Number 8 of 2007 — Kristin Hersh: Learn To Sing Like A Star

Has it really been four years since I wrote about The Grotto? Between that album and this, its successor, Kristin Hersh continued to dabble with 50 Foot Wave, an angular rock-oriented trio that bridged and extended from her solo work to (and beyond) the more corrosive Throwing Muses songs. Learn To Sing Like A Star, a title that arose from a spam e-mail Kristin received, brings a lot from that period. In fact it’s a trifecta of all her work beginning at the last Throwing Muses album, 2003’s self-titled masterpiece.

Even with this knowledge Learn To Sing Like A Star still remains rather surprising. Lead single and first track In Shock bawls with the same energy as the Muses’ Bright Yellow Gun, but lurches from one heart pummeling beat to the next, with former bandmate David Narcizo taking care of those drums. Kristin’s piano accents the rhythm and longtime cohorts Martin and Kimberlee McCarrick provide an emotional counterbalance – the whole making ‘You wanted to be wanted’ sound so painful.

For much of the album, tracks connect in sequences of light and dark, acoustic and electric. Sometimes both. Three varied incidentals, perhaps remnants waiting to be cultivated in the future, separate sections of the album. The rest are typically autobiographical snippets twisted inside daydreams and nightmares. There are other common factors: the McCarricks’ strings form a critical part of many of the songs, giving Kristin an opportunity to let her tangling guitar lines weave underneath, no longer needing them to direct melodies. Listen to the refrain and breaks in Nerve Endings to hear how this works best, emphasising the lyrics “Nerve endings think they see / Pleasure coming I know better”. A violin traces the verses of Peggy Lee, whilst guitars underpin the choruses – every song is an experiment to confuse expectation. That each works so well illustrates her song-birthing skills.

Because of this subtle adjustment, when the guitars do lead, they make the most of it. Day Glo and stand-out track Wild Vanilla glister with buzzing acoustic strums, visceral slides and picks; both paired with the sweetest choruses. Ice too (tying with Vertigo and Sugarbaby as Winner of The Loveliest Chorus Competition) highlighting with a simple piano line and weeping strings. But if you’re looking for penetrating grooves, Wild Vanilla is clearly ahead: shuffling rhythms drive the song forward before being joined by a guitar-organ solo that fades out far too quickly.

David Narcizo’s drums are generally more subtle than one would have predicted. His trademark military style litters many tracks, recalling less rocky Throwing Muses songs, particularly on Winter, but they never dominate. Even when they reach further forward, Kristin’s choruses lap at the tumbling beats to bring everything to order.

I once considered Kristin Hersh’s solo albums to be unaccompanied or alternative reinventions of missing Throwing Muses albums. Learn To Sing Like A Star proves me wrong, although poignant closer The Thin Man blows smoke rings around this thought via Limbo’s hidden White Bikini Sand. With this album she reforms that history to mould her second best release. At this moment I can’t imagine anything surpassing 2001’s Sunny Border Blue, but seven years on, Kristin’s CASH Music project is laying new paths – each monthly release a new invention unsullied by concepts of ‘before’, ‘after’ or the weight of (and wait for) an album. She’s now at the point where she can do anything and I’m head over heels in the ozone snow..

In Shock:

Learn To Sing Like A Star – Amazon UK
Learn To Sing Like A Star – iTunes UK
Throwing Music
CASH Music – Kristin Hersh

Number 9 of 2007 — Underworld: Oblivion With Bells

Exhilaration is overrated – if that’s all you experience. Oblivion With Bells does at least one thing right: it improves on the critically underrated A Hundred Days Off without attempting to re-visit the hyperactivity of their first two albums. It achieves this by distilling the core musical behaviour of those early releases and rebuilding them, more subtly, adding musical bolts to join them together.

However, the approach of the opening combo of Crocodile and Beautiful Burnout is entirely predictable. Crocodile begins with Underworld’s traditionally layered bass and bassline, before Karl Hyde’s over-treated and chorused vocals appear. These take on more musical qualities than one usually gets and the structure of the tune is entirely song-like. The chorus and break are particularly lush. Beautiful Burnout leads on from this, going darker, constructing further layers of percussion and bass before Karl’s dour voice comes in to pair with a buzzing pad synth. But, there is lightness here – the synth drops and guitar. I would have liked a couple of extra minutes on this track to fully enjoy the conclusion which employs breakbeat filtered snares to recall previous achievements.

If you’re looking to make sense of the lyrics – don’t even try. They’re even more isolated and spartan than before, but that’s entirely the point. Recollections and half sentences exist to build or complement rhythms and to tweak listeners’ imaginations and open interpretation. It’s no different to the abstract or ambiguous lyrics that traditional songwriters often use. Holding The Moth brags jazzy deep house and splits its time between almost comprehensive phrases and gibberish. It’s not a problem, mind.

To Heal is where things get interesting. The bright shimmering pads that dominate this brief interlude are inspired. I’m thinking old Polaroid’s of Orbital – an aftermath borrowed from the pages of The Girl With The Sun In Her Head. History and memories blurred. More Orbital moments occur immediately later with the percussion in Ring Road. Oh, and that ’..tagged’ pause. Wow.

Glam Bucket is synthy ambience used to separate Boy, Boy, Boy from Ring Road – two tracks that wouldn’t work jammed together. Larry Mullen Jr’s splashy drums support Karl’s dissertation on Boy, Boy, Boy, bringing extra depth and width. The gorgeous simple pad that ends this track is another welcome surprise but when you’ve lived with the break and build of dance music for so long, you expect another phase of development.

After the weird interlude of Cuddle Bunny vs The Celtic Village, Faxed Invitation returns to the sinister rhythms of Beautiful Burnout, but in a minor way. It then floors by forming a gentle marriage between a weedy pad and bouncing bassline. Given all that surrounds it, it’s the most impressive track on the album.

By now listeners will realise that the opening tracks are as exciting as things get. Most of the album turns downwards – the fine closer Best Mamgu Ever consists almost entirely of vocal cut-ups placed over ambient dub. But this strategy gives opportunities to really listen from the inside of each song, to allow each of those peculiar lyrics to spark thoughts and to reflect on everything in the context of Underworld’s career. I don’t want or need another Born Slippy (Nuxx). Nor it seems, do Underworld.

Oblivion With Bells – iTunes UK
Amazon UK

I’m very late with starting the reviews of my favourite albums of 2007. In this respect I find it vulgar to reduce my opinion and feelings of an album to a mere review and to consider one better or worse than another. But I do so because it allows me to more easily recall exactly how I felt about an album and where my head and the rest of me was at that time. It builds relationships between albums, between artists and when other albums are released it allows me to appreciate them more and perhaps place them in my pantheon of ‘best loved’ music. Carrie Brownstein has another view. My favourites of last year’s music (which traditionally encompasses everything I’ve heard that year, not only released that year) realise something else too: that how frequently I play an album doesn’t correlate to how much I like it. An album – more than just a single song – requires a context before being listened to. The time invested in listening is irrelevant, the emotion however is not. There needs to be a match and emotions are subtle creatures. Some albums require a more defined head state than others, which is why some of the albums on this list of 2007 surprise me with their appearance. Including this one:

Number 10 of 2007 — Pluramon: The Monstrous Surplus

This is the fourth album from Marcus Schmickler’s shoegaze project. But to earmark it thus is slightly inconsiderate. I’ve listened to a lot of Lush’s work over the past two days, re-encountering the gradual transplanting of their original sound into its Britpop vision. Like their final version, Pluramon’s sound doesn’t over-exploit its most obvious references, nor does it totally consume other styles. Instead – particularly with this album – it turns inwards, refining the genre through the benefit of technology, reducing the attendant emotions from ‘dream pop’ towards only dreams. Despite its four vocalists – three female, the other from Marcus, all gorgeously employed – and its lyrics, this is an album which is experienced by how you respond to it, a place that AR Kane got to visit on their 1989 album, “i”. It wants to be pure pop music but the layers of sound which slide, grind and collide, burying individual songs, ensures it isn’t, although an awareness of the way pop is felt and constructed is obvious.

Turn On opens the album sounding like Alison Shaw fronting mid-career Lush, but when the enveloped vocals of Julee Cruise hide beneath the expanse of string-like noise (or noise-like strings) the tone of album is set. On Border, there’s no such foreplay. We land directly where Marcus wants us to feel. Just when we’re comfortable with this, an organ picks up the main melody to tweak the emotional connection with the song still further. Elsewhere there are more obvious reference points to genre: the portmento guitar slides that characterised My Bloody Valentine’s sound is mimicked on If Time Was On My Side, but without the expected queasiness. Similarly, the collapsing frantic drumming of their music is ignored. Instead Pluramon uses traditional rock percussion that serves to emphasise the rest of the music.

Drowning In You turns vocals into noise, the guitars and bass simply swirl and cut, this is where sensation comes from. For some songs it’s not necessary to internalise what is sung (that comes later), initially just the notes and how they’re sung will suffice. Language is unimportant. For others, particularly in the standout cover of Sham 69’s The Kids Are United, the lyrics are critical. This is also true for Fresh Aufhebung, which features Jutta Koether’s spoken words, taking the drone-pop of Loop and turning the dreams nightmarish.

When the noise drops as it does on crossover between K-Land and Can’t Disappear – essentially one song split in two – piano, strings, high hat and vocals – it arrives more beautifully than if it had appeared without its predecessors. Even the clichéd thunderstorm feels right, complementing with its own bassy rumble. Perhaps these couple of songs are merely a lead to the key point of the album. Once you know what’s coming, the drawn out conclusion of Can’t Disappear teases further. If The Kids Are United strikes home immediately with folky tambourine bashing. The vocals, sometimes just adding a layer to the other songs, take centre stage for this song, choral and chorused they bring a sublime blissful state. This isn’t enough however – the pop desires of this album push forward once again with a masterly key change.

After this the final two tracks are unsatisfying, but this album is clearly at the front of the continued evolution of the genre. I never expected the celebration to last this long.

The Monstrous Surplus – iTunes UK
Pluramon – Official Website