Fleet Foxes ‘Shore’ – Review

‘That’s that, we’re a long way from the past / we’ll be better off in a year or two.’ Robin Pecknold wrote the lyrics to ‘Shore’ on long car drives out of the city during the solitary spring/summer of 2020. On these drives he reflected, reminisced, tried to remember, tried to forget. The descriptions of ‘apricot flowers’ ‘passing rain’ and ‘beechwood pyres‘ draw a line to the precious, pastoral images of meadowlarks and blue ridge mountains on Fleet Foxes idealistic debut but these recent descriptions attempt to reflect something more urgent; a writer’s connection to grounded, familiar beauty in ugly, unreal times.

This speaks to a personal disillusionment with the way things have gone as much as a general, universal malaise. Pecknold started writing these songs on the back of a gruelling tour, promoting 2017’s ‘Crack Up’. Whether that album’s dense, experimental textures, proggy structures and intricate lyrics left you spellbound or dumbfounded, it was undeniably an arduous record to recreate live night after night. The profundity of the material got lost in the cavernous concert halls and even Pecknold struggled to relate to songs that were inherently knotty. He knew that if he was going to go through the whole process of creating, promoting and touring again it would have to be for an album he could actively enjoy living with for three years.

It’s easy to hear the bright chords, simplified structures and generous melodies of ‘Shore’ as something of a referendum on the obtuseness of its predecessor – and perhaps to some extent that’s exactly what this album is. Certainly, from the off, it’s an invitational collection of relatively short, relatively accessible folk-rock songs. Fifteen of them no less. Fleet Foxes don’t hedge their bets here. It’s a little cliched and reductive to call it a ‘back to basics’ reboot but essentially, in several very practical ways, that’s how I hear it. 

More direct than ‘Crack Up’ and far less fraught than ‘Helplessness Blues’, Pecknold presents the brand of contentedness and curiosity that initially endeared him to fans on the double punch of ‘Fleet Foxes’ / ‘Sun Giant’. Unlike last time around, these songs don’t invite any studious contemplation nor do they demand your undivided attention; instead they are content to simply wash over you. After a while the edges between tracks start to bleed. And so I don’t entirely remember the distinction between, say, ‘Maestranza’, ‘Quiet Air / Gioia’ and ‘Thymia’ but I can tell you they are all lovely and meticulously executed.

And I’m not sure that’s quite enough for me in 2020. I was 18 when I first heard ‘Fleet Foxes’. It was 2008, I was on holiday to France and looking forward to starting university in September. I remember the bright sun and the cool water. I remember those divine harmonies and baroque-pop arrangements becoming a natural extension of my surroundings and my feelings of seemingly endless tranquility. Outside of my immediate periphery, Obama was on the verge of becoming president and in some sense Fleet Foxes sound came to soundtrack those hopeful, early years of his presidency. Then everything kind of curdled. The innocent folk-rock of Fleet Foxes seeped into the mainstream. Mumford and Sons went on to sweep the major Grammy awards the following year. The Lumineers ‘Hey Ho’ became the biggest song on the planet for a while. Obama came and went without really changing much at all. Fleet Foxes retreated into hibernation for seven years.

There is little aesthetic progression from what you can hear on ‘Fleet Foxes’ to what you can hear on ‘Shore’. These songs are slightly more cluttered, slightly less immediate, but reassuringly familiar. For whatever reason though – and I’m sure it’s on me rather than them – it just doesn’t quite move me like it used to. The languid, indulgent melodies and meditative tones don’t convincingly transport me away. I can see this music for what it is – nice, pretty, carefully crafted. Soothing rather than cutting. And it does that job brilliantly, it’s just, somehow, ‘we’ll be better off in a year or two’, cooed harmonically over an acoustic shrug doesn’t quite feel enough right now. 

7.5/10

Yusuf ‘Tea for the Tillerman 2’ – Review

Before I go any further, it’s worth saying that ‘Tea for the Tillerman’, originally released in November 1970, is one of the all time great pop albums. That score you see at the bottom of this review does not reflect the merits of what I consider to be some of the finest songs ever written. Songs that are curious, wise, empathetic, hopeful, and real. Songs that speak to deep, internalised fears about the world and our place within it. Songs about personal growth and human folly; about navigating through the nonsense to find something real and everlasting. Songs with the most sublime, heartbreaking melodies. Songs originally recorded on analogue equipment by the finest musicians in the best studios in the world. Songs that took Cat Stevens to the top of the charts and sustained his career for fifty years.

But those songs are presented here in often radically different forms. ‘Tea for the Tillerman 2’ is a collection of reimaginings where Yusuf (as he’s been known since his conversion to Islam in the late 70s) channels nostalgia through the prophetic ruminations of his youth. As a consequence, ‘Tea for the Tillerman 2’ serves to highlight just what a striking album the original was by point of contrast. Perhaps inevitably, it isn’t an essential album in its own right. Often, it’s a comically perplexing one.

Yusuf has reinterpreted the songs in a variety of styles. Unfortunately, the more he diverts from his mellow sweet spot, the less successful his reinventions become. ‘Longer Boats’ is retro-fitted with a funky breakdown and odd spoken word insertion. ‘Wild World’, already covered by every man and his dog, here becomes a rag-time Jazz miscalculation. The wisdom implicit in the young songwriter’s original recording is somehow diluted amidst saxophones and accordions. ‘On the Road to Find Out’, one of the more inquisitive songs on the original album, becomes a heavy handed blues number; Yusuf drowned out by overly dramatic organ swells and percussion.

The more successful takes are the ones that lean in to the maturity of the material. The quietly moving ‘Into White’ is presented in a largely unaltered acoustic format. It feels like the ultimate version, not least because Yusuf’s gentle, sweetly eroded vocal performance gives gravitas to the abstract lyricism of 1970. The classic ‘Father and Son’ is also given a tasteful new arrangement. Here Yusuf somehow matches the drama of the original, his voice conveying a power that manages to surprise as the song builds to its stirring climax. ‘Sad Lisa’, one of the all time great melancholic ballads doesn’t fare quite so well. The original’s delicate arrangement is updated with a chintzy AOR electric piano. Nonetheless, the beautiful melody and haunting chords remain as moving as ever.

Great songs are great songs, no matter how unflatteringly they’re dressed up – and make no mistake, ‘Where do the Children Play’, ‘Wild World’, ‘Father and Son’ and ‘Sad Lisa’ are some of the greatest ever written. But by revisiting tunes written fifty years ago, Yusuf has traded in his trademark sense of adventure for nostalgia. In a sense, by invoking the ghosts of his past, Yusuf is reminding us what an inventive, forward thinking songwriter he used to be and also  signalling that those days are assuredly in the past. But if ‘Tea for the Tillerman 2’ has you reaching for that original classic album, or even listening to these songs for the first time, then it should be considered a success.

6/10

The Lemon Twigs ‘Songs for the General Public’ – Review

‘Songs for the General Public’, The Lemon Twigs third album in five years, is the follow up to 2018’s Rock Opera ‘Go to School’. Inherently less ambitious than its wild predecessor, its peaks and valleys feel less dramatic as a result. The prodigiously talented brothers, both barely out of their teens, have stripped things back to the core essentials. This glam, schlocky rock n roll album finds the band pitching somewhere between Todd Rundgren, Alice Cooper and the Rocky Horror Picture Show. In a very real sense, it sounds directly teleported from 1973. At its best, ‘Songs for the General Public’ is thrillingly entertaining, at its worst it’s borderline distasteful.

Michael and Brian D’Addario remain two of the most captivating showmen out there. It’s not for nothing that Alex Turner personally selected the band to open for Arctic Monkeys on their most recent UK tour. These songs seem designed to showcase those talents. They are theatrical, indulgent, ridiculous; songs about red-hot heartbreak, domestic turmoil and, err, incest, brought to life with urgent, blistering power chords and flippant cock-rock. 

At points The Lemon Twigs can be very unpredictable. ‘Hog’ channels ABBA for its gorgeously opulent melody. The shmultzy ‘Why Do Lovers Own Each Other’ blossoms into a mini baroque-pop symphony in its second half. Cathartic album closer ‘Ashamed’ starts by pinching the tune to ‘Auld Lang Syne’ before dramatically upping the ante. It’s a platform boot stomping anthem for ‘little Tom and Jane’ who just want to ‘make it with each other’. If only they weren’t brother and sister.

Despite the strangeness, ‘Songs for the General Public’ is perhaps LESS musically surprising than their best album, their debut, ‘Do Hollywood’. The writing also feels paper thin at points. On the record’s most sentimental love song, ‘Moon’, they compare the moon to a toe nail and bemoan their ability to fit in and feel normal. Other points of emotional openness are blunted by harsh asides, misjudged humour and bitter barbs. Michael’s songs are frequently fuelled by a kind of petulant anger. He begins one by comparing his partner to a hog. ‘My hate knows no bounds’, he goes on to say. On the unsettlingly catchy ‘Fight’ he sings ‘I’m glad your mom is dead’ before asking ‘why don’t we have sex any more?’ On ‘Leather Together’ he tells her ‘you know you look like shit with glasses on.’ It’s a shtick, I think, but not a particularly flattering one, and one that does rather undercut his sincerity.

If Michael’s numbers are often alarmingly specific, then Brian suffers from the opposite problem. As talented a vocalist and musician as he is, his songs can be lifeless. He’s stuffed them with cliched platitudes and vague affirmations. The broadway melodies and rote themes also feel too easily picked. Early single ‘Live in Favour of Tomorrow’ is a good example, being totally short of personality. ‘Wait until you see an open door, joy is nothing without sorrow.’ It’s a greeting card approximation of romance that is forgotten as quickly as its heard.

All this is mostly forgiven by the time you get to the absurd finale ‘Ashamed.’ It’s hard not to have a smile on your face as this six minute ode to forbidden love accelerates towards, and then hurtles over, the cliff of good taste. Nobody else is really making music like this in 2020 and certainly not as fabulously. There is some point of comparison to throwback groups like Sheer Mag, Starcrawller, Advertisment and Anyl and the Sniffers but these groups don’t have the musical proficiency, subversive attitude or historical appreciation that the D’Addario brothers have. They definitely ham it up too much at points – ‘Hell on Wheels’ is little more than a trashy am-dram approximation of rock n roll, ‘Leather Together’ is just plain ugly – but generally the indulgence and extravagance only makes them more weirdly endearing. If they can find a way to rein it in slightly without losing their individuality then they really could be on to something. 

7/10

Disclosure ‘ENERGY’ – Review

It’s a pretty crummy time to put out house music. It goes without saying that clubs and festivals are out of bounds and the hightsteet fashion stores and shopping malls that play this stuff to indiscriminate consumers are also pretty short on footfall. If anyone can weather the storm then it’s surely Disclosure, a duo who have transcended those environments better than any other dance act (with the possible exception of Calvin Harris) over the last decade. Shunned by the bass community that initially celebrated them, Disclosure instead became chart-bothering, advert soundtracking, Sam Smith collaborating mainstays back in 2012/13.

It’s been five years since Disclosure’s underwhelming sophomore album ‘Carcel’ blunted some of the popularity they had accumulated. As its title would suggest, ‘ENERGY’ attempts to regain their early momentum by grooving away from the more muted, r&b tones of ‘Carcel’ towards a far brighter, beat heavy sound. And they’ve succeeded in making an enjoyable, low stakes dance-pop record –  one that is ultimately as hard to dislike as it is to adore.

Their list of collaborators feels almost comically random, particularly in comparison to ‘Settle’ where the guests were a perfectly curated cluster of rising UK vocalists. Here, a mixture of faded mainstream stars (Kelis, Common) of the moment rappers (Channel Tres, Mick Jenkins, Amine, Slowthai) and obscure international acts (Fatoumata Diawara, Blick Bassy) combine and clash with  varying degrees of success. Some make the most of their moment – Channel Tres is brilliant, Mick Jenkin’s soulful performance stands out – while some fizzle from the mind almost instantly. Common provides some utterly faceless verses to the album’s forgettable closer ‘Reverie’ while Khalani and Syd’s contribution, ‘Birthday’, is disappointingly short of originality.

Considering that diverse roster of talent, the album does flow quite nicely. My main complaint with ‘Caracel’ was that it was front-loaded with songs straining desperately to be hits. No space was left for ambiance or texture. Disclosure have clearly tried to remedy that here. ’ENERGY’ starts off confidently as well but it keeps a momentum. The second half contains a couple of relatively minor instrumental/sample based palette cleansers that serve as calming interludes. Partly as a consequence,  ‘ENERGY’ doesn’t burn out after only a couple of tracks.

That said, it’s true that the real bangers come early on. ‘Lavander’ and ‘Watch Your Step’ are breathless house pop songs that firmly announce the shift away from the milder tones of ‘Caracal’. The inexplicably popular Slowthai turns up with one of his more incendiary verses on ‘My List’ while its Kelis who provides her most urgent melody in years on ‘Watch Your Step’. Disclosure team up with preacher Eric Thomas once again on the album’s title track, a lively, samba style rave that could cynically be interpreted as an attempt to rebottle the good vibes of ’When a Fire Starts to Burn’, the standout track from ‘Settle’. The song is uncannily similar but its dulled impact speaks to how, sometimes, subtle differences in texture and cadence can conspire to make a world of difference. Far from being an effortless floor-filler, ‘ENERGY’ feels, like much of the album, a little too contrived to be truly transcendent.

Generally though, Disclosure do enough to at least make ‘ENERGY’ the kind of relatively mindless, high octane album you’d stick on to make it through a quick work out. It’s not going to have the lasting influence of their debut though – indeed it’s hard to imagine any electronic record having such a seismic impact anytime soon – but it does a job well. But perhaps ‘ENERGY’s greatest achievement is in how it serves, through point of contrast, to remind you just how flawless ‘Settle’ truly was.

6.5/10

The Magic Gang ‘Death of the Party’ – Review

Naming your album after a Blur song that signalled the Britpop band’s shift away from spiky pop to something darker feels too on the nose to be a coincidence. The Magic Gang’s follow up to their effervescent self titled debut certainly takes itself more seriously than anything they have put out before now. Maybe this is an inevitable consequence of growing up or maybe the band who named their debut single ‘No Fun’ have decided to live up to that promise.

‘Death of the Party’ is certainly a whole lot less enjoyable than that perky debut. The back half in particular feels a little too sluggish and dour for a band who built their reputation on smiles and major chords. They themselves describe it as a record that ‘slowly gets more and more grim’ and they aren’t wrong. It’s self consciously ABOUT something – alienation – and each songwriter (there are three) dials in to that feeling in a pretty visceral way.  

The Magic Gang have made a big noise about their lyrics this time around and it’s true that the writing feels more defined than in the past, but I find their new approach to be far less effective. They’ve replaced endearingly lovesick lyricism for a more hard-boiled, diaristic style. Alex Turner was a key influence apparently and you can kind of hear it in the conversational, spoken word verses that frequently prop up the anthemic choruses. But they certainly haven’t developed anything like Turner’s wit or eye for detail yet and, as a consequence, these descriptions of parties, panic attacks and metaphorical drives down long roads are lacking colour and nuance.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. On the whole ‘Death of the Party’ is more varied than the pretty one dimensional predecessor. Tempos fluctuate, the mood thickens and the band frequently break out in to a groove. Several songs are fleshed out by soulful string arrangements and horn breaks, which work well, particularly on the title track. A northern soul influence is clearly discernible here and on ‘Think’, ‘I am Sunshine’ and ‘Take Back the Track’.

The album opens to the sound of the band picking up and plugging in, which is fitting; in its best moments ‘Death of the Party’ feels alive with energy. Despite the prevailing somber atmosphere, there are still some unashamedly urgent indie pop tunes to keep the band’s predominantly young audience happy. ‘Think’ is likeable despite the nagging, imperative tone. ‘Take Back the Track’ likewise, if you can look past its very obvious resemblance to Chic’s ‘Freak Out’. Best by a country mile is bassist Gus Taylor’s contribution ‘What Have you Got to Lose’, an initially moody, post-punk number that bursts to life in the chorus. It could be the missing link between Squeeze and Joy Division. 

At points though the band fail to pierce through the fog. I’ve heard the album several times now and the darker songs, the likes of ‘Fail Better’, ‘The World Outside my Door’ and ‘Go Moving’ still fail to register. It’s not that they don’t know their way around a sullen ballad – the expansive ‘Life Without You’ from an early e.p leaned softly into the ‘Pet Sounds’ influence and worked beautifully – they just (understandably) want to reach beyond that low hanging fruit now. Magic Gang clearly want to be taken more seriously. Sometimes though, it takes something more than hiring Animal Collective’s producer, playing some minor chords and writing lyrics that don’t rhyme. It’s something that’s hard to pin down or explain. And It’s something Magic Gang haven’t quite discovered yet.

6/10