Music Journal #014

Synthpop singer-songwriter Charli XCX's True Romance comes across as bland and one-dimensional for significant chunks of its duration. Charli's a capable pop songwriter, adhering to song structures and formulae that are expected in the field. While her vocal style doesn't reach as wide a range I'd hoped on the release, I think she still retains a unique selling point in there. Often, I was irked by the hit-but-mainly-miss production, which only switched up occasionally - such as Cloud Aura featuring Brooke Candy, but even then hip hop-influenced beat is marred by aspects like the shaking percussion overpowering one channel and hiding from the other. Gold Panda's You is essentially bastardised for the second track on the album, losing heart and becoming a husk for Charli to sing her rebellious take on romance over in a most patronising way. Indeed, her rough love lyrics lost between adolescence and fantasy are present throughout, and I could never really get on the same wavelength with them. I didn't hate it, it was okay, just generally uninspiring. It did get off to a great start though, with Charli channelling Gwen Stefani on the colourful opener Nuclear Seasons, and she certainly works her charm on You're The One too.

Forest Swords released the Dagger Paths EP in 2010 and since then, it seems to have turned into something of legend Ahead of the release of a new album recently announced, I found myself diving into the reverb-heavy guitar-driven electronic record. The mix of stretched and distorted samples, ominous string sirens and exotic percussion falls into creations that somehow make a whole lot of sense. Despite how agreeable it is in its musicality, that's far from the main focus of the EP. It's a tale of sadness, loss, weighty guilt and inevitable consequence, translated on all tracks, whether they carry the wandering pensiveness of Miarches' bass or the uncertain synth screeches of The Light. Pounding, Eastern drums and an anthemic, melodic loop in Hoylake Misst form the moment where Forest Swords effectively throws his gauntlet down and demands full attention, in case the subtlety of the prior track went underneath you. If Your Girl is the strangest of covers, built from the smashed remnants of an Aaliyah track, in the artist's own, distinct way. Dagger Paths is extremely characterful, and sticks with the soul long after listening.

The self-titled album from Italian duo Voices From The Lake is surely one of the purest embodiments of minimal techno. Compressing a life time into a moment and then stretching it out into an album length, Voices From The Lake never rush, taking their time to precisely develop each atmosphere on the LP. Thought-provoking pulsations, swampy percussion and atomic ambience transform into each other seamlessly and organically as tracks flower into new creations that never cease to wonder. The sound travels through deeper, foreign territories such as on the Amazonian Meikyu, while Twins In Virgo ditches the Earthly setting for lunar frequencies, yet only one track lies in between to launch the proceedings onwards and upwards. It's astoundingly easy to get lost in the world Voices From The Lake construct, yet the environments they traverse mean it's never a sub-optimal experience.

Everything in Light Up Gold reeks of laziness and nonchalance, in a good way. Parquet Courts conduct their charmingly slacker indie rock with maximum arrogance and self-celebration, stumbling through each riff, each lyric in the manner of the protagonist from Green Day's video for Warning. The lead never really sings or harmonises, opting for something between stating and shouting his barely-formed, almost-abstract lyrics. yelling, "You know Socrates died in the fuckin' gutter," before a solo rounds off the first track. More often than not it seems as if Parquet Courts aren't bothered enough to smooth the edges of their songs, with most tracks consisting of the barebones material just to justify the tracks' existence - the sole song longer than three and a half minutes is the self-absorbed memory, Stoned and Starving. There isn't much to emulate with on there, it's more about being entertained by the sheer fun and juvenile nature of it all - and if you're welling to step onto the ride you'll feel a whole lot of that fun.

Born To Die shot itself in the foot with its overly-long album length. Still, Lana Del Rey's album is a genuinely great listen, most likely down to how entertainingly over-dramatic it is. The combination of alternative hip-hop styled pop beats and thinly 'epic' string arrangements add weight to the singers voice, cinematic in more way than one; You have to believe, in order to be convinced. Wallowing in its own melodramatic and deadly-serious world, it becomes all the more surprising that Born To Die pulls it off. The exceptionally good start to the album helps to convince sooner than later, with the irresistible Off To The Races followed by singles Blue Jeans and Video Games, until Diet Mountain Dew plays along the edges between typically-Rey thematic elements such as dark romance and materialism in modern Western living. One of the bonus tracks, Lucky Ones, provides a far more satisfactory end than the standard version's This Is What Makes Us Girls, yet even before then, Rey's sleeves are emptied, though the attitude of Lolita does make for a great late rally cry on a memorably grim pop album.

I went into Zahava Seewald & Michaël Grébil's From My Mother's House knowing nothing about the artists or the album. In some respect, the undercurrent trend throughout my experience of the record is how little I understand. Frequently in German and often in French too, the spoken word stories, monologues and revelations were alien to me. They appear regularly amongst field recordings, classical and drone, pieced and pasted together like shards of a glass puzzle reconstructed blindly. The music comes across as purposefully alienating, perhaps as it seems so personal. At the start I'm left out in the rain, stumbling into sounds I feel I shouldn't be listening to. By the reprieve at the end, the second version of the title track opener, I'm inside and experiencing things first hand, as if my presence in these memories have been tolerated and grown accustomed to. Indeed, it's as much my story at the end as the artists' - for the album has required my interpretations and extrapolations from the snippets to form my experience, and we are invested in and indebted to each other. The mix of feelings is that of memories, strange and twisted familiarities, translucent truths inducing elation, nostalgia and regret and many other things. Some have an elegance more refined, such as the waltzing strings of Rast krasna, whereas the chapter Soleils noirs / Rentrer carries something of a curveball intrusion towards the end as old realities intertwine with each other. Certainly, From My Mother's House is one of the more fascinating pieces to reach my ears recently.

Riding a wave of appreciation from work on Yeezus, Arca opts to drop the &&&&& mixtape with little hype - pre-release, at least. It's an interesting listen for sure, consisting of what's essentially a sluggish take on bass music and hip-hop, sounding like frequencies swishing around the unstable guts of a queasy, sea-sick Flying Lotus. Large parts of the tape feel purposefully over-compressed and claustrophobic, as if to shake free of restraints we seem to have built for ourselves within the genre. Vocal samples, including Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg loops as well as others I'm unfamiliar with, are distorted with an over-encumbering level of reverb. The tape is a dark trip through all things between Night Slugs and Brainfeeder, maintaining the same spirit through different explorations of the sub-frequencies.

Frank's Wild Years sounds pretty much as I expected it to - in that it chronicled some of Tom Waits' most zany, discombobulating and gleefully unhinged music.I could spend years talking about how fantastic Way Down In The Hole - of The Wire fame - is, with its infectious rhythms and genuine absolving power. "Don't pay heed to Temptation, for his hands are so cold," Waits sings, several songs after a track devoted to Temptation, in which he despairs, "My confusion is oh so clear." Tom Waits' songwriting is visceral as ever, but its his experimentations with everything from Latin jazz to Central Asian folk that encapsulates the essence of sheer depravity and troubled nature of the album. Waits uses the power of putting songs in different contexts on occasion, with two Straight To The Tops and two Innocent When You Dreams, all completely Waits-ian takes on things.

The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do. That's the name given to Fiona Apple's 2012 album, and is the first release of hers I listened to. Her ability to write a song, to send a fleeting feeling, a restoration of hope, a shiver down a spine, is uncanny and incredulous. Apple demonstrates an ability to sing with the most delicate voice a mere second before bellowing powerful tones in the next breath, as early as the first song, Every Single Night. There are just so many magnificent moments here I'm struggling to string sentence together about... The lilt and saunter of Periphery, the light clap of Daredevil, the simple brilliance of the beating heart throughout Valentine before it evolves, and the way Fiona Apple changes from being reactive to proactive during the course of Hot Knife. The album was a charming, brilliant and effervescent listen and it still has me wrapped around its fingers.

The self-titled Melt Yourself Down rides the wilder side of modern jazz, opening with the progressive and messy Fix My Life, which somehow finds a hook amidst all the noise. It's a strange album; when it's on, it's a wonderful joyride that smashes through anyone or anything that tells you you can't ride that way round here, yet once it's over, you wonder if any of it ever happened at all. Since every track throws so much at you, everything from rabid saxophone to foreign or unintelligible soaring vocals, it's no wonder it leaves you in a jaded state. Playing with all influences be it Congo, samba or post-punk, Melt Yourself Down makes for a nice spanner in the works.

My main issue with The Knife's Shaking The Habitual is that it surely loses some of its point along the way, during it's ninety-six minutes or so running length. It does succeed, however, in its mission to be 'difficult' to listen to. It's a chore to hear it in full, nay, a distressing discomfort. I do love alienating music, so I'll say that's one-and-a-half major nuances I've found. It's also for the most part brilliant to listen to. The entire experience is overwhelming, sure, but the musical deviations and divergences along the way make it so worthwhile Full Of Fire, for example, is club-ready 4/4 as well as harrowing, disturbing and eerie noise. It comes after the relatively gentle A Tooth For An Eye, and followed by the largely ambient, verse-long A Cherry On Top. The track that carries the album's namesake is suitably titled, Without You My Life Would Be Boring, as it's a smorgasbord of all things exotic and adventurous, fluttering flutes, tribal percussion, excitable accents and all. The album goes out of its way to make things uncomfortable, even when you think you've acclimatised, but that's the whole point - to never acclimatised, to never accept mediocrity as 'good enough' and to always move. A minute of grating oscillations can be followed by nineteen minutes of quite frankly not that exciting drone. And then, Raging Lung can happen. Of the more 'out there' productions, the metallic and unnatural Fracking Fluid Injection might be my favourite, carrying plenty of weight and making a statement with the pained samples. There are plenty of highs on the album, and a fair bit of nonchalance too - which can be an issue for something so long, as I'd always wonder whether the next destination would be worth the journey there. Shaking The Habitual is certainly an album worth enduring or experiencing, if not enjoyed.