The National – “Alligator” 2005

It’s late but I’ve noticed that I haven’t posted anything here for a while. So here’s a quick nudge for the uninitiated and reminder for those acolytes looking for something to keep them going until the new Arcade Fire arrives, assuming you haven’t already copped one of the leaks. Me, I’m waiting. Sex before marriage is one thing but some things are worth holding out for.

Anyway, “Alligator” by The National is one of my favourite records ever. Every time I play it, I discover something new. Whether it’s the slippery descending riffs of “Baby, We’ll Be Fine”, the wistful “Looking for Astronauts” or the weirdly triumphant screw-up narrating “Mr November” (‘I won’t fuck you over/I’m Mr November’), you’ll be touched, moved, reduced to jelly…It’s a marvellous record, like the Wilco of Hotel Yankee Foxtrot growing a sense of humour and deciding to cover ‘A Rush Of Blood To The Head’. ‘Lit Up’ is a marvellous rocker. ‘Secret Meeting’ is a strange tale of imaginary (?) bodyguards and shifting identities. The singer (I can’t remember his name now and I’m too lazy to look it up) sounds like Ian Curtis with good intonation. The band play a hooky alternative rock leavened with steel guitars and and half-a-dozen diffferent layers of reverb settings.

Enough already. Trust me on this.

Links: Their site has a few mp3s. You’ll track it down.

Arizona Amp and Alternator – “Arizona Amp and Alternator”

“Arizona Amp and Alternator” is a Howe Gelb album, roughly number 30 in hopefully a very long series of records by the prolific Giant Sand mainman. It’s one of his more homespun statements, carrying as it does an aura of Howe and his mates set up in his front room with Howe keeping comfortably close to his piano for those odd splashes of jazzy colour whilst focusing mostly on “playing good guitar on beat-up strings”, to quote an earlier tune off “Confluence”. As has now become standard procedure for his more ‘off-piste’ issues, “A, A & A” features a number of new songs, reconsiderations of a couple of older numbers (including ‘Blue Marble Girl’) and a few curveballs, such as a gently loping treatment of Traffic’s ‘The Low Spark Of High-Heeled Boys’. Given that the ‘mates’ include the sadly departed Grandaddy (who play on the Traffic cover), M.Ward, John PArish and Scout Niblett.

The extent to which all of this will or won’t rock your particular world, depends largely on whether Gelb is the great unsung genius of our time or an annoyingly inconsistent auteur who really ought to spend more time in proper studios and get himself a producer.

Recently, acclaimed records like ‘Sno Angel’ and the sympathetic backing of the Thrill Jockey label have suggested that we can have it both ways with stormingly consistent sets like ‘Sno Angel’ and the most recent Giant Sand album alternating with ah, looser releases. AA&A falls clearly in the latter category, ranging from taut acoustic ballads to shambolic strings of almost spoken lyrical non-sequiturs over a backing sufficiently tentative to wonder whether the song was being made up on the spot, to moments of plain-spun lyrical beauty. Some songs (such as the aforementioned Blue Marble Girl remake) cover all three. Then there are the random little moments such as the appalling-on-paper but charming-in-reality remake of ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ as a duet set in Arizona. Someone called Maria Lorette Friis coos a charming Julie London impression whilst Gelb rumbles away at the bottom of his range. There’s always something interesting happening, even if it takes a number of listens to decrypt exactly what.

AA&A is a definitely a record for acolytes, not neophytes. It’s Gelb at his must spontaneous- frustrating as hell but with enough hits to make the effort rewarding. Beginners, start with the compilation ‘Selections: 1990 to 2000′, ‘Centre of the Universe’, ‘Storm’ and ‘Chore of Enchantment’, then ‘Confluence’ and ‘Sno Angel’. Then you’re on your own.

Links – Giant Sand’s homepage. Also see the excellent array of live recordings on the Internet Music Archive. Now go buy all his records.

The Knife – “Silent Shout” (2006)

I’m still kind of baffled that “Silent Shout” ended up as Pitchfork’s album of 2006. Maybe it just crept in at 19 or 20 on the shortlist of every single contributor and snuck in by stealth.

Mind you, it’s steadily made its way into my own consciousness via similar means. On the surface, it’s nothing special – icy Nordic vocals to the point of cliche, chattering 80s sequencer runs, digital reverb and echo to the nth degree, processed harmonies, Roland beats. Sort of Abba meets Soft Cell via Black Celebration. I keep deleting it off my iPod and but reloading it soon after.

It’s playing right now, soundtracking the brocoli steamer. There’s nothing here I haven’t heard before. Perhaps because it’s all here in the same place, a conveniently wrapped up bundle post-electro European chilliness (there’s nothing remotely chilled about this) for those dispassionate moments. There’s a sort android yearning to “The Captain” which always makes me look up or put down whatever I’m reading and maybe half a dozen other tracks.

I suppose I’ll just have to keep puzzling. Meanwhile, their website has some bits and pieces to listen to and there are more streams here – go puzzle for youselves.

Television – “Marquee Moon” (1977, 2004)

Television are a group who mean a great deal to me and ‘Marquee Moon’ is a record I’ve treasured since I was 19. I must have learnt every note, note, every scratch, every whine of guitar that Richard Lloyd or Tom Verlaine laid down here. It’s one of those unique records – like Joanna Newsom’s ‘Ys’ – that come out of nowhere, in blatant opposition to prevailing trends. Whilst everyone else in New York is dressing up in three chords and short, sharp art-pop, Television put out a virtuoso guitar record featuring two ten minute tracks crammed with guitar solos and lyrics about Venus De Milo.

It starts off at a charge with the relentless, chopping riff of ‘See No Evil’. This and the next two tracks are gleaming, angular constructions, scales consciously bled dry of all hint of rock’s blues roots. They give no clue as to the journey to follow. Last track on what in olden days would have been called Side 1 is the title track. Again, a staccato, two note riff, like someone setting off on a long march to an unknown destination. The rest of the band and the singer gradually join in. Fittingly, its a tale of memory -”I remember/I recall” – and mystery. We never find out what the Marquee Moon is, just that the narrator sits there in its light, hesitating. Meanwhile, the march continues. The guitar solos spiral, up and and up. There’s no showiness, just this irrestible momentum. You want to know where they’re going to end, what’ll finally happen. Ten minutes and climax after climax later, it ends – not with a bang, but with another cycle, another turn of the gyre, as the marcher sets off again. Verlaine begins to sing the first lines once more as the track fades out.

Side 2 (track 5, modernists) opens with ‘Elevation’ (is there a theme of transcendence operating here?) It’s a slow, melancholy number concluding that “Elevation/Goes right to my head” and features a beautiful, composed Richard Lloyd solo. The last track, “Torn Curtain” hints at some revelation achieved. By this point, the band sound like one complex instrument, full of counterpoints and odd spaces, stops and starts.

‘Marquee Moon’ is of its time and out of it. You can hear it echoed in the tight, winding arrangements of the Strokes or Interpol. It was unrepeatable. After ‘Adventure’, the more modest but underrated follow-up, they split. The inevitable reformation album, a decade or more later, was a superior Tom Verlaine solo album. I didn’t get to see them until a few years back and then again, over two nights. The first night, they were solid. The second night, they ignited.

Meanwhile, there’s always this record. The reissue has the debut single (Little Jimmy Jewel), a solitary intrumental outtake and a couple of alternate version.s All worthy but one needs to listen to this record as a single piece, straight through, without interruption. Except maybe for a few seconds between tracks 4 and 5, to pretend to turn it over.

Wikipedia bio.

Fairport Convention – “Liege and Lief”

I spent some of yesterday morning wondering around with this (the 2002 reissue) on my iPod marvelling at sheer clarity of the arrangements and writing.  A couple of original songs (‘Come All Ye’ and ‘Crazy Man Michael’) and rendering of seven other tradition songs that sound as timeless then as now.  If anything, this music probably makes more sense in 2007 than it might have done in 1969.

It is, folk trappings aside, a rock album, as one might expect from anything featuring Richard Thompson on electric guitar and with a rhythm section that moves as forcefully as Fairport’s.  Sandy Denny’s vocals also set it apart – singing that was powerful and earthy  but with the grace and precision of a church choir.

‘Matty Groves’ is a chilling tale of adultery and murder.  ‘Reynardine’ an ethereal story of faery (?) abduction that set a template for everything from the Cocteaus to All About Eve (well, think of the atrocities that could be laid at Hendrix’s door.  Robin Trower, anyone?).  ‘Come All Ye’ has the kind of propulsive groove that (seriously) it would take AC/DC at the height of their powers to match.

I’ve got to go and make a small person’s breakfast.  I’d better go and listen to it again.  In the meantime, anyone whose acquaintance with folk starts with the ‘new’ weird America, really needs to acquire this.  Oh, and then there’s that golden run of Richard and Linda Thompson albums recorded for Island.  Bfairport.jpgut that’s another story.