Number 1 of 2006 — The Knife: Silent Shout

When my favourite techno act Orbital disbanded in 2004, I struggled to find another band that meant as much to me. What’s odd is not that Orbital were two brothers, Paul and Phil Hartnoll, but their replacement in my techno pantheon are also siblings. Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olaf Dreijer formed The Knife in 1999 and release albums on their own record label Rabid Records.

Even if you’re unfamiliar with The Knife, you may already have heard one of their tracks. José González’s acoustic cover of Heartbeats was featured in Sony’s ‘Balls’ advertisement. The arpeggio style of the original is repeated in lead track Silent Shout, which prolongs the trancey feeling before The Knife’s trademark vocal style is introduced. The vocals are treated: pitch-shifted, distorted and excited to become almost androgynous. Karin and Olaf share vocal duties (I think), ranging from growling soul to oriental balladry. The combination of these vocals and lyrics generate an isolated but haunted landscape which is visually evocative. The standout lyric of this song ‘a cracked smile and a silent shout’ is the central tenet of the album, in which compassion and love are inextricably linked: confused, sometimes nightmarish and daunting. Later We Share Our Mother’s Health [video] provides the most dancefloor oriented track on the album, but that title and the song’s queasy electronica serve as the base for a thrilling anthemic duet.

Marble House [video] is the standout track, which, if you’ve be paying attention, is the focus of the album. ‘I cut your nails and comb your hair / I carry you down the stairs’, proves this to be the case. This biographical duet, a reflection on dependency, leads to the conclusion that ‘some things I do for money / Some things I do for free’. Karin’s vocals become almost choral and this delivery underwrites that conclusion. It’s simply beautiful.

Still, even within these emotional conflicts, The Knife can continue to astound with trademark comic horror and jaunty house. Neverland is a basic techno road movie, echoing with electronic claps and thumping snare / bass combinations, and Like A Pen bounces, twists and mutates into something a prehistoric Underworld might have produced. These strands of their style combine with echoey trance riffs for Forest Families which splices humour and mystery to decide ‘Music tonight, I just want your music tonight.’ Appropriately this precedes One Hit which deludes itself by throwing any kind of emotional tension out the window, replacing it with cheesy synths and bizarre lower octave vocals, only to underline familial obligations.

However, there is space for more peaceful moments: Na Na Na is a tiny but precious incidental warping Karin’s vocals into a theremin style accompaniment to an elegiac bass. Olaf (and I think Karin too) whisper through the bubbling From Off To On, that drives simple domestic and emotional needs through cartoon humour thus serving to emphasis their criticality to our lives.

The album closes with Still Light, a question, not a statement. A song that abandons the listener too early, deliberately so. A mere snippet of an event full of possibilities, and yes, you’ll wonder what lead up to this. Maybe the clues are in the earlier songs. When asked ‘If this was the last time, now you should tell us what to do,’ how would you answer? Silent Shout is an unanswered cry for help.

Amazon UK
iTunes UK

Number 2 of 2006 — Joanna Newsom: Ys

Joanna Newsom’s first album The Milk-Eyed Mender was my startling introduction to her voice, her harp playing and her unique songs – mere snippets of ideas and thoughts turned into pop-oriented nursery rhymes. Ys demonstrates a confident extension of those skills, turning in just five pieces of music that merge the two worlds of song and storytelling, so much that it’s difficult to tell which gets the upper hand. Listeners may find some connection between this album and Kristin Hersh’s set of Appalachian folk-songs Murder, Misery and Then Goodnight.

One-time Beach Boy collaborator and musical polymath (if that’s not an oxymoron) Van Dyke Parks helped to provide decorative orchestral arrangements for the songs, their presence being the most striking difference from Joanna’s first album. When one thinks orchestration in a popular music context, it usually means adding strings. Here, however, we have woodwind, brass and sundry other instruments, but they never overwhelm the songs. Instead, they add rhythmic and tonal colours, stretching and supporting the songs. At times they appear almost foreign, as if their creators heard a completely different set of songs. But as you become familiar with each piece of music, the sometimes quirky arrangements eventually interlock and bind with the songs. This leads to an aching emptiness within the album’s focus (and only solo track) Sawdust and Diamonds, for which Joanna never found an agreeable accompaniment.

Four of the songs are autobiographical allegories, with the fifth, Only Skin, providing reflection on the others. These often lengthy songs require concentration on every nuance of content and delivery. Failure to do so can paint the entire album as a exercise in rambling prog-folk. Opening track Emily hinges around a refrain which describes Joanna’s sister’s attempt to teach her various definitions related to meteors. The time between its two appearances is vast and whilst it’s wordy and cute at first, it turns into a towering display of love and friendship between two sisters when it finally recurs at the close of the song. Appropriately, Emily Newsom provided vocal harmonies to this track.

The lack of obvious choruses helps the album’s narrative, preferring instead to use repeating musical themes on which to hang the lyrics. Joanna’s delivery of these lyrics is less gawky than before, but still unique and enchanting. Indeed, her vocal style suits her music and particularly its rhythms perfectly. This allows the vocals and accompaniments to glide across each other gracefully without unnecessary interference or overwrought dominance, thus helping the listening and understanding each of her elaborate tales, particularly on Monkey and Bear. Once you’re locked into listening to this album it is impossible to break away from because its stories are magical and packed with emotions. Not much more can be written – it’s simply an outstanding album.

I wasn’t born of a whistle, or milked from a thistle at twilight.
No; I was all horns and thorns, sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright.
Sawdust and Diamonds

Number 3 of 2006 — Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton: Knives Don’t Have Your Back

I often wonder what would have happened to all concerned if Kristin Hersh and Tanya Donelly’s solo careers had started whilst they were both in Throwing Muses. Back in the 1980s, moonlighting as a solo artist wasn’t the done thing, but in this century, with the democratisation of music it seems that everyone wants to be a solo artist or if not that, then a collaborator with other musicians. Time between albums or tours is an ideal opportunity to create, or if you’re Charlotte Hatherley, time out during tours works too.

So it is that I start this review with a reflection on Charlotte’s debut album – at the end of my review of that album I concluded that she didn’t need Ash, such were her achievements on Grey Will Fade. She’s now a solo artist. Now I ponder on reaching almost the same conclusion on Emily Haines’ album. With two differences: Knives Don’t Have Your Back isn’t her debut – that honour goes to the rare 1996 album Cut in Half and Also Double, and you need to replace Ash with Metric.

Recorded over a period of four years in various cities in Canada and the US, Knives is continents away from the alt-pop of her life with Metric. Knives has two emotional companions: it recalls the loss and intimacy of Kristin Hersh’s The Grotto and the picking of wounds gathered on Hannah Fury’s Through The Gash. It’s not merely a Metric album without guitars, because there are guitars. Occasionally. Based primarily around her voice and piano, these two instruments develop sparse, open, bleak and exhausting music. Here, Emily’s piano work isn’t as intricate as her peers, deliberately so. Notes and chords are used sparingly to tie the dots between the lyrics and to change or twist the mood of a song as they require. It’s masterful due to what’s missing. Likewise her voice, which is in a permanent state of expiry. You wonder if she can manage another verse before the weariness takes its toll and a song stops short, half-finished. Many of the songs appear to end in decay rather than reach a satisfying finale. This is best illustrated on the lengthy Crowd Surf Off A Cliff where the vast reverb on Emily’s voice mirrors her isolation and the yearning for companionship – “Rather give the world away than wake up lonely.” But, as with Charlotte Martin’s Redeemed, the final track Winning breaks through to a resolution: a lullaby that hints at optimism – “What’s a wolf without a pack?” and the mending of broken hearts, broken relationships.

Accompanying Emily are an ad-hoc collection of musical friends who provide understated but crucial support to many of the songs. Opening track Our Hell wouldn’t be as black without the woodwind break. The key to their success is they never seek to draw attention from the focus of the song: the voice, the lyrics, the piano. Even when The Tokai String Quartet’s strings bloom (as they do on Doctor Blind’s intro and its other rising falls) there is balance in the arrangement and mixing. The treatment given to The Lottery is similar, collections of half-stopped measures, giving way to shockingly beautiful cascades of strings. This culminates in the screaming brass of Mostly Waving, which joins Emily’s voice to wail inconclusively but never drowns it.

Because of this constructive eloquence, the primary lasting impression of the album is just Emily’s voice and lyrics. Whilst you can play it to others, it’s really an album to keep to yourself, because the lyrics will cause you to reflect on your own circumstances. Which songs mean most to you will vary as your life changes and as you become more familiar with them. Other reviewers are only now appreciating this. It’s an album you shouldn’t ignore.

Amazon UK – with bonus tracks
iTunes UK

Number 4 of 2006 — Charlotte Martin: Stromata

Charlotte Martin’s major label debut album On Your Shore was perhaps the first evidence of a singer / songwriter diverting from the path begun with Tori Amos, whilst retaining focus on the piano. At that time other contemporaries were choosing to exploit their diverse instrumental skills for their USP, but with On Your Shore Charlotte rummaged through every nook and cranny of potential, to produce a nursling that was instantly likeable and stood out amongst the dozens of diluted Tori facsimiles.

Stromata grows on this and in turn Charlotte delivers a skillfully executed album. An album that strides away from the others bundled in this genre. With each listen it becomes more powerful.

The title track opens this album. Even from the initial descending keys and the pounding drums it’s clear that the triumphant optimism of On Your Shore has been consumed, replaced by dark introspection and reflection. Stromata is the song that hints at this – things left lying around – all bound together by the connective tissues that inhabit the lyrics. Only on the closing track, Redeemed, are these terrors wholly purged.

An anti-love song, with a wish (but not an act) to separate from a damaging relationship, Cut The Cord shows the beginnings of a broadening pallet of sounds that are evident elsewhere. It’s highly percussive but the keys are still there, just to tie the vocals down and to lift the chorus. Charlotte’s voice is versatile enough to have a song work like this and these sparse arrangements are used to great effect on many other songs. The subsequent track Drip returns to more familiar musical territory but this time adds electronic beats to an electric piano. Charlotte deals with her subject matter with a frankness and sensuality that’s not been heard from her before. Part of this was due to the solitary recording process, allowing her to better express her feelings.

Little Universe is also occupied with partnerships and is the most rhythmically challenging song on the album, echoing the minimalism of Cut The Chord, but leading from the textures of Drip. It almost develops into tense ambient electronica, especially when the squelching bassline arrives. Civilized releases the fury that’s been slowly building since Cut The Cord over a flamboyant backing before we reach an aftermath of sorts on the gentle A Hopeless Attempt – “How’d this teardrop start a fire?”

But the remarkable Four Walls is subtle and lyrically disturbing, using manic breakbeats to emphasise isolation and depression. These contrasting dance rhythms thus add to the song’s emotional effect. I’ve written about this track performed live and this may be the best way to experience it, however Four Walls is my favourite recorded Charlotte Martin song – especially as the climax builds once then twice.

Hereon in, the songs yield to the power of Charlotte’s piano: Inch yearns for the redemption that’s not granted (or perhaps not desired) until later, and the love-song Keep Me In Pocket holds a handful of wonderful vocal bridges. Pills is possibly a misunderstood track – the Mr Zebra of the album. Whilst the piano is childlike, the song’s continued repetition of the things medication can do to you and the stupidity of one substance being used to offset the side effects of another only adds to the horror of the finale.

Just Before Dawn is an operatic interlude sung in German which acts as a lead into Cardboard Ladders, a calming beginning to the gradual lightening of the album as it nears its conclusion – “I can’t keep turning my back on / The horizon”

The final two tracks are the musical highlights: The Dance layers voice with pattering drumbeats, adding music-box keys as the song progresses, together with a synth bass and further vocals. It’s conclusion strikingly pours in more piano, over which the subject of the song is finally revealed.

Redeemed binds electronic percussion with a panoply of arrangements. Each section of the song and corresponding delivery works brilliantly. Charlotte uses a wide range of styles here, becoming close to piano cabaret perhaps, but fortunately without the ostentation. This isn’t merely for artistic display. The composition exhibits darkness and light to sum up the preceding 13 tracks before moving forward to the emotional denouement. This single track marks Stromata as an album of transition which intriguingly hints at further possibilities. I suspect that when Charlotte’s career has developed further this album will become more relevant to herself, her fans and to the wider musical community.

In all the black
In all the grief
Through all the pain
And unbelief
These are the words
That they all scream
I am redeemed

Amazon UK
iTunes UK