mind. I think instead of Football, and Bloodbowl, of Dallas and Darkside. Perhaps it is an affectation, sport on the brain, influenced perhaps by the silenced snooker on my TV right now? I really like the main riff here though I find myself semi-tuned out because the pattern is set, and the track does not seem to have enough of a crescendo. Of course, it arrives as I am typing that last sentence, a sort of helicopter-blade swirl of sound applied over the top of the same riff at the same pace and amplitude. A screech, a scream, an objection to something.

A nod to earlier, the static the tune ends with is used as a bridge between tracks, and Chocky kicks off with a lot of dissonant sound humming and buzzing around, obscuring a gentle piano intro. I find this to be unwelcome. One tune fades, another rises, and then the fuzz clears and we actually have a piece of music with a discernible structure. A pretty good one at that. There are hints of sounds here that remind me of other songs, snatches of other groups - positive associations. The one that I can't shake that pops up again and again through the track is Red Snapper... I don't recall the track title(s) for the songs I am thinking of though, so I can't explain the reference. Maybe They're Hanging Me Tonight? It's a very different piece, different style tone and everything, but there are echoes here and there, similar sounds used in similarly punctuating ways.

There is a sort of restrained but naked threat in the sound of the first crescendo in Christmas Steps, a sound that had me springing forward in interest and excitement. This is the first really aggressive passage of the album and I like the bolder, brasher sound. The contrast is too late in arriving for me to consider CODY a great album, but this at least provides a great moment. The energy disappears from the track thereafter and it feels like the wind-down lasts too long, but then from a certain perspective the whole record is one c.70 minute come-down with a brief lively moment near the back-end.

Clayhill - Clayhill

Track List:

1. Figure Of Eight
2. Northern Soul
3. Mystery Train
4. Face Of The Sun
5. Grasscutter
6. Funny How
7. Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want
8. Disscordents

Running time: 36 minutes
Released: 2005

And so I come to a draft that has been sat around for a couple of years.

This post almost appeared titled incorrectly as "Acoustic", for that is how it lived in my library for too long. In sourcing the track list and image I realised my error and re-titled it appropriately so that it can appear in the right place at the right time. It is an acoustic album and "Acoustic" is often added to the name in references, it would seem. Oh well, correction made.

Clayhill are made up of bassist Ali Friend (of Red Snapper and The Imagined Village), vocalist Gavin Clark (Sunhouse, UNKLE) and Ted Barnes (who did work with Beth Orton, as well as solo). Friend's name may have been enough to get me to look them up, but I think I cottoned on to them via Red Snapper's Redone - an album of remixes and a notable cover of Odd Man Out. It isn't credited as Clayhill, but it is Friend, and Clark for sure; not sure about Barnes. The latter's voice was stunning and I was hooked.

This is the first midweek listen I have managed in I don't know how long, and I am able to fit it in only because I bailed on a roleplaying session after three really bad nights of sleep. I am far too busy to find time for everything I have to do and everything I want to do, and getting the rest and recuperation I need to function. Oh well; the late Gavin Clark delivers a soft, almost apologetic song over a simple guitar hook supported by Friend's upright bass. Figure of Eight is a tune based on simplicity for the most part. The trio play off each other well. The bass is subtle and fills in the gaps behind the guitar, which is plucky and bright as it slides under the nasal, drawn out tones of our vocalist. 

As much as I like Figure of Eight, there are two tracks on this album I really adore. The first is Northern Soul - though I am more familiar with the original recording on Small Circle, it is impressive how well the sound transfers to the striped back version here. This song has a punchier hook, a twangier bass, a firmer vocal and a chorus that strikes a chord even though I am a softy southerner not a hardy northern type. The little fussy, busy bits of guitar work are a joy and I imagine they had great fun recording this track - it has that kind of positive energetic style coming through the speaker. The other song that matches this is their cover of The Smiths' Please Please Please... (The Smiths, for disclosure, are not a band I have in my library - though like every human being alive I have a soft spot for the guitar on This Charming Man).

Ali Friend is a musical chameleon - a running thread through disparate groups in my collection, popping up backing people unexpectedly. I love his bass work. Videos of live sets and tracks from Red Snapper burned that love into me a long time ago and it has never left. The sorrowful twang that he gets onto some of his notes here is gorgeous and dovetails nicely with the hurt that Clark injects into his long vowels.

This is exactly the type of low-key music I need on a night like this. I go on holiday in a week, but I have a ton of stuff to wrap up before then... and my ability to do so may well depend on how well I can relax and find sleep this evening. Anything that helps me drift into a loose state is good, and there is a nice laziness to Clayhill's music that helps the mood. It's not chill out fare really, but the tones are low and soothing. The vocal is often challenging and emotional but it is the frequency of the instruments that I find cathartic - mostly the bass, but the guitar doesn't wander off too much either.

I am not that keen on Grasscutter, possibly because it features on three of the 4 Clayhill albums I have and as such it comes up more often than it should. It also devolves into repetition too much for my liking. I think I might trim this version. We then hit the final trio - songs which do not appear on the other Clayhill discs. Funny How doesn't ring any bells for me until Clark hits the chorus and then it finds familiarity. I really like the interplay here, but above all it is the tone - pleading yet wronged, defiant yet downcast. I find little contrasts like that throughout the song, which is a nice touch in my book, and makes up for the fact it sits between me and the heartbreak of Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want.

Slow, deliberate, nail through the hand hurt. Every note and word here is pitched for maximum emotional impact. As someone who has gone through periods of depression in the past where it felt nothing was going my way the song resonates. As alluded to above I am not really familiar with the original, but this is frankly so good that I don't feel the need to be. Here - I am feeling like sharing the love:

The final track is always going to be a bit of a come-down after that. It is a slow, slow number. Very sparse, drawn out words. I like it, but I miss most of it as I got distracted by a work email, just as the US working day is closing. Oh well (I seem to say that a lot).

Beautiful Skeletons - Gavin Clark

Track list:

1. Crazy
2. Spinning Round the Sun
3. Hurricane
4. Black Blood
5. Crazy On the Weekend
6. Elaine's Place
7. Never Came for Us
8. Spotlight for Sunshine
9. Stems
10. The Russian
11. Calling in the Cards
12. The Years Have Loved Us
13. When We Had Faces
14. Painted Glass
15. Raise a Vein
16. Open & Shut Case
17. Low Are the Punches
18. Never Seen the Sea
19. The Lost Choices
20. Roll Away Remain
21. Bermondsey Stutter
22. I Dreamt of God

Running time: 76 minutes
Released: 2014

So my next post was supposed to be Clayhill, which will now come next. In setting that post up I found out two things. One, that Gavin Clark had passed away 2 years ago and two, that he left this album behind when he did, so I bought it.

This is a first listen, a first listen in 3 weeks of ridiculous busy life, and a rather unknown quantity. It might have been done sooner had it not been quite so long, but still.

Crazy sounds like it must have been very early in his career. Clark's voice doesn't have the refined edge, or depth, to it that characterised the vocal that I am familiar with. The song is rather bland for it, too, but it short and past quickly. The next track is, like the first, a simple acoustic guitar tune with Clark's vocal. I recognise the song, from Sunhouse's Crazy on the Weekend.  There are a couple more here from that album, too - no surprise since Gavin Clark was the vocalist. I don't remember the tune, despite recognising it - but I suspect that the Sunhouse version has more to recommend it - a greater depth of sound, and a more mature vocal performance.

Ah, there. Hurricane (also a Sunhouse track) finally exhibits Clark's voice with the distinctions that endeared him to me on a cover of Red Snapper's Odd Man Out with his Clayhill bandmates. This tune I really like. It is also a simple number, but there is a harmonica or something in there too, giving a bit more of a layered sound. The three elements combine well and it slips by nicely. It is a dreamy number in some ways, more reminiscent of summer days than hurricane winds.

Gavin Clark falls into a sizable bucket of charismatic but flawed singers that I like. Character of voice is sometimes more powerful than pitch perfection. There is a gravelly note to it, a fag-burned, whisky soaked rawness and authenticity. A plaintive tone, a vulnerability dressed up in manliness. A warmth, a reality. When a voice like this is on song... ugh, train of thought broken by horrible overdrive and feedback screech on an electric guitar. Once I adjust to the screechy sound it's not so bad, but it stood out a mile from what went before and what comes immediately after. Not a nice surprise sound at all.

We hit a run of very short tracks - as in sub-2 minutes. I tend to find short tunes distracting... not enough time to get into them or have them really tell their tale. That said short and focused can really work. Here the tunes rather drift by - nothing particularly standing out. I find myself wondering about the whys and wherefores of these recordings. Clearly some are early demos of tunes cut later with bands, but even after I heard his voice and knew who he was, Clark had no profile as a solo artist that I was aware of - more as a voice for hire - e.g. with UNKLE.

The overall theme here seems to be confessional, almost apologetic. The soft meandering guitar work, the slow and deliberate vocals. Black Blood, with its harsh electrics feels like a massive curveball given the context of the rest thus far.

Ooh, there is bit more depth and life again in The Russian. A plinky-plonky nature to the sound gives it both a hint of the Old West and a breath of new life. This time the tonal shift works because it is not a complete change of instrument - it is still very much an acoustic string-lead piece, just with the additional backing of a keyboard. Clark gives it some solemnity over the top of a simple enough but lively tune, and I find the overall effect quite enjoyable. My general opinion on this collection is that it is so-so, however my affinity for Clark's voice is such that he can elevate some frankly underwhelming songs to enjoyable pass-times. He didn't have the songwriting chops of a Tom Waits, the croon of a Terry Callier, but he had heart, soul and sincerity which go quite a long way.

I find myself without many thoughts worth sharing. Too much is either a repetition of something said above or without relevance to the tunes at hand. I would happily digress but those thoughts are rather... dull and typing anything at all pulls me out of the stupour, the gentle state of relaxation that I am finding myself collapsing in to. It is good to have got to this at last, for it is the low-key evening that I needed, yet still productive.

There is no pace to the tracks, they all seem to be sedate numbers. Lazy reverie. The pace of the album as a whole is odd - shaken up not by changes to pace or tone of the tracks (Black Blood and The Russian as notable exceptions here - for worse and better), but by the variable lengths. This last quarter of the collection looks likely to be the most samey as everything here is ~3.30 or more. To be clear I don't mind this. The gentle pace fits quite well with how I am feeling, the end of the middle day of a long weekend. I seriously doubt I would ever choose these tracks as my poison for any given scenario, but I have to say that I am enjoying not taking it too seriously, kicking back and letting it wash over me. The familiarity of Clark's voice allows for that.

Never Seen the Sea is familiar, too; it was on the soundtrack to This is England (director Shane Meadows knew Clark well) - a series I never watched, but I have the soundtrack to all the same. This track has more depth to it. It is a shame that more here doesn't have that to be honest. Clark is generally good to listen to, but a good vocal still benefits from a good crucible. I find myself checking what is left to run because The Lost Choices sounded so much like a closer, but there are a few more to go yet. There is a tiredness creeping in to Clark's delivery it seems to me... but maybe I am projecting that. A definite sad tinge to the pieces though.

Listening to dead musicians is a weird thing. It is one thing if they died before I heard them, but it feels quite different listening to those that have died since I discovered them. That goes double for those that die young. It doesn't really feel like I'm listening to a ghost, but it does rather make one think of one's own mortality. That eerie feeling is intensified on the final track, with it's title and lyrics of dreaming of God. I'm not religious at all so the thought of reaching out to something beyond the real applies to deities and spectres in equal measure.

Then all is quiet.

Bending the Dark - The Imagined Village

Track list:

1. The Captain’s Apprentice
2. New York Trader
3. Wintersinging
4. The Guvna
5. Sick Old Man
6. Nest
7. Fisherman
8. Get Kalsi
9. Washing Song
10. Bending the Dark

Running time: 55 minutes
Released: 2012

The Imagined Village. I liked their first album a lot but then soured on them a bit. I have, however, stumbled across a very positive BBC Music review of this album in the process of preparing for this post so perhaps it is a good thing to be revisiting this again. To not influence any reading of this piece, I leave the link to the end.

I have been a bit quiet here of late - nothing for over a week. I may be back from my holidays but I have been tied up one way or another - busy evenings, a weekend with the niece and nephew, tiredness and, significantly, the cricket commentaries coming from the West Indies where England are playing. These have filled up the evenings when I have been around, and I can't listen to two things at once. I have other things on the go that I haven't got to in my evenings, too - for example i am now 2 sessions behind writing up my Albion game. I was going to address that yesterday until I got caught in an accident tailback (two, actually) and it took almost 3 hours to get home from work, normally 40 minutes away, and so I was not in a mood conducive to writing.

Enough grumbling, I have just about managed to find a window for this within 2 weeks of the last post so lets dive in. The opening is an unaccompanied female voice, Jacqui Oates, that I recognise as one of The Winterset backing Rachel Unthank on The Bairns; we then get percussion and eventually a top end joining in. When the vocal returns it is, instead, Eliza Carthy. This is one of the things that attracted me to The Imagined Village - the range of musicians involved. This line up is different from that on their debut; there is overlap but some have gone, some have arrived.

Of course Carthy's vocal is also a different track to Oates' and so, I presume, was the top end. I just missed the transition... rustiness showing immediately. It makes more sense this way, mind. New York Trader is quite a rich number, blending a lot of different influences - another plus from The Imagined Village concept and range of contributers - compared to the sparseness of the short opener.

Two and a bit tracks in now, and I am again reminded about how thin the lines between genre can be, and in places you may not expect. Here on Wintersinging the percussion is persistent and incessant in a manner not unlike something you might hear in a club, weighted by the bass of Ali Friend of Clayhill and more pertinently Red Snapper, who I have seen (on video alas) doing Drum 'n' Bass live with an upright bass. The difference is in the composition of the top end - what instruments are involved - and, crucially I think, the relative volumes of the parts. I really like this track, both as an example of the fragility of genre as a concept and more simply as a piece of music. I am already much better disposed to this album than I was expecting to be before reading up on it.

The Guvna is a disappointment as a follow up - I think it misses something from not having any vocal. I recall this track being called out in the BBC piece but I read that nearer 3 weeks ago and cannot recall why. I still worry that it is influencing my opinion, but the track is simply lacking engagement. It's not unpleasant or anything, just... bland? Thankfully a singer is reintroduced for the next track, which includes Raggle Taggle Gypsy, which I am more familiar with from The Waterboys. This track again features Friend's distinctive twangy bass, with which I am very familiar, the notes he leaves phrases on, the structures of his hooks here, could come straight from a Red Snapper record, which is a fine thing as far as I am concerned.

Tonal shift. A softer song, less bassy, percussion relegated to supporting role rather than dominant structure, and back to Oates as vocalist, albeit sharing some duties with Carthy and a male voice - which one of the candidates I can't pin down by ear. Nest is alright, but I am immediately drawn in to the dark tone of the following track, a sleazy but enticing schmooze with a rich arrangement that pairs really well with Carthy's signing. This feels less folk, more noir despite being titled Fisherman. I love it.

Its not as if I have been completely music free in the weeks intervening between this and posting Beat the Champ - but it feels good to give time to some music again, even as I simultaneously distract myself by typing and glancing every now and again at the silent snooker on the TV. I have not managed to immerse myself in listening to anything else in the interim. Even in yesterdays snore-fest of a drive home there was no music, TMS kept me entertained instead as the cricket is back on, and forms one reason why I am forcing myself to do this listen mid-morning, else it could be another half week before I get to anything.

I have found the more percussive numbers, the grungier less folky numbers more interesting on this disc but I do appreciate the wandering styles, and Washing Song being predominantly stripped back to Carthy, a keyboard and fiddle is a strong counter to some of the earlier sounds. As I head into the last track I can honestly say I have really enjoyed this listen, but I am concerned it might all be destroyed by stupid silence given the 12 minute length of the title track. Hopefully its actually all music all the way - seems quite likely with the way the piece has started - a sort of rolling amalgam of the various styles of the individual contributors, rather than a coherently directed effort. As I type that it drops into sparse wandering, which would be dull except it brings to mind summer days. When it starts to build again I find it less interesting, a return to the busy but flat sound that The Guvna brought.

I hear in there a melody that I recognised, but could not place. Checking liner notes, it references The Cuckoo's Nest which immediately makes sense. That phase passes and we enter some serious drumming. To be honest I find this a shambles. The best songs on this album were tightly crafted works, using the different influences and contributors but pulling in one direction. This closer is undirected which means that whilst different aspects of it are quite decent the overall impression is not strong.

So, a disappointing close, but overall a very worthwhile album with a few tracks I enjoyed immensely. That title track goes. The other disappointing ones... I think I need another time through, or perhaps to listen to them isolated from the pieces that were so much better.

The BBC review I mentioned is here, by the way.

Alone E.P. - Moist

Track List:

6. I Am (Red Snapper Remix)

Running time: 5 minutes
Released: 2009

I do not know where I picked this up. The "why" is easy enough - Red Snapper. Moist is an... unfortunate name. I know several people who recoil reflexively from the word. In this instance it would seem to refer to a Swedish guy who seems to do a bit of everything.

I only have the one track, which must have been made free somewhere, or distributed through Red Snapper somehow for me to have it.

I can hear the RS influence in the bass (I believe it is a stand-up). The track has a reasonable progression, but nothing outstanding and there is no real melody to speak of which is disappointing. It keeps threatening to get good, but never quite fulfilling on its promise. Decent track, I see no reason to cut it, but neither do I feel like getting all Moist over it.