unpopular

Double Negative: December 23rd

 

Unpopular Advent 2014 - Day 23: Allo Darlin’ - ‘We Come From The Same Place'

It seems inexplicable now that in 2010 I was singularly unimpressed with the debut album by Allo Darlin’, although my 2010 advent entry appears to capture both that initial ambivalence and the subsequent conversion in fairly convincing fashion. 2012’s ‘Europe’ set managed to convince me just that little bit more, with it’s rather more polished and filled out sound helping move the group out of some kind of hellish twee indie ghetto I had imagined them inhabiting previously. Jumping forward another two years and this year’s ‘We Come From The Same Place’ saw Allo Darlin’ finally flourish into the kind of group I could willingly place on the top shelf of contemporary Pop groups.

 

This is not to say that Elizabeth Morris has not written some exquisite songs in the past. She most certainly has. And it’s not to say that the sound of cagey uncertainty and vulnerability is not appealing (it most certainly can be). It’s just to say that only on ‘We Come From The Same Place’ did it really sound as though Allo Darlin’ were a group in full control, blending strength and fragility in a marvellously artful manner.

 

Put simply, there were simply more gloriously memorable melodies and more memorably glorious lines in ‘We Come From The Same Place’ than in any previous Allo Darlin’ set. There was the brittle melancholy of ‘Angela’ with it’s spectral guitar line conjuring memories of Deebank and Blueboy set alongside those heartbreaking and warming words about how "the hardest thing we ever have to learn / Is when those we love don’t love us in return”. There was the rampaging love/hate duel of ‘Half Heart Necklace’ and that killer opening line of “the lights of this town spell H-E-L-L” and surely we’ve all been there and felt that? And was that whole half-heart necklace thing a reference to 'Twin Peaks' or was that just me projecting? Then what about that marvellous line about lips being sweet from the Juicy Fruit in the peerless ‘Crickets In The Rain’, outdone only by the one about reading Joan Didion in the dark. Honestly, ‘Crickets In The Rain’ was just such a wonderful Pop moment and hey, did you want to shed a wee tear like me when Elizabeth sang that line about how loving someone was like how "everything you had ever lost had come back” (inspired in itself by a line in a poem by Nayyirah Waheed)? Or what about coffee cups leavening rings on your A-Z in ‘History Lessons’, or those crystalline guitar strings of fairly lights in the title track and that line about just trying to make it through another Tuesday? And I know we’ve all been there.

 

Finally, how about ‘Kings And Queens’ with it’s transformative punch and it’s exquisite grasp of how it feels to be young and full of fire and passion? “They can call us what they want” sang Elizabeth before adding “but we know that we are the kings and queens of love” in so doing capturing the essence of awkward, proud and damaged outsiders everywhere. All of which means that ultimately ‘We Come From The Same Place’ was all about exactly what it’s title suggested: a warming fire about which to huddle; a beacon for those once young and foolish, now grown up but still muddling through, making it up as we go.

 

Allo Darlin’ - ‘We Come From The Same Place' (Fortuna Pop or Slumberland)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Double Negative: December 22nd

 

Unpopular Advent 2014 - Day 22: The Luxembourg Signal - 'The Luxembourg Signal'

Was there a more handsome record this year than the eponymous debut set by The Luxembourg Signal? With its icicle blue translucent vinyl and its classy, classic Saville-esque sleeve this was a record that reminded me of the magic of the physical artefact. The fact that the vinyl sold out within a breath of its release tells you that I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. It helped of course that the music on the grooves sounded every bit as handsome.

 

We’d been tipped to the probability of a magical album early in the year by the brilliance of lead single ‘Distant Drive’. Some say it was the finest single of the year and they may well be right in that, for with its sparkling guitar lines and motorik rhythm it was one of those records that sounds exactly as its title suggests it ought. Now having spent the majority of life being unable to drive I suspect I have never truly understood the meaning of ‘driving music’. Yet having been behind the wheel for only eight months I would instantly aver that The Luxembourg Signal make a sound that is more custom built for driving (or for travelling in general) than anything much else I can think of. Certainly on an Autumnal afternoon driving the lanes of Haldon forest it was perfection itself.

 

That notion of travelling was also captured perfectly in the video for the gorgeous ‘We Go On’, with its clips of train, plane, car and bus trips including the truly magical Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway and the wind turbines from the San Gorgiono pass on the way from LA to Palm Springs. With strong personal memories of both places so firmly rooted in my heart it was perhaps inevitable that I would fall in love with both the song and the film. Perhaps too it was inevitable that the feeling of distance and movement permeated the record so deeply, given that the recording of the album was essentially a transatlantic juggling act. And fitting too that the idea of sun kissed desert space meeting dense urban conurbation melded so neatly. 

 

Nowhere was the darkness of the combination better illustrated than on album opener ‘Dying Star’. With it’s Spirea X groove and ‘For Keeps’ space rock guitars, it sounded spectacular, like an enormous collision of matter and anti-matter, which is to say exactly as it ought. One could imagine it as an extended, trippy remix spanning an entire side in a Loop-like or ‘Higher Than The Orb’-like trance. It really was that fine. And yet, and yet, to have done so on this record would be to have missed the point and to that we must give The Luxembourg Signal credit for taking care to reign in the impulse to stretch too far. For it was that precise contrast between the darkness and the light (it is followed on the album by ‘Distant Drive’); the collision between apparently contrasting yet subtly similar moods that made the album such a treasure.

 

The Luxembourg Signal - 'The Luxembourg Signal' (from Shelflife Records)

 

Double Negative: December 21st

 

Unpopular Advent 2014 - Day 21: The Orchids - 'Beatitude #9'

It is surely a reflection on my age and the accelerated speeding of time when I say it feels like only yesterday that I was excited not only to be writing sleeve notes for reissues of the three albums that The Orchids recorded for Sarah records, but also at the news that the group had reformed and were set to play, write and record again. To realise that in reality a decade has passed is frankly terrifying.

 

In that decade however I am delighted to say that The Orchids have released another three albums, the most recent of which was this years’ typically gorgeous ‘Beatitude #9’ for the Spanish Acuarela imprint. Infused with their trademark supple groove, on ‘Beatitude #9’ The Orchids again showed a remarkable ability to make deceptively soft, bittersweet records brimful of emotion and life. Listened to outside of the inescapable context of Sarah Records, one could certainly suggest that The Orchids always had the necessary skills to escape the Indie ghetto. Certainly ‘Beatitude #9’ sounded in places much more likely to appeal to fans of smooth, seductive, soulful dance music than to devotees of brittle, watered-down twee self-pity. But then in reality there were plenty of artists on the original Sarah roster who didn't fit that sterotype, and if the ‘From Hello To Goodbye’ exhibition (including the premiere of the ‘My Secret World’ film) in Bristol helped place some of the mediated myths within context then The Orchids’ live performance was a certainly a splendid highlight of a wonderful event.

 

‘Beatitude #9’ was peppered with gorgeous moments, including a lovely nod to the Lazy Perfection of their past with Pauline Hynds joining on the excellent ‘Good Words (Are Never Enough)’. Elsewhere the album was equally splendid, and from the shimmering, blissful ’Something’s Going On' though the neat sunburst pop shuffle of ‘The Coolest Thing’ to the mournful, Strands-like beauty of the album closing ‘We Made A Mess’, ‘Beatitude #9’ barely skipped a beat. Like a good single Malt whisky, ‘Beatitude #9’ proved to be an album to take your time over, an album to give oneself over to and to luxuriate in. 

 

The Orchids - 'Beatitude #9' (CD on Amazon)

 

 

Double Negative: December 20th

 

Unpopular Advent 2014 - Day 20: The Wolfhounds - 'Middle Aged Freaks'

One of the most pointless exercises is to draw up lists of ‘all time favourite’ anythings. Such things necessarily drift with the tides of our lives, and this is what makes them so elusive. If pressed however I would admit that The Wolfhounds would be on such a list of musical artists more often that not. The singles and albums they recorded, from the piercing ‘Cut The Cake’ in 1986 to the glowering ‘Attitude’ of 1990 were universally magnificent and criminally ignored and underrated. 

 

Their return in 2005 was a great delight, and their set at the 2006 ‘Still Doing It For Fun’ nights at the ICA remains burnt on my retinas as a spectacular explosion of breathtaking poise and noise. There have been singular releases in the intervening years since then of course, and it was these that formed the backbone of their first album in 24 years. ‘Middle Aged Freaks’ bristled with the spiky intelligence of The Wolfhounds' previous incarnation and sounded in no way like a group settling happily into their armchairs. Instead there was a sense of a group who had matured, yes, but who remained infuriated by the society in which they found themselves. As unsettled and uncomfortable in Cameron’s UK as they had been in Thatcher’s, The Wolfhounds were determined not to be quiet about it. Like Seaford Mods (in fact I think it was The Wolfhounds’ Dave Callahan* who first tipped me to Seaford Mods back in April 2013) or Flies On You, The Wolfhounds had the air of a literate irritant in the side of mainstream culture - not that mainstream culture noticed, or cared.

 

Me, I cared a great deal. From the simultaneously euphoric and splenetic ‘Cheer Up’ (itself a feature in last year’s advent series) through the sky scraping ‘Anthem’ and the gloriously sparse ’The Slide’ to the hypnotic, motorik ’The Ten Commandments of Public Life’, ‘Middle Aged Freaks’ sounded both like the return of a prodigal son and the re-establishment of an alternative order into the universe. Stunning.

 

The Wolfhounds - 'Middle Aged Freaks' (Bandcamp)

 

 

*On a side note, Dave Callahan’s parallel life as a twitcher was spotlit beautifully in his terrific 'A History of Birdwatching in 100 Objects’ book.

Double Negative: December 19th

 

Unpopular Advent 2014 - Day 19: The Hit Parade - 'Cornish Pop Songs'

Was there ever a more perfect summer Pop record than The Hit Parade’s ‘Cornish Pop Songs’? Not in 2014 there wasn’t. Those that know know that Julian Henry has been crafting jewels of Pop perfection since time immemorial (or at least since the mid 1980s which is essentially the same thing) and ‘Cornish Pop Songs’ was the latest in a stream of perfectly poised records. If it had been an album of songs written about anywhere in the world then I’m certain I would have loved it, but I will be honest and admit that it was in no small part the context of the songs that meant that, frankly ‘Cornish Pop Songs' was a record that could hardly have failed to wrap me around its little finger and squeeze my heart until it ached.

 

There is something magical about the end of the world (or at least the end of England) that really does grab a hold of your soul. Something in the juxtapositions of the bleak, wild moors and seascapes and the cosy closeness of copses and the huddled-togetherness of the coastal villages. Something in the mystical histories and the contrariness. Something in the mizzle cloaked cliffs and the sun bleached sands. Magical, either way.

 

So did you need to have at least a minimal knowledge of the geographical context to adore ‘Cornish Pop Songs’? Of course not. For whilst little bits of local colour helped move things along (Mr Stevenson would be the Newlyn fish merchant for example, whilst the garage in Drift would be on the A30 out of Penzance - blink and you’ll miss it), these were fragments of personal geographic reference that rooted the songs in context, thereby allowing them to flower as blooms of universal familiarity. Julian Henry’s songs were a glorious collision between melancholic memorabilia and blissful euphoria. ‘Cornish Pop Songs’ then was both a paean to a specific, magical landscape and a celebration of the simple, essential ingredients of great Pop. Like sonic representations of Peter Benson novels, these songs were OF Cornwall but ABOUT love, loss and distance (both physical and through time). It was as close to perfect a Pop record as I heard in a long time.

 

The Hit Parade - 'Cornish Pop Songs' (CD on Amazon)