Penny Sparkle

Blonde Redhead - Penny Sparkle

released 13 September 2010 on 4AD

After some reading, a bit of research and lots of listening, it’s still near impossible to work out where exactly Blonde Redhead fit in. They seem to be on the margins of scenes or one of those bands that, because their music isn’t easily definable, crop up in new and obscure genres to which only about four other artists belong. “No-wave” and “dream-pop” are the two pigeonholes that get thrown around the most but it’s no easy task; Blonde Redhead are a little bit of lots of things all at once. The dream pop label is the easiest to comprehend: Blonde Redhead take many influences from the shoegaze movement of the early ‘90s and the marriage of these pockets of inspiration with the indecipherable lyrics/female voice as instrument ethos of the Cocteau Twins make Blonde Redhead a more intriguing proposition than they may seem in theory.

This characteristic of being hard to define probably suits Blonde Redhead down to the ground. Graduates of the New York underground, the band members’ history draws in places as diverse as Milan, Montréal, Boston and Japan. Listening to Penny Sparkle, the band’s eighth full-length album and third for 4AD, you do get the impression of a band without fixed roots. There’s a feeling of unease and restlessness, a brooding hard-to-define sensation, like a deeper, more intense version of the displacement and jetlag alluded to in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. Penny Sparkle straddles the line between comfort and tension, the woozy synths bleed into one another, the music is warm and enveloping but frequent, unexpected minor chords and bass rumbles mean you can never be as comfortable as you’d wish to be.

Penny Sparkle isn’t a particularly easy listen at first, but this needn’t be seen as disparaging. Blonde Redhead’s use of textures and layers is very subtle, and means that what could easily be dismissed as background music becomes more rewarding the more time and attention you give it. Think of yourself as a squirrel and Penny Sparkle as your store of acorns for the winter months. While most album’s charms are immediate and obvious, Penny Sparkle reveals its gifts gradually, meaning that there should be more the enough to keep you fulfilled during the hibernation period.

What’s most striking - and refreshing - about Penny Sparkle is that it’s more than the sum of its parts. It’s an album that works better as a whole, and moreover, a whole that’s listened to in sequence; each track is the natural choice to follow its predecessor.

The guitars, electronics and vocals Blonde Redhead employ melt into an embracing mélange of sound. Opener, Here Sometimes, is understated and gentle, and the keyboards have a human-like, analogue feel to them. The transition after the chorus isn’t smooth, and the wonkiness of it adds to the human aspect of the track. It feels like the more sedate moments of Portishead’s Third (most notably, The Rip) and is just as immersive.

Subsequent tracks mostly build on the theme established from the first moment. Not Getting There utilises a low-level buzzing to build a sense of growing urgency, an undercurrent of burbling synths transforms Love or Prison, and Everything is Wrong relates its feeling of yearning and desperation through heartbeat drums and 12/8 time.

While the high points of Penny Sparkle are numerous, the sparseness and the re-treading of familiar ground can become slightly wearing occasionally. On more than one occasion, songs are prone to extended periods of lulling, and only the curios of odd sound effects or a daring chord change sustain your interest.

To some extent, Penny Sparkle feels more like a novel than an album. The cinematic sound and creating of instability means that you genuinely want to find out what happens next. Throughout its ten tracks, the off-kilter anxiety is ratcheted up and truly deserves a fitting climax that resolves all that has gone before. However, it doesn’t get it, as final track Spain is just more of the same. Perhaps mindful of the role this track could play, Blonde Redhead try their damnedest: there’s more atmosphere, more drama, more dynamics, but unfortunately it’s just more of the same. Penny Sparkle is certainly an interesting album, but more an album to appreciate rather than enjoy. It’s just such a shame it promises so much before lamely petering out.

Falling Down a Mountain

Tindersticks - Falling Down a Mountain

released 25 January 2010 on 4AD

It can’t be easy; critically-lauded at the start of your career, then just a handful of years later, you’re largely ignored by the music press and almost considered a niche interest. What do you do, exactly? Do you just carry on doing what you were doing before, in the aim of finding whatever it was that propelled you to such lofty heights in the first place? Or do you change completely, hoping that your new-found direction will earn you some kudos for not resting on your laurels?

That’s been the dilemma facing Tindersticks since the late 20th Century, and it’s an extremely unfair position for them to be in. Almost victims of their own success, their opening trilogy of albums (self-titled releases in both 1993 and 1995, and 1997’s Curtains) were irresistible baroque chamber-pop, full of surprises and, unusually, never outstayed their welcome at over an hour. However, the world moved on and since Tindersticks didn’t see fit to re-invent the wheel, the world also largely lost interest. After Waiting for the Moon in 2003, they called it a day, only to return in 2008 with The Hungry Saw, but only half the original band.

History lesson over, what’s Falling Down a Mountain actually like? In a nutshell, it’s a triumph as well as being probably the least Tindersticks-esque (maybe that should be “Tindersticksian”?) album of their career. The core ingredients are still there: Stuart Staples’ polarising, treacle-rich baritone, beautifully haunting string arrangements and the pervading sense of disappointment and loss. However, add to this a willingness to diversify and be imaginative, and Tindersticks are once more extremely deserving of your time.

Take the title-track, for example, which also happens to be the album opener. Fractured percussion gives way to freeform-jazz saxophone and repeated chanting. While Tindersticks may be primarily known for their lush instrumentation, this is stark, spacious, primal and utterly thrilling. Keep You Beautiful is disarmingly gorgeous, creeping in barely noticed on a gossamer-thin riff; it’s warm, comforting and everything the title track isn’t, but equally affecting.

Keep You Beautiful would in fact fit perfectly on a film soundtrack - if you hear it on a montage of the female lead going about her day, it’s pretty clear it’s only a matter of time before our hero gets the girl. Once you’ve noticed how suited to cinema scores this track is, it’s difficult not to put most of this album as backing music to films that don’t even exist. She Rode Me Down is coming soon to a spaghetti-Western near you (when the flute flutters in, it even sounds like Morricone’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly), Factory Girls is a tender, piano-heavy ballad that would be an ideal bed for a tale of success against the odds and the unexpected major chords of Hubbards Hills would compliment a tale of courage and redemption.

This may well be damning Falling Down a Mountain with faint praise. Tindersticks’ music has always been broad in scope with a cinematic feel, but it just seems here that they’re maturing into a more well-rounded band. No longer so heavily reliant on the dramatic brooding that characterised much of their early-90s work, they’re in danger of becoming national treasures on this form.

It’s not a complete win for the boys from Nottingham, unfortunately. Falling Down a Mountain is fairly Side-A heavy, with two or three of the later tracks disappointingly unremarkable, where only Stuart Staples’ smoky vocals carrying some non-descript arrangements. Despite this, it’s an extremely listenable record and definitely fit to stand aside their finest work. It’s an impressive achievement seeing as Falling Down a Mountain is album #8 of a career just shy of twenty years and a depressingly large proportion of bands are phoning it in by that point. With another album (a soundtrack to the upcoming White Material) due later in 2010, it appears Tindersticks have gained a second wind and have answered the questions posed above. Forget the press, forget the criticism and forget those who ignore you. When you make an album this good, you don’t need to care.

My Maudlin Career

Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
released 20 April 2009 on 4AD

There’s an awful lot of music out there; too much music in fact. Seeing as albums are currently released at a rate roughly equivalent to three a day, it’s impossible to listen to and digest them all. This is clearly a shame as it means that the album that could change your life will never reach you or what you would deem an absolute, undisputed masterpiece will forever be consigned to the bargain bin. So, it’s important to start your album well, to have something that will grab the listener’s attention and make them want to revisit your set of songs again and again until they’re fully embedded in the consciousness.

On My Maudlin Career, Camera Obscura set out to achieve this in the best possible fashion. It takes around three seconds to be utterly transfixed by opening track, French Navy: a song built on irresistible hooks and perfectly complimented by a gorgeous string section. Producer Jari Haapalainen is clearly picking up where he left off on Camera Obscura’s last long player, 2006’s Let’s Get Out Of This Country.

Repeated listens to My Maudlin Career reveal that Camera Obscura completely inhabit their own universe. Despite their Glaswegian origins, their sound is so packed full of vintage Hollywood glamour that you’d think they were from California were it not for Tracyanne Campbell’s Scottish burr that occasionally creeps in undetected.

The high standard set by French Navy is maintained throughout the album; Careless Love has a sweeping key change and a beautiful middle eight, while The Sweetest Thing is just as catchy as Let’s Get Out Of This Country’s title track. Camera Obscura - and lead singer Tracyanne Campbell in particular - are a sensitive bunch and have clearly loved and lost. The lyrical content of My Maudlin Career heavily reflects this whilst also hinting at a vulnerable naivety and an optimistic streak that suggest that they’ll always believe in true love, no matter what.

While French Navy is all pomp and vigour, subsequent tracks gradually become more steeped in the painful side of love, best symbolised in the title track. Delicate piano octaves frame Campbell’s laments: “I’m not a child, I know we’re not going steady” and “They say I’m too kind and sentimental, like you can catch affection.” Following track Forests and Sands would be whiny and indulgent in the wrong hands, but Campbell’s heartfelt vocal transforms it into something genuinely affecting.

Unfortunately, all this heartbreak does become kind of wearing. Individually, each track is musically superb (although Swans sails pretty close to the wind with its twee guitar and glockenspiel twin assault), but a continuing feeling of despondency means My Maudlin Career can sometimes be difficult listening. Album closer Honey in the Sun is fantastic, but a case in point; its outwardly cheery demeanour and horn stabs recall ABC at their peak. However, its refrain (“I wish my heart was a cold as the morning dew / But it’s as warm as saxophones and honey in the sun for you”) which would be a paean to love on any other album, sounds tinged with forlornness and regret thanks to the theme of the preceding ten tracks.

Whilst we’re being critical (as is the record critic’s lot), a change of pace here and there wouldn’t go amiss either. Whilst Let’s Get Out of this Country featured the zip and bombast of If Looks Could Kill and the languid Country Mile, everything on My Maudlin Career remains frustratingly mid-tempo. There’s nothing wrong with this on a track-by-track basis, but it means the album lacks a certain something.

These are minor quibbles though, as My Maudlin Career is a wonderful set of songs and can deservedly sit alongside Let’s Get Out Of This Country while showcasing how far Camera Obscura have come since their patchy yet charming début, Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi. Album making isn’t a precise science (it’s not really a science at all, for that matter), but a couple of slower ones, a couple of faster ones and a couple of happier ones would elevate My Maudlin Career from a good album to a sensational one.