A Wise Birthgiver

The music that you gave me, the language of my soul...

2009-12-10T12:42:00.000-08:00

Gnostic prog-pop a-go-go...!

The Wire #310

2009-11-14T03:32:00.000-08:00

...is out, featuring my King Crimson Primer (I won't hear a word against Lizard, kids!) plus reviews of the lovely new Josephine Foster album and this year's Incubate festival in Tilburg. Also featured is Derek Walmsley's cover feature on mutant hip-hop pioneer Sensational (J-Beez With The Remedy, the Jungle Brothers album which features this dude is one of my favourite albums EVAH... his own Loaded With Power is pretty damn fine too) alongside interviews with Oneohtrix Point Never (fantastic artist with a truly fantastic nom-de-plume) and Ben Frost. The Invisible Jukebox this issue is with Carlos Giffoni, who is most notable in my eyes for being one third of excellent no wave power trio Monotract.

It's a curiously proggy issue, this one - not only does it feature the aforementioned Crims Primer, but also a admirably forthright pro-prog Editorial from Chris Bohn and a rather lovely Epiphanies piece by Stephen Thrower, in which the Cylobe chap waxes nostalgic about his introduction to Yes.

Edit: By the way, I'd like to take this opportunity to state that while Yes come in for a bit of stick in my Crimson piece, I actually love a great deal of their music! I make no apologies for referring to Jon Anderson's lyrics as Aquarian guff, because they generally are. That doesn't mean however that the music (including of course Anderson's voice) isn't often mindblowing. Anyone doubting the group's brilliance should investigate the single edit of 'Sound Chaser' from the CD reissue of Relayer. It's unearthly, in the sense that it really does sound like music from another galaxy.

The Outer Church @ The Quietus

2009-11-09T13:06:00.000-08:00

Those fellows at The Quietus asked me to put together a Spotify playlist and a couple of paragraphs to herald the opening of The Outer Church this Wednesday night. I dutifully obliged, and you can look and listen here. Why not read the article - very slowly - as you listen to the playlist? Just a suggestion.

The End Of The Game

2009-11-08T10:40:00.000-08:00

My good friend Dr Wommm swears by Peter Green's solo debut, and I can hear why. Despite having a reputation as an indulgent mess (check the severely unimpressed Allmusic review) it's actually a pioneering exercise in free blues rock, edited down from a series of jams the guitarist conducted a month after his departure from Fleetwood Mac in 1970. It's also brilliant; Green is on astonishing form throughout, tearing through the tracks with a trancelike concentration which suggests he's taking this opportunity to exorcise a multitude of personal demons... but y'know, that kind of talk is all too tempting when discussing the mercurial Mr Green. The band assembled for these sessions is stellar, comprising the legendary Zoot Money on piano plus keyboardist Nick Buck and the frankly inspired rhythm section of drummer Godfrey Maclean and bassist Alex Dmochowski, who probably deserve as much credit as ol' Petey for making this album so damn good.

The End Of The Game suggests a possible future for post-60s blues rock that few opted to explore at the time. The title itself appears to herald a 'next level' to Green's music that never arrived, his subsequent solo material restricted to undemandingly bluesy fare with nothing like the same degree of audacity or chutzpah displayed here. This album should have been included in The Wire's '100 Records That Set The World On Fire (While No One Was Listening)' feature of several years back, such is its boundary-breaking brilliance and fearless expansion of a then-popular rock genre.

Magister Dixit

2009-11-08T09:17:00.000-08:00

Better late than never, eh? I recently came across a downloadable demo (dating from 2006) by a French outfit called Magister Dixit. Web research throws up very little information about them, but some commentators place the group within the 'Zeuhl' bracket along with Magma, Verto, Univers Zero and others. This certainly makes sense given the elements of jazz rock, chamber music and vocal chanting, but for those not fluent in Kobaian, I'd suggest Brooklyn's Dirty Projectors and Canterbury's Soft Machine as potentially helpful points of reference.

Whatever comparisons the group may inspire, this demo is one of the freshest and most rewarding discoveries I've made in recent months, so comes highly recommended. I wonder if they're still active...?

Open For Worship...

2009-11-02T07:00:00.001-08:00

My new monthly club night (every 2nd Wednesday) begins November 11th at The Penthouse, upstairs at The Freebutt, Brighton, 8:00 til midnight. I'll be spinning a wide variety of musics including psych, prog, kraut and haunted audio... mmmmm.

The above poster was designed by Simon Mills aka Rootsix. More details here.

Incidentally, I just ate a lovely pork pie with Coleman's Mustard.

2009-10-30T06:52:00.000-07:00

Good Words

2009-10-25T08:14:00.000-07:00

"The spirit of play is powerful because by refusing to take the opponent seriously, it undermines the very nature of conflict, a refusal to accept the premise."

- Sun Araw, The Wire #308

Blood From (The) Stones

2009-10-10T14:44:00.000-07:00

The Rolling Stones used to freak me out when I was a kid. Yeah, yeah, insert quip about Mick's dancing here, whatever, but the group inspired a kind of psychosexual unease in the younger me... they just seemed like evil, nasty people with bad intentions. Their lips logo was nauseatingly glossy, a blankly lewd cipher for rapacious corporate appetite while their music... well, it felt like aural molestation. I distinctly recall that the video for 'Too Much Blood' (amazing title) made me feel especially sick and wrong. Watch out for the bloody human remains in the fridge. Would you get an image so cheap and lo-fi unpleasant in a contemporary music video? I doubt it. After all, we have 'taste' nowadays.

I really like 1980s Stones. Seems to me that the group were at their most decadent and morally questionable when they had been fully integrated into the establishment. This next song, released in 1984, is sonically brilliant, a sleazy crawl blasted to pieces by machine gun delay... and lyrically, it's safe to say that few mainstream rock groups at the time were dealing with issues of corruption in Central and South America. I suspect they were fairly well-informed on the subject too. 'Undercover...' sums up what I find queasily enjoyable about the Stones: they don't bemoan a world gone to shit... they enjoy it, revel in it. In that respect they remind me of The Comedian, the ill-fated amoral costumed antihero of Alan Moore's Watchmen. Although the Stones go one better - presiding over the chaos from the ivory tower afforded the rock aristocracy, they look down with contempt upon the weak and helpless. Despicable, although I can't help but view it as a more honest response than the phoney careerist concern that produced Live Aid.

Exotic Pylon Playlist 22/08/09

2009-10-06T12:36:00.000-07:00

Back in August I did a radio show with the lovely Jonny Mugwump and his excellent musical guests Father Murphy on Resonance FM. Here's what I played:

'The Be Colony' by Broadcast & The Focus Group (from Witch Cults Of The Radio Age on Warp)
'Adam' by Buffy Sainte Marie (from Illuminations on Vanguard)
'Andromeda' by Harry Thumann (from Andromeda on Hansa)
'Hiking Metal Punks' by Darkthrone (from Dark Thrones & Black Flags on Peaceville)
'Underglass' by OLD (from Formula on Earache)
'Over The Green Hills (BBC Session)' by Free (from Tons Of Sobs: Remastered on Island)
'Mute Force' by T.I.T.S. (from Second Base on Upset The Rhythm)
'Valley Of The Gods' by The Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra (from Chariots Of The Gods OST on Polydor)
'Cloudburst On Shingle Street' by Thomas Dolby (from The Golden Age Of Wireless: Collector's Edition on EMI)
'Computer Complex' by Luke Vibert (from We Hear You on Planet Mu)
'Aspirations' by Gentle Giant (from The Power & The Glory on Vertigo)
'Lazy Ways' by 10cc (from How Dare You! on Mercury)
'Travels In Nihilon' by XTC (from Black Sea on Virgin)

Have a listen here. But be kind to my mistakes...!

Thomas Dolby

2009-09-28T05:05:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Drowned In Sound, I finally got the chance to ramble on interminably about my all time favourite record of all time, Thomas Dolby's 1982 debut The Golden Age Of Wireless, freshly reissued along with the follow-up, 1985's The Flat Earth. Not only that, I also had the opportunity to speak to the man himself over a very bad phone line (my mate Lee tells me I should have asked for 'Dolby Noise Reduction', har har!) and the piece features his own wit and wisdom. It's a review, it's an interview, it's an interreview.

Have a gander at it here.

2009-09-26T00:49:00.000-07:00

The Witch Cult carouse in the shadow of the gibbet. The same one featured on the masthead of this blog.

The Best Band On Factory Records...

2009-09-25T10:50:00.000-07:00

...was not Joy Division, New Order or the Happy Mondays, but The Crawling Chaos. They were weird, psychedelic, and nowadays sound a bit like the forefathers of the amazing Position Normal (buy their excellent new album NOW) or perhaps a British Faust.

And that's all I'm prepared to say about it at this point.

2009-09-23T10:00:00.001-07:00

Got back from Tilburg in the Netherlands (where I attended the Incubate Festival for the first time... tempted to blog that but might save it all up for my forthcoming print review at the risk of repeating myself... suffice it to say it was amazing and renewed my faith in festival programmers) to find all the travellers' vehicles that use to decorate our road GONE with only parking meters and bollards in their place. How my guts sank. I knew this was going to happen, but still can't quite come to terms with the quiet carnage of it all... it's like someone's massacred half my neighbours. What a victory for the small-minded, for whom any alternative to their mode of living is an affront, even an obscenity.

I loved the travellers' vans... they were all interesting to look at, modified in various ways, but some of them, like the one in the photo above and the old chrome school bus at the end of the road, were absolutely beautiful. But this is hardly a simple matter of aesthetics. These people never seemed to bother anyone, they just lived their lives quietly and peacefully. Imagine if you'd gone away for the weekend and returned to find the entire row of houses facing yours had been demolished, the inhabitants whisked off to fuck only knows where as long as it ain't here in our lovely pristine neighbourhood. This morning a cleaning truck whisked the final traces of the travellers from the kerbside... every minute particle of dead skin sucked up and away, the erasure complete. Shudder.

So what did I do to prevent this eviction? Did I campaign? Did I write to my MP? Did I attend local residents association meetings? Did I fuck. Shameful.

Uh-huh

2009-09-15T13:38:00.000-07:00

Or alternatively

The Lovecraft Of Sarah Jane

2009-09-14T12:58:00.000-07:00

Watching Doctor Who spinoff The Sarah Jane Adventures - which in terms of being a smart, scary kid's programme is often closer to vintage Who than new) I was struck by the Lovecraftian resonances of the two-part serial 'Secrets Of Stars'. Russ Abbot plays a luckless sort reduced to peddling fraudulent horoscopes who realises his true destiny as the human host of the Ancient Lights, entities which predate The Big Bang and whose universe is subject to the movement of the constellations. They possess Abbot and use him as a gateway through which they might invade and take control of our reality. For 'Ancient Lights' I think we can safely read 'Great Old Ones', while Abbot is clearly a variation of the mad, mutated cultist figure common in Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. The astrological angle is a nice original twist, but whatever - it's just fun to be reminded yet again of the extent of Lovecraft's enduring influence on popular culture.

You can watch Episode One HERE and Episode Two HERE

Music To Play In The Dark Pt. 1

2009-09-13T13:05:00.000-07:00

Seeing as we're in the run up to Samhain (as far as I'm concerned) I thought I'd start an irregular series of posts about albums which have the capacity to chill, and I don't mean Groove Armada or Zero 7. First up is Eno's frankly disturbing Ambient 4: On Land from 1982. Where the fuck was his bald head at around this time? On Land is one of the few albums which I find genuinely difficult to listen to alone in the flat... the whole record whispers 'Look behind you!' or at least 'Did you lock the back door?' Especially 'Lizard Point' (named after a genuinely creepy part of England), 'Shadow' and 'Lantern Marsh'. The idea of Eno going all out to freak out his audience is an highly appealing one, and in terms of dread atmosphere and overall heaviness, On Land is comparable to the respective debuts of Black Sabbath and Free... of which, more later.

R.I.P. Iain Cuthbertson

2009-09-12T02:00:00.000-07:00

Scottish actor Iain Cuthbertson passed away on September 10, aged 79. Cuthbertson's rich and varied career in British film and television included appearances in Doctor Who, The Avengers, Nigel Kneale's The Stone Tape, Survivors and ITV's classic 1976-77 supernatural drama Children Of The Stones, in which he gave an unforgettable performance as unhinged astronomer Rafael Hendrick. I hope you'll join me in wishing Cuthbertson a safe and pleasant passage to the next place.

The Wire #308

2009-09-10T07:08:00.001-07:00

The latest issue of The Wire is out, with my cover feature on Broadcast plus Lou Reed, Dumitrescu, Dopplereffekt and more.

It was with great astonishment that I discovered my interview with Trish Keenan and James Cargill would entail a visit to Hungerford - one of my oldest haunts, and the last place I'd expect any group to relocate to. Up until the week of the interview I was sure they were based in Birmingham! A delightful alignment indeed, and I sincerely hope I have done the pair justice with my feature.

The forthcoming EP with The Focus Group, Witch Cults Of The Radio Age, is ridiculously good, still identifiably Broadcast yet taking place in its own pocket universe, where Keenan, Cargill and collaborator Julian House are free to model a world of their own design from fragments of folk, psychedelia, Radiophonics and more.

Coming In With The Golden Light

2009-08-29T11:09:00.000-07:00

The Last Wave was Australian director Peter Weir's second attempt at tackling the Aboriginal myth of the Dreamtime following the beautiful, psychedelic The Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975).

Judging from the trailer, with this 1977 film Weir cast aside the oblique approach favoured by the previous work, building a full-on mystic thriller around the folklore of indigenous Australians. Doesn't seem to have a current UK DVD release, but I'll keep foraging and once I've watched it, I'll post a full report. I should probably get around to watching his 1974 debut The Cars That Ate Paris, too.

Incidentally, wasn't Richard Chamberlain an unbelievably beautiful man, in his day?

Edit: I've just finished watching The Last Wave. It didn't disappoint. Richard Chamberlain's performance is very low-key, which has led some to accuse him of woodenness, but in my opinion his portrayal of a man's helpless slide into a world with which he's desperately unfamiliar is astonishingly well-judged. The sense that the character is running to catch up with his destiny contributes enormously to the overall sense of apocalyptic dread that suffuses the film, along with Russell Boyd's cinematography, which makes much of the aquatic theme, casting everything in watery, liquescent hues, especially during the brief premonition sequences (one of which in particular is haunting in the extreme - but I won't ruin it for prospective viewers).

It's interesting to me that this film was released in the same year as Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, which I watched for the first time in an age last night. They share the theme of a relatively ordinary guy who receives a mystical calling he neither asked for nor wanted, which gradually draws him away from his family, and indeed the great majority of humanity. I suppose there are Nietzschean connotations here, but I'm not really qualified to say. Both The Lost Wave's David Burton and Close Encounters' Roy Neary (played by a grandstanding Richard Dreyfuss) are transformed into something more than human by their contact with supernatural forces - in Burton's case, the Aboriginal Dreamtime, in Neary's, his extraterrestrial interlopers. Needless to say, though, the conclusion of The Last Wave is hardly the prog rock fireworks display of Spielberg's film, and when Burton detaches himself from his family it's with the intention of shielding them from a harm he has barely begun to understand, rather than to more easily pursue his personal dreamquest.

In all, The Last Wave makes for a harrowing experience, and works as a fine companion piece to The Picnic At Hanging Rock, exploring similar themes - the attempted lamination of 'civilisation' upon historically 'tribal' territory and its psychic and physical consequences, reality versus dream, the irresistable lure of hysteria, incipient clairvoyance - and similarly showcasing the director's hallucinatory early style. In recent times Weir's made some films I couldn't care less for, but later works such as Fearless and The Truman Show indicate that when the mood takes him, he is still capable of making intelligent films that question the nature of sanity and reality.

You Better Come Home Quickly...

2009-08-29T05:48:00.001-07:00

One of the eeriest pieces of music I have ever heard, Bob Young and John Palmer's 'The Bunyip (Bunyip Moon)' from the 1977 animated film adaptation of Ethel C. Pedley's children's book, Dot And The Kangaroo. It's a truly fantastic production too - listen to those spectral, dissonant 'Ligeti goes pop' backing vocals! Quite remarkable.

The film itself features the voice of Spike Milligan, and is well worth seeking out. It was made at a time in which more-or-less unreconstructed hippies were allowed an influence on family entertainment, and is notable for its new age-ish blend of ecology, spirituality and Aboriginal folklore.

Keep Pushin' Mama

2009-08-29T04:45:00.000-07:00

Daemonic Resonance

2009-08-29T01:02:00.000-07:00

Aldbourne was my first home. Following my birth in Swindon in 1975, my mother took my brother and me to live in a tiny toll cottage just outside the village. Both have told me that they experienced uncanny happenings in and around the cottage. It's certainly fairly remote, which lends the place a slightly eerie atmosphere.

Four years before my birth, the village was the location for the classic Doctor Who serial 'The Daemons'. Within the narrative, written by Barry Letts and Robert Sloman under the pseudonym 'Guy Leopold', the village was named 'Devil's End', which indicates just how great a debt this era of the show owed to Nigel Kneale's Quatermass cycle.

In case you're not up on your Kneale, he set his 1958 TV serial Quatermass & The Pit in a fictional London district named Hob's End - 'Hob' being a Northern English colloquial term for 'Devil'.

Sauveur Mallia, Actually

2009-08-28T14:22:00.000-07:00

Simply wonderful.

Who Is Tom Baker

2009-08-28T09:25:00.000-07:00

I'm overjoyed to report that Tom Baker has returned to the role of the Doctor for a series of five interlinked audio plays written by Paul Magrs, in which the Timelord's retreat to a sleepy Sussex village proves anything but relaxing. Who enthusiasts will be pleased to know that Mike Yates (played by Richard Franklin) will be playing a major part in these adventures. I always liked Yates - thoroughly decent sort, good to have him back.

I must confess, audiobooks are not usually my 'thing', but I may have to make an exception in this case! The BBC are to be commended for the packaging of these releases, which echoes the classic design of the Target novelisations. It's also very pleasing to see what I consider the definitive Who logo back in use.

More details here.

Winchester Hospital Radio

2009-08-28T08:49:00.000-07:00

I'd like to draw your attention to the website of Winchester Hospital Radio. Here you can donate money to what is undoubtedly a very good cause and also purchase some rather splendid CDs, such as Watch With Teacher, a 2CD collection of musical cues taken from TV for schools, spanning from the late 1960s to the early 1980s.

I've been disc jockeying, believe it or not! Just the other day, I guested on Jonny Mugwump's marvellous Resonance FM show, playing hits past, future and sideways from Broadcast, Harry Thumann, Thomas Dolby and others, with live music provided by the rather wonderful Italian beat group Father Murphy (whose music, to these ears, betrays the influence of Morricone and Goblin, although my partner thinks they sound like Fly Pan Am). Listen here - but forgive my lack of expertise on the faders. It's been a wee while since my voice last sailed out over the airwaves!

Entranced

2009-08-24T08:40:00.000-07:00

It really is good to know that there are some things in life you can rely on. For the first time in a good couple of years, I decided to check in on the Entrances To Hell website (which I first hailed on the original You Need A Mess Of Help blog some time ago) and I was gratified to discover the site still very much in operation, its founders continuing their tireless mission to catalogue the infernal maws scattered the length and breadth of this sceptered isle. How shall we describe the warm feeling of weirdness that accompanies such a realisation? Perhaps we can coin the helpful tautology, 'the homely unheimlich' to aid us in our categorisation.

Findings

2009-08-23T11:06:00.000-07:00

That, um, Basinksi feeling...

2009-08-16T08:14:00.000-07:00

Simon Reynolds has also noticed the yawning gulf between William Basinski's music and his public image, his impressions here. Not sure about Rufus Wainwright and Peter Wolf though - I stand by my original comparison of Nikki Sixx... post-rehab model, obviously.

Thinking about it, was Sixx ever in rehab? It seems fairly likely, doesn't it?

This Is The Last Century

2009-08-13T02:22:00.000-07:00

Why are so many people so keen on 'The Universal' by Blur? It's one of the twin troughs of anthemic Britpop along with the cretinous 'Wonderwall'. Albarn and chums may have been aiming for Scott Walker territory, but they couldn't even make it to Anthony Newley's gaff, their paltry songwriting talents only carrying them as far as Tommy Steele's front yard.

It's a such an unlovable sound too, the aural equivalent of being walled up in an Asda with ten thousand Steve Lamacqs - which may be the point (the song's about mind control, yada yada yada) but that still doesn't make it any good. All those 'ominous' strings and ironically triumphant brass... ewww. It's a waste of resources, but not a glorious one, and the effect is dismal, alienating. To me, anyway... it's like an anthem designed to encourage precisely the 'battery thinking' it's simultaneously decrying.

It's been suggested to me that 'The Universal' is one of the better features of The Great Escape - a truly vile but nevertheless sporadically interesting record - but to me it's just more Albarnian 'La-la-LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!' made even less appealing by the group's smug pseudo-intellectualism.

I'm a bit late in expressing this opinion, but OH MY DAYS hasn't the recent Blur revival been one of 2009's more depressing cultural events? Do we really need them back? Reeeally?

The Wire #307

2009-08-13T01:52:00.000-07:00

...is out now, featuring my interview with US avant hucksters Caroliner plus a new Avant Rock column and reviews of Black Sabbath, Six Finger Satellite, Nick Cave and Supersonic 2009. Stuff written by other people this issue includes a review of Warp 20 by Joe Muggs, an interview with Joker by Lisa Blanning and cover story on David Sylvian by Biba Kopf.

William Basinski does the Invisible Jukebox this issue... y'know, I had no idea the Disintegration Loops (de)composer looked so much like a member of Motley Crue! He could be twinned with Shellac's Todd Trainer, who's also been sporting the Nikki Sixx look lately.

Uh-oh, rock 'n' roll!

Suicidal Tendencies

2009-08-10T13:58:00.000-07:00

It's always a source of great delight for me how musical discoveries and rediscoveries have a knock on effect, interest in one area naturally colliding into another, and so on, endlessly. For instance, listening to shitloads of The Cars in research for my megapost on the Boston group reminded me of the links between Ric Ocasek and NYC electro pioneers Suicide, and now I'm in the midst of rediscovering the rich legacy of Vega and Rev, which in turn is leading towatds a rediscovery of the individual members' solo careers.

One of the most rewarding new/old discoveries to come out of this has been Vega's Saturn Strip, described in the Cars post as an ill-fated bid for mainstream acceptance. Its saddening that this record didn't make Vega a household name, but hardly surprising as it's fucking insane. The fact that Vega, producer Ocasek and presumably Elektra thought they had a hit on their hands is simultaneously dumbfounding and touching - what gloriously innocent days those must have been!

I love the fact that they had such high hopes for this album of wired minimalist electropunk, especially as Vega's screws have never seemed looser, particularly on the gut-churning cover of Hot Chocolate's 'Every 1's A Winner'. At first, this guitar-heavy interpretation seems to offer little more than a cheap laugh of semi-recognition, but it's become a bit of an earworm round these parts; I've found myself automatically playing it on repeat at home, then while out, I've caught myself absently mumbling "no, no, no, yeah, yeah, no" like a futuristic hobo. Funny how Vega's tossed off ad-libs have fast become more memorable to me than the actual lyrics. Then again, the actual lyrics were written by Errol Brown. I know who I'd rather quote.

'Jukebox Baby' is one of the album's weaker tracks, but don't let it put you off - Saturn Strip is essential listening for all fans of bad (meaning good) craziness.

On Returning

2009-08-10T11:08:00.000-07:00

By some strange twist of fate, I have received a commission which will involve a return to one of the most important places in my personal history. It was not until a few hours ago that I became aware of this synchronicity - I was previously under the impression that this assignment would take me to an entirely different region of the British Isles. How bizarre that I should be called back to this old haunt of mine... and what extra resonance this lends the task in hand!

This Ain't No Disco

2009-08-10T08:33:00.000-07:00

I was warned, but little could prepare me for just how weird Patrick Cowley and Jorge Socarras' Catholic really is. This music is so different to Cowley's famous disco productions (Menergy, Mind Warp etc) it's really quite ridiculous... and delightful. Somebody I know likened it to Roxy Music, but this turns out to be way off-base - it's nowhere near as sane as that would suggest. If anything, the music on Catholic, a kind of recalcitrant lo-fi post-punk, suggests a kinship with New York experimentalist (and Stones Throw fave) Gary Wilson and the raw, pre-Eno Devo anthologised on Rykodisc's two Hardcore Devo collections. Sounds to me like there's a bit of Chrome in there too, especially in the maladjusted stomp of 'In & Out', but that could simply be my fetid imagination at work.

The vocals of queer activist Jorge Socarras are utterly deranged throughout. Personally, I like 'em, but they may evoke for some unwelcome memories of the punk singer from Driller Killer, the guy whose insufferable warble drives neighbour Abel Ferrara to grisly powertool moida. Cowley clearly had no problem documenting extreme states of being - the hypersexual robodisco usually associated with the NY producer exudes the heady lust of late 70s club culture while Mind Warp is allegedly a sonic allegory of his deterioration from HIV - and Catholic is suffused with an atmosphere of druggy dislocation.

I was trying to think of something contemporary to compare this album to, but it's a tough one... Philadelphia/New York synthesists Cold Cave come close, but even they're more disco than this, and a hell of a lot more conservative. Catholic is pretty unique, all told. Thank Odin for albums that were originally shelved only to be issued years later - see also Six Finger Satellite's excellent Half Control, reviewed by yours truly in The Wire #307 - and endless props to Macro for putting out one of the best new/old albums of 2009.

PS. I've just been alerted to the material Cowley released as part of Indoor Life - thanks Marcus! Sounds kinda like Devo fronted by Alan Vega... but I'm hearing Vega all over the place lately.

Sir Duke

2009-08-08T04:05:00.000-07:00

Being a cautious fan of Zappa's One Size Fits All - cautious partly because my favourite song on the album, the gorgeous 'Inca Roads', features lyrics regarding ugly groupies (not keen) as well as sci-fi creation theories (very keen) - I've been exploring the work of keyboard maestro George Duke, specifically the 1974 trio of albums over which the analogue synthesizer became more and more the dominant instrument, Faces In Reflection, Feel and The Aura Will Prevail.

Much of this stuff, especially Feel, is every bit the equal of Herbie Hancock's work around the same time such as Thrust, perhaps even Headhunters (an album I've always found a little flat and boring after the excitement of the Mwandishi trilogy) and is notable for some completely off-the-hook synth playing. Duke's often neglected as an electric jazz pioneer, and while his later work did slip into the same disco pit as Hancock, these three albums are worth investigating for anyone who loves fusion, prog... or the squelchy splendour of analogue synthesizers.

Here's 'Old Slippers' from Feel, which features not only some vintage wobble from Duke but also a badass guitar solo from Frank Zappa:

A nice wee nod...

2009-08-07T06:56:00.000-07:00

...from Simon Reynolds regarding my take on Neil Ardley's Harmony Of The Spheres here. Ardley's album is every bit as fantastic as Simon suggests, although I would add that it reminds me an awful lot of the immediate post-Gabriel era of Genesis circa 1976-1980, the period that even Genesis apologists seem to find problematic, mainly due to Phil Collins's repositioning as lead vocalist. But the increasing prominence of Collins (plus ex-WR drummer Chester Thompson's recruitment as live sticksman) also means that there's plenty of pseudo-fusion taking place on these albums, which often results in a 'British Weather Report' vibe comparable to that of Spheres. I'm thinking of tracks like 'Dance On A Volcano' and 'Los Endos' from A Trick Of The Tail, 'Wot Gorilla?' and 'Unquiet Slumbers For The Sleepers' from Wind And Wuthering, 'Burning Rope' from ...And Then There Were Three and 'Duke's Travels'/'Dukes End' from Duke. These are much more convincing examples of a very British take on fusion - combined with a solid pop sensibility that the US musicians obviously lacked - than Collins's more strictly jazzwise explorations on the horribly dated early albums by Brand X.

Pop Art, In A Sense: In Praise Of The Cars

2009-07-19T11:09:00.000-07:00

New wave was a nebulous concept established in the late 70s by record companies seeking to cash in on the punk boom, offering a gullible public the same old J Geils Band shit wrapped in a brand new skinny tie and fluorescent socks. That's one school of thought. Another maintains that the terms punk and new wave were interchangeable. Yet another claims that the term was applied to any group whose music didn't already belong to an existing genre, including early synthpop acts. My own interpretation, partly informed by the musical elements that have become associated with the term over the past 30 years, is that new wave is an identifiable musical style involving clipped, angular pop songs bolstered by the use of synthesizers.

By these criteria, you'd be hard pressed to find a more quintessential new wave group than Boston's The Cars. Ric Ocasek (vocals/guitar), Benjamin Orr, (vocals/bass) Elliot Easton (guitar), Greg Hawkes (keyboards) and David Robinson (drums) pioneered a form of pop music that was nervy, skeletal and linear, experimental yet egregiously commercial. I was initially reluctant to use the same Robert Palmer quote that graces the group's Wikipedia entry, but the Rolling Stone writer nails them so damn perfectly, I couldn't avoid it: "[The Cars] have taken some important but disparate contemporary trends - punk minimalism, the labyrinthine synthesizer and guitar textures of art rock, the '50s rockabilly revival and the melodious terseness of power pop - and mixed them into a personal and appealing blend."

It was certainly appealing – in their day, The Cars were huge. It's perhaps surprising that the band got so big in their homeland. It's often stated, usually by British critics, that the tastes of the American rock fan traditionally incline towards music which makes a feature of the graft involved in its creation, thereby signalling a gritty masculinity (although how the overcooked melodrama of Springsteen's Born To Run fits in here is worthy of a separate discussion). Yet there's something wholly inauthentic about The Cars' music, a glossy, plasticky quality which marks it as a step forward, if not a severing, from the past. In some ways their amalgam of styles reminds me of the pioneering synthesis of Prince; the 50s rockabilly influence Palmer refers to is similarly detectable in Prince's early work, particularly 'Delirious', 'Horny Toad' and "Jack U Off" while the albums Dirty Mind (1980), Controversy (1981) and 1999 (1982) document the tics of new wave as accurately as those of late 70s/early 80s funk. Certainly, the title tracks of the former two suggest that the Minneapolis polymath was cocking an ear to the work of the skinny Bostonites and taking notes. Though The Cars undoubtedly drew on rock tradition, their state-of-the-art production values confound any charges of retro-fundamentalism, as does the ever-present hum 'n' squiggle of the group's Eno figure, keyboard player Greg Hawkes. The Roxy Music reference seems even more apt when one considers that co-frontman and songwriter Ric Ocasek's vocals are essentially an Americanisation of Bryan Ferry's louche drawl and that Ferry's group also administered ECT to early rock 'n' roll with futuristic results.

The artificial feel of The Cars' music has a lot to do with their choice of producer. The band's first four albums were produced by Queen associate Roy Thomas Baker, whose massive stacked harmonies formed a significant part of their distinctive sound. As Baker related to Mix Online in 1999, "when I did the first Cars record, we purposely did it very sparse, but when the harmony vocals come in, there are as many vocals there as there were in a Queen record. The only difference is it was in and then it was gone. 'Good Times Roll' is a classic one for that. When they sing those words, it's huge and then it's gone, and everything is back to sparse again. I was able to put big vocals on a sparse, punkish background, sort of inventing post-punk pop." Their final two albums, Heartbeat City (1984) and Door To Door (1987) missed the Baker touch, the former featuring a typically airless mix from Def Leppard/Shania Twain collaborator John 'Mutt' Lange - check out the ear-scraping harmonies that open 'Hello Again' - while the latter album fared better, sonically if not commercially, with Ocasek on both sides of the console.

To these ears, the new wave sound pioneered by Baker and The Cars signals a retreat from the orgiastic indulgence and profligate sensuality of rock 'n' roll into a private, emotionally hygienic world of furtive masturbation, the group's use of an Alberto Vargas pin-up for the sleeve of Candy O being one intimation of this (dis)inclination, its airbrushed exaggeration of female sexuality seemingly designed to inspire frantic bouts of teenage self-abuse. Robert Palmer's description of the band's appeal as "personal" is therefore entirely correct; unlike their similarly gynophobic contemporaries Devo (with whom they share much soundwise) The Cars did not have a political agenda, but even when they were letting the good times roll, Ocasek's baritone hiccup and the band's "jerky motion" suggested awkwardness and anxiety. Where Devo contrived the appearance of androids dedicated to dissecting and eliminating rock 'n' roll, The Cars tried to understand and assimilate it. They could never quite escape their own uncertainty, though, and this invests their music with a frail, intimate quality which fully surfaces on quieter tracks such as 'A Dream Away', 'I'm Not The One' and 'All Mixed Up'. Even at their most gregarious, as on 'Candy O', 'Let's Go' and 'Shake It Up', they're still plagued by nagging doubts; when Benjamin Orr whines, "She's winding them down/On her clock machine/And she won't give up/'Cause she's seventeen," the last word is delivered with a mixture of guilt, lust and admiration. There's always something 'up' in The Cars' world, nothing seems to - excuse the pun - come easy. For example, 'Don't Cha Stop' from the debut is lyrically lustful, but its shuddering delivery hardly signals the height of satisfaction. In this respect they differ from many of their power pop/new wave contemporaries, especially the overtly salacious The Knack, whose 'My Sharona' (and entire oeuvre) is a unambiguous, guilt-free paean to the joys of jailbait. The Cars want it bad enough, it's just that getting it only presents a fresh universe of problems for those involved. The Cars closes in downbeat fashion with 'All Mixed Up'.

When he's not essaying sexual alienation, songwriter Ric Ocasek's lyrics are either future-beatnik doggerel, garbled evocations of neon nightlife or melancholic assessments of damaged relationships. His lyrics often achieve a straightfaced poignancy; every time I listen to 'It's All I Can Do' I'm devastated by the line "When I was crazy/I thought you were great." The words are made even more resonant by Orr's plaintive vocal, and by the time we get to "All of a sudden/It all comes to you/Soon as you get it/You want something new" it's all over. This tendency found its ultimate expression in 1984's 'Drive', which became the unofficial theme, in the UK at least, of Ethiopian famine. Yet the song, with its creepy evocation of a failing relationship, is probably one of the least sentimental hit love songs of the decade.

It's been suggested that if The Cars had hailed from New York, they would have been afforded the same credibility awarded Talking Heads, the Voidoids, even Blondie. And there is a New York connection. Suicide are a key reference here – Alan Vega was without a doubt influential on Ocasek's vocal mannerisms and lyrical approach, and "Shoo Be Doo" from Candy O is a bare-assed tribute. Ocasek would later repay the debt by producing several of the duo's albums, starting with their underrated second effort, released in 1980, and a number of Vega's solo efforts, most notably the really quite odd Saturn Strip, a muddled but fascinating bid for mainstream success which also features the input of a young Al 'Ministry' Jourgenson plus a somewhat 'loose' cover version of Hot Chocolate's 'Every One's A Winner'.

Another New York connection is more theoretical; The Cars were what Television might have been, if they'd been jittery TV and junkfood addicts instead of effete monochrome psychedelicists, and nowhere is this more evident than on Candy O, one of the truly great guitar records of the late 70s. The guitars of Ocasek and Elliott Easton twist and mesh like a chain link fence around the songs and while much of the album is as straightforwardly rockin' as they would ever get, the riffs are carefully constructed from modular parts a la 'Marquee Moon' rather than hammered out, caveman garage style. Candy O constitutes a convincing argument for the two-guitar configuration; on the ridiculously thrilling 'Night Spots' and the surging title track, Ocasek and Easton jab and parry at each other like street punks in a knife-fight, trading slashes of sound, ducking and diving each other's blows with impressive agility.

Following Candy O, the group took full advantage of their continuing success, engaging in an elaborate deconstruction of their sound on Panorama (1980) and Shake It Up (1981). Panorama's title track opens the album with a frantic, elongated riff, sounding like something Helios Creed would write for one of Chrome's dirty epics, its spiralling awkwardness conjuring images of a dizzying pursuit through a razor-lined hexagonal corridor, sections of which are revolving rapidly in the style of a deadly kaleidoscope. Quite an opening for a platinum selling pop record – albeit one without a hit single, unless we count the disorientating thud of 'Touch And Go', which reached #37 on the Billboard chart. The following year's Shake It Up is probably my own personal favourite. Considered by some a retreat from the experimentation of its predecessor, in truth it features a couple of fascinating departures from the highly successful template of the first two records. Shake It Up is The Cars' most electronic record, its arsenal of synths, sequencers and drum machines often featuring as prominently as the guitars. This doesn't align the music with the synthpop of The Human League and Flock Of Seagulls; rather, it echoes the twinkling proto-electro of Kraftwerk, Cluster and Harmonia. Perhaps because it recalls a form of electronic music distinct from the dominant sound of the time, Shake It Up has dated remarkably well. 'I'm Not The One' sounds uncannily like a blueprint for contemporary R&B while the wistful, optimistic 'A Dream Away' foreshadows the direction Ocasek would take on his excellent 1982 solo debut, Beatitude.

Beatitude was one of a handful of solo projects from individual Cars and probably the best, despite competition from Greg Hawkes's Niagara Falls (1983) and Benjamin Orr's The Lace (1985). Although it contains some more conventional radio tracks, Beatitude is most interesting when it explores the experimental avenues briefly visited on the band's albums. Here, guitars take a backseat to synths, the beat is mostly flattened to a Moroder pulse and the songs are allowed to stretch out beyond the traditional FM rock format. Opener 'Jimmy Jimmy' is just astonishing, a sincere appeal to disenfranchised Reagan youth in which Ocasek manages to avoid seeming pompous or excessively avuncular, acknowledging that “Nobody's getting' off/We're all in this together.” The song is warm, wise, and marks a significant development in Ocasek's songwriting. 'Connect Up To Me' is just as impressive. A brightly lit cityscape of a song, it's one of the most beautiful, unashamedly romantic tunes Ocasek has ever written and an epic at over 7 minutes long. The feeling of freedom is audible as the song rushes forward through its changes with relentless momentum, sounding carefree and abandoned. The instrumental section at around 2:03 is breathtaking, MDMA-sparkly. 'A Quick One', 'Take A Walk' and 'Out Of Control' recall Berlin-era Bowie and Iggy, the latter two as doomy and imperious as 'Sister Midnight'/'Red Money' and Talking Heads' nightmarish 'The Overload'. 'Sneak Attack' is another of Ocasek's sporadic melodicisations of Suicide, its disturbingly upbeat refrain of “Watch out for rockets” lodging in the brain like Hiroshima footage. The album ends on a down note with 'Time Bomb', a further cold war-ning. As preemptively apocalyptic as Prince's 1999 of the same year, Beatitude is unmistakably a pop album, but it takes plenty of liberties, and it's a pity Ocasek's subsequent solo career didn't continue in this vein.

Benjamin Orr's The Lace is another matter entirely, though equally accomplished. Orr was the 'real' singer of the group, his smooth yet soulful tones and melodic sensibility more conventionally pop-orientated than Ocasek's and superficially at least, The Lace resembles the mid-80s AOR of Foreigner and REO Speedwagon. There are, however, certain qualities that place it on a plateau above those chart-troubling balladeers. For every 'Stay The Night', the album's first single, a power ballad without a great deal of power, there's a 'Circles', an uptempo rocker laden with hooks and cute, unusual sonic details such as a synthesized xylophone solo...! Orr's pop pedigree (he and Ocasek formed a CSNY-style harmony duo called Milkwood in the early 70s) and dedication to formal beauty ensure that the melodies are fully developed, almost Beatlesque, and there's too much going on in the music for it to be bracketed as typical FM slop, whether it's the extended harmonic section in the middle eight of 'Circles', the vocal leap at the end of 'Skyline's pre-chorus or the unexpected lift in the middle of 'Spinning'. It's as though Orr was unwilling to compromise his standards in order to meet US radio requirements, making his album as experimental as Ocasek's, albeit in a more subtle way; 80s AOR rarely came this well-tooled.

Of the other solo albums, I'd love to write about how great Greg Hawkes' long deleted Niagara Falls (a favourite of the canny sorts over at 20 Jazz Funk Greats) undoubtedly is, but I've only heard the fantastic 'Bee System', a hyperkinetic electropop instrumental bearing comparison with Yellow Magic Orchestra circa 'Behind The Mask' and Devo circa 'That's Good'. If anyone owns the whole album in whatever format, please get in touch! And I can't write about how great Elliott Easton's Change No Change (1985) is... because it just isn't. It might feature some typically inventive guitar-playing and a handful of good tunes, but it's also blighted by embarrassing lyrics and a few outright mistakes, including a dodgy flirtation with rap. Suffice to say, Easton's 'skillz' are best restricted to the guitar. The album does at least show that having Roy Thomas Baker at the controls doesn't always guarantee success.

Following 1987's (actually pretty good) Door To Door, The Cars broke up permanently, and Orr's death from pancreatic cancer in 2000 ensured that the original line-up could never reform, although a project cloddishly dubbed The New Cars – Easton and Hawkes plus Todd Rundgren (vocals/guitar), Kasim Sulton (vocals/bass) and Prairie Prince (drums) – sprung up in 2005, touring and releasing a serviceable package of live and new tracks entitled It's Alive. Rundgren's voice may be a dead ringer for Orr's – or vice versa I suppose – but it just ain't the same. While the nerdish Easton, Hawkes and Robinson were always doomed to be overshadowed by their talented leader Ocasek and the charismatic Orr, the groups' chemistry should not be underestimated – the first four albums showcase a band whose tightness did not merely indicate their collective technical ability, but which also became their much-imitated signature, thereby crystallising a subgenre of rock thoroughly deserving of contemporary reappraisal.

Wilco (The Album)

2009-06-06T11:10:00.000-07:00

>>They're funny fuckers, Wilco. Crawling out from the sticky, chargrilled carcass of Uncle Tupelo in the mid-90s, they dragged the mangled entrails along with them on their journey through the powdery American twilight. Displaying both tenacity and tenderness, the songwriting of founder and frontman Jeff Tweedy soon eclipsed that of lugubrious Tupelo ex-partner Jay Farrar. And yet, in the quest for what he termed "pure bug beauty", Tweedy subjected his songs to all manner of creative ill-treatment, often with the help of temporary aides such as the late Jay Bennett and Jim O'Rourke, collaborative fingers digging greedily and bloodily for the core of the music. With their second album, the double-length Being There, Wilco emerged as secular soothsayers. On 1999's Summerteeth and the album posterity will most likely chalk up as their definitive effort, 2002's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Tweedy's artistic abuse didn't obscure the emotional content of his songs. On the contrary, his tales of dislocation, loneliness and the eternal struggle to connect were accurately conveyed via the use of reduction and subtraction, distortion and overload.

>>2004's A Ghost Is Born was even more boldly experimental, but slightly less successful. There was hardly a bad song on it but it was an often chilly record, the desperate humanity of its predecessor traded for a glacial abstraction which didn't really suit, the warmth that characterised Wilco's records up to this point only present in flashes as the band wrangled with their new reputation for abstruseness. 2006's Sky Blue Sky saw the group lurch unexpectedly into bland, coddling soft rock, with a set of laidback tunes that seemed, for the most part, rushed and underbaked - all the more disappointing given this was the band's first effort to feature Nels Cline, the guitarist partly responsible for a fiery, groundbreaking interpretation of John Coltrane's Interstellar Space. At least, as I remarked in my review of the album in the May 2007 issue of Plan B Magazine, there was at least some consolation to be derived from the fact that Wilco had retained their ability to wrongfoot even their most loyal admirers.

>>Aside #1: in Barcelona last weekend for the Primavera Sound festival, I returned to my hotel room late at night and flicked on the TV. After a few minutes of half-hearted channel-surfing I tripped over some footage of Wilco from their appearance at the festival two years previously. After two songs in a row from Sky Blue Sky, I switched off.

>>I first became acquainted with the music of Wilco during a period of acute anxiety triggered by the excessive use of hallucinogenic mushrooms and MDMA, both of which were easily available in Brighton throughout the summer of 2004. I would eventually be diagnosed as suffering from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. It was my good friend Anna, the one person who seemed to 'get' what I was going through and was therefore instrumental in preventing me from tipping over the lip into full-freak insanity prior to diagnosis, who encouraged me to dig out my neglected copy of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I was relieved. The Wilco I got to know back then was comforting, but certainly not smooth; their music wasn't an immaculate surface I could slide down into the abyss. There was always a ledge or crag to hold onto, delaying my descent.

>>Jeff Tweedy's voice was one such useful jut. Sleepy, often bewildered, one bad decision away from Wilson-like 'gee-whiz' naivete yet at times roused to a resentful caw, it voiced – much better than I could at the time – my exhaustion, my dim hope, my bruised optimism, my nostalgia for better times, my paranoia, my abject fear. Tweedy's very human delivery made me feel understandable. And his lyricism, a succession of evocative images and fragmentary assertions loaded with emotional resonance, mangled syntax until it resembled the reality that shimmers elusively between our heads and what's outside 'em. 'Radio Cures' from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - I played that song, wordlessly, to my girlfriend at the time, Katie, hoping she would understand that I was trying to tell her something. "Cheer up honey I wish you would/There is something wrong with me." I think she was so numbed by the shock of her boyfriend turning into human static, as though some meddling cosmic stepfather had left me tuned between channels before falling asleep on his cosmic couch, that she didn't notice me crackling faintly on the exterior of the cocoon she had wisely spun for her own protection.

>>The advance buzz on Wilco (The Album) was that it constituted a return to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot-style studio experimentation. Given that the advance buzz on Sonic Youth's recent The Eternal was that it would betray the influence of black metal, I was, uh, sceptical. I did, however, hold out hope that Wilco (The Album) would be a better record than Sky Blue Sky. I wanted my Wilco back, the Wilco that had walked with me through near-terminal moments. The Wilco that transmitted 'Radio Cures' direct into my overheated head and painted monochrome pictures of 'Poor Places' as I shuddered in my living room above Cambridge Road, terrified that I was going to have to kill myself to avoid visiting harm upon my loved ones. OCD can be a bitch, especially when you don't yet know what it is.

>>I wanted the Wilco that had formed part of my newly restricted musical diet alongside George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Scott Joplin, Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks. I couldn't bear listening to anything that revelled in violence anymore - the extreme metal I had been writing about up to that point mirrored too closely the carnage inside my head. I ached for something to dissolve the ugliness that confronted me whenever I turned my vision inward.... intersections of eyeballs, scissors, lips and knives. Around this time I developed a fascinated fear of sharp objects; when Katie wasn't looking I would wrap them over and over in sellotape and deposit them into a black plastic bag, which I would take downstairs and thrust into the rubbish bin, after which I could breathe again, for the moment.

>>I'm no longer quite so scared of myself as I was back in that eternal overcast afternoon. And while I haven't had the Wilco of back then returned to me, I've been gifted with something just as precious. Wilco (The Album) isn't a hybrid of previous records, thank heavens. What a dull idea! Who comes up with these rumours? Accountants? In an interview in the latest (and sadly, final) edition of Plan B Magazine, bassist John Stirratt compares the new opus to Summerteeth. It certainly shares a linear accessibility with that album. But this record wouldn't sound the way it does if there hadn't been a Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or an A Ghost Is Born or even a Sky Blue Sky. The latter was soft work, for sure, but it was partly redeemed by some tentative Television-style interplay between guitarists Cline and Tweedy, and that relationship is developed further here, especially on the merciless, murderous 'Bull Black Nova', the "precise wildness" of which also qualifies as an improvement on the wannabe-kraut repetition of 'Spiders (Kidsmoke)' from A Ghost Is Born. Keyboard player Mikael Jorgensen chimes in between the guitars during the song's tense, thrilling middle section, the result as Reich/Glass as it is Verlaine/Lloyd. There's also the fact that Wilco has been a fair few different bands since the days of Summerteeth. Once-key members have come and gone, the membership only stabilising over the last couple of years.

>>Wilco (The Album) appears confident, but never complacent. These songs do not merely emerge from the speakers and deposit themselves Schmoo-like in the listener's lap, malleable and ingratiating, like those on Sky Blue Sky. Wilco dig right into these compositions, bruising them, grazing them, stamping their mark into the flesh, and what results is a set of 11 cleanly-defined, self-contained, memorable experiences. The opening song, from whence came the album's disarming title, indicates that the playful, self-aware aspect of Wilco is back, even if there's a marked absence of digital shitstorms, 15-minute drones or motoriks. Here the willingness to tamper with the fabric of rock is largely restricted to the lyrics, through which Tweedy reveals an acute – perhaps even sly - awareness of his band's strengths: "A sonic shoulder for you to cry on/Wilco will love you baby." The songwriter's desire to cut the bullshit is to admirable - “C'mon,” Tweedy seems to be saying, “you and I both know what's at stake here.” A ravaged howl of feedback blows its way up through the body of the tune, recalling Robert Fripp's work on Bowie's 'Heroes'. Overall though, the main riff is easy on the avant, its lupine swagger suggesting a turbocharged take on Warren Zevon's 'Werewolves Of London' with a healthy dose of Mott The Hoople detectable in the joyous bell-ringing of the middle eight.

>>Aside #2: speaking of Zevon, I've also been listening to the late singer-songwriter's ambitious 1989 science fiction concept album, Transverse City, which could almost be a part-buried touchstone for Wilco's blend of rootsiness and modernism/futurism. It isn't a completely successful album (although the manner in which the parts don't fit could be considered consistent with its lyrical evocations of a shabby, savage future) but there aren't many records which could be said to present the missing link between late 80s adult orientated rock and Thomas Pynchon. Respect due, I'd say.

>>Is Wilco (The Album) a return to form? Not really. These songs aren't a 'return' to anything. They're the latest flowering of a unique and constantly evolving talent. Tweedy's grasp of process is firmer than ever. He's no longer the innocent, fumbling blindly, the still-learning avant neophyte who required O'Rourke to bring order to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. He's now able to punch straight to the centre of the song and focus on what is required, as with the cinematic, episodic Deeper Down, with its edits, pauses, screenwipes and crossfades. But wait... cinematic? Perhaps that should be literary? The breezy Sunny Feeling embedded itself in my consciousness just as I was finishing Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast Of Champions, and its themes of split destinies and cracked realities tessellated perfectly with Vonnegut's cathartic/satirical splurge. It's worth adding that Tweedy exhibits a similar compassion and humour to Vonnegut's, as well as a comparable inclination towards humanism, best illustrated by the album finale, the kindly fatalistic 'Everlasting Everything': “Oh I know this might sound sad/Everything goes for the good and the bad/So it all adds up and you should be glad/Everlasting love is all you have.” Delivered via the good luck charm of Tweedy's voice, the sentiment comes across as pure and sincere, learned from experience, all the more powerful in the light of former associate Jay Bennett's recent passing.

>>Another echo of Vonnegut, and also Philip K Dick: it seems there aren't many truly human rock groups left. The landscape is littered with well-programmed machines, components of an even bigger and colder and more powerful machine. Wilco are so human it hurts; and the fact that it hurts confirms not only their humanity but also my own.