Starring
Simon Crocket, The Smile, Something Sandy, The Umbrellas, Xanaduum
The Front Runners
Cutouts : The Smile
The Smile’s second album of alternative and experimental rock in 2024 reveals its brilliance slowly, but undeniably.
In the absence of a new Radiohead album, ‘Cutouts’ is like nothing else. It bears as much resemblance to conventional rock music as a specimen soaked in formaldehyde bears to the living animal it represents. It’s recognisably the same, but eerily different too.
Thom York doesn’t strike me as a man weighed down by others’ expectations. He, and his bands, make the kind of music they’re going to make regardless of what others expect. That’s why the jazz virtuosity of Jonny Greenwood’s guitar on ‘Eyes and Mouth’ can run straight into the completely different slinkiness of ‘Don’t Get Me Started’ and both can sit alongside the fiddly Talking Heads infectiousness of ‘Zero Sum’. ‘Tiptoe’ brings a cinematic grandeur that is completely at home with the rest of the album.
Perhaps that’s why they feel left out of time. There are moments here when you feel that The Smile would be as much at home with the breakdown in Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’ as they are at the cutting edge of 21st century rock.
What’s not surprising is how the jazz influences fall naturally into the whole. This is emphatically NOT a jazz album, but Greenwood’s guitar flourishes and Tom Skinner’s percussion lighten songs that might otherwise fall in a Kid A kind of weighty chaos.
Don’t be fooled, either, by the collaboration with the London Contemporary Orchestra either. Their strings are mightily effective, but they’re a million miles from the lush sounds of a pop ballad. Classical music is as capable of accommodating Stravinsky and Stockhausen as it is Classic FM, just as The Smile are able to carve out a space in Radio 6 land.
This may be their second album of 2024, and it may be called ‘Cutouts’ but it’s much more than a collection of leftovers rescued from a never to be heard B side or a future padded out deluxe edition of the earlier ‘Wall of Eyes’ release.
It may be a difficult and challenging start to the album but it reveals its brilliance as you settle into it. It’s a heavyweight album that will endure.
Taster Track : Don’t Get Me Started
Wouldn't Mind A Good Adventure : Something Sandy
You can’t listen to this album without feeling the sun, and the music’s charming innocence, warming your soul.
It might start in a vein that shouts “One, two, twee” but that doesn’t last. Instead the songs are filled with the clean cut, fresh faced songs of someone growing up, building hopes and facing disappointments as an adult for the first time.
These aren't songs for the cool kids. They’re for the likeable, slightly naive kids setting out for Freshers’ Week. They’re going to experience giddy happiness and baffling disappointments. They’ll look back on that time with 75% fondness and perhaps 25% puzzled disappointment and they’ll recognise they had the time of their lives.
This soundtrack to that time of their lives is immediately engaging. The sixties influences are everywhere - Peter Sarstedt, Simon and Garfunkel and The Lovin’ Spoonful. The songs also follow a line from there through Jonathan Richman, Cosmic Rough Riders to The Lemon Twigs.
They keep it simple, almost busking it on ‘’Bout Five Minutes’. ‘Wouldn’t Mind A Good Adventure’ is a catchy, singalong opener. It even features a kazoo. ‘Once’ captures the tone of the album well, bitter sweet, wistfully nostalgic, great lyrics. The songs are all quietly but confidently played. The sun drenched harmonies spread across the album are perfect for spontaneous performances for a small set of friends on a warm beach as the sun sets. And if, occasionally, a song doesn't make a strong impression it still contributes to the overall vibe.
Luke Seals, the man behind ‘Something Sandy’ also directed ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid Freshman Year’. These are the songs that show what happens to the wimpy kid when he sets out for uni. You’ll want to follow him.
Taster Track : Once
The Chasing Pack
Predecimal : Simon Crocket
{This isn't the cover for 'Predecimal' In the absence of any image on line, this is the best I could do!}
This is an album for those who would like to rediscover the early sounds of electronic music, its potential and its capabilities.
Simon Crocket avows simplicity and eschews the layering that you find in much electronic music. He dives deep to the bottom layer and shows us the meandering noodling that carries the music rather than the melodies that might hook you in. He’s lost in his music and there are moments when you wonder if he’s sailing too close to self indulgence.
This shares much in common with library music. It feels unengaged at times, unconcerned with how it's received. It’s never boring but neither will it fire up excitement, wonder or passion. Strangely, its ideal setting may be playing in the background as you explore a haunted house, sensing unseen dangers and puzzling out its mysteries.
Don’t jump to judge too quickly though. This does sound old fashioned, almost an electronic origin story. It’s electronic music that has been found, damp in the attic. But that gives it a purity that has its own appeal. Crocket is the equivalent of those field researchers who seek out village folk songs that have been handed down from generation to generation without being written down, but he’s dealing with machines not people.
The strength of this album is in its texture, in understanding the capabilities of the equipment. Listen to ‘Crown’ and appreciate how he achieves variations and different frequencies within a single note. Put aside your feelings about the lack of a tune and enjoy the array of sounds, effects and atmosphere he uses.
This may be an album for the electronic connoisseur but it’s also a guided tour for those with an interest in how electronic music is created.
Taster Track : Crown
Fairweather Friend : The Umbrellas
Define, twist, and expand the genre as much as you want but The Umbrellas are the very definition of indie.
Try to keep up with them. Their energy levels are high. In places it’s a little frantic as if they recognise that this is their fifteen minutes of fame and they have a lot to cram in. You’ll find hammering machine gun drums, busy and choppy Orange Juice guitars, vocals that are both growling and sweet - and that’s just in ‘Toe The Line’.
The thing about being in a rush though is that things are missed. As the songs zoom by you’re left flailing for hooks to cling to. They’ve sought to bring the energy of their live performances to their recording. That’s laudable but the environments are different and a little appreciation of that goes a long way.
It’s not that they’re better when they calm things down, more that you’re given a chance to appreciate what they can do and to see their potential and promise. It's not until the end of the album and you reach ‘Blue’ and ‘PM’ that you have the space to realise that they are tantalisingly close to greatness.
Those songs also show that they’re only lacking a killer melody or two before they become your new favourite band.
The vocals are a nice blend of the deliberately the commonplace vocals of an Everyman on the street, and the backing vocals which are a deliciously sweet thing of joy. They work well together. Together they’re like the Field Mice on steroids.
The Umbrellas are building a scene with the raw DNA of pure indie pop before it’s glossed into an impersonal shiny thing. They’re the very definition of a cult band, and one to keep a close eye on.
Taster Track : Blue
Inverted Terrain : Xanaduum
Xanaduum throws himself wholeheartedly into electronic and ambient prog. I’m not sure he takes us with him all the way.
This is totally prog, from the Emperor’s new clothes of the music - is it really any good - to the tiles that include ‘Polybius’, ‘Dodecathedral’ and ‘Xenogenesis’, to the album cover that looks to have come from Hipgnosis’ library of stock images. That’s a fair warning to manage your expectations.
Now it’s highly unfortunate for both me and Xanaduum that I listened to this while I was under the clouds of a heavy cold. Nothing sounds as good as you would like it to sound under those conditions, but that’s pop in the real world for you.
The downside to that is the music has to work harder to please. On that level Xanaduum struggled. For me, the music was almost meaningless, for the most part formless. There’s little momentum and even less melody.
Google tells us that Xanaduum is a multi disciplinary living project. I applaud the concept, genuinely, but it also explains why this often feels like music to accompany an installation. It’s only part of the story and it can only be completed by looking at something else or in situ in a specific environment.
But there’s a few upsides to this too. Heavy headed from the cold, I eventually listened to this lying down on the sofa. It made a surprising difference. The minimal lightening of the sky from black to dark grey to mist created the type of environment that suited the music well. In that positon ‘Xenogenesis’ revealed its pulse which was quite attractive in an Orb kind of way. ‘V.A.L.I.S.’ too snagged the attention at various moments across its eleven minutes.
It's telling though that the stand out track that prevents this album collapsing into ruins of its own making is ‘I May Be Some Time’. The extract read from the notebooks of Captain Oates about his departure from Captain Scott and the rest of the polar exploration party is the gentle epitome of a stiff upper lip. It's bookended by the noise of a blizzard. This engagement with humanity and the real world generates an emotion that the music can’t offer alone. It doesn’t quite redeem the whole but it helps.
And there you have it. For the most part this is a behemoth of an album that can’t carry its own weight but with just enough flashes of inspiration not to dismiss it completely.
Taster Track : I May Be Some Time
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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