May Album Reviews Roundup
May saw the Echoes And Dust DJs released from their darkened room and out in to the world of gigdom. They mostly behaved themselves and the inaugral Sunkan Dymonds night was widely regarded to have been a rip-roaring success, £500 being raised for Macmillan Cancer Care in the process. The result of all such breathless excitiment has been that we've hardly had a chance to pen to paper this month, so here's a few things we missed but deserve an honourable mention:
Apparently, The Commune Of Rochefourchat take their name from the smallest 'commune' in France where, as of the 1999 census, had only one inhabitant. I don't know about anyone else but that sounds like one old, lonely hippy to me. The name was chosen as the band was originally just one man too, Matt Flint, but as things have gone along he's managed to recruit a few fellows to help him out, unlike our sad Frenchman. The result is this self titled and self released album of throughly engaging, chirpy indie pop with deep Nineties influences; there's some Smiths in there, a chunks of Elbow and Suede and a dash of something that I can't quite put my finger on but it might be Geneva or Longview. A very enjoyable summertime listen.
Hear that the main man from Lungfish releases solo album, awesome, you might think? Double album of this alleged former Satanist’s conversations with God, you say? Uh oh, you might think. And you may well be right to think that as ‘Say God’ from Daniel Higgs is a singular piece of work and no mistake. I can only imagine the pitch meeting for this one and must assume that Mr Higgs has built up a mighty store of credit at Thrill Jockey for them to be taking a punt on this because it’s not exactly packed with radio friendly unit shifters. What it is full of is extraordinarily long, hypnotic sermons, chanted, spoken and repeated until it reaches a certain kind of scary beauty, the arrangements are stripped down to the point of emptiness and what is left is a mortal man starkly staring his maker in the face. Quite the opposite of a fun album of summer tunes yet strangely compelling none the less.
Thankfully, Danny Laycock is a completely different kettle of fish. I say ‘thankfully’ only because I don’t think my poor, atheist brain could have coped with another hour or so of Higgsian God bothering, so it’s just as well that the aforementioned Mr Laycock sits right up the other end of the jolly spectrum. ‘The Exciting New Sound Of Danny Laycock’ is very much in the happy go lucky singer songwriter mould, plenty of 60's references and the like and reminds me somewhat of Noah & The Whale before they got all heartbroken and miserable. It may be an exciting new sound to Danny but to me it doesn’t seem to break a lot of fresh ground generally, that said it is a pleasant listen and there’s certainly the kernel of good songwriting talent at the heart of it.
Les Sages are four brothers from Salt Lake City who pass vocal duties around between them, thus having no lead singer per se. On first listen I was tempted to discard ‘Share This’as just another slab of the kind of pop, indie, punky mish mash that you hear quite a lot of these days but there was just something that caught my attention and made it stand apart from the crowd. The interplay of vocals is exceptional, they harmonise exquisitely and perform all sorts of cleverness as they toss songs around from brother to brother mid song, and musically there’s just enough going on under the hood to keep the listeners attention, including some pretty spectacular drumming, although they do have that American tendancy towards an over-wrought ballad. Certainly more commercially pitched than most of the stuff we cover at E&D Towers but I can see these boys tearing down the house at a festival like Reading no problem at all.
Last up this month, but most definitely not least, is ‘Cerebral Frontier’ by Belfast’s Jason Mills, also known as Deadman. Cerebral this certainly is, six tracks of thoughtful, innovative, eclectic electronic and space rock this is one of those records that rewards more the more attention the listener pays it. Opener ‘Amygdala’ is a pleasantly queasy affair with squeeze box to the fore and second track ‘Lysergic Lasso’ a fun, lolloping stoned electronica work out, but it’s the third that suddenly make one sit up and take notice. ‘Pathos’ is a six minute epic of genuine, hairs on the back of the neck, intensity. Watch this guy, greatness lies here.