Number 3 of 2003 — Toktok vs. Soffy O

Twenty eight years after the formation of Cabaret Voltaire – one of the most important groups in the history of industrial and then electronic music.

Twenty two years after the formation of seminal Detroit group Cybotron, which provided the first home for the recordings of techno godfather Juan Atkins.

Twenty one years after the release of Dare! by the Human League.

We have with this album something which finally brings all of these different facets of the same genre fusing together into one captivating package.

We’re talking 2002. The biographies of Toktok and Soffy O are somewhat difficult to ascertain. Primarily because all that I can find is written in German. Or you can cheat and read the reviews at Amazon. Toktok started life in Berlin in 1993 inspired by the hardcore Spiral Tribe collective of the UK. Made up of Benjamin Weiss and Fabian Feyerabendt, they spent many years making punk electronica for illegal raves and releasing endless amounts of vinyl, notably on Ellen Allien’s BPitch Control label. Soffy O (Sophia Larsson Ocklind) moved from Sweden to Berlin in 1999 and joined with Toktok for live shows and to flesh out the otherwise vocal free music. Ultimately signed to East-West, this debut album was released in October 2002.

The overriding feel of this album is simultaneously playful and serious (listen to the lyrics). There’s a minimalism to each track. Using the barest instrumentation required to carry each song exposes the mastery of their songwriting. The second track Neighbour with its sparse analog strings which blossom into a chorus with addition of one simple buzzing pad line. Genius. I cannot really hope to convey this in this review. You just have to hear the album.

Jean is seems to be some bizarre pastiche of Hazell Dean and Dead or Alive, revolving around a filtered loop, a barely there keyboard rhythm section all for a song about a pair of jeans. Soffy O’s vocals throughout the album fit into the classic electroclash mould of slightly disinterested, sleepy, sexy vocals, except in this case, she can really sing.

Things get dark on Go, a lower than low bassline and crisp clinically clear percussion and synth effects. But these then drop out for a the introduction of a divine monophonic melody. The vocals come in, together with more monophonic leads or chorus lines and I’m holding up my TUNE placard. Incredible. Siamese Twins continues the darkness with a more atonal feel.

Club hit Missy Queen’s Gonna Die has an octave jumping bassline which leads up to the chorus and the gradual introduction of more and more percussion. Experience the classic delay between the key change on the vocal and the backing track. Sublime.

I wrote about songwriting earlier. Changes has a chorus which would be fine elsewhere, but there’s the addition of a Casio or D50 string line and everything is lifted a hundred fold. Follow this with a look at The Lookalikes – “we all look the same, we’re all lookalikes”, with its “don’t wanna be ignored at the door” take on club life and its inevitable boredom “we just wanna go home, so bored, so bored, so bored”. Deconstruct or dive into the mechanics of the song and you’ll find it consists primarily of a bouncing bassline, ancient synth horns, percussion and that damn glorious string pad again – albeit this time in chords! This is so mindbendingly beautiful.

Sixpack and Talkative appear to be Cabaret Voltaire covers, such is the similarity with the Sheffield duo. But they serve as useful reminders of how far music has come in the last twenty eight years. Even if sounds just the same as it did back then. It’s at once innovative yet retro. One Of These Places demonstrates this by effortlessly moving into deep house territory and then back out again.

So there are the highlights. There is one fly in the ointment. The final track A Pointless Life appears to be a studio reworking of what feels to be a live track. Whilst I have no doubt that this speed punk workout would be great live, it doesn’t work on the album. That said, there’s no other album of 2003 that hit me with its majesty as immediately as this one did.

Number 4 of 2003 — Throwing Muses: Throwing Muses

Back in 1980, when step-sisters Kristin Hersh and Tanya Donelly were 13 or so, they formed a band called Kristin Hersh and The Muses, although Kristin denies they were ever called that. Joining Kristin and Tanya (both guitar and vocals) were Becca Blumen (drums), and Elaine Adamedes (bass). They released their first demo in 1983. When Becca left, long-time friend David Narcizo took over on drums and the band became Throwing Muses in 1983-4. There were further line up changes over the years: most notably, Tanya Donelly who left in June 1991, because she was unhappy with contributing just a few songs to each album – with Kristin writing the remainder, and numerous bass players (Elaine Adamedes was replaced by Leslie Langston in 1985. Fred Abong replaced Leslie in 1990, and in around 1991-2, Fred left to join Tanya’s new band Belly. Fred was replaced by Bernard Georges.

Throwing Muses released many critically acclaimed albums and EPs during their most productive years. Their untitled first album in particular (1986), and The Fat Skier EP (1987). However, my favourite remains House Tornado (1988). The tour that accompanied that album was the first time I saw them live (this first UK tour was a double-headliner with Pixies), and was unfortunately the only time they played many of the songs from that album. Kristin occasionally played the exquisite You Cage as a solo encore to their gigs, but the rest of that album has been pretty much ignored for Kristin’s personal reasons.

Throwing Muses quit the music business after the release of their eighth album Limbo in 1996. The band wasn’t making any money and as much as they loved touring and loved making music they had to call it a day. “The band was barely breaking even, and it just didn’t seem to make sense financially to continue Throwing Muses as a living entity,” as Kristin remembers. On 6 May 2000, Throwing Muses got together in Boston, MA for a live reunion they titled “Gut Pageant”. Put together for the band’s online fan base, fans and band members mingled and enjoyed each other’s company for a day — “Like some kind of musical company picnic”, says Kristin. Over 1,000 of the Muses faithful travelled from all over the world to attend, some from as far away as New Zealand. Tanya Donelly played with the band for the first time in almost 10 years and Bob Mould opened the show with a surprise acoustic set. The band played, taking song requests from the audience, as did Kristin solo, and so a spark was lit for something a little more permanent.

This album, Throwing Muses is the result. Recorded in late 2001 (but not released until 2003), the album was recorded in three consecutive weekends. Kristin says: “We made a ‘quick and dirty’ record. It sounds very much like us — like we really do, as three people playing together in a room. Because we literally couldn’t afford the studio time it would have taken to produce it, it was as if we were tricked into making the record we always wanted! We didn’t rehearse before we entered the studio. We were playing by the seats of our pants. It’s a very exciting way to record, but we’ve played together for so many years, that it also felt solid and secure. It was nice to be home again.” and “I think we should have been making records like that all along. There were very few overdubs, and no heavy-handed mixing.” The album also marked the return of Tanya Donelly, who popped in to the sessions to add backing vocals for some of the tracks. The earlier Throwing Muses albums were authored between Tanya and Kristin, save the song Two Step that was credited to Throwing Muses. The reunion of the band is epitomised by the fact that the writing of the whole album is credited to Throwing Muses alone.

The first thing that struck me about this album is how close it sounds to their first album. There’s an intensity that was lost in their later recordings, primarily because of the production. Here it’s very raw – you can here when Kristin’s a little too far away from the mic for example. The opener Mercury introduces so many typical Muses moments, two-speed driving rhythms, military style drumming (which is what David originally learnt before joining the band), and screwy but beautiful backing vocals from Tanya. Pretty or Not is nice and slow, until the chorus kicks in, where we have scorching guitars ripping across the soundstage… left, right plus a solo in the middle “Pretty or not, on top or underneath, you’re never, never out of reach.”. Writing this now, this brings to mind the efforts of Kristin’s new band 50 Foot Wave.

One thing that’s very clear from the album is that there are more ‘pop’ songs. Civil Disobedience has a gorgeous singalong chorus, with a classic run-in to it, but elsewhere the arrangement harks back to Muses of old. It’s as if the album is both a new direction, a retrospective and a compilation album. Later in the album Ephinany has similar radio friendly choruses, with backing vocals from Tanya, but the rest of it isn’t radio friendly at all. Pandora’s Box strolls along until the chorus picks up into a stingingly spine-tingling moment. Kristin sings “I’m right behind you”, but alliterates it as “I’m right be-he-hind you” and it’s a masterstroke, which she repeats elsewhere in the song as the repeat of the chorus at the end of the song has completely different lyrics.

Status Quo is one of the tracks that you can dive into. Swimming around the guitars and drums, reminding me of Say Goodbye from The Real Ramona, but then the melody drops and we scream into “There are sapphires in the trees and the moths as big as bats. Lucky me, to have all that. What do you have on your mind?”.

Kristin has always had a way with words. Speed and Sleep has plenty of choice phrases that just blow me away. The opening is:

“Was a man took a hand, cleared the ground
Dug a hole we called home
Sprawled here
Eleven years, forty-four seasons
We came unstuck and it stung.”

Backed up by throbbing heavy guitars — Throwing Muses have been compared to Black Sabbath on more than one occassion (apparently it’s all to do with the chords) — and picked melody lines. It’s extraordinary that Kristen can write delightful delicate solo acoustic works and then write music as caustic as this is.

Portia has the line of the album, oft quoted in reviews, so I’ll quote it here: “Like frat boys who sleep together, we party better”. And although it’s foreign to me, somehow, I know exactly what she means.

“I’m so mad i could spit” (Solar Dip)

Los Flamingos, originally called Lost Flamingos, is somewhat of a throwaway song, which I don’t particularly like as it sounds like an abridged outtake from the Red Heaven sessions. The lengthy coda could be evidence of this.

Then there’s Half Blast and we’re into a seemingly epic Throwing Muses track. Slowly building from sparse drums and guitars which then rip into a luscious chorus using the same upping the bpms technique as before. There’s the first part of the chorus. Then, when you think it can’t get any harder, an extra overdrive guitar line drops in and the chorus takes off further. “Come outside, everyone’s outside”. Truly incredible. And Tanya’s vocals make it sound even sweeter. The epic feel of Half Blast comes to fruition on the final track Flying. The opening lines – almost a chorus – speak volumes. Is it about Kristin’s family, the band, her children, her husband, or all of these things?

“Wig out on me
One more time, I swear
We’ll take this outside
I take you to pretty places
You’d think you’d just take the rest in stride
Wrong
But if I’d known fucking with a payphone would’ve got me this
I would’ve tried sooner”

However, there are other lyrics that seem to sum up everything I love about this band. There’s a gothic shoe-gazing feel to the close of the song which indicates that perhaps this is the final song that Throwing Muses will record. The lyrics themselves and the way they are delivered convey an inevitability to this. It is desperately sad.

“I make you so sad
What can I do, what can I do?
I worry so bad
What can I do, what can I do?

I make you so mad
What can I do, what can I do?
I want you so bad
What can I do, what can I do?”

Number 5 of 2003 — The Postal Service: Give Up

Serendip was the name of the country now known as Sri Lanka. It is also the root of the word serendipity coined by Horace Walpole in 1754 based around a fairy tale titled The Three Princes of Serendip. The relevance is here because, according to Mr Walpole, the princes were "always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of". It’s by serendipity that I discovered this album.

Give Up is the second collaboration between Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and Dntel’s Jimmy Tamborello. Their first collaboration was for a track on the Dntel album Life is Full of Possibilities (which I must get sometime). If you know Dntel and Death Cab for Cutie you can guess the sound of the album. What we have here is a mix of synth-pop that veers towards Intelligent Dance Music territory (discombobulated breakbeat to you and me) and indie songwriting of the ilk found on Radiohead’s OK Computer. I discovered The Postal Service whilst grazing through the multitude of music channels on Sky Digital.

Named because of the way they worked on the album, contributing the music (Tamborello) and the vocals (Gibbard) individually and passing the working results between each other via air mail, The Postal Service have produced an album of understated beauty that demonstrates a high level of musical proficiency and cohesiveness which is lyrically accomplished (aside from one track) — although I didn’t really appreciate this until I saw the lyrics written down. The District Sleeps Alone Tonight launches the album with a tale of meeting an ex-partner in the context of their new relationship – "And I am finally seeing why I was the one worth leaving". It sets the tone for the rest of the album, low-fi synth basslines, electronic drums, lush hushed vocals, harmonies and occasional guitar licks. The single Such Great Heights has interesting lyrics with incredible imagery "I am thinking it’s a sign that the freckles / In our eyes are mirror images and when / we kiss they’re perfectly aligned / and I have to speculate that God himself / did make us into corresponding shapes like / puzzle pieces from the clay".

Things turn a bit iffy on Sleeping In, a song about the assassination of JFK with lyrics I daren’t repeat here, they’re pretty bad aside from the chorus. However, Nothing Better repairs the situation with a story predating the first on the album "Will someone please call a surgeon / who can crack my ribs and repair this broken heart / that you’re deserting for better company?". It’s essentially a bittersweet, sometime humorous duet between Ben Gibbard and Jen Wood (who I know nothing about apart from the fact she does indie folk music and, with Jenny Lewis, provides backing vocals on many of the tracks on this album).

Recycled Air ditches the personal introspection for the fear of flying. Clark Gable comes across like some French film shown on BBC4 "..I’ve been waiting since birth to find / a love that would look and sound like a movie". We will become Silhouettes is more serious, addressing the fallout of a nuclear accident, all arranged to a boppy happy children’s tune, with ba ba ba ba lyrics. The sub-pop feel of This Place is a Prison uses disturbed synthetic squelched loops rather like reined-in Aphex Twin tracks, adding live break beats towards the end. The romance exhibited in The District Sleeps Alone Tonight, Such Great Heights, Nothing Better and Clark Gable reappears for Brand New Colony, which reminds me lyrically of A Man Called Adam’s track Porcupine. The album closes with a furious demented instrumental Natural Anthem or so it appears. Lyrics do appear right at the end in a wrong-key for the musical accompaniment. But this all makes sense. The album is light and dark, dark and light, sweet and sour, and everything makes sense. Whether they’ll get together for another album remains to be seen, but this one is one huge happy accident.

Number 6 of 2003 — Kristin Hersh: The Grotto

Kristin Hersh’s solo life (her ‘day job’ as she calls it) started when Throwing Muses were still together as a band. She released Hips and Makers on 24 January 1994. The same day that Underworld released Dubnobasswithmyheadman. I know this because I remember buying them together, or rather getting a friend to buy them for me, who then delivered them to me at the White Hart pub in Chessington. It was my birthday that week. Hips and Makers was just Kristin, with her guitars, and the occasional cello. It was stunning. Until last year, she had released four other solo albums, including the mail-order only Murder, Misery and then Goodnight which is an album of traditional but scary Appalachian folk songs, arranged by Kristin. The Grotto is her fifth solo album.

The Grotto is an area in Providence, Rhode Island. Kristin and her family moved there for six months to be with her mother after Kristin’s step-father died. Kristin says "I was worried that my mother wouldn’t make it through, so we moved into The Grotto, to bring her the babies and sort of bring her back to life. It felt like sleep walking at the time. And then when I got pregnant… death and life at the same time." Whilst this isn’t essential to understand The Grotto, it helps. The Grotto is a deeply personal piece of work, full of small insights into Kristin’s life and how she cannot bear to be without her family. She once remarked to her husband Billy "these songs seem to be about how I can’t leave you".

For this album, Kristin was joined by Howe Gelb (from Giant Sand) on piano, and Andrew Bird (Bowl of Fire, ex-Squirrel Nut Zippers) on violin. All the guitars were played by Kristin. It’s probably her most ambient, spacious album. Howe seems to caress his pianos more than play them. Splashes of notes here and there. Hammered notes, strummed strings. Andrew’s violin tends to sweep around songs rather than playing with them or against them. It sounds very spontaneous. Both Howe and Andrew have toured with Kristin as part of her solo live line-up. It shows. The album was itself recorded over three consecutive days, then mixed over another set of three days. I’ll just pick out a few notable tracks from this album, otherwise I’d go on for pages.

So, The Grotto starts off with Sno Cat. It’s about the aftermath of an argument between Billy and Kristin. Kristin couldn’t sleep so she went out and started driving around, and she sees a man on a Sno Cat. The opening lines are "A man made of butterfat / Careening around on a Sno-Cat". You wonder what it’s about. It’s only on the last verse that it all becomes clear. She "decided to forgive and forget". All is well chez-Hersh. Kristin is accompanied on this song by Howe although only with a few throwaway piano notes as a coda. It works well though.

Deep Wilson is a song that will puzzle me and enchant me for years. As far as I can deduce, it documents a night time tryst probably when Kristin was a teenager. The chorus is majestic: a chord change, the strings take off and then a piano comes in. "Knees pressed against the leather couch / I couldn’t find my bra and / You were so familiar". Kristin has never written her lyrics down, nor her music. She rarely explains what her songs are about — her excuse is that she doesn’t know anyway. We can make them whatever we want them to be.

The Grotto has been criticised for not having much in the way of Songs. Much of the songs appear to be all verse, no choruses and in some cases they appear to end arbitrarily. Casual listeners won’t realise that this album is as much about the words as it is the music. When Kristin’s finished what she has to say, the song ends. It’s as simple as that. True, choruses are rare, but the musical themes repeat as choruses would do. So you’ll find that there is harmony. Another issue is that of rhyme and delivery of the lyrics. Kristin’s never been one to slavishly rhyme. She merely puts what she has to say to music. There are recurring themes (snakes in particular) and playful lyrical twists which have always been in her music. The delivery of the lyrics is used as the method of keeping them in touch and in time with the music. This means that you have to listen to the songs, otherwise they just appear skewed and peculiar.

I’ll skip over Snake Oil. It’s a fine song which seems to continue the themes picked up on Deep Wilson. I could be wrong. The Grotto is an extremely ambiguous album.

Vanishing Twin begins with a gorgeous piano intro which then drops to Kristin’s familiar round and round guitar plucking: walking chords picked out note by note, with a separate sequence of notes for a bassline. The chord change is the evidence of the end of a verse, then reverts to the next verse. Howe does some piano bashing towards the end, but in the nicest possible way.

Vitamins V uses the same chord change trick as an intro to a chorus, but this time there is a chorus "This lukewarm catastrophe / Is a recipe for rebirth / Or so I overheard". Gentle music, hard lyrics. The juxtaposition works perfectly: "I’m still staring through the fish tank / And a fist full Valium". After the second chorus, the music picks up, and Kristin voice is raised. Strummed piano strings accompany the last couple of verses. Once Kristin used to scream her anger and whilst she still raises her voice, it’s now creamy and warm – all the sharp edges have been worn away.

Arnica Montana was probably a pop-song in a previous life. It’s a blast of off-kilter improvised bluesy piano guitar and violin. It builds and builds from a fairly sparse arrangement to an all out stomp. My only disappointment is that it’s not Kristin playing the piano. She can play piano, as shown on Walking in the Dark from Throwing Muses’ second album House Tornado. It’s my favourite track on the album at the moment. Kristin says it’s about being on tour. Billy does the driving and Kristin looks after the pets, teaches the kids and does the cooking. They really do bring their whole family on tour.

If you want further evidence of a master (mistress?) of her art, look no further than Milk Street. This track starts out with an entire instrumental verse and chorus. You think it’s going to be an instrumental. Then half way into the second verse, Kristin starts singing: "You are good / You are kind / You are drunk all the time / But never drunk enough". She’s a funny woman. But later: "As you’re trying to shield / Your glass newborn from the dodgeballs / And aching for children / That you have never seen". She can be terribly serious too.

The album closes with Ether. A song that’s typical of the album. It’s very mournful and it’s this feeling that I’m left with after listening to it. An album full of little pieces of life, small anecdotes and minor tragedies. An album that you won’t want to listen to continuously – it’s too personal for that, too emotionally involving. I just dig it out every couple of months so it can cut me into little pieces and put me back together again all shiny and new.

Number 7 of 2003 — Evanescence: Fallen

Ah, the Amy Lee Band. A bit of a surprise this one, and it certainly wasn’t on this list the first time I listened to it. It all sounded the same. Same arrangements. Same guitars. Same everything. But there’s more to it than that — you just need to dig. It’s this digging that keeps me coming back to this album. I could play it for a hundred years and never get bored of it. Do you want your music handed to you on a plate? Well I don’t. I want to work for it sometimes. Music is my life, and I like life to be interesting, to challenge me and to make me think. This album does all of that for me. I didn’t write "predominantly secular" in an earlier post for nothing, you know

Four myths about Evanescence:

• That it’s all about the guitars. Not true. It’s all about the voice. Amy can sing. Really sing. Dido cannot (well, apart from four well chosen notes). No Amy’s voice doesn’t grate – it just means you’ve got a poor hi-fi.
• That it’s nu metal. Not true. The beard count is too low for that.
• That they are spiritually neutral. Well, that’s what Amy reckons. Please, who is she trying to kid? Sure, the teenies that buy this might just pick up on Tourniquet, as a bit, whisper it: religious, but this album is drenched in their faith. Don’t be so defensive!
• That it’s depressing. Not for me it ain’t. I’ve been in some dark places at times, and come through them.

Now, I won’t pretend I buy into the beliefs documented in this album, so there will be no in depth examination of the lyrics for this review. However, I will say this: why do secular bands steer clear of spiritual terminology? I could write a whole blog, never mind one entry about this issue. Does life mean nothing to them? Yeah, like it’s all Charles Darwin and Stephen Hawking. I don’t buy that: the scientific struggles and wild hypotheses caused by String Theory and the race for a Single Unified Theory is evidence of that. To think I wanted to be an astrophysicist when I was in my early teens. Sheesh! Just leave it alone.

Anyway, back to the album in hand. This is their second album, after Origin, of which some tracks have been reworked for this album. Fallen irritates me no end. So, why is it in my albums of 2003? Because of the potential. Strip away the production and you have two people who write proper songs (that’s not meant to be patronising). There’s talent here and it needs harnessing. Aside from the occasional misfired lyrics, which may be there just to scan well, Amy’s words are beautiful, heartfelt and real. What she sings she means. The scarce times when we have the opportunity to hear just voice and piano shows what’s good about Ben and Amy.

Musical points to note: The orchestral bridge between Tourniquet and Imaginary. The second best bridge I heard last year. (The best bridge appears on my Number 2 album which I’ll disclose much later in this blog. It’s not even a bridge though. Curious? Wait and see.) Neither am I sure about the choir at the end of Whisper. It’s all a bit melodramatic and obvious. They should have tried something innovative to sign off with. Try Abwoon (Our Father) from Lisa Gerrard and Patrick Cassidy’s album Immortal Memory for innovation. That’s flawless.

So, my tips for the next album. Firstly the flippant. Amy and Ben, come round to my place and I’ll give you some great ideas. Bring that piano guy too.

Now, the more considered:

1. Ditch the electric guitars. They do sound the same on almost each track. The same two note riffs that pound percussion-like are tedious. Only on the last few tracks do we get some genuine fluidity (My Last Breath). Witness the disaster caused by them after the beautiful intro for Taking Over Me.
2. Ditto with the drum loops. Or spend some more time preparing them. Some bands spend weeks sorting these out. They’re critical parts of the arrangements, and should be treated as such.
3. Listen to Faith in Space by Lida Husik. Ideas in spades there.
4. Spend some more time examining the structure of your music. On first listen, the album is crescendo piled on top of more crescendo. It’s not quite that bad — it’s all relative I guess — but there needs to be more dynamic.
5. Listen to Tori Amos’ Winter and cry your eyes out. Or just read the lyrics. It does the same to me either way. No other song in the world does this to me.
6. Make some space for Amy’s voice. My Immortal works phenomenally well because of this, despite the Enya piano trills. Less is more. Cowboy Junkies recorded The Trinity Session live, in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto, direct to tape with one omnidirectional microphone in one day for 250 canadian dollars. It can be done.

So, what will we have for the next album? Will it improve on this? Will it be more of the same? Will Evanescence go all secular on us, as is being touted on the rumour mills. Will they sell out? I can’t wait to find out.

when you cried I’d wipe away all of your tears
when you’d scream I’d fight away all of your fears
I held your hand through all of these years
but you still have
all of me

Says it all really.