Religion and death

Swedish pop minstrel El Perro Del Mar (“The Dog of the Sea”) came to indie prominence a couple of years ago with the release of a beautiful and melancholy self titled debut. It was a record that carried with it the air of having been discovered in a grandparent’s musty basement – a sepia time capsule by a long-dead pre-War starlet. Her second album, From the Valley to the Stars, has just hit Australian shores, and it confirms El Perro Del Mar (Sarah Assbring by birth) as a rare talent. I spoke to Sarah on the phone as she sipped a double espresso in her kitchen.

What was the process of making From the Valley to the Stars?

It was a long process. It was different. I wanted it to be different, I knew that I wanted to make a conceptual piece – an entity, a unity of songs, I wanted to make something that was almost expressionist in some kind of way.

I started with that idea, and with these theoretical ideas in my mind I felt I needed to work on a theme, so I started to do research for that while I toured.

When I finally got the time I connected a lot of ideas and impressions and theories. I had them in my notebooks. When I got back to Gothenburg and started writing music I had all these ideas collected and I just started to put the ideas down and put them into music.

It was a different kind of process and a process I didn’t know would be possible… I had all these ideas for songs – I had very specific things written down for the songs – this song will sound like this, this song will sound like this… and then there will be a part of the song where this happens… blah blah blah…

I didn’t know if it was ever going to sound the way that I envisioned or even going to be an actual song – it was all a risky thing.

I was really happy to find pretty fast after I started writing music that it was possible and I was very happy that I made it.

You say the music came after the language. Does this include lyrics? Do you keep a diary or write a lot?

I have tons of notebooks. I separate things a lot. I have a personal diary where I would never ever write any ideas or inspirations – I’m very meticulous about that… I’ve always made that kind of distinction with things.

I know when I go to the place I work or write, if I stumble on a diary note when I’m writing music it distracts me or annoys me so they have to be kept separate.

I keep 3 or 4 notebooks. Some contain inspiration, people, events, other music. Page after page of names, dates, buildings, historical events. Other books contain quotations, poetry. Others contain my own stuff.

So you find a lot of inspiration in places beyond music?

When it comes to music, all the music that means something to me has a very clear heartfulness and soul. That’s what I look for and what I instantly hear and love when I listen to music. I think it’s the same when it comes to other things. I draw inspiration from a lot of different things – architecture very much, literature, photography and math – and art. And a lot of inspiration from various people… Peoples’ lives.

It’s all about the soul and the heart of those people and what they made and the imprints that they left on this world, I think, that I’m drawn to.

You instantly see it when you look at a painting or a building – you see the person behind it and that’s what fascinates me.

There is an innocence about From the Valley to the Stars, which you’ve said before is a conscious thing. Is modern music too cynical?

Yeah… It’s in a lot of modern music. The feeling that I had and wanted to rid myself of was… when you’re into pop music and the short lived world that pop music is about – about fashion, and it’s so well studied, you tend to get cynical and bitter when you’re involved in pop music.

I wanted to make something that wasn’t about that, something good hearted that didn’t have ideas of anything else besides being loving and good hearted… I didn’t want to be a part of the complaining department.

There’s certainly a few religious references on this album, and I think the use of the organ gives it the feeling of a mass, or a wake. Did you have a religious upbringing?

No, definitely not. But I’ve always been – especially in the last few years – drawn to religion . I wanted to explore the reason why that was.

The last few years I have been very – there’s been a lot of deaths taking place – I lost a lot of people the last few years – and I started to think about what relation death had to religion. For me religion was so closely linked to death… the only reason we have religion is because people have always needed and will always need an explanation for why their loved ones disappear, so I wanted to explore that and to see if there was a religion for me or if I’m even capable of believing in something

I realised that I’m not - probably not. Not in a religion per se but maybe [I can believe in] a religion that is simple and almost childlike for me in the way that children celebrate life and celebrate nature.

That’s what I ended up believing when I wrote the album, and that to me is what the album stands for – this simple, naïve celebration of living and being part of the world and part of nature.

You’ve said you wanted to make an “unfashionable” album. Do you think drawing from Christianity is one of the more unfashionable things you could have done?

It is probably yeah. That’s what inspired me as well – why is it [unfashionable]? What’s the reason? I’m always drawn to doing things that people would initially think is weird or not so fashionable maybe, but to me it’s the only thing that I could do, the only thing on my mind, the only thing that I wanted to express, to talk about, so I had no real choice but to be unfashionable.

Are you immune to fashion?

No. I love fashion and trends – I’m very weak when it comes to fashion. But if your meaning is to be a serious artist – or if you take yourself seriously when it comes to your art or your music – I think you have to kind of separate yourself from what goes on in fashion and trends – a little bit at least – if you’re going to really have your own voice, and your own soul and your own heart, if it’s going to be heard through the trendiness.

I try to keep them separated because I thinks that’s the point – by the time you’re done with what you’re doing, something else has happened and the wind has changed, so you really need to have an idea that what you’re making is your own regardless of what is going around.

Any chance you’ll work with Jens Lekman again?

Definitely – I hope so. I’ll probably spend some time in his summer house in the south of Sweden this summer. We’ll probably make something during that time.

Any plans to make it over to Australia in support of the album?

There are, but nothing set. I’m hoping to come in winter. Hopefully.

I’ve never been to Australia, but I’ve been dreaming about it.

It's a giant freaking ball of yarn

Guillemots – Red [2008]

There’s got to be some limits to the notion that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Having endured Guillemots second album, Red, five too many times, I can confirm that one of those limits is a cover photo that features a giant freaking ball of yarn in some kind of corrugated iron tunnel road. It doesn’t help that the yarn is, you guessed it, red, just like the album title. It’s fucking yarn. Seriously.

Guillemots are the musical equivalent of a United Colors of Benetton billboard, featuring a cast of musicians from three continents with funky-ass names like Fyfe Dangerfield and MC Lord Magrao who play lots of instruments, have lots of sex with teenage groupies and, you can only assume, have perfect Colgate smiles and black, black hearts. Red is overproduced, earnest and saccharine – in short, sickening – the kind of record you’d catch your mum secretly adding to her ipod shuffle for those lonely Tuesday afternoons of self-loathing on the treadmill.

Don’t believe me? Download “Cockateels” and when those syrupy strings rise 80 seconds through and Fyfe sings “Cuz deeeeeeealing with the real world/Is sometimes not too fun/When baby says she loves you/Whilst holding up her gun”, just see if you can keep your lunch down.

Dangerfield’s lyrics provide a pretty good microcosm of how craptastic Red is overall. Oblige me another quote, this one from masturbatory lamefest “Standing on the Last Star”: “So Cinderella sold her soul/There’s no such thing as rock n roll/We all stood in the queue and sold our hearts”. There’s so many layers of crapness in these three lines, thinking about it too much is like peeling a rotten onion. And these are just three of dozens of rotten lines to be found on Red.

But it’s not just the lyrics. With their debut, Guillemots proved that they are actually capable of penning a decent tune (see “Trains to Brazil”), but on Red the band is out of ideas. The solution, it seems, was to drench the whole thing in super-slick production and turn the bells and whistles up to 11. The problem is that underneath all the guff, the songs suck.

The Verdict: 3 rotten onions:

Me I'm a Creator

Santogold - Santogold [2008]

Some music sounds like other music. It seems obvious, but it’s a fact that’s ignored by anyone who has ever dismissed a musician on the basis that they sound just like someone else. Those who would castigate music writers for harping on about music beyond their immediate subject matter also miss the same simple point. We understand what is new by reference to what came before, and, even more fundamentally, what is new emerges from what has come before. Elvis Presley doesn’t make much sense without BB King, the Beatles don’t make much sense without Elvis. So it goes.

So there’s no point avoiding the fact that Santogold’s cherry picking fusion of rock, pop-punk, electro and soul is just so MIA. That statement isn’t a denigration, because this debut album from Santogold collaborators Santi White and John Hill is great stuff. Rather than an MIA rip-off, what we’ve got here is a reinterpretation of MIA’s restless, schizo, globalised sound, and the results are pretty glorious.

Santogold opener “L.E.S. Artistes” is the perfect example. This could be a Yeah Yeah Yeahs song, if Karen O was less of a rockstar poseur and more of a sexy bitch, and the rhythm section turned the bass up to 11 and discovered their dancing shoes. Two parts Interpol, one part Beyonce, shake. Best served from a stripper’s exposed bellybutton.

In true pop style, every song on this CD clocks in somewhere between three and four minutes, and there’s so many club ready hits you’d hate to have the job of choosing the singles. Whoever does went with “Creator” first up. Probably the most obviously MIA-influenced track here, Creator’s rowdy electro backing bursts along behind vocalist White, who dominates proceedings with a boisterous call to arms. “Shove It” is the kind of track that will convert teenagers to dub, and the chorus “We think you’re a joke/Shove your hope where it don’t shine” is just too freaking cool.

There’s some great music here, all of which apes established genres without falling into their clichés, but Santi White is the real star of this record. Shame on the music industry and the public for allowing hacks like Delta Goodrem to sing for a living when there’s talents as mercurial as White out there. She’s charismatic, clever, powerful and flexible. That flexibility means she sounds just as perfect in front of reggae (“Shove It”) as rock pop (“I’m a Lady”).

Perhaps one marker of a truly revolutionary musician is the quality of their imitators. In that case, Santogold is the latest bit of evidence for the case that MIA has caused a mini-revolution in popular music. While Santogold might not quite reach the artistic heights of MIA’s output, it explores new pop avenues and gets the party started. What more can you ask?

Vampire Weekend at Bernie's

Anyone lucky enough to have caught Perth’s Snowman live in the last few years can testify to the shrill, “Nightmare on Elm Street” tone that the four-piece brings to the stage. The first time I saw Snowman, vocalist Joe McKee threatened to suck the audience’s blood before the band ripped into a twisted set of what might be described as undead surf-rock, like what might happen if Brian Wilson died and a teenage punk band exhumed him and propped him up on stage, “Weekend at Bernie’s” style.

Having corresponded with Perth’s Snowman, I can confirm that the band probably aren’t undead, but they do have the angle on all things horror rock. Vampire Weekend, eat your heart out: “[Vampire Weekend] don't do [the undead thing] very well,” Snowman told me. “We have the market cornered.”

Having forged a solid Perth following with 2004’s EP Zombies on the Airwaves of Paris (my copy of which, picked up at the CD launch, is splattered with fake blood), and following it up with Triple J airtime and critical plaudits for 2006’s self-titled debut full-length, Snowman are currently prepping the release of The Horse, The Rat and The Swan. In coy fashion that belies the horror shtick, Snowman are “somewhat relieved” about the end of the recording process. But Snowman fans are pretty excited.

Snowman can count indie-criticism heavyweights Pitchfork Media in that fan group. Pitchfork’s article on 2007’s Laneway Festival prominently featured a picture of (other) vocalist Andy Citawarman in the header line. Later, Pitchfork went on to describe Snowman’s Laneway show as the best they saw in Australia, saying “It’s bands like Snowman that give the sense that Australian rock is about to produce something truly unique”. In some circles, this is the indie rock equivalent of knighthood, but not to Snowman: “[We] try to avoid reading these things. It does not effect [sic] the way we write our music.”

So how did they write their music this time around? “We didn't want to fall into any old habits,” Snowman told me. “We also did not want to rely on rock cliches. We had to teach ourselves some restraint in certain aspects of our playing and reinvent the way we played our instruments. We needed to challenge ourselves I suppose... place ourselves outside our comfort zone.”

Whether or not they read their press, statements like this reveal that Snowman are serious about creating unique, engaging music that avoids the rut of old habits. And what we’ve heard of The Horse, The Rat and The Swan so far seems to confirm that the change of direction is working. First single “We Are the Plague” broods, builds and rattles; the trademark screeching is there, but there’s also this mechanical bent that could signify Snowman moving away from zombie rock toward something more post-apocalyptic. “The Blood of the Swan” caresses vocal harmonies over this creepy, beautiful piano riff, it’s like the soundtrack to a night in a haunted gothic mansion.

It also seems like Snowman might have reburied Brian Wilson, or at least kicked some dirt over the corpse. They’ve described the new album as “mechanical” and “tribal”, adjectives that could easily be applied to the music of recent tourmates Liars, whom Snowman told me are “particularly fine gents”. When I put to Snowman that Liars may have been an influence, they said “Along with millions of other things, probably.” But originality seems to be the important point: “The songs have been written from a fairly isolated frame of mind without too much exterior influence....where possible.”

Liars aren’t the only big name that Snowman have toured with in recent years: they’ve also managed to share confined space with indie legends Spoon and Interpol. When I prodded them for tour goss, Snowman wouldn’t be drawn: “They are all regular people in irregular circumstances. As long as you realise this then all is usually fine.”

Snowman are preparing for some irregular circumstances of their own by moving to London in July and sinking their teeth into some extensive touring. Of the move, they told me: “we need to throw ourselves into the deep end...it's that comfort zone thing again.”

Australian music lovers would be well advised to catch Snowman before they hop on that plane. They won’t suck your blood, but they might rock your shit.

The Long Slump

The Long Blondes - Couples [2008]

When a young band makes a great debut album that blows up and makes a pile of cash, you can almost set your watch to the sophomore slump, that shitty second album that never meets expectations. For this reason, when a band’s debut rocks your shit, it’s best to be circumspect in spinning the follow-up. To take just a few British examples from recent years, see The Music, Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party, The Streets, Art Brut…

It’s hard to say exactly why bands dud out the second time around, but there’s a few theories. Some debut albums take shape through years of songwriting and touring, while the follow-up might be squeezed out in the studio on record company time (see Bloc Party). Some debuts might find their poetry in everyday life, a vein of experience that can’t be mined on a second album that was written between snorts of cocaine from the naked bodies of groupies (see Arctic Monkeys). Sometimes, the group might respond to the pressure of sudden success by making an overwrought concept album (see The Streets). Other times, it might even be the listener’s fault: the debut album was so fresh and exciting that when the follow-up doesn’t shake the earth, the listener chucks a sad. Fickle consumers that we are, this happens to the best of us.

Sheffield’s The Long Blondes made a great debut album in 2006 called Someone to Drive You Home and now we’ve got the follow-up, Couples. Does it suffer from the sophomore slump? Honestly, yes. Couples falls into a number of the traps which beset second albums. It feels rushed, the songwriting and lyricism is diminished, it takes an ill-conceived stylistic left turn, and it even features some appalling cover art. But in spite of all this, it remains a partial success.

The beauty of Someone to Drive You Home was mostly about front-woman Kate Jackson. There was nothing too revolutionary about the band’s blend of 60’s pop, punk and new wave, but the album was an absolute delight because The Long Blondes could pen a rock tune catchier than syphilis to back Jackson’s wonderful, forthright, and at times hilarious lyricism. Maybe it’s just a reflection of the patriarchal nature of rock music, but I’d struggle to name another front-woman who sings so incisively about boys, girls and relationships. It sounds lame, but it’s actually a revelation to hear a woman sing lines like: “Where do you go when you’ve finished work/You should have been home an hour ago/And I’ve got your tea laid out like some kind of fifties housewife”.

The problem with Couples is that The Long Blondes sound like they’re unaware of their strengths. The album half-heartedly tries on a bit of dance-punk for size, with mixed results, on show in opener “Century”. Other songs, notably “Here Comes the Serious Bit”, sound at best like B-sides from the debut. But the worst sin of the album is that Kate Jackson no longer has her trademark vocal and lyrical presence. Sadly lacking are the witty lines that defined the debut, replaced by repetitive angst (“Century”, “Round the Hairpin”), and aural filler (“I Liked the Boys”, “Erin O’Connor”). Cheekiness was much more becoming on Jackson than the faux-darkness of Couples songs like “I’m Going to Hell”.

But not all is slump on Couples. “Guilt” exhibits everything that’s great about The Long Blondes, right down to some snarled lyrics about an unfaithful protagonist and her loathed fling, and is a legitimate dance-punk hit. “Too Clever by Half” is sexy as fuck, Jackson eschewing her standard talk-sing for a sultry, half-whispered croon.

At the end of album closer “I’m Going to Hell”, Jackson asks “Would you forgive me now?”. Sure we do, Kate. Just don’t go to hell before you make another album as good as your first.

Super Best Hits

No seals were clubbed in the making of this compilation

Morrissey - Greatest Hits [2008]

Fans of Morrissey and The Smiths know better than most that compilations should be handled with care. Whether the blame lies with profiteering record companies or with Morrissey’s narcissism, it seems that for every proper LP that the man puts his voice to, a compilation of some sort will follow. For the confused, an abridged guide to just some of Morrissey’s compilations follows:

1995: World of Morrissey
1997: Suedehead: The Best of Morrissey
2000: The CD Singles, Vol. 1
2001: The CD Singles, Vol. 2
2001: The Best of Morrissey
2002: The Very Best of Morrissey (my emphasis)
2008: Greatest Hits.

All this collating, repackaging, remarketing, and recycling of old material is palpably ridiculous. But is it wrong? Morrissey has a big target painted onto his back by virtue of his hard-line, limp-wristed positions on stuff like seal clubbing (Canada’s endorsement of which caused him to cancel a 2006 tour of that despotic nation), so he’s always ripe for parody and/or rancour from those cynical carnivores amongst us.

“Greatest Hits” is not exempt from such cynicism. To take the obvious example, it’s an utter misnomer to call a Morrissey album of 2004-2008 material “Greatest Hits”, when the guy’s prolific solo career began in 1987. But this is how it works: every Morrissey single is a hit, an album worth of hits is a compilation. There’s no point fighting it.

Beyond the inevitability of the thing, it’s not fair to make fun of Morrissey for releasing a new compilation every twelve seconds, for two reasons. First, people are obviously buying these records. That means they’ll keep getting made, thanks to capitalism and all, and PETA will keep getting its fat annual check from Morrissey. Second, notwithstanding the constant rape and pillage of his back catalogue, the man continues to make great music.

That Morrissey is still capable of penning a great tune is perhaps the point of “Greatest Hits”. Not everything that he does these days still works, but for an awkward, bullied Manchester kid come poet, musician, and androgynous vegan with three decades of groundbreaking music under his belt, we can allow some false steps.

There’s a couple of false steps here. One of two new tracks featured on the compilation, “That’s How People Grow Up”, is truly grotesque. Crunchy, pub-rock guitar is countered with dramatic-by-numbers rising strings and repeatedly interrupted by this horrible chorus from nowhere. It sounds like something a sleep-deprived Muse would squirt out late night in the studio. “In the Future When All’s Well”, which hit # 17 on the UK charts, is annoyingly repetitious and fails to reach Morrissey’s lyrical potential.

Apart from that, though, we’re in solid territory here, largely because Morrissey has had something of a renaissance of late. His 2004 album “You Are the Quarry” was stellar, and four of its tracks are featured on “Greatest Hits”. The wonderfully titled 2006 album “Ringleader of the Tormentors” didn’t reach Quarry’s zenith, but it’s singles, with the exception of “In the future…”, stand up well. Morrissey’s cover of Patti Smith’s “Redondo Beach” is also a treat.

And of course, the token pre-2004 tracks (all four of them) are fantastic. Thing is though, they’re so good that they threaten to overshadow the new stuff that, in all but name, this compilation is a showcase of. The two 1988 classics, “Suedehead” and “Everyday is Like Sunday”, are pretty much flawless, and feature some of Morrissey’s best poetry as lyrics. His call for nuclear Armageddon in the latter song still strikes me as the most poignant enunciation of subjugated teenage angst I’ve heard.

Don’t buy this album. If you’re interested in discovering Morrissey, pick up a Smiths record and try one of his early solo albums, let’s say 1992’s “Your Arsenal”. If you want to know what Morrissey’s been up to post millennium, buy “You Are the Quarry”. If you hate Morrissey and want him to die, then don’t go to England. He still gets played on the radio there.

Wam, Bam, Shoot Me in the Freakin' Head

Dull town, dull sound

Various Artists - Kiss My WAMi 2008

(see the published version)

Everyone loves the dole, but welfare isn’t always a good thing. That’s one lesson to take out of Kiss My WAMi 2008, the latest installment of the West Australian Music Industry Association’s annual Perth tunefest. There’s other lessons too: for example, if you have to play shitty two-bit hardcore, at least come up with a better name than “Tengo Fuego”. But more on that stuff later. For now, I’d like to make a pitch to the WA government: the West Australian Music Industry Association (WAM) needs to work for the dole.

Seriously. Your average lazy bogan or mentally ill user has to dig a few holes and fill them up again for that precious fortnightly cheque, so why not the State Government funded WAM? An annual CD showcasing WA’s musical talent is a great idea in theory, but every year the damn thing gets more bloated, less focused, prettier on the outside but more rotten at the core, like a depressed, botox-happy doctor’s wife or the Victorian police force.

This year, Kiss My WAMi is a whopping three CDs plus music video DVD. We’re talking 75 songs from almost as many bands. Now, I’m a proud enough Perth boy, but let’s face it: there aint 70 great acts in Perth today. Not even close. For Perth people, that should be no cause for shame: Perth is a small town that’s managed to export some stellar acts in recent years. But there’s a strong sense of overcompensation about this compilation, in the vein of the faded signpost at the roadside edge of your standard provincial backwater which claims that said backwater grows the best beetroot in the world. The beetroot may be good, but too much of it will make you shit purple.

In any case, having more bands on this album than talent is a fundamental error, kind of like inviting fifty people over for a party and only supplying a carton of beer. But Kiss My WAMi 08 suffers from more than just bloating. Conceptually, the thing is confusing. It’s flogged on the inside cover in typically meaningless political wank as a promotion of “Western Australia’s contemporary music scene”, but the choice of acts ranges from arbitrary to sycophantic to really mediocre. And God knows who the audience is for this mutant.

I mean, to take a random example, what the fuck is John Butler Trio doing on this compilation? Is Australia so covetous of minor talents that we can’t admit that John Butler is an American? And hasn’t the guy lived in Byron Bay, a lazy 4000km from Perth, for most of his career? Perth people have to face the fact that John Butler had a stopover in Perth on his way from Cali to Byron two decades ago during which he happened to busk a bit in Freo. He aint West Australian, but worse, he’s filthy rich. Butler made more money than Shannon Noll in 2004, so it’s not an exaggeration to say that he could buy the virginity of the first born daughter of every other act on this compilation, with enough petty cash left over for mung beans and tofu from an overpriced Byron eatery. Note to WAM and the WA government: John Butler doesn’t need the promotion [blog edit: please see sickening Rolling Stone cover above].

There’s three other points of Kiss My WAMi 08 where exposed bands are flaunted seemingly for the hell of it, but they aren’t as egregious as John Butler’s inclusion. The Panics excellent “Get Us Home” gets a gig on CD 1, as does the Waifs “Stay” and Little Birdy’s “After Dark”. Now, normally the Waifs make me want to hop into the bath with a plugged in toaster, but it must be admitted that when they ditch the Aussie blues and roots masturbation and write a proper pop song, as they do here, they aren’t half bad. As to Little Birdy, the less said about them the better.

There’s a lot of bad spread over these four discs, so much that it’s probably unfair to single out certain bands. Perhaps the best way to explain it is to say that every significant genre which is represented gets the apprentice butcher treatment many times over. Hair metal veterans Voyager, for example, don’t translate well to tape, because without the sense of humour inherent in their live shows, there’s just a very sincere, highly embarrassing wad of cum-soaked tissues jutting from the dustbin. Streetlight play low-rent emo for fat teenage groupies. The Justin Walshe Folk Machine sound like a Goon-drunk yobbo taking a wet shit on Johnny Cash’s grave in broad daylight. The Silents sound like the Vines without Asperger’s syndrome: that is, poseurs without even a hint of credibility. The list goes on.

There’s stuff to like here, but the problem is that you have to wade knee deep through diseased floodwater to reach the small islands of listenable music. In that regard, stalwarts Red Jezebel provide a workmanlike track, as do Zombie-obsessed freaks Snowman. Eleventh He Reaches London unjustly suffer by being lodged between metal cliché machine Pyromesh and the unlistenable Tengo Fuengo, but their 10 minute track is nevertheless a standout. Rollerskates and Delta Forse both do what Aussie hip hop does best by laying down chilled out Sunday barbecue tracks, notwithstanding that the boys from Delta Forse sound like genetic clones of Perth hip hop progenitors Downsyde. New Rules for Boats are refreshingly good.

Here’s the point: there’s maybe one CD worth of good, fresh, creative music on this four disc beast. For those acts that make the cut, it’s just bad luck that they’re forced to share space with some real hacks. By taking such a liberal, kitchen sink approach to its annual compilation, WAM is just hurting good Perth artists and alienating its possible audience beyond Perth music scenesters. And I can’t get behind that.