Starring
22 Beaches, A Swayze and the Ghosts, deary, The Dip, Fabiano do Nascimento & Sam Gendel
The Front Runners
Let’s Live A Life Better Than This : A Swayze and the Ghosts
A Swayze & the Ghosts have beaten the second album syndrome by producing an album that broadens their palate while remaining true to their Australian punk roots.
I loved their debut ‘Paid Salvation’, so a follow up always comes with a fear that anti-climax and disappointment lurks in wait. No worries on that score. ‘Tell You All The Time’ is the kind of rollicking opener that reassures you that what has come before was no fluke.
This is an album that brooks no resistance. There’s something to to hook you and reel you in to join the jumping throng around you. It excites and it triggers adrenaline rushes. It’s relentless in its quest to give you a good time with music that is determined to make a difference.
There are riffs everywhere - when did they cease to be fashionable - and they remain anchored to punk. Swayze’s snatched and jittery vocals still sound as if he’s singing through a heavy cold.
Perhaps it’s a little less overtly punk, nodding to pop but pop that has a lot of attitude. The middle eight of ‘Anthropology’ is nigh on perfect. There’s more ambition here, a commitment to keeping their message strong but to bend it to different templates to render it more accessible. They achieve this without compromising.
What’s different then? Well, keyboards are more noticeable on songs like ‘He Is Dead’. There’s more light and shade. Acoustic guitar breaks through: fleetingly on ‘Cool As Cucumber’, more reflectively at the end of ‘Puppy Baby’. Sick Kinda WRLD’ achieves a Happy Mondays type dancefloor swagger. The bass line is allowed to make the song. It’s an interesting expansion of their sonic palate while remaining true to their essence. The fade out to ‘Before I Left’ heads to an exciting future.
Swayze and his ghosts are relentless in a good way, track after track here hits the mark.
Taster Track : Tell You All The Time
The Room : Fabiano do Nascimento, Sam Gendel
Fabiano do Nascimento plays rhythmic jazz guitar. Sam Gendel plays fluid jazz saxophone. Together they’ve made a truly lovely album.
In its way this is a dangerous album. The music is heady enough to lead you to ill judged affairs of the heart, as you’re caught up in its flow. It’s romantic from start to finish - that’s romantic as both a genre and a feeling. A tune like ‘Kewere’ serenades you, woos you to like it.
There’s are flavours of Spain and North Africa here. That’s not bad for a duo steeped in the sounds of San Franciscan jazz, and testimony to how music that’s done well can transport you to faraway places. You’d hope to hear it on a moonlit Spanish terrace at the start of something giddy and special. It conjures up the image of a genie, escaped from its bottle, wandering around a Moroccan palace. It’s music for new lovers.
‘Foi Boto’ and ‘Sapricho de Raphael’ set the tone. The guitar brings the pop while the saxophone brings the jazz. Or to put it another way, the guitar brings the rhythm and the sax brings more sensual notes that are fluid and slinky as they lull and caress.
This is jazz for those who like it mellow and tripping along with a sunny disposition. It’s close to the sound of Mammal Hands in its gentle but memorable rhythms. There’s not a jarring note to be heard!
Quite simply this is a charming, pretty and gentle album that brings happiness in its wake.
Taster Track : Foi Boto
The Chasing Pack
Dust : Recordings 1980 - 1984 : 22 Beaches
Back in the day, 22 Beaches made rhythmic post punk that should have been much better known. This collection is an opportunity to put that right
Raise your hands if you’re familiar with the songs of 22 Beaches. Not many. It seems! Along with countless other bands, 22 Beaches’ musical legacy has been swept away by the tides of musical fashion. That’s undeserved, and Seated Records have set out to put it right. (By the by, their mission to resurrect the bands that would otherwise be lost forever is a public service initiative that deserves awards and accolades.)
This eight track compilation shows that 22 Beaches were an excellent representative for their era. They would have sat comfortably with Joy Division. Their rhythms, if occasionally a little downbeat, would have stood shoulder to shoulder with A Certain Ratio. You could even argue that post punk funk could have positioned them as a more introspective Heaven 17.
They never made a John Peel session, but I’d be amazed if he never played them. If there’s an issue with the music it’s not of the band’s making. It’s more that 40 years after the event you can hear similarities to bands that came afterwards. On a couple of tracks the vocals reminded me of Fred Schneider, vocalist with the B52s. Although both bands aim to make you dance, they couldn’t be more different.
Here’s an album that’s all angular rhythms and riffs (‘Dust’). It’s seriously brooding on ‘Cartoon Boy’. There’s something almost hymnal about ‘That Girl’, with the vaguely Gregorian backing. ‘Somebody Got It Wrong’ manages to make alienation music for downbeat dancing.
At its heart, that’s why it works. This captures all the misery and wallowing in depression but, at the same time, songs like ‘One Of Us’ and ‘Zoo’ are eminently danceable. There’s life in these old songs yet.
We’re of, and in, an age where nostalgia can play an important part in reminding us that bad times will pass. They will fade into memories we can value and appreciate. 22 Beaches take you there.
Taster Track : Dust
Aurelia : deary
Rebecca Cockram and Ben Easton are deary (lower case typography deliberate). It takes just a few seconds of this six track EP to realise that they understand the power of shoegaze.
Actually, that doesn’t do them full justice. Far from looking down at their feet, they’re looking up at the universe - less shoegaze and more stargaze! ‘Aurelia’ inhabits that kaleidoscope space where shoegaze blurs with dream pop and electronica. If you’re a fan of any of these genres you’ll love this EP.
It’s a heady mix that tingles the spine and shivers the back of the neck. It’s easy, maybe even lazy, to make this comparison but it’s reminiscent of The Cocteau Twins, especially in the way the vocals are far down in the mix, reaching out to you from behind a heavy velvet curtain.
This is a big, dense and beautiful sound. Even when it turns to acoustic guitar on ‘Where You Are’ it’s dripping with honeyed effects. It’s music in slow motion, held in restraint like the steam from a dishwasher in the seconds before it hits your face. It jangles, chimes and echoes as it swirls around and it’s perpetually gorgeous
It’s also just enough at six tracks not to overwhelm you with its headiness, not to smother you in reverb, not to overdo its power.
This rich and luxurious sound is just what you need to feel spoiled.
Taster Track : Aurelia
Love Direction : The Dip
It’s guilty pleasure time with this set of soulful pop from Seattle’s The Dip.
This is the epitome of 1970s Sunday morning Radio 1. It soothes and pampers rather than being something that is exciting and energising. It’s the very essence of easy listening and it’s drawn deep from the well of classic pop, flying in the face of any musical snobbery that this is corporate soul.
There is some weight to that argument. The cover leads you to believe that this album will take you onto the streets. And it will, but only as a means of getting to the plush Las Vegas club where you’re part of the house band for whoever is in residency that week. It won’t claim to be authentic. Inspired by the world of heartbroken blues, urban jazz moves and Harlem funk, there’s not a black face to be seen or a lower east side accent to be heard.
From a listener’s perspective only, that doesn’t matter. It’s a nostalgic and easy listen. There’s no harm in that. It’s surprisingly pleasurable, in the same way that Hall and Oates, Level 42 and the Lightning Family were. Imagine a less raucous St Paul and the Broken Bones playing in the corner of your living room as you catch up on the last of the week’s work before an early finish. It’s a tingle you can’t itch and it’s all delivered with a glossy but consummate professionalism.
There’s enough music out there detailing what’s wrong with the world. This is the music you want when you need a respite from all of that.
Taster Track : Bougainvillea Blues
Playlists
As ever this week's Taster Track playlists can be accessed at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7cSveL7NpVp1xgrKxPe4av?si=SkFlSnvySeuYFpgG0WJFmA or via the Spotify link on the Home Page.
The link to the Youtube playlist is https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwV-OogHy7Eh_sy55y6i18Qj7w_Z3CQft
Comments