Big Thief ’Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You’ – Review

‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You’ is a pretty wild title for Big Thief’s fifth album. What does it mean? Not sure. But I think it speaks to the band’s artistic impulse to follow their nose rather than any ordained sense of logic or expectation, even if it results in something strange, uncanny or inexplicable. ‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You’ is shot through with this sense of singular conviction. It’s become cliche to evoke The White Album in a review, but ‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You’ does indeed capture that same freewheeling energy; that same sense of spontaneity, artistic daring and perfect imperfection. ‘Dragon New Warm Mountain’, like The White Album’, is so broad and deep and wide that it encompasses all sorts of divergent themes and ideas. It’s about love lost and love found. It’s as dark as it is light. As heavy as it is featherweight. Weird and accessible in equal measures. Big Thief’s fifth album is their best yet.

The title also conveys songwriter Adrianne Lenker’s deeply ingrained preoccupation with nature. The album is full of natural imagery; the morning geese in the title track, the poisonous snake in ‘Sparrow’, the ‘river with a mouth full of foam’ in ‘Promise is a Pendulum.’ Lenker views the natural world with an equal sense of awe and mystery while also fundamentally understanding the brutality of nature; she knows that death and decay are assured. She begins the album by exploring the inevitability of change, initially with a wide angle lens – leaves dying, butterflies growing, the moon rising – before honing in on an emotion, in this case the questions that arise in the wake of a break up. ‘Could I feel happy for you when I hear you talk with her like we used to do?’ Of course time is a requisite condition for anything changing, something Lenker dwells on in the next track ‘Time Escaping.’ Here her lyrical style is less fussy and formal. Her instinct for rhyme is impulsive, her imagery impressionistic. ‘Everything falls through, each dimension breaks in two, like the two hands clapping…’ 

Lenker’s interests are both existential and deeply, uniquely personal. When she ponders the nature of the ‘celestial body’ on ‘Spud Infinity’, or the nature of belief on ‘No Reason’, she sounds fundamentally invested in uncovering truth on the listener’s behalf. She interrogates, prods and asks questions a million times over before she considers providing an answer.

No circumstance is dealt with blithely or casually. ‘Certainty’ reflects on living in the debt of ‘make believe’ while stringing along someone who is in love with you. ‘Little Things’ bats back from the other perspective: ‘maybe you do use me?’ On ‘Flower of Blood’, Lenker is helpless, surrendering to their partner’s power and influence. On ‘Love, Love, Love’ she demands release. ‘Heavy Bend’, a slight but impressively detailed song, describes in careful detail how ‘the grass was sweating, you were sleeping in with the window open, the blanket breathing, cigarette on a golden ashtray, your golden hair lay in the swollen sunray, the withered roses hanging in the doorway.’ In the second verse she describes the scene on second sight; notices the flies, the clouds, the thick wilderness. Decay. Change.

On ‘No Reason’, her perspective, which at first might appear cynical, is revealed to be deeply optimistic. Faith, she contends, isn’t grounded in ‘reason’, it’s a feeling that is borne out of mutual experience and the beauty found in little moments. Little moments like the flute solo that elevates this song into something beautiful and unexpected. It’s an idea she extrapolates on the track ‘Little Things’ where she playfully describes the wonder of infatuation, and ‘Wake Me Up To Drive’ which is about the mundane joy that can be found in singing along to a popular song on the radio with the person you love. Ultimatly, Lenker is a bit of a hippie. ‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You’ is a contemplation of faith, hope, love, nature and music in which the songs seem to be in total conversation with one another.

Big Thief are at that point in a great band’s journey where every decision just seems to pay dividends. Every risk results in reward. Every melody and guitar solo so effortlessly falls into place. Considering that there are twenty tracks here, I can’t think of a single one that isn’t accomplished. Ok, ‘Sparrow’ feels a little melodically repetitive and ‘Dried Roses’ is perhaps one folky ballad too many, but on the whole this is a remarkably consistent double album. Big Thief turn their hand to country rock on ‘12,000 Lines’ and trip hop on ‘Heavy Bend’. Their vision encompasses the heavy drama of ‘Flower of Blood’ and the delicate intimacy of ‘The Only Place.’ Things get trippy on ‘Little Things’, dubby on ‘Blurred View’, rootsy on ‘Spud Infinity’ and silly on ‘Red Moon.’ They make all these choices feel like logical extensions of their signature sound.

The album’s closing track, ‘Blue Lightning’, finds Lenker somewhere between a state of rejection and commitment. The verses describe surreal natural occurrences that read like bad omens – lightning strikes, water running dry, spiders larger than hills, swearing angels – but the chorus is a declaration of commitment – or is it longing? ‘I wanna be so happy I could cry, I wanna be the shoelace that you tie, I wanna live forever till I die…’ there isn’t really a resolution. The album swings in its final stages, to the sound of synthetic horn stabs and the loosest guitar playing on the record. ‘That was a great set’ someone mutters enthusiastically. ‘Ok what shall we do now?’

9.5/10

Sea Power ’Everything was Forever’ – Review

British Sea Power, one of the most idiosyncratic indie bands of the last 20 years, have historically performed amidst foliage, stuffed animals and, brilliantly, a man donned in a fancy dress bear costume. No longer. “The bear’s gone now,” they said in a recent NME interview. “It’s like a novelty thing – kinda goofy and predictable.” This is one of several evolutions that the band have undergone this year – trivial on the surface but together they form a fundamental sea change (excuse the pun). British Sea Power have shaved away the esoteric, the theatrical, the eccentric. They’ve left the antics behind them and declared explicitly what their last album –  2018’s dull as dishwater ‘Let the Dancers Inherit the Party’ – had only implied: British Sea Power, sorry, Sea Power, want to be taken much more seriously.

Yes, let’s talk about the name change. British Sea Power will be known as Sea Power from this moment on. The band’s decision to abandon the word ‘British’ is perhaps understandable considering the current climate and you can clearly see why that name would provoke unwanted and distracting questions; as Yan put it in the NME interview “there isn’t open discussion and stuff. It’s just people arguing, not listening and being weird.” But it’s also a disappointing decision. By their own standards it feels like dumbing down; conceding ground to bigots and internet trolls. British Sea Power is a compelling, romantic name, one that evokes past glories and tragedies, conquests and concessions. Sea Power, is vague and nondescript. For me – and I accept that there are opposing arguments – it’s a clanging and uncharacteristically docile left turn and one that totally mischaracterises their audience.

But it’s also got people talking about the band; the name change has been picking up extensive coverage at the broadsheets and BBC – even GB News allegedly tried to run a feature on it. The group have historically been more successful than a lot of this coverage would like you to think (how many of today’s young bands would love a top 20 single?) but nonetheless, they have a lot of eyeballs on them right now. It feels like, for the first time in a long time, people are excited to hear a Sea Power album.

‘Everything Was Forever’ is the band’s seventh studio album (things get complicated if you factor in their numerous soundtracks and e.ps). It essentially sticks to the anthemic rock template they perfected on 2006’s ‘Do You Like Rock Music’ and have repeated, with diminishing returns, on every album since. Ten tracks. Stick the uplifting single near the beginning. Make room for a couple of Hamilton’s airy, psychedelic ballads. End with a dramatic post-rock number. ‘Everything is Forever’ is basically ‘Let the Dancers Inherit the Party’ which was basically ‘Machineries of Joy’ which was basically… you get the idea. And it’s fine. Sort of. On its own terms, there are plenty of things going for it. The band are experienced, talented musicians and their chemistry can be explosive. ‘Two Fingers’ and ‘Doppelgänger’ tap into some of that in compelling ways. They’re also capable of stretching out the landscape and indulging in the beauty of languid guitars and violins. ‘Lakeland Echo’ and ‘We Only Want to Make You Happy’ remind you of that. 

Which is sort of the problem. Ultimately, these songs only serve to remind you of older, better songs. They don’t add anything new to the equation and they only pale in comparison to their predecessors. Of course, In the early days, British Sea Power were obsessed with memory and remembrance. Their debut excavated the past and examined the aftershocks. Almost every song on ‘The Decline of British Sea Power’ explored that dynamic, which they articulated most clearly on the song ‘Lately’: ‘And you know how they say, the past, it is a foreign country / How can we go there, how can we go where we once went?’ That impulse plays out in the music of ‘Everything Was Forever’, an album which, from the title down, is stuck mining the past even while the band stare down a new future. ‘How can we go there?’ they seem to be implicitly asking. Sea Power, it turns out, are just a tired iteration of British Sea Power. 

And they’re a lot less fun that they used to be. Things are going wrong in the world and while Sea Power don’t have any answers, they’re very happy to point out the myriad of ways that we are letting each other down. This is a hopeless album. It’s dreary and dark. The brooding, pensive post-punk beat that throbbed in the belly of the band has been pushed deeper and deeper over the years. It’s now a dull, repetitive thud. Their early albums were wiry and caustic. Unpredictable. Exciting. And there was a dynamism to those records. Remember the frantic punk of ‘Apologies to Insect Life’ and the gnarled, punch-drunk conviction of ‘Waving Flags’? They occasionally recall that (the ascending guitar solo of ‘Two Fingers’ for example harkens back to ‘Remember Me’) but generally ‘Everything was Forever’ is predictable and bland. There is no new perspective. No clarity. No originality. Songs are crammed with wishy-washy rhetorical questions (‘what have you done my dear?’), vague declarations (‘we only want to make you happy’) and facile sloganeering (‘fear eats the soul’). The lyrics are just so… watery. Everything in fact feels watery. The guitar tones are watery. The reverb that soaks up the harmonies is watery. The mix turns everything to mush. ’Everything Was Forever’ is outwardly ambitious and expansive, like all Sea Power albums, but it just washes over you. It asks big questions and tackles serious topics yet it’s ultimately a relatively compact and constrained 47 minute pop rock album; it isn’t audacious enough to achieve it’s high aims.

The cover is emblematic of all this; the grim, grey colour scheme; the poorly photoshopped logo that seems inspired by soviet, agitprop design. It’s a mess. I was fourteen when I picked up my copy of ‘The Decline of British Sea Power’ from the local Borders store. The alluring yellow cover piqued my interest. The typography, the design, the unusual title sparked all sorts of questions. It looked like an old library book. I did something that I’ve rarely done since – I bought the album without knowing a single thing about the band. The music, in contrast to its packaging, was wildly modern and wildly agitated. It was clear that British Sea Power were a band of intellectual punks. Upon the cover of that “classic” record is a quote, that seems to at least partially paraphrase Thornton Wilder: “We ourselves may be loved only for a brief time… Even so, that will suffice… There is a land for the living and a land for the dead.” There’s no quote on this new album’s sleeve but if they wanted one then they would do well to pick a line from ‘Transmitter.’ It’s quite an appropriate lyric: ‘I feel more confused than ever.’ Well, as they once said, there is a land for the living and a land for the dead. Sleep easy British Sea Power.

5/10

Black Country, New Road ’Ants From Up There’ – Review

Back in 2019, Black Country, New Road released their debut single, a caustic little interrogation of online culture called ‘Athens, France.’ Singer Isaac Woods memorably told us ‘I’m still young but I’m working on the glow up.’ Black Country, New Road’s sophomore album, ‘Ants From up There’, is that glow up. It’s every bit as impressive as the leap Radiohead made on ‘The Bends’ or Blur produced with ‘Modern Life is Rubbish.’ ‘Ants From Up There’ is potentially the most accomplished indie rock album in half a decade.

BCNR’s debut ‘For the First Time’ demonstrated lots of potential – it was ambitious, experimental, strange – but it also felt pretentious and apathetic. Distant. Almost pleased with itself. ‘Ants From Up There’ is that much warmer, you’d think several fires had been lit under the band’s feet. Their biting post Punk has matured into a more emotive blend of emo and heart on sleeve indie rock. At different points it reminds me of Arcade Fire, Titus Andronicus, Explosions in the Sky, Los Campesinos, British Sea Power and Neutral Milk Hotel. There are unexpected musical passages as well; the atmospheric Post Rock of ‘Basketball Shoes’, the baroque string arrangement that opens ‘Chaos Space Marine’ (before it careens into a sludgy indie-folk anthem). The chord progressions that are often jazzy. The surprising time signatures and jolting tonal shifts that evoke Math-Rock. ‘Bread Song’ was influenced by Avant Garde composer Steve Reich. Violins weep and wilt, Saxophones wail. It can be a lot. Which you suspect is sort of the point.

Singer Isaac Woods keeps things from getting too esoteric by retaining the sense of humour that made him stand out on ‘For the First Time’. He deploys it with less irony this time around, and he sings more than he speaks, a distinction that takes him further away from overrated scene bands like Wet Leg, Yard Act and Dry Cleaning. BCNR are now operating in their own lane. 

Woods’ lyrics are so much sharper and more clear minded; rooted in the real but often expressed through the grandest possible metaphors. ‘Chaos Space Marine’ has him as an emigrating soldier, escaping England after ‘all that went wrong.’ The Concorde is a commonly recurring motif; Woods’ unwillingness to give up an unrequited love being equated with the British government’s continued devotion to the Concorde, long after the aircraft ceased being profitable. In the chorus, he races up hills, breathless, to catch a glimpse of his love flying through the evening sky. Infatuation leaves us physically and emotionally exhausted. Elsewhere, he’s floating around space, ‘traversing the milky way’, trying to find his way home after being ejected from a burning starship’s escape pod. He know the love interest’s time for him was nothing more than a ‘generous loan.’ The feeling on unrequited love is the ‘crippling interest,’ as he puts it on ‘Basketball Shoes.’ On ‘Snow Globes’ he is Catherine of Argon (at least according to some fan speculation) pleading on behalf of Henry to God. ‘God of weather, Henry knows snow globes don’t shake on their own!’ These are ridiculous, hilarious, heartbreaking images of devotion and desperation.

The album is full of self aware hyperbole. ‘I die, like, fifteen times’ he sings, the ‘like’ doing all the heavy lifting there. ‘Drown in me like boyfriend jeans’ he pleads later on in the same verse. On ‘For the First Time’ Woods sounded one step removed from his emotions. He used his wit to keep distance between himself and the characters he described. That occasionally came across as smug. Songs would drag on for up to ten minutes, rarely making literal sense, only to occasionally puncture you with a line of genius. His writing throughout ‘Ants From up there’ is all genius. It’s all first person. It’s all in. There is no remove. Every word feels deeply felt and truthful. He sounds like he’s being torn apart limb by limb when he utters things like ‘I was made to love you, can’t you tell?!’ And ‘I’m just trying to find some way to keep me in your mind.’

On the eve of release, the band announced that Isaac Woods would be leaving BCNR. “I have been feeling sad and afraid too … it means from now I won’t be a member of the group any more.” If Woods sounds overwhelmed at points on ‘Ants From Up There’ then that’s because he was overwhelmed. This is a real document of real emotions. Painful emotions. Emotions that you hear the band working through live and in perfect harmony. One admirable thing about the album is how earnestly it strives for greatness, in spite of that difficulty. The band wear their ambitions on their sleeve, and they surely recognise their talents as musicians make them every bit the match for Isaac Woods’ talents as a writer. This is a record full of grand gestures and open hearted declarations. It strives, it strains, it ultimately sprawls. Had this album not been an incredible success it would surely have been a dismal catastrophe. Half measures feel impossible for this band in this moment. Isaac Woods’ imminent departure feels like a necessary comma but luckily the band have the words ‘new road’ in their name. It doesn’t feel like the end yet. 

9.5/10

Animal Collective ’Time Skiffs’ – Review

Animal Collective came to embody the ambition and reach of late 00s Indie better than just about anyone else. 2009’s ‘Merriwether Post Pavilion’ was the high water mark for the genre of disruptive, experimental, melodic music that the likes of Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear, Deerhunter, MGMT and Tune-yards took extensive notes from. Their best songs were uncanny in the manor they straddled the familiar and the unknown; like a fever dream of The Beach Boys, Aphex Twin and the Grateful Dead with something unprecedented you couldn’t quite locate. ‘Feels’, ‘Strawberry Jam’ and ‘Merriweather…’ along with slightly lesser works such as ‘Sung Tongs’ and ‘Fall Be Kind’ set a standard that the band have spent the past decade struggling to match.

Of course you enter the Animals’ layer expecting to encounter a degree of difficulty; their sound is usually densely layered and frequently provocative. But by 2012’s ‘Centipede HZ’ and 2016’s  ‘Painting With’, the abrasive aesthetic had simply become exhausting. Beautiful melodies were concealed by distracting layers of noise and grating effects. Harmonies were weaponised. Sugar coated hooks drew blood. Listening to these albums often felt as challenging, and involving, as the making of them. Subsequent soundtracks and e.ps – ‘Crestone’, ‘Tangerine Reef’, ‘Bridge to Quiet’ – were less obnoxious and messy but, tellingly, more anonymous as well. Animal Collective’s creativity seemed thoroughly spent.

But one of the group’s central appeals is the way they can surprise, change what they do, move against expectations, react against their past, echo off it. And so perhaps we actually shouldn’t be shocked that new album ‘Time Skiffs’ is refreshingly unpretentious and immediately likeable. For the first time in a long time, Animal Collective have made an album that doesn’t feel like a chore. It would be an exaggeration to call it laidback, but ‘Time Skiffs’ settle into a hypnotic flow that intoxicates and lingers. This is a cool, atmospheric, kaleidoscopic journey through a strange and fascinating jungle of noise.

Despite their clear interest in drone, ambience and repetition, Animal Collective won’t quietly fade into the background. ‘Time Skiffs’ wants your attention as much as ‘Painting With’ did but this time the band use carrot rather than stick. Opening tracks ‘Dragon Slayer’ and ‘Car Keys’ were stitched together on the band’s last tour, melting into one proggy jam. The versions presented here are shorter and more understated, emphasising some tangly guitar licks and a surprisingly sturdy backbeat from Panda Bear. It’s a relaxed start to the album, which really gets going on ‘Paster John’, a beautifully textured and deceptively groovy comeback single that brings Panda Bear, Avery Tare and Deakin together in harmonic heaven. Further singles – ‘Walker’, ‘Strung With Everything’ and ‘We Go Back’ – are other giddy highlights.

‘Time Skiffs’ combines tension with relief, surprise with repetition, pessimism with hope. The album is full of surreal natural imagery; suns burning, fights breaking out in flower beds, red fire, cold water and infinate blasts of light. ‘How are we doin’ now?’ They ask on ‘Car Keys?’ Well the world is either eating itself or collapsing in on itself in strange and uncanny ways. ‘Fresh sneakers in Babylon get dirty’ Avery Tare observes. But throughout ‘Time Skiffs’ there is always the sense that ‘the grass will find its shape again’, as they put it on ‘Strung With Everything,’ a song riffe with life affirming, call and response chants that evoke The Beach Boys at their weirdest. Through sheer charisma and conviction, the album is uplifting in spite of the group’s apocalyptic lyrical concerns.

That ‘Time Skiffs’ is the best Animal Collective release since 2009 won’t, in and of itself, been seen as a major achievement to anyone who endured ‘Centepiede HZ’ or ‘Painting With’. What is surprising though is how effortlessly good the album sounds in comparison to its hyperactive yet tightly wound predecessors. ‘Time Skiffs’ doesn’t have a banger like ‘My Girls’ or ‘Peacebone’, and it lacks the wild unpredictability and singular invention of their best work, but it is perhaps Animal Collective’s most accessible album to date and something like a return to form. My favourite song, unexpectedly perhaps, is ‘Royal and Desire’, where Deakin takes lead vocals for only the second or third time in the band’s catalogue. Deakin doesn’t have access to Panda Bear’s angelic register or Avery Trae’s ecstatic energy, but there is something quietly captivating about his relaxed, honeyed croon. It personifies the qualities of the record as a whole. ‘We’ll always come round, round / round, round’ he repeats softly as the vocals fade and organ notes swell and dissipate. A few years ago that may have sounded more like a threat than a promise. It’s good to have the real Animal Collective back.

7.5/10

Mitski ‘Laurel Hell’ – Review

In 2022, Mitski has almost unparalleled reach. It’s hard to think of another indie rock artist who could top Pitchfork’s year end list and soundtrack Tik Tok trends; one who has vocal fans in Barack Obama AND Harry Styles. ‘Laurel Hell’, her sixth album, seems unsure of how to handle the scrutiny that this volume of success brings. Stick or twist? Expand or pull back? ‘Laurel Hell’ is a slight and anxious record that seems torn between hamming up ‘Be the Cowboy’s more restrained pop undertones and retreating into a sort of deflated, dank ambience. It crunches through gear changes awkwardly; Mitski can’t quite decide whether to be the introvert or extrovert and the album suffers as a consequence. That it still manages to be an enjoyable and occasionally captivating album despite the muffled vision, speaks to her fundamental strengths as a songwriter.

The album opens with the muted, ambivalent ‘Valentine, Texas’ which, in reductive terms, sounds like a gloomy rehash of ‘Be the Cowboy’s memorable opener ‘Geyser’. ‘Let’s step carefully into the dark’ she tells us in the first line, foreshadowing an album that is indeed both gloomy and tentative. The central hook is even more telling; ‘who will I be tonight? Who will I become tonight?’ I’m not sure she ever works out the answer but Mitski should have enthusiastically embraced the light because the album is easily at its best on the album’s brighter numbers.

‘The Only Heartbreaker’ and ‘Love Me More’ are paired together in the centre of the record and they are catchy, carefree highlights.  Adele and Taylor Swift collaborator ‘Dan Wilson’ worked on the latter and it shows in the song’s razor sharp hooks and laser lit production. Later on we get ‘Should’ve Been Me’, which sounds like The Cure, and ‘That’s Our Lamp’ which is reminiscent of late stage ABBA. These songs flex Mitski’s pop muscles in uncomplicated ways, and are remarkable for how light they sound in comparison to the claustrophobic and uptight numbers that we find elsewhere. ‘Heat Lightning’? A dull, droning ‘Heroin’ homage. ‘Everyone’? A vague and indistinct slog. ‘There’s Nothing Left for You’ and ‘I Guess’ are totally interchangeable, minimalist ballads. Too many of these tracks sound phoned in and noncommittal; the work of an artist who has frequently talked up quitting the industry and who only started writing the album out of a contractual obligation.

But there is enough here that reminds you why Mitski is considered to be one of the brightest artists of her generation. ‘Working the Knife’ might be her best song to date, and it’s the one true time on the album where Mitski attempts to tangle the darkness and light into a single shade. Alongside some drizzly synths, Mitski ruminates on the nature of her creativity; ‘I cry at the start of every movie / I guess cos I wish I was making things too.’ Disaffection may sour the quality of other tracks but ‘Working the Knife’ is the only song that explicitly wrestles with the root cause in a meta way. What fuels creativity? A desire to make something meaningful and true or cold obligation? Is the acclaim worth the cost? How will the physical and mental strains take their toll? ‘I start the day lying and end with the truth, that I’m working for the knife.’ What is the eventual outcome of striving for that truth? ‘Laurel Hell’ suggests that Mitski still hasn’t come to a positive conclusion.

7/10