Thursday 17 December 2009

The Decemberists: Live

The Decemberists: Live at The Coronet, Elephant and Castle

How would you define confidence? The first entry on dictionary.com lists confidence as “full trust; belief in the powers, trustworthiness, or reliability of a person or thing”. Urban Dictionary states that confidence is “absolut could-care-fucking-less-what-every-fucking-body thinks” (well, they would, wouldn’t they?). But of all the myriad definitions, surely this ranks pretty high: how about releasing the album of the year, going on tour and then playing said album in its entirety as a warm-up to your own gig? Yep, The Decemberists sure have confidence – such an act fits both the definitions above – and on the evidence of their show at The Coronet, it most definitely isn’t misplaced.

The Elephant and Castle Coronet in South East London is primarily used for club nights rather than live gigs and only holds 2600. It seemed a pretty small venue for a Decemberists show, especially seeing as it was a sell-out weeks in advance and was one of only two London performances to promote The Hazards of Love (the other being at the even-smaller Kentish Town Forum).

The show opened – unsurprisingly – with Prelude, and cheers and whoops reverberated round the theatre as the various band members gradually wandered onstage. Colin Meloy’s guitar rang out the opening riff for The Hazards of Love #1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won’t Wrestle the Thistles Undone) and from that point on, it was non-stop. The Decemberists performed all seventeen tracks of The Hazards of Love without pause and without hesitation. The delicate, tender tracks (Isn’t It a Lovely Night?, The Hazards of Love #4 (The Drowned)) were given even more consideration and attention, while the more upfront, rock numbers (The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid, The Rake’s Song) were raced through with an urgent intensity. On Won’t Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga), drummer John Moen went hell for leather, attacking his hi-hat and snare with both sticks simultaneously.

If you’re unfamiliar with The Hazards of Love (and if so, seriously, where have you been?), it’s basically a concept album. There’s a narrative arc throughout, centring around four main characters: two of which are voiced by Meloy, and the other two by guest vocalists Becky Stark of Lavender Diamond and Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond. Just to make it clear who’s good and who’s bad, Stark wore white and Worden wore black throughout the show and they were in fine voice, Worden in particular performing some applause-worthy vocal gymnastics on Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid.

As the final strains of The Hazards of Love #4 (The Drowned) died out, the crowd rose as one to give an ovation and Meloy said, “Hi, London, we’re the Decemberists,” before the band left the stage. People in the crowd were looking at each other in amazement as if to say “there’s more?!” and it was hard to imagine how such a spectacle could be matched.

The second half showed that, as well as being writers of extended pop fiction of the highest order, The Decemberists are the jauntiest band in music today. Their songs seem to trigger a Pavlovian response, where you can’t help but move in time to the bass, which is almost oompah-like at times. After an hour of solid music in part one, Meloy and the rest of the band engaged with the audience extensively in part two, and displayed their acumen as traditional all-round entertainers. There was a story of how violent The Elephant and Castle pub in Portland, Oregon is, which ended with the payoff, “so, really, I think you guys could’ve picked somewhere better to name this area after”, there was jazz improvisation between songs and there was even a singalong, where Meloy divided the crowd up (“hey, you there, yeah, you, step left, hey, everyone, this is Dennis, we take him everywhere”), got them to harmonise and then shifted the dynamics like an orchestra conductor.

Oh yeah, there were songs too: great, great songs. The Yankee Bayonet, O Valencia! and Sixteen Military Wives all got a great response. Admittedly, they didn’t play my favourite (We Both Go Down Together, since you’re asking) but I was too busy enjoying myself to really care. After what seemed like not long at all, they retreated backstage once more, leaving the baying crowd hungry, despite the fact an obvious return was imminent, as it always is in these situations.

Meloy returned solo and performed a heartfelt rendition of Eli, The Barrow Boy which had the packed venue almost silent in reverence before the other Decemberists returned. Meloy subsequently announced that for their last song, the crowd would need to “scream as if they were in the belly of a whale”, which triggered possibly the loudest cheer of the night. All five band members stood stage front (plus an inflatable killer whale, courtesy of some industrious soul in the crowd) and ripped through a high-energy version of The Mariner’s Revenge, which was a culmination of everything that had occurred over the previous two hours. There were highs, lows, noise, silence, screams, dancing, slow bits and fast bits, Russian Cossack dancing (evidently quite difficult whilst playing a double bass) and such ferocious drumming that by halfway through the song, the stage was strewn with drumstick and tambourine debris.

A shellshocked, buzzing throng then emerged into the autumnal London night and went their various ways home, all united by what they’d witnessed. That was my night with The Decemberists; they’ve finished their A Short Fazed Hovel (an anagram of The Hazards of Love) tour, so, um, sorry… you really should’ve been there, these paltry words are nothing like an adequate substitute.

Saturday 5 December 2009

Temporary Pleasure


Simian Mobile Disco - Temporary Pleasure
released 17 August 2009 on Polydor

If aliens were to land on our planet tomorrow, they’d probably waste no time asking the big questions. Why do we have wars? Why are some people obese while others die of starvation? Why - when he’s so unnecessarily rude to everyone - doesn’t someone punch Gordon Ramsey really hard in the face? However, this is a music review and since your humble narrator is fond of a whimsical flight of fancy, we can add another question to that list: what’s going on with the naming of music genres?

Pop music no longer means music that’s popular, R n’ B has long been devoid of anything approaching either rhythm or blues and what exactly is alternative music the alternative to? At least you always knew where you were with dance. The raison d’être of dance music was, rather unsurprisingly, to make you dance, and to hell with anything more noble or meaningful. However, the advent of superstar DJs and ubiquitous chill-out compilations has heralded a world where dance has branched out into countless variations, not all of which are fit for dancing.

Simian Mobile Disco could well fit into such a category. Along with groups such as Justice, they belong to a select group of more cerebral dance acts, which place as much importance on the detail as the beat or groove. They’re a combination of old-school dance and Kid A, and SMD’s commitment to the finer points was summed up by the title of their début album, Attack Decay Sustain Release.

The problem with such an approach is that there’s a danger of it all coming over as “art for art’s sake” and hard to love. SMD employ a wealth of additional vocalists for Temporary Pleasure, and on tracks such as the Gruff Rhys-led opener, Cream Dream, seem too in thrall to their guests to really let loose. Every click, tone and beat of Cream Dream is perfectly formed, the vocals are great but it wouldn’t hurt to have a bit more melody and, you know, something to dance to, maybe?

It’s a theme which crops up throughout the album. Temporary Pleasure suffers from relying too heavily on the singers to carry the song whilst SMD do all the clever, science stuff in the background. It’s only on vocal-less tracks such as the fantastic 10000 Horses Can’t Be Wrong that they show their true class. It’s a modern club classic with an irresistible riff (strangely reminiscent of Hot Butter’s Popcorn) and a perfect build-up, leading to an thrilling but agonising pause and the euphoria when the hook comes back in. The trick is repeated on the other stand-out track (and only other song without vocals), Ambulance, which has nightmarish, squonky synths in abundance.

As we go into the new decade, appearance and reputation are all important and let’s be honest, SMD are cool. They’re cooler than you and they’re a damn sight cooler than me, so on occasion, Temporary Pleasure can be hard to warm to. This is music for über-trendy LA clubs, where impossibly glamorous women bump and grind in gold, lamé micro-hotpants. Alas, anyone who has ever spent time in a town centre of the UK knows that a night out equals binge drinking, shrieking regional accents, a river of E number-filled, dangerously alcoholic vomit and a fat girl crying in a corner somewhere. It’s hard to see where Temporary Pleasure will fit in and who it’s for; the relentlessly catchy single, Audacity of Huge, namedrops like there’s no tomorrow (Mama Cass, Peter Tosh, Joey Ramone are all mentioned) - what will that mean to an inebriated teenager in a dingy club in Gateshead?

Luckily, there’s enough to keep you more than interested, if not jumping to your feet to shake yo’ thang. Miraculously, Beth Ditto doesn’t ruin the sultry Cruel Intentions, and shows that, oddly, she may be more suited to the role of ice-cool diva as opposed to her day job of screaming at all and sundry as if they’re personally standing in her way of control. Bad Blood sounds exactly like Hot Chip (no surprise, as it features Alexis Taylor) and Young Fathers provide a welcome change of pace on the hard-hitting Turn Up the Dial. Yet still, it’s all about image, and the lyrics to the whole of Temporary Pleasure are little more than repetitive, empty platitudes.

Maybe all this is the whole point, after all, you can over-think things. Turn the volume up, have a few drinks and this album would probably sound amazing. As it is, attempting to detail this record by scribbling down poorly-formed half-phrases in a notebook and expanding them out in a Word document seems out of step. Frank Zappa famously said that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” and that may hold at least partly true for Temporary Pleasure. It’s not meant to be written about, it’s meant to be enjoyed. It’s trashy yet too self-conscious for its own good, it’s lovingly crafted yet ultimately hollow, it’s dance music which veers from so catchy you can’t help yourself to chin-stroking music to nod at and appreciate. To quote Morrissey, “it says nothing to me about my life”, but it could mean everything to you.