Wings Of Desire

Live Review: Pajama Club @ Oxford Art Factory, 13/6/11

When Neil Finn reformed Crowded House in 2007 it put a firm stop to the interesting things the 53-year-old was doing on his own. While it would be a stretch to call his solo work experimental, 2001’s One Nil, as well as his dalliances with film soundtracks and the like, saw him embracing synthesisers, reverb, effects pedals and other strange noises of the future.

The Pajama Club, where Finn is joined by his wife and erstwhile wallflower Sharon along with New Zealand ‘music personality’ Sean Donnelly and Brisbane indie jewel Alana Skyring, allow this side of him to be fully indulged. It’s been rather too long since the world saw Finn’s freak flag fly.

Playing their fourth show ever tonight, they made the promotional push of playing their forthcoming album in its entirety, a record that from tonight’s showing promises to be full of dramatic space-rock flourishes, touches of Talking Heads-style keyboard from Donnelly and a meandering ‘jam’ quality as to call to mind the work of Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks. There is even enough of a sprite within Finn on this project to take one back to 1980 and Split Enz’s suitably eccentric True Colours album.

The only song available to be heard by fans prior to the show was ‘From A Friend To A Friend’ (released online), actually far from being the strongest song in their set, that honour falling to their propulsive (and unknown) opener, Sharon maintaining a one-note bassline for its entirety while her husband brought the track to a shuddering climax on his good old red Gretsch Firebird.

That richness was heard again on ‘Diamonds In Her Eyes’, while some more familiar melancholic chord changes could be found on the comparatively sedate ‘TNT For Two’. Mention must also go to a strangely awful duet between the married couple about carnal etiquette featuring Neil on drums, and a quite spectacular mid-set medley that saw ‘Suffer Never’ (from the first Finn Brothers album) mutate into Tubeway Army’s ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’ That was the only nod to Finn’s past all night, ensuring that this project has a special energy of its own.

Track-By-Track Review: WIT'S END by Cass McCombs

The new album comes out April 11 in the UK and April 26 in the US. It's Cass's fifth record and sees him as reclusive as ever, and continuing the rather browbeaten poetic melancholy of his previous LP, Catacombs. While on first dozen or so listens this does not seem like his best album, each song is a universe on its own, making WIT"S END deserving of a piece-by-piece breakdown. Because what else is there do to.


'County Line'

With soft organ, slow tempo and shivery guitar lines, this opener immediately signifies WIT'S END as carrying on where Catacombs left off. This one was shunted around the internet as a pre-release taster of the new stuff, for good reason. Melodically this is probably the most satisfying song on the record, complete with a nifty refrain reminiscent of Pink Floyd's 'Echoes' and, by association, Phantom Of The Opera. The overall impression, however, is of a cross between 10cc and The Band. Have you ever considered the vague vocal similarities between Cass and Richard Manuel?

'The Lonely Doll'

For all his originality, Cass McCombs has a few songs in his back catalogue where, probably not deliberately, he has sounded exactly like another artist. Look at 'Full Moon Or Infinity' (Elliott Smith) or 'Subtraction' (Morrissey). This is Cass doing early Leonard Cohen. It's all there, the slow ups and downs of the vocal line, the absurd repetition of the title line and the cutesy xylophone. Cass's touch is to throw in some swelling Hammond organ, and to do his usual trick of coming up with a short and tuneful vocal refrain, and repeating it throughout the song without aberration. Magical.

'Buried Alive'

Backing vocals make their debut on WIT's END on this one, even if they are fleeting. Soon we meet the most mysteriously arresting line of the album in 'If I'm alive or dead I don't really care/Just as long as my soul's intact', and indeed in this one it seems that unlike the previous two songs, he is making a point of articulating the words. Of course, they offer expressive little vignettes rather than a coherent message. The organ/harpsichord line in this one is very lovely, with that same Baroque quality as the Beatles' 'In My Life'. The song peaks with a delicious mantra of 'Maybe I'm wrong/Maybe I'm waking for the dead'.

'Saturday Song'

This piano-led number is probably the bleakest song on the album. At no point does it snap out of its state of ominousness, with McCombs unusually exploring the lower end of his vocal range, and indeed after a couple of albums steering clear of the Morrissey influence, this sees him paying his respects once more. A little over-long maybe, 'Saturday Song' will not be the one most listeners skip to.

'Memory's Stain'

Much better. The 'verse' melody is in his typical high croon, but unlike so many of his songs, this one has distinct sections - perhaps four. Even a chorus. Its diverse nature is further proven by the ups and downs of his voice, and there are the familiar phonetically impressive lines as 'I have a confession/In the form of a question'. Dare I say this has a certain air of Sufjan Stevens to it? Again, he ends the song on a startling note, with a beautiful meandering section that sees the most wonderful use of bass clarinet this side of Rufus Wainwright. A real highlight.

'Hermit's Cave'

In some ways, you could say that WIT'S END and Catacombs come as one project, with the former being the sequel to the latter. This is another sparse one, driven by a riff reminiscent of Bryter Layter, which is interesting given that for all McCombs' singer-songwriterly credentials, Nick Drake is not an obvious influence. Interesting here is this song's emotional energy.'Hermit's Cave' begins with a kind of buoyant youthful expressiveness before it comes to an existential crash in its chorus. The juxtaposition is depressing, and beautiful.

'Pleasant Shadow Song'

The penultimate track has the least accessible melody, but also some of the most attractive chord changes and instrumental arrangements. Unlike the rest of the album, this one will take a few listens to grasp. A previous song along these lines must be Catacombs' 'The Executioner's Song'. A full album of this looser style of songwriting might be too much, but this proves McCombs as capable of expressing more than one melodic idea in a song.

'A Knock Upon The Door'

The return of the bass clarinet, and a banjo and even a saxophone for this final slog. This is a perfect encapsulation of Cass McCombs' songwriting style. A single phrase is composed and then repeated for nine minutes, yet the song passes through countless landscapes due to its changing instrumentation and arrangements and the different vocal intonations allowed by the words. Cass doesn't repeat himself once, apart from always returning to the title line. The essence of this song, and indeed a large part of his art, is this: to see how far he can get from his point of departure before returning again. It's often not very far, but he certainly makes the journey worthwhile.

Ted Lucas

One mailing list I hope never to be unsubscribed from is that of the Drag City label. The latest missive from them brought tales of the new album from Six Organs of Admittance and single from Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and the Cairo Gang. Let's not forget also that it is this imprint that supports many Alasdair Roberts' releases.

But it is their reissues that have been causing me the most frissons of excitement. Of course, it was Drag City (and indirectly, Six Organs Of Admittance) who allowed the world to hear Gary Higgins' Red Hash, when they oversaw its re-release in 2005. That album's dazzling magnificence has seen it become relevant to the constant inner dialogue that is the tumultuous and fatuous debate over the best album I have ever heard. Red Hash is up there.

Anyway, the latest Drag City email contained details not of one of their own reissues, but pointed in the direction of the Sebastian Speaks label (run by former Silver Jews guitarist William Tyler). They have put out a curious thing from 1975 by Ted Lucas. Lucas was a meandering soul who drifted between a few nondescript bands in the 60s to become quite a big deal as a sessioner in the 70s, according to a his tribute website, working with Frank Zappa, Yes, Ravi Shankar and a few others. Here, for starters, is a song:



His 1975 eponymous album, apparently known as The OM Album among many, is a delightful thing. Sebastian Speaks put out the album earlier this year, and it hits a vaguely similar spot to Higgins, if a little less spacey and textured. The LP is full of short examples of woozy songwriting by a man for whom life must have been one long stretch of calm, with quite a lot of weed thrown in too. On that note, Lucas even managed the difficult trick of coming up with a song extolling drug use that isn't wretched:



Some other interesting reissues in recent times from Drag City include that from Vernon Wray:



along with that from good old Mickey Newbury:



and a wonderful load of nonsense from Ed Askew, the prototype for Daniel Johnstone:

Live Review: De La Soul, Enmore Theatre, Feb 10

I've been to some concerts recently. And even had a good time at a couple, proving there is still life in the old dog yet. Writing about them, however, is another matter, but I did have to ease out the following as a favour to someone.

When De La Soul Is Dead was released in 1991, it was a strident deconstruction of everything that had defined the trio three years earlier on their debut 3 Feet High and Rising. That album saw them at the forefront of a strange new age for hip hop, one that involved fluorescent colours, advocated peace and compassion and had a surreal sense of humour. The daisy age phenomenon allowed De La Soul commercial success, yet some in the rap community deemed them lightweight, hippies, or worst of all, hip hop for white people.



De La Soul Is Dead was a cutting, ironic and relatively dark riposte to all that. It distanced them from the acts who followed their lead and returned them to the less exuberant, more profound territory of the pre-daisy years, with a sound more like Eric B & Rakim than the Jungle Brothers. Twenty years later, they are playing Enmore to pay tribute to this landmark release. The enthusiasm and the heart are all there, but they failed to honour De La Soul Is Dead, preferring instead to tread their well-worn path of dance-happy party music.

These days, De La Soul cruise around the world like the Harlem Globetrotters, performing shows that are more exhibitions of hip hop than anything original. Naturally, there is nothing wrong with that, aside from them being a little one-dimensional in their hell-bent desire to entertain, negating the changes of pace and overlapping samples that make their music so extraordinary. This was one of those typical shows, apart from the absence of Maseo, whose flight was cancelled from the US. Long-time producer Prince Paul filled in on decks.

True, they did play a number of De La Soul Is Dead’s best tracks, with Trugoy and Posdnous careering through ‘A Roller-Skating Jam Named ‘Saturday’’ and ‘Ring Ring Ring’, while 3 Feet High was honoured with ‘Potholes In My Lawn’ and ‘Buddy’. It was a good show, but anyone who came expecting something in the spirit of their fine second album would have seen its message swamped by the deafening sound of a good time.

Goodbye Pen Pusher

Around this time of year about five years ago I was still in the middle of what is increasingly turning out to have been a fruitless waste of time and money. In other words, my Masters in Journalism from London College of Communication. In the midst of this, I was offered the chance to contribute to a new London-based literary journal that had been set up by a pair of bright-eyed and pro-active young women working in publishing. The journal's title was Pen Pusher and back in 2006 its design was only a few cuts above your average campus lit-journal. Almost a chapbook (although it managed to achieve some degree of notoriety on the back of its front design being straight from the imagination of one Ricky Wilson of indie morons Kaiser Chiefs).

I contributed a few things to them in their early days. All of it the ignorant dribblings of a half-ambitious, sycophantic idealist enthralled by the premise of this new magazine. So the poor editors got lightweight and ill-informed opinion pieces on both Norman Mailer and JD Salinger, and then a little something on PJ O'Rourke. That was Pen Pusher's first year, and they have come a long way since then as you can see from their website.

Anyway, the other day they announced they were packing it in. Here is the email:

Pen Pusher was hoping to take the magazine kicking and screaming into the digital age as we informed you all last year... But sadly finance – our continuing lack of a grant or funding of any kind – and an ill-advised lack of interest in the digital world means we have taken the very difficult decision to cease publication.

We're older, no wiser, but yet feel it is time to move on to other projects.

Many thanks to everyone and anyone who has ever submitted, been selected as a contributor, been interviewed by us, supported, read, or even bought the magazine since we began as a free and modest wee thirty-two-page saddle stitch number we gave to our friends in 2006.

Apologies to anyone who has sent a submission – if you have provided postage we will return your work – otherwise there will not be a response; and apologies to those of you with subscriptions – we are unable to refund any remaining monies or provide old issues in lieu of those you were expecting to receive. Hate us for this if you like… or don't!

Once again many, many thanks to all who have been involved or supported us in any way. Best of luck to all aspiring writers and poets, and very best wishes,

Pen Pusher.

This is obviously a real shame, as Pen Pusher filled a vital hole on the literary landscape, in its own small way. This was a publication accessible to both readers and possible contributors, worlds away from the stuffiness of the established journals and more inclusive than those that exist entirely within academia. It managed to be credible, approachable and it looked good, eventually. The other thing was that it actually managed to get read: its list of stockists was impressive and the launch nights of each issue were always well-attended. Over five years it built up a firm identity and a loyal readership.

This all begs the question of why exactly they could never get funding. It's not as if their profile wasn't high enough (more than once I read about Pen Pusher in national newspapers, and one time it was even featured on Radio 4, with the editors interviewed) or that the quality was inferior. Of course, anyone seeking arts funding might expect to be disappointed what with the economic panic of the last two years, but even before then Pen Pusher failed to secure funding. The Arts Council will have its reasons but the message it sends out to anyone wishing to launch a similar enterprise is stark: even if you support it yourself for five years and achieve a success you never envisaged when you started, we still won't help you out. Pen Pusher was not the sort of magazine that could have been bought by a publisher and, say, had a marketing team installed and gone for free distribution. So Arts Council funding was really its only chance.

It must be said that such brutal disregard doesn't seem to be the case here in Australia. Here I find half a dozen or so journals doing pretty well, such as Overland, Southerly, Meanjin, Mascara and others, and they get funding. It's true there's an awful lot less competition for arts funding over here, but I'd rather be in a landscape where you can breathe and look around than one that as so crowded as to be stifling.

A Final Word On The Year That Was...

I have a friend who is a list maniac. He loves to make lists. His lists are his children. He recently made a list of the top live shows from 2010, and given that 2010 was a year that saw me visiting many countries in the name of music, I thought I would do the same. Such an exercise seems to be more worthwhile than the humdrum live review, as this can act as a pointer towards who is good, rather than account of something that has already happened. So...

1. Nils Bech - Slottsfjell Festival, Norway
Disco-opera boy prancing in tight denim as the sun sets.



2. Rufus Wainwright - Kaufleuten, Zurich
'Song-cycle' show, in beautiful theatre, complete with belly-ups during 'The Dream'.



3. John Grant - Green Man Festival
Included an acappella version of 'Chicken Bones', in the rain.



4.The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Abart, Zurich
They didn't seem like they could care less, which made them just too attractive.



5. Yeasayer - Exil, Zurich
The first time I saw the new album live, and was happy.



6. Pavement, Primavera Festival
Finally saw a comeback show, splendid it was.



7. Mayer Hawthorne, Abart, Zurich
He said he had eaten the best meal of his life at Abart.



8.The Black Angels, The Borderline
Too hot to breathe, soulful nonetheless.



9. Field Music, Great Scott, Allston, Mass
Tiny audience but the Brewis brothers on special form.



10. Sleepy Sun, Green Man Festival
One of the last shows before Rachel left.



11.Tame Impala, Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Biggest ever show in Sydney. They slowed everything down, still sounded okay.



12. Crowded House, New Theatre, Oxford
Blissful, including cover of Bowie's 'Moonage Daydream'



13. Built To Spill, Dynamo, Zurich
Second on the bill to Dinosaur Jr, which seemed unholy.



14. The Besnard Lakes, Green Man Festival
One of the best sets of this year's Green Man



15. Scout Niblett, Primavera
Utterly flabbergasted to find I like her.



16. Little Feat, Cropredy Festival
Dayglo t-shirts and all.



17. The Dixie Bee Liners - Cropredy Festival
Very pleasant surprise on a miserable day, with a largely miserable line-up.



18. MV + EE, La Case a Chocs, Neuchatel
Perfect tiny space for the woozed-out couple.



19. Dr Dog, Primavera
New material is good, but it was the Fate stuff that did the job.



20. Monotonix, Primavera
It's Monotonix, which should offer an explanation of this set.