Choosing packs a punch – the effect of which lingers. What’s captured by these 11 songs comes across as unfiltered, disconcertingly direct. And what it is that’s captured appears to be an account of someone getting to grips with how their lifestyle has had negative impacts.
There’s been a quiet storm of critical approval building around Weyes Blood. American singer Natalie Mering has been releasing music for over a decade but, during the last two or three years a tailwind of positive verbiage has blown her faster forward. Her last album, Titanic Rising, the first of a loose trilogy, of which this is the second part, made low level inroads to commercial success on both sides of the Atlantic.
The chorus to Working Men’s Club’s song “Money is Mine” usually runs, “Endless depression, it’s time/Suicide is yours when the money is mine.” Presented as the penultimate song of their set, frontman Syd Minksy-Sargeant distils this. Grim-faced, his hand twisting about under his tee-shirt as if suffering from an untenable itch, he spits “endless depression” and “suicide” into the mic on a jarring loop, backed up every inch by harsh, dark, techno-adjacent battering. It’s a moment that sums the night up.
Even the jolliest number on Micah P Hinson’s new album, a banjo-pickin’, wistful campfire jig entitled “Waking on Eggshells”, has him singing, “Give me a knife, I’ll show you my vein”, alongside offers to “blow out your brain” with various firearms, and proclamations he “must be going insane”.
There’s a disconnect between Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett on record and in concert. On record, especially on her latest album, her dryly-stated, touching emotional lyricism is to the fore, but in the live arena you’re as likely to be presented with a scorching rock goddess, playing with her fingers and no plectrum.
There was something devilish about Alex Kapranos at this homecoming gig, and not simply due to the blood red shirt the Franz Ferdinand frontman was wearing. Throughout the night the singer would cajole and conduct the crowd with finger-pointing flair, as if tempting them to join him on the dark side, and when he spoke it was to demand more from the audience like a preacher zealously seeking extra funding for a mega church.
“When we started out we were really just an amalgamation of three bands – the Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and the House of Love,” said Ride’s Andy Bell in 2012. The arrival of the literally-named double album 4 EPs – collecting their first four EPs in one place – brings a chance to ponder this.
After an unavoidable delay theartsdesk on Vinyl returns with over 9000 words on new and recent releases, ranging across the entire spectrum of known music. Dive in!
VINYL OF THE MONTH
Edrix Puzzle Coming of the Moon Dogs (On the Corner)
It seems an ambivalent statement, perhaps estranging Ride’s Mark Gardener from what’s happening on stage. “I always loved this track off Going Blank Again, it’s called ‘Chrome Waves’.” He could be a DJ or a fan talking about what’s about to be played, rather than a member of the band itself – a member poised to launch into a live recreation of the fourth track from their 1992 second album.
Other Voices is, according to its founder Philip King, a festival which celebrates what’s about to happen. Indeed, artists like Hozier, Fontaines DC and Amy Winehouse cut their teeth at this unique musical event which, although it has its home in the west of Ireland, has iterations across the world.