Ant
A Long Way To Blow A Kiss CD
Fortune And Glory.
by Keith Mclachlan.
March 9, 2002.
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Is it lachrymose? I don't think so. It seems almost
too child-like to engender any feelings deeper than
melancholia. Ant is the non-celebrity drummer for
Hefner, he seems to have been made obsolete by
Hefner's recent change in musical direction which
finds them now favouring technology over Ant's
unspectacular beat. So unspectacular in fact that he
employs a drum machine on his own drummer-gone-solo
solo debut album. But it was never the drums that
made the girls hearts quiver it was those all too rare
backing vocals on the likes of Hefner classics like
'The Librarian' and 'Don't Flake Out on Me' these were
the tones generated from the divine vox humana these
made the listener ache these made one wonder why
Darren Hefner was hogging the mic. So here at last
after some delay we have the very yellow (avid TK
readers (a patient lot this) might recall my theorem
about yellow being the colour of love synesthetes
might disagree) 'A Long Way To Blow a Kiss' and I
admit some trepidation beforehand worrying that Ant
would find some new brand of professionalism to
replace the archaic scrapbook style he had employed in
the past but lo I was wrong for the efforts here are
even more primeval than in the past. It almost sounds
like wheeze, obviously of the gorgeous sor t(are there
gorgeous sorts of these?) with Antony Harding (no
apparent affiliation with July Skies who have an
Antony H of their/his own) singing simple love
daydreams with a bare acoustic backing sometimes
accompanied by a wurlitzer or dancing with a balalaika
or coexisiting with the melodica and through it all
Ant by turns sounding like he has only just discovered
the catholicity of romance. This is the charm of his
music, it sounds naive and fresh faced, like a child
discovering the goodness of life for the first time,
free from trendy cynicism and not yet having
constructed a jade barrier to enjoyment of anything
without a sarcastis undercurrent. It's high time more
people express themselves in the manner of an Ant song
protagonist, their souls laid bare, their hearts on
their sleeve their expressions not veiled in hidden
subtext but made obvious and plain and entirely honest
and draped in loveliness. A national treasure then is
Ant, well, if you happen to be English.
Walker Kong
There Goes The Sun CD
Magic Marker. MMR015.
by Keith Mclachlan.
February 23, 2002.
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In a less perfect world this would have been in some
way associated with Elephant 6. Having then borne
that mark of shame I would have dutifully ignored a
remarkable record. I would have missed the french
horn the most I think, or maybe I would have missed
how they seem to have made songs that sound like Love
but are not dreary and overrated, and how they seem to
have a bt of that early 80s Athens sound in there as
well (maybe even coming off a bit like Pylon!) and for
a few brief moments when the singer gets all
enthusiastic on 'Your Lovely Metropolis' make me
forget to cross off the dates on my calendar that I
keep to count the days when Carl Newman abandons the
dreadful New Pornographers and reforms Zumpano. It is
a remarkably diverse record for an indie-pop band, at
times being all Ladybug Transtor-like in their pop
restraint and well-studiedness and at others
reflecting a groove that makes my eyelids dance across
the rooftops that flicker with the refracted light of
the visual symponics of television screens tuned into
WB early on a balmy sunday evening. The record has
it's baroque moments with a soft undercurrent of cello
and violin on most of the numbers, then allowing for a
change of pace there are some numbers like 'Vivien
Girls' that exude the premium richness of casually
strummed indie-op and near the end even the Talking
Heads get a jostling from their grave on the spindly
art-school number 'New Fallout Fashion'. Nothing
dramatic or pressing here just an astonishing
collection of magnificent pop songs. Joy on lease
from Minny So Cold.
Allen Clapp
Available Light CD
by Keith Mclachlan.
February 17, 2002.
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Watching the Olympics and having witnessed live on
television the alleged 'debacle' of the pairs
competition (let's be honest the Russians had one slip
but otherwise skated flawlessly and the Canadians
looked like they were in a jazzersize competition
skating a risk-free program and certainly were no
match for the Russkies grace and beauty) I couldn't
help but wonder if things wouldn't be a bit more
interesting, overall, if they ditched the classical
themes. I am not courting the idea that they need
abandon concepts like grace of poetic fluidity but
what if one of the pairs performed with Allen Clapp as
their soundtrack? What if the crowd knew all the
words and sang along the rising chorus egging the
skaters on to truly Olympian heights of majesty. The
purists would howl just as they did when Elvis
Stojko (sic) was doing his kung-fu routines on ice but
maybe the average beer-swilling schmo would feel a
little more in tune with such 'artistry'. Unlikely
dreams sure and so Allen is the new Elton John then,
if not the new Stravinsky, most of these songs are
piano based, mid-tempo with some archaic sounding
synthesizer mulch padding out the songs. Al plays
pretty well every note here, the one exception being the
pioneering triangle and chimes work on the reprise of
'Whenever We're Together'. Al ranks up with Kevin
Barnes when it comes to earnest performers who seem to
lack inhibition and possess such incredible
earnestness and devotion to their fantastical views of
the pop landscape. Most of the songs here are to do
with themes related to cosmology or basic astronomy
really, likely they are metaphorically linked to
Allen's faith but the only faith you need to attach to
is his potent hold onto pop endearment and I hope
Skippymudgeon pays him cause he certainly deserves a
reward.
Mild Euphoria
Let's Dissolve CD
Siesta. Siesta 144.
by Keith Mclachlan.
February 17, 2002.
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The band's name seems appropriate, I find myself
easily imagining the reaction of the record company
after these tunes were turned in for release and brave
young artists Jeremy and John asked for an appraisal
and well it came back 'mild euphoria'. Allegedly this
is for kids and although this type of music may be
exactly what the kids need, its coma-inducing effects
might keep them from tagging subway trains,
car-jacking or selling meth that they made with the
chemistry set their parents got them for christmas and
their mom's Allegra prescription.
Of course had the name chosen been instead mild
cholera then that might have been something
celebratory but mild euphoria?!? perhaps for avid
canasta players the run of a good number of hands
might qualify but pop music usually demands more.
For while some of it might sound like an audition tape
to be the backing band of David Cassidy or maybe since
they are British Simon Turner back in his teen-pop
fandom days most of it sounds like the sort of
wallpaper in the background of a Pink Panther movie,
where Inspector Clousseau has just stepped in a can of
paint instead of making love to the beautiful woman
invariably bent on his destruction (likely I remembering
things incorrectly). But are Pink Panther movies for
kids? I saw them when i was a kid and the slapstick
was funny but I am not sure it would be funny to kids
today, but then what do I know I have never believed
'Willy Wonka' was much of a kids movie because I
always found it a bit sinister and frightening not
'The Day After'-like frigthening but certainly more
chilling than any of the 'Friday the 13th' movies.
Mild Euphoria then don't seem to have their place
secured, likely no one under 15 will hear this, I
suppose a 15-year old is still a child but they surely
won't be begging Paul Oakenfold for a spin at one of
his 3000 dollar per hour club appearances, but then
maybe they should take the music to the kids and prove
me wrong book a tour of the elementary schools all
across the world and realize just how out of touch
they are when the kids start screaming for DMX and
'Break Stuff'. Oh and an aside, the best Mild
Euphoria songs are actually on the Reverie Siesta
compilation called 'Dream Drops' and they do not
reappear here so balance your options carefully.
Neil Halstead
Sleeping On Roads CD
by Keith Mclachlan.
February 9, 2002.
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Neil H. seems to have lost something on the way to
making his very first solo album. In my ears he has
lost his desperate tone, his longing, the ache of
weariness (or to quote one of my favourite songs
'where's the ache of freedom, where's the devil's
whisper') that accompanies a life on the "road". I
imagine this album was made while he was on holiday,
spending lazy days in the sunless English countryside
mirthfully romanticizing with the florid landscape
while listening to a steady diet of Leo Sayer (check
that hideous artwork, how Vaughn Oliver did not veto
such an abomination is a bit puzzling but then there
was the whole Paladins/4ad scandal so who's to say
that there is anyone minding the store there these
days) and Neil Young. This is most certainly a
pleasant record, but oddly rather disaffected and
charmless. I've read comments about it being his
first English record in some time and I agree with the
first track is a spot-on theft of Nick Drake (no hint
of Dylan here) and while listening I'm thinking it
most reminds me of 'River Man' which is no bad thing
even if it isn't one of my fave Nick tracks.
Elsewhere it reminds of Mojave 3 (obviously) with the
title track being vaguely reminiscent of 'Prayer for
the Paranoid' from the lovely beyond description but
haughtily maudlin last M3 record. But as I mentioned
earlier taken as a package it all sounds ruefully
content, I suppose trying to quantize someone's angst
within a pop song from 7000 miles to the west is a bit
difficult to interpret but he sounds downright jolly
in spots here and there and this is the man who nearly
wrote the book on lamentable dream-pop while in
Slowdive. Perhaps he has within him newfound bliss or
perhaps he has in his pocket a new prescription for
Zoloft, who knows, but the general sanguineness is a
bit discomforting to me for when I hear Neil Halstead
I expect a mournful, dread-ridden tale of beautiful
misery but on 'Sleeping on Roads' it seems he has
adopted the preening habits of a musician with
resources enough to cobble together some rented
sentiments and paste them in the fashion of a
professional with more than enough time to leisurely
stroll his way through a pop record. Sigh.
Life Without Buildings
Any Other City CD
DC/Baltimore 2012. DCB 003.
by Keith Mclachlan.
January 10, 2002.
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Remember a few years back when Bjork was in Bangkok or
Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur or wherever really and she
decided to attack a local news reporter after said
reporter had taken photos of Bjork's son? No?
Suffice it to say but Bjork took out the can'o whoop
and pummeled the lady almost as if she were imagining
the face of Lars Von Trier as she exorcised her jetlag
on this poor woman's carcass. Well then, now is the
time for you to stretch your imagination, stretch it
back to the time after that incident (not widely
covered by most media) where Bjork was taken into
custody by the local authorities and made to endure
all of the famous east asian tortures that were so
graphically outlined in the classic Chuck Norris
'Missing in Action'-films. Electrodes to the
genitals, 24 hours of listening to Slint's
'Spiderland' and likely all that she was given to eat
were the bamboo shoots they mercilessly shoved beneath
her fingernails as she sat for years in a small wooden
box in the middle of the yard in some remote outpost
of some micronesian jungle. Did you think she had
taken the sabbatical between albums of her own accord?
Hardly. OK now, fast forward a few years to Bjork
back in the UK (secretly released) only in order for
the enemy to effectively use her as a mole, a covert
agent to obtain information about the Uk entertainment
industry and its designs for the domination of Asian
culture she needed to change her name to Sue Tompkins
and she had to hone her Lydia Lunchisms even further
to cast out all of the elfen tendencies of her voice.
So having done this Bjork, err...Sue went about acting
secretly trying to infiltrate the music industry when
one day she happened upon a sad sack of blokes making
third rate velvet underground homages disguised as pop
songs, suddenly within hearing the first few bars of
said dread Sue is suddenly thrown into an unrelenting
fit of sorts spewing forth rants of the cosmic and
surreal like, the words don't seem to make any sense
as if they were pouring from a repressed center in her
brain, a final enclave for her to escape from the
torturers unseen hand still invading her consciousness
ten thousand miles away. The boys is the band are
suitably frightened but also deeply impressed, all of
them are failed art students and think this chick is
deep, man, like if Martin Creed had used Halogen
lights instead of incadescent filaments! They decide
to ask Sue to join the band, she agrees and they go
off and record a blinding debut record, the sort that
Too Pure would have released in 1994 but not now since
they are seeming stuck on bands like Billy Baloney and
Murry the Dump. Sue is either praised as visionary
poet, extreme logictress or ridiculed as a bit Daisy
Chainsaw. It's brilliant! Sure the music is somewhat
uninspired and I can imagine Sue's ranting, strange
that it does not seem angry but merely imbued fully
with unscorned passion, might become tedious in a few
albums time but for now it is my new favourite record,
at least up until the song 'Sorrow' which sounds a bit
like a Blue Aeroplanes cover of the Lou Reed and the
last song which is a former b-side throw-in to entice
the American kids who have already purchased the
import and could have remained unheard in my own
perfect little universe, but alas all that remains for
me to offer are cheers.