Teflon Monkey
Farming In Space ep CD
Placid Casual. plc04cd.
by Keith Mclachlan.
March 12, 2002.
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Welsh mothers, I am thinking they must be analagous to
the stage mothers here in Boulder, Colorado although
instead of sending their children to Heaven with a
perfect application of foundation, a perfect coiff, a
mini and a blunt force to the head they seem to
encourage their children to listen to Soft Machine
records and to play the acoustic guitar as if their
heads were balloons and their arms were bassoons.
Those wacky Welsh always seem to start young, Gorky's
first album came out when they were 3 and here Rhodri
Viney (who actually played on the last gorky's lp,
their 37th) displays his eighteen-year oldness with a
quiet sense of aplomb. All acoustic madness, one song
in Welsh, one instrumental and all gentle beyond the
pale, unfierce but offencive only with its
overabundant charms, a bit like Rodney Allen I think
if he had stopped his devotion at the shrine of Bragg
and instead decided that an 8th grader named John
Darnielle had already seen the future and was worth
pledging allegiance to. Perhaps Rhodri Viney is welsh
for Rodney Allen even?
the Czars
The Ugly People Vs. The Beautiful Peopl CD
by Keith Mclachlan.
March 10, 2002.
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Denver is the first major city in America whose air
quality surpasses EPA requirements for cleanliness!
Something to celebrate eh? I am in fact all partied
out from the parades and festivals and forums and
holidays and to soundtrack my weary period of recovery
I must chose the Czars. Who knew that cowtowns had
the capacity for such sophistication? My friend Kate
saw the Czars' singer John Grant (a voice easily
comparable to Roy Orbison in glory) sitting alone one
night in a bar, no big deal right, but it was
Christmas Eve he nursed a drink for short time and
then left. Perhaps this is where the ache comes from?
Funny thing, the members of the Czars are all in other
bands and all of the other bands are dreadfully simple
and boring and actually a few are simply bad, but
collectively they manage to pool their individual
tendencies towards mediocrity and create something
extraordinary and it seems only on a recent occasion,
because the first (well first that was available
outside Denver) cd was not very good at all, it had a
few nice ones but a number of "bar band" tracks that
keep me from ever listening to it again. But then
things changed, I first saw the Czars last year and
was completely mesmerised by the performance, it was
something approximating Alt-Country but with a
reliance on the guitar mastery of bands like the Verve
or Low and a voice that soars to heaven every few
seconds. It renewed my hope in my adopted hometown,
the local scene had degenerated into a crop of bands
with big guitars little mouths and penchants for
annoying my ears. The Czars are masterful, The Czars
have made an explosive and emotional record without
hardly raising their ires or even cranking the amps.
It seethes with the brooding intensity of the
singer (unfortunately clad in ponytail) and his less
than literate lyrics appeal even though I imagine he
should have spent a lifetime reading Solzhenitsyn or
Marcuse. They sometimes make me think of Jack or the
Tindersticks in their scope and cinematic appeal, most
of the songs here ebb and flow there are dynamics
aplenty and the voice changes register sometimes
breaking your heart and sometimes causing the heart to
skip a beat and sometimes even managing to belt out a
perfectly pleasant pop number like 'Killjoy' with its
sterling trombone and the gohostly backing vocals of
Paula Frazer. Denver is the coolest city in the world
but only, of course, on the nights when the Czars are
playing their beautiful music from their beautiful new
album.
Boards Of Canada
Geogaddi CD
by Keith Mclachlan.
March 10, 2002.
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Bored of Canada? I know that senitment well. As a
former Canadian myself I was required to spend a good
part of a good number of the summers of my youth in
our "aircraft carrier for terrorists" to the north.
This was in the 70s when Canadians still had
approximately 2 channels of television, milk in bags
and baseball cards where some of the stats were also
conveyed in French. Of course now all the stats are
in Franglais, and Canadian television still resembles
American television from 1959 although apparently it
is not illegal to steal direct-to-home satellite
television and many Canadians enjoy the trash on
American cable for free. Boards of Canada are from
Scotland then. But, they did spend some of their
youth in Calgary and thus the source of their name
which likely seeped out of their collective experience
as part of a repressed traumatization featuring
electrodes and animal rectums, silly cowpokes. It is
fashionable to say that not much has changed in Boards
of Canada's universe, that this is an extension of the
first album but as I only recently become a fan,
discovering 'Music Has a Right to Children' only a few
months ago I would have to say I disagree. There are
similarities for certain but whereas I find the first
album mining a single idea in each song until the vein
is completely depleted the new one is a bit more
expansive, it turns three or four different directions
in the span of a song. It also feels warmer, there is
less space, less of an alien feel, more of the
pastoral feel that everyone attributes to the first one
but i just don't hear. Geogaddi is long, but it is no
drawback because it feels less of a whole than the
first one, more like a compilation of exciting
moments. I haven't listened enough to pick out the
highlights, I still can't name any songs off of the
first one other than 'roygbiv' and I can only recall
it because it is the acronym for the colour spectrum
but I couldn't recognize it should it be playing right
here, right now. I guess that is my own hang-up with
instrumental music, familiarity, I listen to a
reasonable amount but I couldn't name a Roy Montgomery
song on listening or a Mum or a Boards of Canada song
either. Maybe I need to pay more attention but then
this is something near the equivalent of a sensory
deprivation tank, the lack of focus on lyrics allows
me to immerse myself deeper into the music and create
associations which are less conscious and more
visceral and that is rather lovely.
Scarlet's Well
Alice In The Underworld CD
Siesta. Siesta 154.
by Keith Mclachlan.
March 9, 2002.
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I find myself sometimes nearly narcoleptic while
consumed in my daydreaming these days a recent one has
been my imagining the "pop-star" Bid appearing on the
Charlie Rose show where the intrepid reporter in his
inimitably pukey style leans his head to the table and
reaches his left hand to the edge of that same table
and grabs hold because the momentum of the next
softball he is about to hurl is so great as to require
him to reestablish his foundation on terra firma and
finally Charles asks so Bid what do you think of Laura
Bush's hair am i correct in assuming it's
conservative appeal masks an assertion that everything
really is ok? Bid clearly under the spell of some
Mousseronian bark extract enchants Charlie with an
explanation of the Coen brother's misuse of the
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in their most recent
film 'You see the theory deals with paired properites
like Time and energy which have a 'canonical conjugate
variables... (at this point Charlie starts constructing
his next question about wheter Kathleen Hanna would
make a good pope) and as such the taxi cab pilot from
wings erred as do moist social scientists when they
claim nothing is truly knowable because the
interaction of the observer affects all processes.'
Charlie thrown for a loop says then 'Raising Arizona'
was a hoot I wonder why 'huggies' and not 'Pampers'?
Then Bid clearly tired from this moves on to a lengthy
expansion of the genesis of his ideal imaginary world
which resides somewhere near Kevin Barnes cosmopolis
along the space-time continuum and the use of proper
English in pop music lyrics as being the new
rock-and'roll of our times. He manages, increduously,
to bring up the exciting possibilities of a merger of
Mousseron and Lecithin's frozen Island but worries
about the social darwinistic aspects of the hyena
cicadas spoiling the purple rushes and whether his
fair maidens might be relegated to supporting roles
behind the more exuberant creations of Mr. Barnes.
Two giants then, like Sendak and Dahl competing within
the same pages, this is a daydream worth exploring.
Bid with his uncommon intelligence and Kevin with his
unfettered joy. Marvelous! But suddenly the
monotonic inquest of a certain Mr. Rose reacquaints me
with the world and instead of Bid I find he is
speaking with E.J. Dionne and there are practically
toasts to celebrate the gutting of the first amendment
by Marty Meehan. Woo Hoo! Surely Mousseron is a
dictatorship, benevolent is it's iron fist imposing
only fanciful folk pop nuggets to his subjects, his
minions 7 fair ladies of song, and his kingdom a
sanctuary of peace.
Josef K
Only Fun In Town/Sorry For Laughing CD
LTM. LTM2305.
by Keith Mclachlan.
March 9, 2002.
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Josef K seemed to be a tense lot. Theirs seemed a
serious cause so much so they deemed it necessary to
wear suits for their performances and so much so that
they recorded a first album then ditched it because it
was decried by the band as betraying their seriousness
by actually being polished and well produced. Later
on they made another debut record and decided it was
fittingly skittering and assaulting and unleashed it
to an uncaring world. The world hasn't a clue. For
what a splendidly fantastic album 'Only fun in Town'
is, it is all drill press guitars, mumbled art
schoolisms and nihilistic intent. It is almost as if
the fellas in Josef K pursued a higher calling than
their fellow post-punkers who all seemed mired in the
depression of the times and industrial decline of late
70s/early 80s England. There surely is a gloom that
shines bright in their songs but also an intensity of
anger and integrity that gnarled instead of being
regimentally bred of introspective resignation that
seemed the popular theme for that brief moment.
Perhaps because they shared more in common with the
terrifically overrated but still decent labelmates
Orange Juice as a pop band than with Joy Division as
an art project. So the first half is awesome. The
'lost' original debut then finishes up the disc and I
believe I can understand the disappointment that
originally met with the album's sound, it is polished
it is more restrained and there is nothing menacing or
even tense about it. The manipulation here seems to
have been postured from behind the mixing desk to the
band's collective unawareness even though I always
find claims where bands are found blaming producers
for their crummy songs to ring a bit hollow. In this
case with exhibit A being the first half of the disc I
might be more sympathetic to the claims of the boys in
Joe K. They didn't last for much longer than it took
for 'Only Fun in Town' to disappear from popular
consciousness and while the members of the band have
kept busy (Malcolm made an abysmal turn as pop crooner
on last year's wonderful 'Caroline Now!' cd painfully
warbling the heavenly pop hit 'Heroes and Villains')
they have not come anywhere near the importance of
their first artifacts of sound. Intense tension!
Camera Obscura
Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi CD
Andmoresound. and17cd.
by Keith Mclachlan.
March 9, 2002.
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What joy must be brought the the heart of Stuart
Murdoch on those rare days when he can escape the
skullduggery of his own group of musical miscreants
and find himself among what are essentially his
children in Camera Obscura. He beams when they come
to him asking him whether their new songs are good and
when he nods in approval the children scream with
passionate excitement and beg him to place the score
on his refrigerator with his collection of precious
moment magnets. And after a day when Stevie J and
Miss Isobel are complaining angrily about there being
not enough of their two chord dirge contributions on
the quite excrementable Todd Solondz' soundtrack he
can think only of sugar plums as he drives his car to
the studio where his children in Camera Obscura have
been working overtime to write a song even more to his
liking and when he arrived on that day when 'Eighties
Fan' was presented to him he was so overwhelmed with
the whiff of nostalgic happiness of his own youth when
he penned breathless wonders such as 'Get Me Away I'm
Dying' and 'Boy With the Arab Strap' with little worry
over whether the others might complain 'Oh look at
Stuart with his classic songs again', the whiff so
bravura that he decides to strap on the old six-string
himself and live vicariously for a moment through
Lindsay Boyd's voice and the perfect strums and feel
pleasure even at the stifling of tears when he thinks
back to his days of stalking Lawrence Felt and the
drama of adolescence. And his children respect the
old man, they can't understand his patience with those
who wish only to displace his mantle of glory, but in
response they push themselves even harder to achieve
the greatness within his admiring gaze and pull even
harder to wrench him from his funk at the fount of
irreconciable differences. Pity the poor old pop star
then his only winning moments the thoughts that come
to him when he listens to the marvelous 'Biggest
Bluest Hi-Fi' and the knowledge paired that he played
a grand part in its magnificence.