Björk: initial thoughts on Volta


The new Neurosis album, Given to the Rising, was supposed to be out today. I had held off any downloading of it especially; I hadn’t even listened to the song the band themselves put on My Space (I’m still uncomfortable with a band like Neurosis being on a site like that). Virgin didn’t have it; HMV didn’t have it; Crash was bloody closed. A trip to Jumbo revealed that, while it was due to be out today, the album had only been ‘sold through’ last week. No idea what that means, but the upshot is apparently me waiting until the twenty-first for it. So near, yet so far.

More reliable on the punctual release front than Neurot Recordings (for the album is their first to be officially self-released. Well done) is One Little Indian. The album in question? Well, it’s a little late for me to attempt any mystery as it’s up there in the header. That’s right, today (technically yesterday) saw the release of another album I had abstained from downloading, Ms. Guðmundsdóttir’s newie, Volta. Personally I consider it her first proper new album in six years – since the magnificent Vespertine – as I wasn’t all that enamoured with vocals-only Medulla nor the random soundtrackage of Music from Drawing Restraint 9. Excitement then.

There was also rather a bit of hype. Rather Mike Patton-on-Peeping Tom, Björk mentioned that this was her big, brash pop record and that she was wheeling loads of guests into the studio. Like a good version of Madonna then. And hopefully a good version of Peeping Tom at that. Well, it’s not that it was bad per se, just rather disappointing, given the half-decade wait and facetious comparisons by Patton to Fred Durst and Sisqo. Oh, what could have been… Anyway, this album was going to boast such names as Timbaland, Lightning Bolt Drummer and Antony T. Johnson. Or something. And it turns out that my boy Mark Bell was doing some production. He occasionally releases albums as LFO and consistently rules the school. He also put me in mind of Q-Tip guesting on a Beastie Boys record. That’s one for the thinking cap wearers among you.

So I ended up getting the limited edition, specially packaged version and maybe I shouldn’t have. For a start it cost way more, and I have no 5.1 surround system on which to play the DVD audio. The packaging itself is extremely pretty, something of a modern day Babooshka doll, what with card cases containing gradually smaller ones (each with great photos of the lady herself with blue face and body literally ablaze), until we get to the card-contained discs. Weirdly, the front of the case seems to open up, but is sealed with a sticker of the cover graphic. I didn’t want to break the seal, so ended up opening the thing from the top. God knows if that was what I was meant to do. Anyway, the CD is now stored elsewhere, so the case is back in the cellophane, like that last Tomahawk album.

I was very impressed with the music itself. There were a few tears before bedtime on a message board I frequent because some people were disappointed with it upon hearing a download. Not wanting content spoilers, I didn’t read too attentively. Maybe they expected something different, which is weird as – like I mentioned above – this was always going to be a day-glo pop album, and therefore polar opposite of the lush likes of Homogenic or Vespertine.

The first song was, I think, a Timbaland one, and established the mood very well. Can’t remember too much about it, but these are initial thoughts so it’s all good. It reminded me, as the album generally did, of her Debut, from the ostensible simplicity of the mix to the gleeful ebullience of the vocal. I was pretty much happy with the way things were unfolding, in a not-blown-away kind of way, until ‘Dull Flame of Desire’ found its way onto the Death Deck. Man alive was Antony ever impressive on this tune. I didn’t mind I Am a Bird Now and was irritated by his presence on the disappointing second CocoRosie album , so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Bizarrely, his early entrance into the mix (initially a surprise to hear a male voice by this point on the album) reminded me of Burton C. Bell. Anybody who knows who he is without summoning the Great Gazoogle or Wikipedia leave a comment and get kudos. Anyway, the duet was so sweet and wonderful that I would have been happy it it never ended; it was even better than the Björk/Yorke duet ‘I’ve Seen it All’. Nice one.

The quality continued for another couple of songs until the very beginning of the second half, coincidentally enough. Not that ‘Vertebrae by Vertebrae’ is a particularly bad song, just that it was neither here nor there – the kind of thing one might hope would get quality controlled off the album. Things thankfully took a turn for the better to close the record, but the first half definitely seems superior to the second. I never thought I’d be so happy for Antony to return for the last song, but there you go. Possibly the most interesting song on the album is also in the ‘weak’ half: ‘Declare Independence’ is a pretty screamy noisefest that really pleasantly surprised me. I had comparisons in my mind when it was on, but I’ve unfortunately forgotten them now. Maybe it’ll come back to me. There was a strange moment when it reminded me of a fuzzed-out ‘Sugar is Sweeter’, but maybe that was an aberration. Good single, though, even if it was just a poor mans ‘Poison’.

And one of the songs reminded me of The Knife, which is definitely a good thing. Again, unsure (I knew I should have finished this last night…). Maybe it was the first track, actually. It had a boss, weirdo, chorus either way. A bit ‘We Share Our Mother’s Health’, perhaps. Anyway, I’m happy with the album, as it was what I expected; no more, no less. It also makes for a quicker fifty-five minutes than Vespertine did. This will be due to the album, while reaching nowhere near the 2001 albums peaks, not dropping off to the extent that one does near the end. Or maybe it’s just because Vespertine is so emotionally powerful, and Volta intentionally frothy for the most part.

Postscript: There, I think I’ve caught all the typos. That’s what happens when you write straight to Blogger without the safety net of Word. Also this is an illuminating and enjoyable read. It’s a ‘special’ on the album, complete with diagram of how the packaging opens up. I remain sceptical on that front.

A Miniscule thought on listening to Botch

Today, finally, I bought the Botch DVD. Named 061502, after the date on which this live set was performed, it is a surprisingly professional sounding piece of work (let us take a moment to remember the shit sounding DVD that came free with Miss Machine by Dillinger Escape Plan). I don’t want to bang on too much in this post, so The End Of Metal and Bitter Young Men themes will have to wait til later. Sorry. And yes, they are actual things I plan on writing.

The point here is that, historically, my favourite Botch tune has been ‘Man the Ramparts’. It’s pretty demented and is the last song proper on their magnum opus We Are the Romans. The major attributes of this one are the killer riff it kicks in with, the even more killer riff it ends with, and the five or so minutes of Gregorian chant-inspired harmonies sandwiched in the middle. Shouldn’t work, but it does. I get lazy; like to have musical shorthand. For example: someone asks me what my favourite album is, it’s Through Silver in Blood. Favourite Poison album: Flesh & Blood. My favourite something else: something to do with blood, I suppose.

Anyway, fave Botch song was always ‘Man the Ramparts’. As someone who increasingly judges the quality of music by how much it makes me rock (or, conversely, how close it gets me to tears – only three songs have ever pushed me over the edge, disappointingly enough), I like the fact that the post-Gregory return has me rocking in a way that Status Quo could only pretend to do all over the world, and way more than Def Leppard ever did, despite their continued promises in early 1992. The last couple of years, though, have seen a sly change take effect.

See, the song ‘C. Thomas Howell as The ‘Soul Man” has been creeping up on me. It all started when I innocently put it on a minidisc compilation in about 2004. The main facet of the song that hooked me initially was the oddly emotive backing vocal that crept in near the end of the song, ridiculously low in the mix and sung in total deadpan. The fact that it was ostensibly clean, melodic, singing set it apart from the rest of their work at that time. Obviously that was way superceded by the gorgeous (and gutting, seeing as it was on their swansong) ‘Afghamistam’ (not a typo! All the songs on that E.P. were named for countries, but with the letter ‘n’ replaced by ‘m’: ‘Japam’, Framce’ etc).

Where was I? Oh, the song. Yeah, it certainly hits the Noisecore buttons of stop-start dynamics, weird rhythms, and anger; there’s just more to it than that. Like Coalesce, Botch is certainly no fan of the hardcore scene, specifically the straight edge element. They let us know all about this with a bile-filled set of lyrics condemning messages that are drowned out by metal noise anyway (ironically, these lyrics are similarly drowned out/hard to figure out. Intentional?). The song on the DVD is prefaced by a dedication to singer Dave Verellen’s ‘straight edge friends’. I always hated scenesterism in Leeds, so maybe that’s why I like this so much. What I know for sure, though, is that the explosion back into action, after everything has dropped away leaving just a bassline, is a wonderful catalyst for chaos – both physically and psychically. The juxtaposition of this closing madness with the oddly restrained backing vocals is the icing on a beautifully deranged cake.

So there we have it: a changing of the guard, as it were. Obviously I still love ‘Man the Ramparts’ to an insane level, as well as something less obvious, like ‘Hives’ off their debut album. Who knows, maybe ‘Afghamistam’ is my favourite Botch tune after all that…

Seeing Bob, part two.

Set List

Bob Dylan, 14 April 2007
Sheffield Hallam FM Arena

Saturday the fourteenth of April marked the second time I saw Bob in concert. It was blatantly really good, but with conditions here and there. Because I like to think about the context of gigs as much as the sets themselves, I’m going to spend a little while on what preceded the show proper.

While last time I got a lift to the venue, we went to pubs and excellent Italian restaurants (Leoni’s in Manchester: lovely calzones), this trip was less luxurious, though it certainly had defining moments of its own. For the most part, this was the trip in which Lady Luck was smiling on our trio of Dylan fans. We got a train to Sheffield, but the views were nice (when not travelling through Barnsley) and I got my friend to call in a favour after he availed fellow travellers with the football scores; a near-pensionable couple on our side, we got off a stop early – Meadowhall – and got a tram to the arena.

We figured this would come in handy for the post-gig rush; we did not want to miss the scandalously early last train to Leeds (given that it was due to depart at 2220, there was an outside chance I could hop on the last train home from Leeds). We made great time: not sure which tram platform to stand on, we went for the nearest. The tram came in a minute or so, and we were asked by a smarmy man in shades how to get to the arena. We grudgingly helped him, but were amused greatly when he failed to leave the tram at the right stop. Maybe he thought we were working him. Maybe we should have.

With plenty of time before doors were due to open, we went to a tacky theme ‘restaurant’ for watering and big screen football (sadly, Manchester United won). The place itself, I think it was called the Broadway Roadhouse or something equally ridiculous, was a veritable Aladdin’s cave for those who were searching for stuff to be facetious about. The uniforms were a source of near-constant amusement (although I did suggest that I’d dress everyone in pink chaps if I was in charge), and the menu was out of sight. For some reason, Chinese food was under the ‘San Francisco’ category, and Italian was ‘Chicago’. Yes. America is the only place in the world, even in Sheffield.

I also didn’t have to pay for my round, which was a definite boon. The ginger idiot behind the bar seemed amused (certainly confused) that I ordered a chocolate milkshake. So amused, evidently, that he laughed all thoughts of money out of his student head.

Anyway, we found the arena easily enough: the door we needed was nearest to us, as was the entry gate in the arena. After getting hot dogs in (without a doubt very suspicious, but about a thousand pounds cheaper than those in the Roadsteak Broadhouse), we found our seats. Those seats weren’t quite the ‘on the floor, nearer the front than the back’ golden boys of the last time I saw Dylan. They weren’t bad though. We were sitting in the permanent seats round the side and closer to the stage than not; he was about ten o’clock from our view.

I don’t think I’ve had a seat for a gig since the last time I was at Sheffield Arena: for Metallica in October 1996. Actually, I technically had a seat for the last Dylan gig, but that was just on the floor anyway. I ended up standing for both of those anyway. This would be different, though, as our vertigo-inducing situation rendered the idea of getting up and dancing quite impractical.

Making good time, we were seated by the time that bizarre biography opening tape came on. Shortly afterward, Bob Dylan and his band entered the stage. We actually had binoculars for this gig, so I was able to view the band up close at certain points, albeit through the wobble-emphasising zoom. Decked out in a grey-blue jacket and smart black trousers (as well as his cowboy hat, natch), Dylan alternated between playing guitar (the first part of the set) and keyboard (latter part, essentially).

Pre-gig (as with last time, there was no opening act), I was told that slight tardiness would matter little, as he had apparently been opening with rather a rubbish song. ‘Cat’s in the Well’, from Under the Red Sky (1990). I can safely say I have never heard that album, even if it was released the year after the really rather good Oh Mercy.

It was quite fortuitous that we were punctual, then, as he opened not with ‘Cat’s in the Well’, but the infinitely more promising ‘Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine’. The latter is off my personal favourite Dylan album (I like Blonde on Blonde? The world reels in surprise), and was enjoyable enough, if rather far from life changing.

The set overall was not something I was overly familiar with. The last time I saw him, being between albums, was something of a ‘greatest hits’ set, and was awesome for it. This, being less than a year after the release of Modern Times, was obviously in support of that record. Having not heard that record, this wasn’t quite a sing-along experience. In a way that was pretty cool, as it meant I’d be judging the performance on its own merits, rather than the wonderment that he’s playing my favourites.

With that in mind, this set was something of a mixed bag. There was a period about halfway through where it dragged a bit, as they played ‘The Levee’s Gonna Break’ and ‘Spirit on the Water’. The former was a memorable performance, though it settled comfortably into the Dylan boogie-blues template like an old man into a warm bath. This passage, while entertaining enough, was a bit creaky, and the songs a bit longer than ideal.

By this point, six songs into the set, the placement here of ‘Highway 61’ was a masterstroke. Not only should it have been instantly familiar to anybody present, but it rattled along at such a pace that, if the band was an old train, the screws would be gradually shuddering out of their holdings. This aged band was rocking out at a fair whack, and they did justice to a classic.

The next group of songs was a nice mix of eras, and admittedly largely new to me. For some reason I have never heard Another Side of Bob Dylan, so the re-jigged ‘My Back Pages’ fit in well with the likes of ‘When the Deal Goes Down’ or ‘High Water (for Charlie Patton)’. As I said earlier, the last time I saw Bob was a treasure trove of favourites, so my wants for this show were little. It was boon beyond boon, then, that the twelfth song was my all-time favourite Bob song: ‘Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again’.

He played this magnificent composition when I saw him in Manchester, and I enjoyed it far more this time around. That can partially be explained by the changes the song has undergone in the forty years since it was first released. The primary change is the new descending motif the song has been given as punctuation, to telegraph the start of the song and to bridge to new verses. Not knowing the changes made when I saw him in 2005 (and the fact that Bob obviously sings with different delivery to how he did in 1966), it took a while to even recognise the song. It was somewhere just before the first chorus that it finally twigged.

Thankfully, the conditioning that was the first time I heard this played had worked, and I recognised the classic immediately this time around. I was jazzed once more and, again, that joy of repetition built within me through verse after verse, one stanza after another. That new bridge worked well, now that it was expected, and the whole thing was a triumph of bristling kinetic energy, momentum building until it destroyed everything in its path.

Bob didn’t even try following this with another upbeat song; surely he realised that literally no rock ‘n’ roll Dylan song could follow it. Instead he reached into his modern day song book (or at least his Modern Times song book) and bestowed a gorgeous performance of ‘Nettie Moore’ onto the gathered appreciators.

I obviously didn’t know this one before it aired on this night, but that mattered little due to the beauty on display. Indeed, one of my companions remarked that I would be severely disappointed now with the studio version of the song, given that it was so vastly inferior to the live arrangement. Dylan tempted slight, subtle chords out of his keyboard, while the rest of the band restrained their rocking tendencies. This was this sets equivalent of Manchester’s ‘Girl from the North Country’, then.

‘Summer Days’ gave way to another excellent performance of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, and that was it for the set proper. When he returned, two encore songs were played once more. While I do have a problem with the encore in general, I’ll allow it for Dylan: he probably needs the rest. The first of this final brace was ‘Thunder on the Mountain’, another new one to me. It was pretty good, and the first time I heard that Alicia Keys reference.

Thankfully, he finished once more with the beyond excellent ‘All Along the Watchtower’. To be quite honest, I have said all I am willing to say about this particular generation of the song in my last review of Bob. Rest assured it was just as good this time, if not better, and my elevated position led to a lesser degree of rocking out, but that was compensated by a greater level of awareness of the arrangement, and just how much Bob was pouring into it.

Overall, the Sheffield set was, by its very nature as a record-supporting set, inferior to the Manchester gig. I wasn’t expecting the world from this one, though (as the last set had almost everything I could have asked for). With the pressure off and anything enjoyable being a bonus, I was very pleased. The set was perhaps a tad Modern Times-heavy, but it is refreshing to see such an established and revered musical figure have such faith in a new album. Perhaps more importantly, those classics he did play were arguably better than when he had played them last time round.

The journey home was quite something. In brief, we got on a tram that turned out to be going away from Meadowhall. We got off at the next possible stop (no mean feat, given how packed our carriage was with ugly Sheffield men) only to rush back on upon realising we might as well stick with the tram to Sheffield and get our last train from there. Cue a sprint to the railway station, and onto the platform, only to find out that our train was going to be delayed by three quarters of an hour. Gutted, but not to the level we would have been if our waiting had been carried out in the grounds of the closed Meadowhall shopping centre. Still, this was slight inconvenience given how enjoyable, and lucky, our day was overall.

Live Review: Pelican, 18 April 2007


Leeds Cockpit.

Support: These Arms Are Snakes

Boo. We missed most of the support act (allegedly the second band on, and they were finished by twenty to nine?), which gutted us immensely; they were the main reason we bought tickets. What was doubly gutting was the fact that what we did see was excellent. What was a fine slab of Jimcore last time out had been replaced by frazzled, overwhelming noise, as the vocalist skittered and flew around the stage. All the while a white noise and sub bass torrent was drowning all around it. This was good noise, a sense of the rib cage rattling, the lungs filling with some kind of bizarro-tar that replenishes the soul. It had been far too long since I had felt this, felt the vibrations ripple up my entire body in an ecstasy of sound. And then, all too soon, it was over.

I was well gutted; not only because we had missed most of their set, but because it also seemed numerous times more intense than their December set.

We were left with only the prospect of hippy-metal heroes Pelican. My history with their recorded oeuvre was not especially positive; their albums range from nice-but-bland to rubbish aural wallpaper. That their music becomes exponentially better the louder it is played, though, semi-filled me with optimism for this show.

When the band entered the stage, my optimism was rewarded. Not massively so, but rewarded nonetheless. Much has been made of the current ‘post-metal’ scene, wherein everybody tries to sound like Neurosis and Earth, but Pelican aren’t even a part of that. Not really. They sound like they should be included with the scene: their songs are long, rolling and quite dynamic; they are on Hydra Head records, home of cool metal bands (though that status is being thoroughly challenged by Crucial Blast); they have referred to themselves, largely due to their instrumental nature, as ‘metal that non metal fans can listen to’.

And if all of that wasn’t enough of a turn-off, the truth of the matter seems more to be that the band consists entirely of old school rockers pretending to be a cool post-metal band. One of them looks weirdly like Varg Vikernes (a.k.a. Count Grishnakh, who’s currently serving a life sentence for killing a rival black-metaller), and one of them sort of resembles a malnourished James Hetfield. And let’s face it: a scary amount of old school rockers look like a Hetfield that has suffered various maladies. He also reminded me a bit of Klaus Meine from the Scorpions. When the band rocked out, which they thankfully did quite often, they synched and all I could think of was Status Quo. So, not cool then.

Still, the music was there and it was good. Anybody familiar with this post-Neurosis generation will know what to expect: Isis, but a little less exciting. Perhaps that is a tad harsh, as it takes a lot of nothing to be less exciting than Panopticon, but I digress. The songs were generally of a decent length, and usually started out slowly, before kicking into a riff-groove in which they tended to remain until the band stopped playing.

Initially this was slightly awkward, as I was too aware of the performance rather than feeling the music that was filling the venue. The band played loudly enough that the simple fact that they were riffing allowed me to coast through the ostensible falseness of the whole thing, the formulaic construction of the music and the annoying blokes next to me. But something didn’t feel right – it was all too mannered.

What was really weird is that I seemed to be experiencing a different gig to everyone else – or at least the band. The main talker (obviously not the lead singer, but the spokesman, as it were) made numerous mentions of how ‘you guys are always great to us’ or ‘we always have great gigs in Leeds’. Perhaps I have a different idea to them of what constitutes a ‘great gig’, as nobody seemed to even be dancing. Do people sleep at the average Pelican gig? Do they walk out, or bend the guitarists’ fingers back as they try to play?

Even weirder was the fact that I eventually had a really good time. Maybe it was the amount of time I had spent watching the band, rooted to the spot (I was admittedly sort of swaying – there really isn’t much in the way of dancing one can do to this music). Maybe the music got a lot better. Maybe I just got used to it but, whatever the reason, it really started making sense.

There was a lovely little period of time where the awareness left me and I sunk myself into the groove, into something of a trance state engendered and encouraged by the warmth of the venue, the music that was rolling and breaking like so many waves, and the fact that I was getting quite tired. Due to the latter fact, this period was eventually succeeded by a tiredness that articulated itself in the form of yawning, slight annoyance and a desire to go home. Before that, though, I loved it. There was one song in particular, I think it was called ‘Lost in the Headlights’, that signified the beginning of this positive stage in my appreciation of the set.

I synchronised with the groove, my mind filling with colours and feelings as I rocked with the rhythm of the music, the ebbs and swirls, and it really started to make sense. The last song, too, was great, as high-note droning gave way to massive feedback that subsided into very heavy music. It was rather a shame it was an encore, because I can’t stand the things. That period between main set and encore is the musical equivalent of the fans pleasuring the band until they splurge another song or two. It makes me feel dirty.

Anyway, the set ended up being a very positive thing, though no compensation for missing the lions share of These Arms Are Snakes. That I enjoyed the headliners more than I expected makes me want to catch isis when they roll through town, as they should be louder and better. After a couple of drinks, I bumped into a fellow gig attendee on the train home, and I convinced him to go see Isis too. He confirmed that These Arms Are Snakes were on at eight. That sucks.