Album Of The Year

There were many candidates for this esteemed award, from the critical darlings from These New Puritans to the hipster-despised Oasis (Dig Out Your Soul being a work of psych-disoriented brilliance) amongst many others. While it has been somewhat of a lean year in terms of monumental releases, one that has gone seemingly unnoticed in the indie press is the latest from political rapper Immortal Technique.

Already a confirmed fan of the incendiary one, The 3rd World was high in my expectations throughout the year. However, I didn't dream that it would reach my top 10, never mind the top of my list. I can only think that its strange format (album + mixtape) has hindered its end of year appreciation, because listened from start to finish its manifesto-like properties are breathtaking in execution - fulfilling the promise of Revolutionary Vols 1+2 and ending any lingering questions about Tech's (admittedly, at times) long-winded flow. Linking the corporate world's exploitation of the third world with its stranglehold over the Hip Hop industry, The 3rd World is both Tech's most vicious and most eloquent, (as well as mostly blackly comical) exemplified by passages like: "Now you know this ain't a trend or a fashion/This is my life and my passion/Fuck trying to cash in/I need more than advancements and a record mansion/So while you little house niggas are singin' and dancin'/I'll kill you and take your land like an Israeli expansion."

Setting this record apart from the rest was its format, (the mixtape structure loose enough for the large conceptual scope to be explored from various angles) its connection with the audience and fans, (sorry, Tech doesn't have those, he has "soldier supporters") catchy, adaptable beats, and most importantly, Tech's piercingly intelligent lyrics. "Open Your Eyes" is a discourse-like treatise against privatisation and corporate control of people and resources - and its lyrics are so engrossing, its subject matter so vital, it almost made The 3rd World my album of the year single-handed. All hail the Harlem Chavismo!

A Review of Lykke Li's "Youth Novels"

Since Li seems to have featured in quite a few end of year top 50s, there's no better time than now to throw in my too late, unpublished review of the album written for Cluas:

At the (admittedly late coming) time of writing, Lykke Li has been buried beneath an avalanche of adjectives, comparisons, hyperbole and lazy references; she’s everything from the latest in a Swedish invasion to the heir of the knowing naïf role once personified by Altered Images’ Clare Grogan. Strange then, that listening to Youth Novels one can’t help sensing the void between the hype and the restrained nature of the music. This is pop of course – a lot of the tracks are as easily listenable as anything by fellow Scandinavian and arch melodicist Jens Lekman - but they are balanced by a raw emotionalism that finds expression through both Li’s voice and the music, the Scandinavian angle solidified by the producer, Peter Bjorn & John’s Bjorn Yttling.

“Melodies & Desires,” is a clever introduction, a re-interpretation of the standard love song. With sub-zero electronics drifting behind her, Li recites “poetic” erotica in a direct robotic monotone. Rarely in music are lyrics like “Love is the harmony/Desire is the key/Love is the symphony/Come sing some with me” intoned with the passion of an instruction manual, but the song is an astute choice as the introduction to Youth Novels.

As the album progresses, it becomes clear that the accompaniment is as prominent as Li herself. While “Melodies & Desires” showcases the electronic, it’s when the organic elements enter the fray that things become both interesting and eventually bland. The sax on “Dance Dance Dance,” the trumpet on “Everybody But Me” and the pianos littering the album work as a marriage of the electronic and the acoustic, mirroring the clinical analysis the lyrics offer to the most emotional subjects. “Hanging High” is the epitome of this approach; simultaneously sparse and melancholically melodic, the carrying bassline, restrained ornamental instrumentation and Li’s most expressive vocal performance combine to make the song the highlight of the album.

When it results in a song as good as “Hanging High” the instrumental support can only be praised, but not every song is its equal. Eventually the tracks start to run into one another, each sonic trademark becoming vaguer as the running time progresses. Increasingly, the accompaniment dominates the album rather than being an aural expression of Li’s lyrics - the use of production techniques sliding from sublimely restrained to rampantly gimmicky, as if Yttling saw a chance to try out any new idea in real time. This extends to the vocals meshing with the music rather than being placed to the fore, a cardinal sin when arranging for a singer as stylish as Li. As it is, the best places to hear that much-lauded voice are “Tonight,” “Hanging High,” and “Time Flies,” where Li’s distinctiveness raises her above her accompaniment.

Youth Novels possesses too many positive aspects to be judged a failure. There is an atmospheric quality to the production and arrangements that makes short listens very rewarding. Undeniably heavy on hooks, each song is capable of making the austere, skeletal production seem triumphant, never sacrificing eccentricity for commercial appeal. It’s only on longer listens that the negative characteristics become subtly apparent. There is a sense of each song having to include a new demonstration of studio trickery at the expense of melodic innovation. Therefore, while it can’t be called a truly triumphant record, Youth Novels has enough to mark out Lykke Li as a dissenting voice in the female pop pantheon. If it has one effect, it is to disqualify any notion of her as an heir to the faux-naïve role countless others have stepped into in the past, at the same time allowing a glimpse past that defining voice into a promising future for devotees of leftfield pop.

The forgotten joys of Magic And Medicine

Over the past few weeks I’ve been re-listening to The Coral’s 2003 release Magic & Medicine, their second record best known for the hit single “Pass It On.” Unquestionably a brilliant example of The Coral’s ability to create perfect singles, it’s also best heard in the context of the album, alongside self-doubt, insanity and suicide; the perfectly integrated opposites of abundant melody and lyrical dissonance that make the record work so well. “Pass It On” isn’t the only perfect pop offered on the album – indeed there’s at least 3 other contenders for most tuneful song – but the ominous mood pervading the recording makes it impossible to simply call this a pop record.

Indeed, the eerie thread running throughout manages to immerse even those poppy tunes in a sense of nostalgic despondence. The haunted vibe is established immediately with the sylvan beauty of “In The Forest,” a bleak song closer to a gothic romance than a love song. By the middle of the album the atmosphere has been made definite, “Secret Kiss” sharing a similar mood to the opening track, co-opting the prominent organ but positioning it within a basic pop song structure. Following these is the probable stand-out “Bill McCai,” probably the catchiest single ever written about a white collar worker’s suicide.

While it is absurdly reductionist to divide an album’s songs by mood, in this case it’s also basically impossible. Here, the “happy” songs and the “sad” songs run into one another, every upbeat melody undercut with regret and tortured nostalgia – see “Liezah,” one of the most perfectly-crafted pop songs on the album, but also the most pained (see the twist at the end, as our narrator tells us “every time I think of Liezah/I break down and I start crying/Although she tore me apart/There’s still a place for that girl in my heart”). Melded to a rustic combination of bass and acoustic guitar, the results are irresistible.

With all this in mind, the reasons why Magic & Medicine isn’t highly-regarded seem implausible. There is a particular tendency to fob it off as The Coral’s in-between album; the one after the crazed experimentation of the debut and the coming stylistic maturity of 2005’s The Invisible Invasion. While it is true that it lies between the two, this is almost certainly a good thing – there is a cohesion The Coral lacked, the songs are better crafted (and less prone to descend into Cossack dance insanity) but at the same time have the imagination and restlessness downplayed on The Invisible Invasion. The other, more obvious criticism is that the album has its share of filler and lower quality songs that keep it from being a classic. Admittedly, the first few times I listened I had much the same opinion. The years and hundreds of listens since then have caused me to re-evaluate that opinion radically, (although I will concede that I’m still not a fan of “Confessions Of ADDD,” the anti-climatic closer) recognizing the subtle touches and effects in those I hadn’t appreciated before. While it would be moronic to term those “difficult” tracks as being objectively “growers,” that was certainly the case with me.

Magic & Medicine is not, and will never be widely acclaimed. Viewed as neither an outright disaster or as a monumental classic, it occupies the critical middle-ground, the equivalent of I Should Coco or Expecting To Fly – in this zone the transition to the status of all-time great is impossible. In a way, this seems only fitting – even The Coral have long since moved on – due in part to the point it occupies in the band’s evolution and its fairly sinister themes. Right now I wish The Coral would revert to the indie-psych-folk-country-blues-pop-etc sound of old, rather than the scaled-down indie that characterised latest release Roots & Echoes. Listening to Magic & Medicine could make anyone wish the same.