The Best of the Decade: 50-41

41: Amy Winehouse - Frank (Island/2003)

Before she overtook Kate Moss as the poster girl of heroin chic and while she still had some meat on her bones, Amy Winehouse was the little diva that could. Unfairly lumped in with Norah Jones and Katie Melua by the critics, Frank was infact a remarkably mature R&B flavoured début that chronicled what it meant to be a 21st Century woman in your 20s in the UK better than Lily Allen ever did. Frank tackles spineless men (Stronger Than Me), gold-diggers (Fuck Me Pumps) and unfaithfulness (I Heard Love is Blind) as if she has the life experience of someone twice her age. Back to Black may have been her breakthrough, but Frank is the real gem with its mix of late-night horns, 50s jazz stylings and contemporary R&B, and deserves to be appraised on its own merits rather than being compared to its more popular successor or reviewing the reputation rather than the music.

42: Eels - Blinking Lights and Other Revelations (Polydor/2005)

Always keen to appear on the outside looking in, Mark “E” Everett appeared to be committing commercial suicide releasing a 33-track double album telling the story of his tragic family history. However, Everett’s attention to detail, keen ear for a melody and gravely, yearning voice ensured that Blinking Lights… was a triumph. Tracks range from sparse and unsettling to rich and textured and - curiously, given its subject matter - listening to it is a life-affirming experience. While the rest of the decade may not have been so kind to Eels, this is Everett’s White Album - a towering, sprawling masterpiece which he’ll struggle to ever match.

43: Charlotte Gainsbourg - 5:55 (Warner/2006)

We can’t all call on Air, Jarvis Cocker and Neil Hannon to help with our album but then again, we don’t all have legendary music pioneer, the late Serge Gainsbourg, as our father. 5:55 may sound a terrible idea full of smug back-slapping on paper, but in fact, it’s the album equivalent of Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation. Girl with famous father confounds expectations to make beautiful piece of art which eschews traditional formats to tell the story of a mood and a place. While Coppola’s film charts the feeling of jetlag and loneliness in downtown Tokyo, Air’s score for 5:55 mark it as languid music perfect for the feeling of relaxation but still with a lingering suspicion of uncertainty. Gainsbourg’s barely-there, whispered vocals may be an acquired taste, but this gorgeous album avoids the pit-fall of most minimal chill-out albums by being consistently challenging and interesting.

44: Badly Drawn Boy - The Hour of Bewilderbeast (Twisted Nerve/2000)

It may be difficult to reconcile given his decline into virtual obscurity, but at the turn of the century, this Mercury-winning album meant that Damon Gough had the world at his feet. Self-confessed Springsteen devotee and an unlikely looking pop star, The Hour of Bewilderbeast showed what a dedicated student of pop music Gough was. The warm horns which open the album immediately make it stand out from the crowd and are the precursor for Gough raiding pop’s history and the musical box of tricks for an audio thrill-ride. Crucially, The Hour of Bewilderbeast succeeds where all of Gough’s subsequent albums have failed and has an emotional connection with the listener rather than the look-at-me kooky studio wizardry of later releases. Singles Disillusion and Once Around the Block were among the most catchy and best crafted songs of the decade and highlight the fact that it’s a loss for all of us if Damon can’t recapture his mojo.

45: Tindersticks - Can Our Love… (Beggar's Banquet/2001)

Tindersticks live in that odd world of groups who seem to effectively release the same album throughout their career (see also: Stereolab and Cocteau Twins), but what an album it is. If possible, Can Our Love… is even more introspective and brooding than their 90s back catalogue with its long tracks and ruminations on mortality. This, coupled with the prevalent Motown influences, give it more soul than any Tindersticks album before or since. Drums are lightly brushed, strings are dabbed and sounds are gently coaxed out of guitars and organ, Can Our Love… rarely gets above a whisper, but is simply beautiful. Standout track and album centrepiece, Sweet Release, could easily reduce you to tears; if there’s a track - and, indeed, album - which better demonstrates longing and loss, then I’ve yet to hear it.

46: Amanda Palmer - Who Killed Amanda Palmer? (Roadrunner/2008)

Sometimes albums can completely pass you by and you remain unaware of their charms until a much later date. That’s what happened with Who Killed Amanda Palmer?, an album recommended to me by a work colleague who was so convinced of this album’s merit, I was practically bullied into listening to it. With some records, that could have been a case for an employment tribunal, but luckily Who Killed Amanda Palmer? is an absolute blast of an album. Airing your personal issues in public has never seemed so vitriolic yet triumphant and while you’re unlikely to ever hear a more solipsistic collection of songs, its entertainment value cannot be denied. On tracks such as thrilling yelp-along Leeds United (“Who needs love when the sandwiches are wicked and they know you at the MAC store?”), Palmer throws in energy, the piano, all other instruments and then the kitchen sink, before throwing the piano and the kitchen sink at each other, but somehow, like all this album, it all works perfectly.

47: The Shins - Oh, Inverted World (Sub Pop/2001)

Get past the look-at-me-I’ve-read-books Marx-quoting album title and the minimal sleeve art and you’ll find The Shins have a released a straight-up, perfectly-formed pop album. In fact, that’s pretty much what The Shins did in this decade, and better than anyone else to boot. Oh, Inverted World may be bursting with 3-minute verse-chorus-verse pop songs with killer hooks, but that doesn’t mean that The Shins aren’t afraid to take risks and try something new. There’s no sugar coating on the disorienting squeaks that back Caring Is Creepy and on the peerless New Slang, The Shins are content to let the strength of the song and the melody speak to itself. Not a record that will initially blow you away, but one you find yourself coming back to again and again, and each time it’s more rewarding, revealing subtle nuances and quirks of arrangement that show The Shins know exactly what they’re doing.

48: Lewis Taylor - Lewis II (Island/2000)

How we could do with Lewis Taylor back right now. Taylor quit music and severed all ties with the industry part-way through the decade, presumably fed-up with the being hailed as the future of British soul music. The biz being the way it is, though, means this only adds to the myth and he remains as popular as ever, if not more. However, it’s the music where you should really be concentrating, as Lewis II is a remarkably assured piece of work, showing that it wasn’t out of the question that Lewis Taylor could be as good as Stevie Wonder. Sexy, sultry and confident, Lewis II displays the strut typically synonymous with his American contemporaries, such as Maxwell or D’Angelo and like them, he’s not afraid to transcend genres. There’s an awful lot of rock in, what is essentially, a soul album and he dovetails wonderfully with his backing singers to produce spine-tingling harmonies. Every track has a twist and every twist is worthwhile; now all we need is to track him down and ask him to reconsider his self-imposed exile.

(Can you find a YouTube video of Lewis Taylor? I certainly can't)

49: Incubus - Morning View (Epic/2001)

Music can be a remarkably personal experience, and chances are everyone has a landmark handful of songs or albums in their life which are pertinent to them for reasons that transcend the quality of what’s on the disc. For me, this is one of those albums. Morning View was released just as I was starting to get into music (I’d just turned 15) and was the right album at the right time. I took it to my heart immediately and listened to practically nothing else for the first three months I owned it. Several friends of mine had the same musical epiphany and we often reminisce about this time and its accompanying soundtrack. Now, not for a second would I claim Incubus are better than Radiohead, for example, but they’re unfairly maligned in my eyes, and lazily lumped in with the nu-metal shoutniks by critics. Morning View has plenty of straightforward hard rock, but there’s more to it than that: the funky bass on Are You In?, the lazy, irresistible riff of Just a Phase and the prog-like timing of Nice to Know You suggest greater forces at work. It may not be the decade’s defining masterpiece but it’s certainly worth revisiting from time to time, and not just for the nostalgic smile it gives me.

50: Hadouken! - Music for an Accelerated Culture (Atlantic/2008)

Like its similarly-doomed 21st Century forebearer, electroclash, “grindie” (a cross between grime and indie, as any fule kno) never really took off. Mainly due to the fact it was all hyperbole and no trousers, but in its short-lived day in the sun, it did produce one great album. Music for an Accelerated Culture is just that - a soundtrack for the Skins-generation and the perfect companion for gatecrashing a party you saw advertised on Facebook. It’s a relentless assault on the senses and completely thrilling, if a little exhausting for those of us out of our teens. Despite its hard-hitting attitude and bravado, it’s actually a charmingly naïve album and, as these things often are, so of-the-zeitgest that it already seems out-of-date in places (no-one goes on MySpace any more, granddad). It’s also a truly British album that includes insults such as “wally” in between expletives, sirens and crunching guitars. It’s debatable whether Hadouken! have any staying power, but they’re following a very British tradition of marrying cutting-edge innovation with a modern, everyday take on life. The real strength is that Music for an Accelerated Culture gives you the addictive, visceral rush that 99.9% of music fails to do and when you experience that, it‘s difficult to care about much else.

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.

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.

Three

The Loves - Three
released 11 May 2009 on Fortuna Pop!

Even with, or perhaps because of, the limitless possibilities of the Internet and the seemingly endless recommendations from the blogosphere, artists can tend to drop through the net. Take The Loves, who released their third album, the unimaginatively-titled Three, in May of this year to the glee of no-one in particular. In such situations, Wikipedia is the enterprising hack’s friend although we all know it isn’t exactly the most reliable of sources (either that, or the climate of Colombia actually is perfect for growing moon rocks).

The other problem with Wikipedia is that the pages for musicians tend to be written by obsessive fanboys since they’re the only people prepared to devote the necessary time to maintaining such a repository of information. So, it seems odd that the Wikipedia page for The Loves is - at the time of writing - hardly full of glowing praise. The Loves’ début album (Love) “attracted generally hostile press” and the band themselves have suffered “criticism from many reviewers and people in the music industry.” Be still, my beating heart…

Before even listening to Three, it’s already facing an uphill battle and you might want to bring your Big Book of 60s Influences along with you for when you press Play on the CD player. Be warned though, chances are you’ll contract cramp from furious ticking. The Loves do not seem to have one original idea between them, veering from hippie-pastiche to swirling-keyboard pop with little regard for invention. Perhaps more frustratingly though, is the deadpan delivery of the lyrics, suggesting an in-joke that you’re just not enough of a hipster to be party to.

And you know what? It’s absolutely brilliant.

No, really, it is. It may not be flawless and the constrained vocals can grate but the majority of Three is executed with enough knowledge and respect that it’s a worthy homage to its myriad influences. As a short-hand to describe the sound, imagine The Dandy Warhols, except… uh… well… good.

Opener One-Two-Three is irresistible rock and roll which pilfers the chorus from The Jackson Five’s ABC, Kaleidoscope (In My Head) races around like a marginally more focused Architecture in Helsinki, and Sweet Sister Delia is a power pop classic in the making. Despite the lack of originality, the melodies and the quality of the songwriting is so strong that its possible lack of artistic merit hardly seems to matter.

That’s a pretty controversial statement in some quarters but when all’s said and done, you like what you like and that’s how it should be. The concept of “guilty pleasures” shouldn’t even exist; it’s a creation of the indier-than-thou tastemakers but if you enjoy a piece of music, why feel guilty about it? No-one in the music world seems to be prepared to go out on a limb and say than anything Thom Yorke puts his name to is less than perfect or recognise just how fantastic a song Toxic by Britney Spears really is. So, if you can maybe abandon your principles a little, there’s a gem of an album in store for you.

Of course, there are downsides to Three: the main example being the cloying Everybody is in Love which strays so far into relaxed, it ends up with its feet in the next camp: comatose. Ode to Coca-Cola is as ill-advised as its title suggests and no-one wants to hear a song featuring burping as percussion.

Worth the admission price alone, however, is the penultimate track: Can You Feel My Heart Beat? Over a palpitating drum beat, a sparse Hammond organ plays a simple hook and female vocalist Jenna purrs her way through a seductive call to arms. It’s an effective track given room to breathe and has just the right amount of momentum to take it from one phrase to the next. You’ll wish you were the subject of Can You Feel My Heart Beat?, providing you don’t mind being described as “a motherfucking sweet-as-fuck panic attack” (and let’s face it, no sane person could object).

Not everybody can be as groundbreaking and inventive as Aphex Twin, but then again, you wouldn’t want everybody to be. If you can concentrate on what’s important - the actual songs - then you might just find one of the great underappreciated albums of the year. If that ends up being the case, maybe you could edit The Loves’ Wikipedia page; it could certainly do with some, well, love.

God Help the Girl

God Help the Girl - God Help the Girl
released 22 June 2009 on Rough Trade

There’s a danger in this opening paragraph of wringing the very meaning out of the word “eponymous,” so it’s probably best to start from the beginning. God Help the Girl is the name of a film written by Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian, due out next year. For the accompanying songs - one of which is called God Help the Girl - Murdoch has created a group called God Help the Girl and their soundtrack is entitled God Help the Girl. So, just to make things clear, on God Help the Girl by God Help the Girl (the soundtrack to God Help the Girl), there’s a song called God Help the Girl. Got it? Good.

The film is a musical, which will probably come as a surprise to those who still see Belle and Sebastian as the fey, publicity-shy indie kids of the 1990s, but less of a shock for those who have followed their career trajectory more closely. The most obvious case in point is Act of the Apostle II from Belle and Sebastian’s last album, 2006’s The Life Pursuit; a song so jaunty and packed with narrative, it sounded like an off-cut from Bugsy Malone. The song is back on God Help the Girl in a different guise (and, somewhat confusingly, simply titled Act of the Apostle) and if possible, it’s got even more swing in its step.

Stuart Murdoch’s lyrics have always been sexually ambiguous (see the harrowing The Chalet Lines from the under-appreciated Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant), so it seems perfectly natural that God Help the Girl makes use of five different female vocalists. Most simply act as a mouthpiece for Murdoch’s tales of regret and the frustration of the mundane, yet one newcomer completely steals the show.

Unless you’re particularly au fait with the notoriously prolific and slightly incestuous Glasgow indie scene, chances are you won’t know an awful lot about Catherine Ireton of up-and-coming and really rather good duo Go Away Birds. But know her you should; her cut-glass accent and perfect pronunciation coupled with a honey-sweet voice possibly shouldn’t work in theory, but in practice it’s daringly alluring and altogether sexy. The nearest soundalike is probably Sophie Ellis-Bextor but that can’t help but come across as damning with faint praise (hey, theaudience were a good band, right?), Ireton outshines everybody here, including Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy who crops up (with Ireton) on Perfection as a Hipster.

God Help the Girl is based around Ireton’s distinctive voice and wonderful, shiver-inducing major to minor chord changes, which lead to its particular sound. Whereas Stuart Murdoch’s last foray into soundtracks (Belle and Sebastian’s hit-and-miss Storytelling) was too piecemeal, God Help the Girl really feels like a proper album with a running theme. It’s evocative of sassy girl groups of the Motown era and everything drips with sumptuous string arrangements. It’s a similar trick to that pulled off by The Last Shadow Puppets on The Age of the Understatement but with a much more perky attitude.

God Help the Girl is at its best when exhibiting what has become something of a Belle and Sebastian trademark: the soaring, sunny melody juxtaposed with the unexpected lyric. Ireton excels as she floats up towards the chorus on the title track (“If he gave me a sign, I’d think about it for a week, I’d build it up and then I’d turn him down”) and the marriage of cymbals, bells and bombast with the everyday on Musician, Please Take Heed is a joy to behold (“I lost a lot of weight, I think it’s down to leaving meat out of my diet, as a rule I won’t buy it ‘cos it’s cruel”).

God Help the Girl demonstrates that Murdoch is part of a great male-female partnership for the first time since Isobel Campbell left Belle and Sebastian seven years ago. In fact, if God Help the Girl featured solely Murdoch/Ireton collaborations, it could be argued that it’s the best album that Murdoch has put his name to since The Boy with the Arab Strap, over a decade ago. However, that isn’t the case; the aforementioned Neil Hannon sounds curiously out of place popping up halfway through the record and the remaining female contingent do little to engage or uplift. As well as those - albeit minor - complaints, the less said about the frankly horrible lift-Muzak of A United Theory, the better.

All of these things are forgivable, but what really threatens to put a downer on an otherwise stellar record is the teeth-grindingly awful version of Belle and Sebastian’s biggest hit single, Funny Little Frog. Whereas the original (again, from The Life Pursuit) was full of warmth and wit, the 2009 update is devoid of anything approaching quality. Vocalist Brittany Stallings (sorry to attack someone whose presence on the album is due to winning a competition) seems to think she’s Joss Stone and her vapid, melismatic warbling are as synthetic as a nylon pullover. Even the band sound as if they’re going through the motions like they’re contractually obliged and the fact Stallings doesn’t even attempt the charming non-rhyme of “know it” with “throat” would be tantamount to treason in a fair society (ok, maybe that’s a bit of an extreme reaction, but it really is buttock-clenchingly wretched though).

For anyone after the next Belle and Sebastian album, God Help the Girl ticks the boxes whilst simultaneously asking more questions than it answers. Save for a handful of forgettable excursions into tampering with a perfectly good formula, it’s a very well-written, cohesive collection of songs. Its main legacy may turn out to be, however, that a star has been discovered and a girl who may not need help from anyone, omnipotent deity or otherwise.

Lines, Vines and Trying Times

Jonas Brothers - Lines, Vines and Trying Times
released 15 June 2009 on Polydor

In November 1983, Duran Duran released their third album, Seven and the Ragged Tiger. In an interview not long after, Simon Le Bon told Rolling Stone that the album “is an adventure story about a little commando team. 'The Seven' is for us — the five band members and the two managers — and 'the Ragged Tiger' is success. Seven people running after success. It's ambition. That's what it's about.” This proves two things: firstly, Simon Le Bon is an utter tool (not that their was much doubt surrounding that one) and secondly, simple bands shouldn’t make themselves appear impressive by having “clever” album titles. It didn’t make Duran Duran look deep and philosophical; instead it was a prime example of trying too hard.

Perhaps Kevin, Nick and Joe Jonas (seriously, who calls their kid Joe Jonas?) were big fans of lightweight 80s pop, because that’s the only possible explanation behind this baffling title: Lines, Vines and Trying Times. What with the brothers Jonas being signed to Hollywood Records, a subsidiary of Disney, you would think they’d have had to battle hard to keep that title. You can imagine a meeting between the Jo Bros and some head honcho at the record label (you may wish to imagine said honcho smoking a huge Cuban cigar that he lit using a $100 bill):

Head Honcho: “Nick, Curly, Spud, come in, sit down. Now what are we going to call the album?”
Jonas Brothers: “Lines, Vines and Trying Times”
HH: “That’s a terrible title. We were thinking maybe In Your Face or Rock Da House. Calling it Lines, Vines and Nursery Rhymes…”
JB: “…Trying Times.”
HH: “Whatever. It won’t sell”
JB: “But we feel it reflects our new found maturity or some other similarly empty gesture”
HH: “Well, Joe Rivers might do some unfunny, self-referential skit on the title if he reviews it”
JB (in unison): “Who?”
HH: “Good point.”

Yeah, it probably went something like that.

Anyway, despite the eldest brother (Kevin) only being born in 1987, the most striking thing about Lines, Vines and Trying Times is the proliferation of 80s influences. Not 80s in a cool, La Roux, sleek electro revival kind of way, but 80s in a synthetic, cheap, well… Duran Duran kind of way, come to think of it. There are horn stabs at every turn, meaningless phrases, “triumphs” of style over substance and power ballads. The production (and title) of Poison Ivy take it laughably close to hair metal while Hey Baby bounces along on a slap bass figure which reeks so strongly of fromage that even Flea would think twice before donning the Fender and banging his head around in a mindless fashion.

As you’d expect, there’s nothing to change the world of popular music in Lines, Vines and Trying Times. There’s the obligatory syrupy ballad or three (one featuring the irritatingly ubiquitous Miley Cyrus) which prove to be the vomit-inducing lightweight pap that the pre-teens seem to lap up, and a couple of songs that seem to have crafted solely with the intention of soundtracking the season finalé of some post-Dawson’s Creek solipsism-fest where Johnny’s upset with Janey and Danny’s angry at Jay but Jay’s in love with Janey and is going through a really, really hard time.

So, quelle surprise, Lines, Vines and Trying Times is primarily a box-ticking exercise. The songs are exclusively about relationships but what with them coming from America’s most famous wearers of purity rings, everything’s blandly sexless and free of controversy. Even the tracks about longing and wanting don’t contain a hint of lust and the closest the brothers come to breaking their family-friendly image is the implied rhyme within Poison Ivy (“everybody gets the itch/Everybody hates that…”) which has a squall of guitar instead of completing what would be the least threatening lyric used in song since “Stop - Hammertime.”

Then there’s the singing. Whoever started this style of singing - possibly Mariah Carey - should be made accountable for their crimes as the brothers sing as if (and sorry for descending to this level) they’re attempting to evacuate something particularly obstructive from their bowels. Miley Cyrus is just as bad so the only voice of reason on this album comes from Common. Yep, that Common. Mr Lynn lends his flow to Don’t Charge Me for the Crime; a pitiful attempt at sounding street - careful, they mention the police and pistols - that only succeeds in making the Jonas Brothers seem the kind of people who could have their ice creams stolen by a five-year-old.

Now, it’s time for a small confession and one that may be a sackable offence on the good ship No Ripcord (and if that’s the case, thanks for the memories, it’s been a blast, best of luck for the future and all that). In parts, Lines, Vines and Trying Times can be quite listenable. If you manage to ignore the fact that half the tracks make Starship and Heart sound like the Aphex Twin, those Jo Bros sure know how to write a tune. For all the overblown, bombastic production, when they’ve a spring in their step, the melodies are strong and the songs can be fun. World War Three, Much Better and the aforementioned Poison Ivy are catchy enough that if you happen to hear them, you may find yourself inadvertently humming them to yourself hours later.

Lines, Vines and Trying Times isn’t a good record and definitely isn’t the kind of thing you should be looking to investigate further. But if you’re reading this review, the chances are it’s not meant for you, so giving it a thumbs-down is hardly earth-shattering news. Like it or not, Jonas Brothers and the people behind them know their target market and do what they do pretty well. The abundance of such dated sounds is baffling but consider this: if you had a 10-year-old child who was starting to take an interest in music, would you rather they were into the misogynistic, materialistic world of commercial 21st Century R n’ B or the wholesome, clean-cut image of the Jonas Brothers? While comedian Bill Bailey may have had it right when he claimed there was “more evil in the charts than in an Al-Qaeda suggestion box,” Lines, Vines and Trying Times hardly constitutes the war crime your prejudices may have led you to believe.

Journal for Plague Lovers

Manic Street Preachers - Journal for Plague Lovers
released 18 May 2009 on Columbia

On May 15 1991, Manic Street Preachers, then an androgynous glam-punk outfit on the up, played a gig at Norwich Arts Centre. After the show, an interview with the NME’s Steve Lamacq gained widespread notoriety when Richey Edwards decided to carve the phrase “4 REAL” into his arm with a razor blade. Stupid and misguided as it may have been, it’s an iconic moment that has gone down in rock folklore and was quite possibly one of the catalysts for the success of the Manics’ début album, Generation Terrorists, the following year. The fact that this man who didn’t sing, (allegedly) didn’t even play guitar and only wrote around half the band’s lyrics could be the focal point for such an image-conscious band pretty much summed up the enigma that was Richey Edwards.

Of course, we all know what happened next. Generation Terrorists was followed by Gold Against the Soul and, completing the Richey trilogy, The Holy Bible. Then, in February 1995, Edwards went missing and hasn’t been seen since. MSP soldiered on without him and became one of the leading lights of the British music scene of the 1990s but The Holy Bible remains their masterpiece: a brutal, gruelling growl-from-the-id of an album clearly showcasing the fragile mind of a man on the edge. Unfortunately, at the time, no-one knew quite how close he was. Richey left behind folders of poems, musings and ideas, and these form the lyrical content of Journal for Plague Lovers. So, basically, we’re in for The Holy Bible mark II, right? Well, just to be contrary, yes and no.

It’s clear from track one, Peeled Apples, that it’s Edwards’ words coming from Bradfield. Within a couple of minutes, there’s a reference to Noam Chomsky and there’s certainly no-one around in 2009 who would pen an opening couplet such as “The more I see, the less I scream/The figure eight inside out is infinity.”

But MSP have grown up over the last fifteen years (all three members are now 40) and there’s a maturity to their music now that has replaced the all-out nihilism of their formative years. We’re now treated to a situation where Edwards’ lyrics actually fit the music; something of a novelty for long-term Manics fans. James Dean Bradfield’s voice has softened from the passionate rallying cry of the early 90s too . So, there’s the odd spectacle of a 40-year-old man crooning, “Overjoyed, me and Stephen Hawking, we laughed/We missed the sex revolution/When we failed the physical” as Bradfield does on Me and Stephen Hawking (hey, no-one said all his lyrics were winners).

The most striking difference between Journal for Plague Lovers and any album MSP recorded during Richey’s lifetime is the variation. Rather than cranking up the amps and letting the fury fly, there’s much more thought and consideration in every riff. In fact, it’s the ballads that prove the most powerful throughout the album, where songs such as This Joke Sport Severed add a restrained gravitas to Edwards’ words. The hallmarks of Manics of old are still there to see though: metal riffs, double-tracked vocals; in fact, She Bathed Herself in a Bath of Bleach could have come straight from Generation Terrorists.

Manic Street Preachers really do need congratulating for their efforts on Journal for Plague Lovers. Not only have they crafted an album that is fit to rank among their best, they’ve done so in difficult circumstances (though obviously they have previous in this field with 1996’s triumphant Everything Must Go). What could have been a mawkish album in poor taste has ended up being a fitting tribute to a friend and former bandmate.

On this album of confounded expectations, it seems only apt that it’s left for Nicky Wire to apply the coup de grâce. Not known for his vocal dexterity, he stays true to form here, but he lends his pipes to the best track on the album, William’s Last Words. Like most of the high points on Journal for Plague Lovers, it’s an acoustic-led ballad and this time, a tender paean to Richey. You don’t get to write your own epitaph in life but that’s effectively what Edwards has done. The words could have just been thrown together in five minutes on a piece of scrap paper for all we know, but lines such as “Isn’t it lovely when the dawn brings the dew? I’ll be watching over you” take on a heartbreaking poignancy when you consider the tragic story to which they now relate. As Wire’s wobbly voice strains for the notes on “Goodnight, sleep tight/Goodnight, God bless,” you’d have to have a heart of stone not to feel even the slightest twinge of sadness.

Richey Edwards was officially declared “presumed deceased” in November 2008. Chances are, the truth about what happened will never be found out. The fact that, however crass it may sound, we live in an age where death can sometimes seem a good career move (à la Jeff Buckley or Nick Drake) and conspiracy theorists worldwide can share mutterings across the globe via the Internet means that the cult of Richey Edwards will be with us for a long time yet. With Journal for Plague Lovers, it feels like Manic Street Preachers have finally closed the door on a painful chapter in their career and, rather fittingly, they’ve done it with some aplomb.