Starring
Group Listening, Manu Chao, Nada Surf, Observatories, Oisin Leech, Strange Boy, Vampire Weekend
The Front Runners
Viva Tu : Manu Chao
Manu Chao makes music that brings people together. It’s heartfelt and sincere Latin music with a global twist.
To be honest I’d never heard of him, but, surely, nearly 10m monthly listeners on Spotify can’t be wrong, and he received glowing reviews for this album in some of the glossy music press. Of course, there’s a risk that with those listening figures he could be one of the biggest sell outs of all time. It’s a risk not mitigated by the album cover - all cartoon coloured bling.
But wait. This is music that will win you over. It’s truly global. Manu sings in French, Spanish, English and a number of languages that weren’t on the curriculum when I was at school. It’s built on traditional music, but not drawn from the traditions you might expect. They include skiffle, beach party, the feeling that comes from happy reggae and the pub singalong. I loved the ye-ye feel of ‘Tu Te Vas’.
It’s a gentle sound filled with the warmth of ripples swirling around your toes on a sandy beach. ‘Tantes Tierras’ is chilled like the first drink of a hot Summer’s evening.
Too much of this could become irritating to serious music fans. That’s avoided because he’s not bullying you into having a good time, he’s providing the soundtrack that will make a good time inevitable. It’s music for the whole family. ‘Tom and Lola’ will see outbreaks of Grandad dancing, toddler tumbling and whole community dancing. It will wear down your reluctance to engage and leave you with a smile that lasts all night. It’s carnival music for the procession float and you have a place centre stage.
At a time when the world seems to have turned away from harmony and togetherness, this is a short term, temporary antidote to cheer you up.
Taster Track : Tu Te Vas
Love Remains : Strange Boy
This is something a little different, a blend of fairly minimal synth pop and highly stylised vocals. It works, even as it drifts a little away from the mainstream.
How best to describe it? Perhaps as a song cycle rather than an album. There’s a consistency to the songs that binds them together, and it’s difficult to conceive of them as individual songs rather than a collection, or to think that they could be performed in a different order. You could also describe it as chamber synth pop.
It starts gently with the lovely ‘Boston Blue Period’. Its introduction is long enough to establish the minimal synths as something more than mere backing before releasing Kieran Brunt’s vocals into the mix. In that respect it's possibly the best partnership since The Pet Shop Boys.
And what vocals! They’re a cultured blend of past vocal tones that include choir boys, Morrissey, David Sylvian, Jimi Somerville, Hamish Hawk and Rufus Wainwright. Of course, once you’ exceed a couple of influences you have something unique and that’s the case here. They’re all strong flavours but together they make something clean, clear and pure and just to one side of the mainstream.
When you hear ‘Oscar’s song’ or ‘Drunk In Iceland’ you quickly realise that these are complete performances. It’s undeniably rooted in pop but its ambitions reach higher, to create something that endures and retains respect. You can imagine Strange Boy setting up in the Covent Garden Piazza, at home with the opera singers and string quartets but drawing a crowd versed in an arty pop scene.
This is an album where the vocals will draw the crowds but the synths will hold the attention. It’s a startling and absorbing combination.
Taster Track : Follow The News
The Chasing Pack
Walks : Group Listening
Take some time out in the company of Group Listening’s blend of light electronica, gentle ambience and bucolic jazz.
This is the kind of album that, on a good day, you would find tucked away at the back of a well stocked record shop's unclassifiable Miscellaneous section. Their own curated Spotify playlist - ‘Dreaming. O Walking’ mixes electronica, world music, classical and jazz. Their sound is representative of all of that while sounding nothing like it.
These tunes are inspired by the walks taken by Stephen Black and Paul Jones between gigs. They’re walks taken at a steady pace interspersed with those moments when you pause to rest on a sun dappled bank and drift away into your thoughts in the warmth of the afternoon.
They’re full of the found sounds of nature - bird song, frog chirrups to name just two. Like nature they’ve found their own rhythm, and it’s not restricted to the rhythms of pop. Notes can arrive half a beat later than you expect, or last a fraction of a second longer. The tunes spread like the daisies and dandelions starting to carpet your lawn.
On tracks such as ‘Shopping Building’ and ‘New Brighton’ the midground holds the best earworms. They hold the tune’s structure together, drifting along in the most pleasant way you can imagine.
Forget how this music sounds. It’s how it makes you feel that’s important and this makes you feel good.
Taster Track : New Brighton
Moon Mirror : Nada Surf
Nada Surf’s new album is a collection of anthemic 00s rock songs that also serves as a response to the times.
Listening between the lines, Nada Surf are agitated by the times and are frustrated that they can’t get their voice heard. They’re not about to settle down comfortably and talk it though. As is often the way when that happens, they shout louder.
From the off it sounds as if they are building their presence by sheer force of their musical personality.. It often works. ‘Second Skin’ has a great melody within its jangly, thrash of a tune and it shines brightly. In ‘In Front Of Me’ they belt it out as they did in their younger days. Its phrasing sounds like the debut single of the next big thing, immediate but not too polished.
The thing is though, Nada Surf have been around for over thirty years. They’re old hands. Their greatest moments over that time - ‘See These Bones’ or ‘Are You lightning’ for example - take time and space to build. Here, songs such as ‘Moon Mirror’ and ‘Open Seas’ lack the killer hook or melody that lets the songs escape from their noisy backing.
It’s by no means a harsh sound. Strings swell the backing, adding to the wall of sound. ‘The One You Want’, ‘Losing’ and ‘New Propeller’ reclaim the melodic ground. So does ‘Floater’ as it takes the album away into the distance like a passing cruise ship. Nada Surf sound like the 00s rock band which they are, but they’re better when they temper it with some sweeter notes.
When you have a catalogue that contains moments of pure magic, anything less is an anti-climax. This is a good Nada Surf album but, sadly, not a great one.
Taster Track : New Propeller
Frost Forms : Observatories
This collection of ambient electronica has an undeniable calmness and even beauty, but it also poses a challenge for the listener if they are to extract anything from it.
That challenge may be to get up early, say half five, to listen to it. Your environment needs to be still, free from distractions. Daily life must not yet have exerted its old over you. That loose eyelash irritating your barely wakeful eye - ignore it. Keep your body and mind still. Prepare for this as you would prepare for a meditation or mindfulness session.
Across the six tracks that make up the 42 minutes of this album, there’s a sense of struggle towards calmness. Its waves and pulses need to be free of any interference to have their full impact. That requires effort from you too.
If you succeed, the rewards are worth it. This album conjures sounds and atmospheres that might transport you to a polar icecap, under a starlit sky, picking up radio waves, the hum of far off satellites and the natural movement of the ice. Coming back down to earth, it’s full of natural beauty, the soundtrack to accompany your gaze at spiders’ webs draped in frost on a sunny morning.
The sounds you hear are often minimal. Their shifts are minimal too. Everything is in the detail’. It’s certainly in the barely noticeable detail of the underlying pulse at the opening of ‘Rain Patter’.
This is unhurried music. Take your time with it. Be grateful for its unfurling. It’s good for you.
Taster Track : Rain Patters
Cold Sea : Oisin Leech
A folk album big on atmosphere awaits you in Oisin Leech’s solo debut with collaborative input from Steve Gunn.
Oisin Leech is one half of The Lost Brothers and on this solo album he’s lost in the sense of being completely immersed in his music. Steve Gunn is a maestro on acoustic guitar and here he demonstrates why. Together they make Irish folk from the uninhabited territories of Americana.
It’s an album that displays the craft of keeping it simple, recognising the power of restraint and, bluntly, not showing off. This has the beauty of making starlit music under a clear sky overlooking a twinkling stretch of coast.
Of course it’s acoustic, for the most part. Of course, too, it’s folk. It’s also memorably subdued and affecting on a song like ‘One Hill Further’, which carries Celtic echoes and the faintest whispers of Dire Straits' ‘Why Worry’. Oisin Leech has the right kind of voice for this, attractive and warm, but also just a little worn around the edges. It’s perfect for late night reflective listening.
A couple of tracks - ‘Cold Sea’ and ‘Maritime Radio’ swerve towards ambience and they work well, particularly ‘Maritime Radio’.
So far, so good. Around the point of ‘Malin Gales’ we find a mournful streak making its presence felt. It takes the vibe a little too far, makes it a little too intense and the rest of the album is unable to shake it off. Atmosphere trumps melody.
This is a collaboration that works, and an album of songs that will leave an impression.
Taster Track : One Hill Further
Only God Was Above Us : Vampire Weekend
It’s time for Vampire Weekend to tell it like it really is, and the tale they tell is bleak but exhilarating.
It may not be the case song by song, but the image I’ve retained of Vampire Weekend and their work as a whole is of a preppy boisterousness bathed in sunshine and exotic rhythms. This album is about what happens when that sunny, carefree world comes crashing down and shatters.
From the very start with ‘Ice Cream Piano’ they’re wounded and lashing out. The title is a pun: Ice Cream = I scream. They’re screaming rather than conversing, seeking not to explain and discuss but to vent. In ‘Classical’ there’s a sense of imploding in their final days, free from restraint. These are clever songs full of heedless passion.
If you really want to understand this album, listen to ‘Connect’. The music is broken like a 78 RPM record dropped onto concrete from a great height. The shards that survive are the sounds of the old world and deep amongst the ruins is the fragment of a gorgeous melody. It’s an intoxicating mess.
Across the tracks there are singalong, almost nursery rhyme passages but they turn abruptly into something more chaotic and darker. In places the production is almost Spectorish, a cacophony of sound with so much going on. It makes for something fascinating.
It calms down but that only serves to focus on the devastating bleakness in the songs,with nothing to distract you. Tale this line from ‘Pravda’:
“ ‘Cause when I come home, it won’t be home to you.”
Or how about this despairing line from ‘Hope’?
“Our enemy’s invincible
I hope you let it go.”
Thankfully the jumble of ideas and sheer brio of the execution prevents this becoming an overwhelming experience.
We can but hope that Vampire Weekend’s despair in this album is their equivalent of The Avengers’ ‘Infinity War’, and their ‘Endgame’ is yet to arrive. It will be worth the wait.
Taster Track : Connect
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
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