Where is the Queen? doesn’t hide where it’s coming from. Drawing so gracefully from disparate strains of Nineties rock while augmenting them with a literate sensibility, it immediately sets itself up as an album which stands apart.
Finland’s Jaakko Eino Kalevi, who played his debut British show last November, heads up theartsdesk’s latest regular round-up of what’s come down from the north. A spellbinding display of individualistic pop, the London outing coincided with the arrival of his first non-Finnish release, the Dreamzone EP.
Damien Jurado last surfaced as one of Moby’s collaborators on the Innocents album. From the sound of Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son, Beck might have been a more logical musical partner. Texture-wise, Jurado’s new release sits alongside Sea Change-era Beck as well as the dense, fuggy atmosphere of his own last outing, 2012’s Maraqopa.
Country music in the 21st century is the weirdest thing, and not much of it seems to have to do with the country any more. At its commercial end, it sells billions of records by men with tight T-shirts and women with very white teeth who all drive gigantic 4x4s, making gigastars (in the US at least) of the likes of Tim McGraw and Taylor Swift. Elsewhere there is rootsy bluegrass for urban hipsters, avant-garde classical-electronica-folk, and a vast swathe of “alt.country” and Americana acts that blur the lines between indie rock and retro country.
White noise saturates the air. At mind-melting volume, it shifts through the aural spectrum to settle on the bass end. A voice begins yelling angry-sounding gobbets. The words are unintelligible. The stage is in darkness. Gradually, it becomes possible to make out the source of this impassioned diatribe. It’s a non-descript, white, bespectacled young man in a T-shirt. This nerdy fellow stops for a moment. So does the accompanying noise. Then his guitar-toting accomplice piles on slab after slab of noise.
It’s ironic that the album which has invited itself back onto the turntable more often than any other this year is wholly redolent of another time and place: the California of the early Seventies. Whatever the shortcomings of his live performance, on his second album Fanfare Jonathan Wilson fashioned a dense, atmospheric whole whose constituent ingredients were explicitly acknowledged – and not just by the identity of those guesting on the album. But it was also wholly original and showcased a unique yet disconcertingly familiar voice.
Even on first listen, without context or introduction, the music of The Fauns already seems familiar. Their sound is an amalgam of many of the things I have enjoyed in 2013: The History of Apple Pie, all guitar fuzz and sweetness; the shimmer of the newly-reunited Mazzy Star; the soundtrack to an early Sofia Coppola film; and, on “Point Zero”, the buzz of the crowd at an open-air rock show as imagined by somebody who decided to stay at home on a Friday night.
Various Artists: I am the Center – Private Issue New Age Music in America, 1950–1990
Although Confection is sonic ear-candy of a most seductive type, it’s hard to grasp what the point is. The album is lush, orchestrated and enfolding, but it does nothing new and says little beyond being the product of meticulous craftsmanship. Essentially, it’s the soundtrack to a film that does not exist. Themes are stated and then restated. A half-time interregnum comes with a playful synth outing which could be an alternate theme to the Magic Roundabout.
Kraftwerk closing a festival is a big deal. It’s an even bigger honour when the seminal German outfit reconfigure their set to acknowledge where they’re playing. Last Sunday, Kraftwerk performed the rarely heard “Airwaves”, from 1975’s Radioactivity album, within the honeycomb-windowed Harpa concert hall. They were paying tribute to Iceland Airwaves, the remarkable festival which was drawing to a close