Baroness packaging fetish

Wasn’t there a character called Baroness in Action Force? Sorry, ‘G.I.’ ‘Joe’. Kinda makes it sound like a show about a bloke trying out special diets. ‘No bread for me!’ I was always more of a Transformers fan in my youth. That was tops. Inhumanoids too, actually, but mainly Transformers. I had tons of the things. Best had to be Scorponok, though Trypticon was never available over here so who knows.

I did manage to get a knock-off Omega Supreme in the local Jolly Giant through. It was just called ‘Omegatron’, and was very grey, but turned into a massive robot and had a detachable space train and things, so that was pretty great. Scorponok, though. He was the bomb. Great colour scheme. Who was that triple changer that turned into a missile launcher and stuff? Double Dealer or someone? A Transformers anti-hero. The Stanley Kowalski of the under-tens set. Can’t beat it.

In fact, I can still watch Transformers: The Movie now and love it. Not the piece of crap live action one. All that has going for it is Megan Fox. I won’t deny that she is very nice, but the film’s a bloated wreck. Only one thing even transforms in the first twenty minutes! Watched it for an hour and a quarter and that was it. Who makes a 135-minute Transformers film anyway? Ooh, the suspense. Maybe something will transform! Fat chance. And when they did, you couldn’t make them out.

They’d have fights, and it’d just look like what it was – a bunch of computer graphics knocking about. Forget it. And I hate to be one of these anal dorks, but Prime doesn’t have a moving mouth. And he doesn’t say ‘my bad’.

The original was fab though. It was so tightly-plotted. Fast-paced, every scene moved the story on. It was too fast paced for some friends of mine who first watched it as adults. But what are you doing watching it for the first time as adults? It’s a solid sugar-rush that, if you weren’t there at the time, you’re not gonna get.

Transformers died in that thing. I’ll never forget the feeling when that belch of orange smoke emerged from… Prowl’s mouth? And the eyes going dead. Cartoon characters, actually dying. While that great Spectre General song played. The soundtrack of the 1986 film was better than the multi-million dollar live action one too. Under-rated. Lion doing the theme tune, Stan Bush’s ‘The Touch’. Love it. In terms of musical impact, let’s not forget El-P sampled the film on his production of Cannibal Ox’s sole, classic, album The Cold Vein.

Anyway, Baroness. From Savannah, GA I do believe. I ordered this record in December 2007 and received it in July 2008. I’d do a timeline of the unfortunate events if I could be arsed. Just know it took that long because Hyperrealist took payments before the thing physically existed, and then took an age to get it made. Oh, the artwork needs re-doing in 12″. I have to get the music and etchings done in separate places.

I don’t give a stuff about the etchings. It’s a nice touch, but you’re only gonna sped so long looking at them. And they’re not worth the delay. Especially when you absent-mindedly drop the needle on them. They surround the grooves, see. My god.

And when the album did arrive, deep into the third season of waiting, the records had sliced, sorry ‘etched’, through the inner-sleeves. Yay! Luckily the music is pretty hot. It’s the better ‘Red Album’ that came out in the last couple of years. It’s no Ire Works, but it’s a very solid Relapse release. But quite how solid will have to wait til I ‘do’ 2007.

I make myself laugh sometimes. Someone has to laugh, right?

Susanna K. Wallumrød – Flower of Evil

(2009, Rune Grammafon)

Susanna has dropped her ‘magical orchestra’ for another solo jaunt. Flower of Evil is mostly cover versions: originally sad songs mix with ostensibly surprising choices for this Norwegian doyenne of the melancholy.

The record opens with Thin Lizzy’s ‘Jailbreak’. It is a song that could easily have been reduced to ‘look, a sad version of “Jailbreak”’ in the wrong hands. However, Susanna has a knack of getting inside the lyric and either finding the original truth behind it, or a completely new one that’s no less valid.

Stripped of the boys’ own bravado Phil Lynott revelled in, Wallumrød’s ‘Jailbreak’ is conspiratorial and struck by the gravity of impending events. ‘Tonight there’s gonna be trouble’, she gently intones. ‘Some of us won’t survive’. It’s chilling.

Because the tone is unwavering throughout the hour-plus of the record, though, some pieces can sound like pastiche. The poignant raw wound of Black Sabbath’s ‘Changes’ should be perfect source material for Susanna’s brand of sorrow. Instead, there is something missing.

Perhaps the purity of her voice is too at odds with the anguished howl Ozzy had in the early 1970s. This is the kind of song where Susanna strays worryingly close to the FM radio of Beverley Craven or Katie Melua.

For every lovely song, there is one too close to MOR. Do we need another version of ‘Without You’? While Wallumrød sings beautifully, her voice alone can only take you so far. Forty minutes would be sufficient to contain the better songs on here.

It all comes together on ABBA’s ‘Lay All Your Love on Me’, which ends the record. Susanna’s spare arrangement strips the original’s paranoid obsession of its synths and rhythm guitars, its delicate heart left bleeding right in front of you.

This leaves me in a quandary. While this is a lovely record, with moments of mournful beauty, the sheer amount of it dilutes its impact. Also frustrating is the quality of her own compositions. These are a pair of perfectly charming songs that give the listener an appetite for new material the album doesn’t satisfy.

Hopefully next time we’ll get all-new songs. Until then, this is an efficient set of what you’d expect from the Me First And The Gimme Gimmes of the sad music scene. For curious newcomers, Flower of Evil is a great place to start.

FACT version of the review is here, folks. Support the scene(sters)!

Darkest Hour packaging fetish

Hey! Darkest hour is a metalcore band that I haven’t listened to yet. They won’t be as good as Carcass or At The Gates, but they share a member with the lovely Verse En Coma. And… what’s this? Ooh, the mighty John Dyer Baizley painted the cover for them. I guess this means the latest, long-awaited instalment of [BAND X] packaging fetish! How disappointed am I gonna make those people who are Googling the words ‘vinyl’ and ‘fetish’ right about now. Aww…



While I’m here

I just did that rare thing and read a blog post from start to finish in one go. I know, whoopee-do. But it’s good for me. All too often, I will scan and/or read some, deciding ‘yep, I’ll read that later’. Sadly, ‘later’ all too often turns out to be the twelfth of never. What am I trying to say? That’s right, Impostume did his albums of the year!

As you’d expect if you’ve read his blog in the past, even Impostume’s idle thoughts are wrapped up in grand narrative and context. That’s not a bad thing, as I’m trying to get more of that in my writing, but I’m sure he summed up 2007 rather more tacitly (‘get the Oxbow’, as I recall). I know where he is coming from, anyway.

For a long while I have been dismayed at the way people (including me) listen to music this decade. I started downloading on peer-to-peer in late 2004. Very quickly I amassed quite the collection. If a connection was slow, I’d leave the computer running and be amazed at all the Fushitsusha/Swans/La Monte Young suddenly on my hard drive.

But there was a sense of ennui I could not escape. For the more music I heard, I was listening to less than ever. So I had a top 70 albums of 2007, a top 100 of 2005. But what did it mean? I attempted my top 50 albums of 2005 theme (of which I wrote enough to justify completing. Then I can move on to other, non-groundhog, years), but realised soon that I knew little about albums I had already ‘judged’.

Much like Rowdy Roddy Piper in They Live, I see the evil of instant judgement everywhere. It wasn’t like this back in the day, I’m sure of it. I lend people albums now and they don’t bother getting past track two. While this is disheartening, I at least know I can take most peoples opinions with more than a pinch of salt. Yeah, you listened to it once and decided it was number 38 of the year? Kiss my arse.

Which reminds me: Impostume also mentions the insanity of having a top 150 of a year. He questions how (and why) a person who considers himself* sane would justify positions at such an irrelevant end of a list. And, while I admit to my own top 50, I also wonder why anyone would give a rat’s behind about what a single person considers their 43rd favourite album of a year. I understand when The Wire does it – they pool many people. But the individual top 50? I’m now old and ugly enough to realise the folly (both Narcissistic and Promethean) of such a move. Top 20, max. I don’t care how many albums you’ve heard.

Let’s not forget that little correlation: the greater amount of albums you have heard means less time available to actually digest each one.

Impostume also throws this bone of intrigue:

Every now and then you need to go elsewhere for a while to feel excited by home again.

Just before I read that, I was thinking about how metal-focused my lists have been over the last few years (certainly since 2004, when I got back into the scene). I used to be a right little eclectic: at the turn of the century I was consuming all and sundry, having decided metal was getting too popular for me.

I got into metal, to a serious degree, in the mid 1990s, at the absolute nadir of its popularity. So, when the likes of Linkin Park and Slipknot were all over tellies and t-shirts, QOTSA playing venues larger than pubs, I decided the scene was no longer mine.

So, inspired by the fantastically-timed release of Radiohead’s Kid A, I set off listening to all of those genres I had once considered out of bounds. It helped that I was in a new city, so none of my existing friends could ask ‘why the hell are you listening to that?’ It was all about DJ Shadow, Warp Records and Ninja Tune, XL and reading The Face. Garage music, Neptunes and a still-good Timbaland. I’d shop on Oldham Street and club at Music Box. Not only was it new to me, but there was seriously cool stuff to listen to.

And that’s without getting into post-rock. What is now a shit vacuum where only a few bands are decent (pretty much none who aren’t Japanese) was buzzing: Godspeed, early Sigur Rós, Múm, Lift To Experience, Xinlisupreme, Lali Puna, Labradford, Laika, Broadcast, Add (n) to (x)… what is there now?

At risk of sounding like an old man, I’ll end it there. But it seemed there was a lot more going on in 2000-01 than there is now. In the oh-four I got back into metal. Not a moment too soon, I decided, as its qualitative fortunes were rising as everything else was dropping off.

Is it really all dropping off though? Perhaps, as the quotation says, I just needed that musical holiday before an inevitable return ‘home’. I’m not sure though. Mainstream ‘indie’ rock is pretty much as godawful as it was: The Strokes and JJ72 are now just Kings Of Leon and Snow Patrol. Chart house is the same as it ever was. And in the garage’s place, we had grime, dubstep, bassline, funky, donk… it seems to me that the ‘ardkore continuum is becoming self aware to the point of eating its own tail, Ourobouros-style. The forced evolution is certainly faster than rave…hardcore…jungle. But that’s for another post.

I’m gonna mention Reynolds’ EOY stuff when I’ve done more listening, because it’d be an interesting context in which to drop more thoughts in. Who said cross-posting was dead?

P.S. I wish I had entered a ballot for the Rocktimists thing, but alas it coincided with my holiday. And my list would have been more premature than it was on this blog. Hopefully there will be a 2009 ballot to enter.

P.P.S. I have that Tricky album ordered. Having less luck with the Bug: if I’d known he’d get Wire’s album of the year accolade, I’d have bought it when it came out, like I was going to. Damnit.

* Let’s face it: we’re mainly male.