Have One On Me

Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me

released 1 March 2010 on Drag City

Let’s get this straight out of the way. Joanna Newsom is probably the most divisive artist of the 21st Century; she provokes a stronger reaction than Obama’s Healthcare bill with a side order of Marmite on toast. On the surface, it’s easy to see why she would rub people up the wrong way - a baroque harp-playing prodigy singing modern-day madrigals in a voice which is equal parts Kate Bush, Joni Mitchell and a melismatic pixie princess on helium. However, if you can’t see past any of this, then more fool you, as you’re missing out on something astonishing, especially where Have One On Me is concerned.

Just in case you weren’t aware of this yet, Have One on Me is a touch longer than your average record; in fact, it’s over two hours long and comes packaged as three CDs, each containing six tracks. Assimilating such a large amount of music may seem arduous and it’s true, how often do you get two hours to do nothing but listen to a record? Yet as well as this album being entirely engrossing on a standalone play, it’s also rich and imaginative enough to reward casual listening, where you can perform a lucky dip anywhere amongst the eighteen songs and be rewarded.

Have One On Me opens with Newsom gently forming a single word, “easy”, which sounds almost comically arch considering the complexity and technical skill of the songs that follow. Straight away it’s clear that she takes great care in her vocals and considers her voice to be as important an instrument as any other. As previously mentioned, the singing of La Newsom can be an acquired taste for some, but you’d be hard pressed to find another artist in 2010 who can express so much through just their vocal cords. The restraint of Easy, the rousing chorus of Good Intentions Paving Company, the animalistic yelp towards the climax of In California, the shimmering and arresting Ribbon Bows - the variety is both admirable and completely beguiling. When Newsom coos “in your arms” with such warmth and longing onNo Provenance, it feels as if she’s singing directly to you, causing an involuntary shiver. If you’re not entirely ensconced in the world of Newsom at that point, you might want to be calling the emergency services and checking your pulse.

Even more extraordinary than the utterly mesmerising vocals is the astonishing attention to detail that has gone into the playing and recording of this album. It sounds ridiculous to suggest that not a note is out of place in an LP that tops the two hour mark, but it’s true. Newsom’s harp playing is bewitching, transforming an instrument that is mostly plagued by cartoon celestial connotations into a thing of otherworldly beauty, perfect for the songs it frames. At times, it appears that Have One On Me is the missing link between pop music and classical. We may be talking harp, horns and flutes rather than guitar, bass and keyboards, but the songs retain an irresistible accessibility, with more hooks than a JM Barrie convention.

Have One On Me defies convention and categorisation. Joanna Newsom is primarily earmarked as a folk artist, but this album is packed with such myriad styles, it’s impossible to pigeonhole. There’s straight-up singer-songwriter fare on the stylish ‘81, the barely-there instrumentation and perfectly judged light swing drumming of Occident, the Spaghetti Western giving way to bar-room blues of Soft as Chalk and the 1920s glitz and glamour reminiscent of old Hollywood of Autumn. Newsom manages to inhabit these songs and styles with such aplomb and conviction that it’s simply breathtaking. It’s also expertly sequenced, so the pace never drops and you remain enraptured for the duration.

After a breathtaking two hours, Have One On Me closes with the fluttering Does Not Suffice - potentially another irony-tinged nod to the sheer breadth of the album. Even at this late stage, there’s invention aplenty and a refreshing refusal to conform to type, with its flourishes that sound somewhat Gaelic and gothic simultaneously. It’s not a remarkable track in the context of the album, yet it is a significant one; a tender lament replete with a heavy sense of nostalgia. It’s as if Newsom recognises what an achievementHave One On Me is, and she’s just as astonished as the rest of us. The album experience is now complete and although it’s been hard work for her (and an all-too-rare feast for us), she’ll actually miss it now it’s gone. It’s unlikely that Joanna Newsom will be able to make an album as broad in scope and texture as Have One On Me again. This is a career-defining piece of work, and she’s completely earned her right to spend the next five years knocking out four-to-the-floor crowd pleasers. It’s not going to happen though, is it?

Summarising Have One On Me in a word is an impossibility, but the most apt is probably “absorbing”. If you hold the belief that the best albums inhabit their own space and time, and draw their listener into that world for their duration, then Have One On Me is fit to stand alongside the finest examples of the craft. It’s difficult to predict legacies for new albums without sounding like a misguided merchant of hyperbole, butHave One On Me is so enrapturing, so imaginative and so delicate, that it feels safe to say that in five or ten years time, you’ll go back to it and discover brand new things - whether they be the meaning of a song you’d never fathomed before or a simple amuse-bouche of a beautifully constructed oboe phrase.

Enough with the florid prose, please, buy this album. Don’t download it, buy it on a physical CD, hell, buy it on vinyl. Get rid of outside distractions, remove any white noise and give Have One On Me the full attention it deserves as one of the finest albums of this, or any, year.

The State of British Indie in 2010

I’ve got a bone to pick with the BBC Sound of 2010 list; it’s an embarrassment. The idea is that music industry insiders pick their top tips for the year ahead, who’s going to make it break through and make it big. These “insiders” are either fit to give Nostradamus a run for his money or they know something we don’t - namely which artists are going to have obscene amounts of money thrown at them by their labels. For those of you too lazy to click links, the top three on said list are Ellie Goulding, Marina and the Diamonds, and Delphic. Woo-hoo! Go UK with our unknowns sticking a finger up at the man and proving that talent triumphs over all. Well, except that Ellie Goulding has already won a Brit award, Marina and the Diamonds are already having their album advertised on prime-time television and Delphic sound like an anaemic Klaxons. The 2009 list wasn’t much better - with the Brits in the top five being Little Boots, White Lies, La Roux and Florence and the Machine (henceforth to be known as Effluence and the Latrine). All massively hyped during 2009, all successful, all unimaginative and in the case of White Lies at least, pretty much forgotten already.

Now, aside from a worrying fascination with “quirky” 80s-influenced female vocalists, there’s nothing wrong with producing a list that tells you who to look out for (like you could ignore them anyway). The problem is that by holding these people up as the leading lights of the UK music scene, there’s the potential to make UK music into a laughing stock whilst besmirching the good name of indie.

Ah, indie, how I love thee. I don’t know about you, but to me indie means The Smiths, it means Morrissey flouncing around on Top of the Pops with a gladioli betwixt his thighs, it means DIY, it means the halcyon days of the NME, it means C86 and it means an attitude. It obviously meant some of these things to people with some marketing nous, as it’s now been turned into a mainstream commodity. Tell most people you like British indie, and they’re likely to assume you mean something like Coldplay (signed to Parlophone, owned by EMI) or Snow Patrol (signed to Fiction, owned by Polydor). How can these acts be indie if they’re not on independent labels? Surely that’s the very definition of indie? This anodyne commercialisation of indie-style music has its own term which was coined by Andrew Harrison of The Word magazine – “landfill indie”. Acts like The Wombats, Scouting for Girls, The Fratellis (currently on hiatus, thankfully) and The Kooks who seem to think Oasis represent some sort of musical year zero. This reached a ridiculous climax earlier this month when Kasabian – a facsimile of Primal Scream (themselves a facsimile of various 60s bands these days) were chosen to début the new England football shirt... at a gig... in Paris. No, really, it happened.

While, indie in the 21st Century doesn’t seem to mean what it used to, the spirit of indie still lives on. Though indie artists had something of a reputation to tend towards the shambolic, their fans were fiercely loyal. With the rise to prominence of the Internet and social networking, anyone can now get their music out there, thus continuing the legacy of the DIY ethos. Arctic Monkeys (Domino in the UK) built up a large amount of support from steady gigging and the use of MySpace and the blogosphere is constantly abuzz with tracks and demos from indie bands.

if you take away the meaningless label of “indie” as a particular style of music, there are some fantastic UK bands doing their own thing on independent labels. I’m not particularly patriotic, despite being as English as Hugh Grant (well, except with more of a farmer’s accent), but from The Beatles onwards, the UK has a fantastic record of producing new and exciting music, far in advance of what can be expected from a country so small.

As a quick example, why not glance at No Ripcord’s Best of 2009 list? Sure, it’s pretty US-heavy, but there’s a lot of love for Wild Beasts (Domino), The Horrors (XL), Future of the Left, Camera Obscura (both 4AD) and The xx (Young Turks). I haven’t even mentioned Rough Trade yet, with its embarrassment of riches, including Belle and Sebastian (former holders of the unofficial title of the indiest band in indiedom), Aberfeldy, Super Furry Animals and The Fall. Indie festivals were started by Belle and Sebastian in 1999, with the Bowlie Weekender event at Camber Sands, including The Delgados, The Divine Comedy, The Pastels and Teenage Fanclub. Fast-foward to 2010 and the rudeness of indie’s health is evidenced by Belle and Sebastian returning to curate Bowlie 2.

My argument could just turn into a list of artists at this rate, but that’s just because there’s so much to get excited about. Undoubtedly, the grand high priest of UK indie was the dearly-missed John Peel, who famously attempted to listen to every recording he was ever sent, and could fill his quixotic radio broadcasts with a smorgasbord of eclecticism. If he were still here today, his show would still be full to bursting with new music as it always was, bands who have been inspired to write and perform, wishing to be part of the grand heritage of UK indie – a heritage which continues to this day.

So, forget the naysayers, ignore Delphic, Effluence and the Latrine and their ilk. Indie is alive, kicking, breathing and in excellent health. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find out for yourself - you could well be some time.

...And Then We Saw Land

Tunng - ...And Then We Saw Land

released 1 March 2010 on Full Time Hobby

You know what? You can’t beat a good -tronica from time to time, can you? First there was electronica, obviously, and then it seemed you could put beeps and effects over any style of music and hey, you had a new style of music and a handy suffix to define it! Good old -tronica. We all know indietronica, but then, what next? Metaltronica? Jazztronica? Sadly, landfill indietronica seems the most likely.

Anyway, Tunng can be thrust into the pigeonhole labelled “folktronica”. It’s a genre name that produces an involuntary sceptical reaction, since the natural, unplugged nature of folk music doesn’t lend itself even to electricity a lot of the time, so folk and electronica appear unlikely bedfellows. So, what are Tunng? Are they mavericks fearlessly melding together two distinct styles to make something greater than the sum of its parts, or are they just folkies strapping on some bells and whistles in an attempt to appeal to a larger audience?

On the evidence of …And Then We Saw Land, it could be said that it’s a little from column A, and a little from column B.

When Tunng are good, they’re very, very good, and they’re rarely better than they are on opening track, Hustle. Electronics fade in, before giving way to a piano riff, which in turn yields to acoustic guitar, school music trolley percussion, uplifting banjo and jaunty drums. It’s an absolutely gorgeous start worthy of any album, and chances are you won’t even notice the maudlin opening lines: “When I come home, you won’t be there anymore”. It’s almost impossible to stay still whilst listening to it, resistance is futile and you’ll be stamping your feet, swaying to the off-kilter rhythm, or both in no time.

You’d be forgiven for forgetting the whole use of electronics debate at this point, but as …And Then We Saw Land progresses, Tunng run out of ideas and it’s as if the unusual sounds and squelches are merely an attempt to disguise the fact. Admittedly, the sounds aren’t as self-consciously kooky or try-too-hard as on previous albums, but more often than not, a dash of electro adds nothing to a mediocre folk song.

Really, …And Then We Saw Land only serves to prove that Tunng are a less inventive British Sea Power with short attention spans. The tracks are all pleasant enough individually, but lack cohesion as an album, and inspiration often runs dry. The clattering, driving percussion that proves effective to begin with, ends up becoming something of a chore and a lot of the songs threaten to go somewhere without ever really doing so.

In fact, as an analogy, The Roadside may be symptomatic of the pros and cons of …And Then We Saw Land as a whole. It’s got a pretty, acoustic bed, nice male/female vocal interaction and a good use of harmonies. However, it’s merely diverting than gripping, and the drum machine fills feel forced, as if Tunng have a strict electro-on-every-track policy. Oddly enough, like most tracks on the album, it sounds oddly familiar, maybe like a cover of a track you’ve only heard once before, even though Tunng aren’t especially derivative.

If you’ve got this far, two things to mention. Firstly, thanks for reading, it’s much appreciated. Secondly, it’s worth pointing out that despite the mostly negative comments, …And Then We Saw Land isn’t a bad album, it just doesn‘t grab you. The amount of new music being released on a weekly basis is unfathomable, so you need something to make people come back for even a second listen, let alone listens three, four and beyond. If you hear …And Then We Saw Land, chances are you’ll think it’s a fairly decent album. Then, an hour or so after listening to it, you won’t be able to remember what any of the songs sound like. Then, you’ll probably forget you ever heard the thing. If ever a track were selected by your mp3 player’s random function, you wouldn’t guess who the artist was straight away, but you’d enjoy the track, but probably not enough to give the album another proper go.

And in the end, that’s Tunng’s downfall. A nice band with some nice ideas and some nice songs, but nice isn’t really enough.

The end for 6music?

I’ll say this straight away - I love the BBC and can forgive them practically anything and I gladly give them £142.50 of my hard-earned cash each year. To be honest, the fact the BBC house volumes and volumes of live sessions played for various incarnations of the John Peel show is plenty value for money. Thanks to the BBC, there is the only program on music worth watching in the UK (Later… with Jools Holland, which admittedly, has the misfortune to feature Jools Holland and his dubious interview “technique”), fantastic documentaries and archive footage on BBC Four, iPlayer and the programs of Charlie Brooker. So yes, the Beeb (that term that only journalists ever use) have plenty of Get Out of Jail Free cards to make up for abominations such as The Persuasionists, Miranda, My Family and the baffling continued success of Fearne Cotton and her Radio 1 show.

However, this time, they’ve gone too far…

On 2nd March 2010, Director General Mark Thompson announced a radical shake-up of the BBC and how it will be run, with one of those initiatives being the closing of digital-only radio station, 6music. The story of the proposed closure of 6music (along with the BBC Asian Network and BBC Switch) was leaked to Rupert Murdoch’s The Times newspaper - more of which later - and led to an impassioned response from 6music listeners.

For those not in the know, 6music is an alternative radio station committed to bringing a wide mix of old and new pop music. During the day, it plays it fairly safe - though earlier today I heard Blondie, Roxy Music, Public Enemy and a live track by The La’s all within half an hour - but by night, it’s prepared to go a bit more experimental. You can hear funk, soul, avant-garde, dance and anything in between. Sounds great, right? So why close it?

The strategic review states that the BBC needs to do fewer things better, which sounds like a reasonable business strategy to deliver quality content. However, the report goes on to say that 6music “delivers relatively few unique listeners”, “competes head-on for a commercially viable audience” and various other phrases of meaningless business speak 2.0 that can reduce a man to unconsciousness at fifty paces. If you know what it means for radio stations to “deliver unique audiences”, then answers on a postcard please, but I’m prepared to take issue with the assertion that they are “competing for a commercially viable audience”.

On that note, I shall say this… of course they are, what an absolutely stupid statement to make. Hey, guess what, these people who are listening to a radio station with no adverts could, in fact, be listening to a different one that had adverts instead. That’s true of 6music and it’s just as true of any other BBC radio station.

But perhaps I’ve misinterpreted that statement. Perhaps it means that the 6music listeners could find an alternative on commercial radio that would better suit their listening requirements. Well, to that I say… no they couldn’t. In the mix of music it plays, 6music is pretty unique among UK radio stations (despite apparently not having enough unique listeners) and commercial stations would be unlikely to take such risks. Commercial stations that claim to serve up a wide range of alternative music, like Xfm and NME Radio, actually play it remarkably safe and give the nation a diet largely subsisting of landfill indie. In fact, Radio 1, the BBC’s flagship radio station, has the most obvious commercial alternatives, with stations such as Heart, Capital and Virgin having similar playlists.

Now, this is where it starts to gets confusing - there appears to be no commercial reason for closing 6music. The annual budget for 6music is a relative drop in the ocean - maybe even less than the annual salary for some of the BBC’s biggest names. Mark Thompson has said that funds are being moved to boost the overall spend on programming - which I’m in favour of - but there are plenty of better ways to do that than sink the good ship 6. The recent Winter Olympics in Canada was extensively covered by a large crew on site, and I’d imagine the spending on reporting for the upcoming World Cup in South Africa will cost a few bob.

Even more bizarre is that another of the BBC’s new manifestos is to provide “inspiring knowledge, music and culture” which would “bring music to new ears” - something which is well in line with the vision of the first Director General, Baron Reith, who believed broadcasting could educate the masses. But if the BBC want to meet such a target… well, they’re pretty much already meeting it. You see, they’ve got this station called 6music which is really great and, oh…

I’m no political expert (cue audible gasps of surprise), but there may be some element of government involved too. As previously mentioned, the story was broken by a newspaper owned by that paragon of virtue, Rupert Murdoch. Mr. Murdoch is the kind of man who thinks of nothing but a way to make a quick buck and is to culture what Kanye West is to modesty and humbleness. Murdoch is extremely anti-BBC, but the primary reason for that is because they have a guaranteed income and stop him making money. He wants to charge for The Times Online and has voiced his opposition to the BBC often. He’s also extraordinarily wealthy and oh, did I mention he owns Sky TV and is a leading investor in satellite television? With a General Election in the UK months away and a victory for the Murdoch-supported Conservatives looking likely, the state of the BBC is becoming increasingly important. The Tories have a history of privatisation and have already made a section of the BBC a commercial entity when previously in power. Sure, I’m a bit of a hippie leftie, but it seems the BBC is shooting itself in the foot before the seemingly inevitable change of power even happens.

This is a sad announcement for lovers of music, lovers of radio and lovers of quality programming. It’s also a sad announcement for the marvellous history of public service broadcasting but all is not yet lost. These measures, although strongly recommended, are not yet definite - the final decision goes to the BBC Trust and there are signs the BBC may be backing down in the face of overwhelming support for 6music.

So, you can still play your part. The strategy review can be read and commented upon until the end of May at https://consultations.external.bbc.co.uk/departments/bbc/bbc-strategy-review/consultation/consult_view. Air your views, say what you love, say what you hate but I’m practically begging here - please, BBC, save our 6.