Starring
Clinic Stars, El Perro del Mar, Jamie XX, Letters From Mouse, Mammal Hands, Max Richter, Molly Lewis
Under Starter's Orders
In A Landscape : Max Richter
Two words sum up Max Richter’s music - sad and beautiful.
This is classical music, not the usual fare for Pop In The Real World. I used to refer to it as nu classical to justify its inclusion in a pop music blog. That was before I realised that nu classical isn’t a widely recognised genre. In fact, it’s one that I seem to have made up. What I can say though is that this is new classical music of the kind that Mojo and Uncut magazines will happily review.
Whatever it is that makes it so, its effects and appeal are at the place where classical meets pop. It’s melodic but mournful, beautiful but beat free. It has the power to leave you lost in your thoughts, transported to a different mental place and time. It’s the perfect soundtrack for remembrance, and it leaves me feeling awe.
‘And Some Will Fall’ is immensely emotional, an essence of the magic in pop that you find in the early ballads of Damien Rice or in Maximilian Hecker’s ‘The Saviour’. Strings swell to bring you to the point where your tears are fully formed and about to trickle helplessly down your face.
To have an album completely made up of such music might be hard to take. Richter manages that possibility well and preserves the music’s power. There are nine brief ambient interludes interspersed between the major tracks. They provide a breathing space, an opportunity to collect your thoughts and emotions. He introduces electronica to some of these pieces, and to ‘Only Silent Words’. The music is always painstakingly paced, drawing you in one step at a time.
The album comes in two sections - the complete versions and a selection of shorter edited versions. If you feel you can have too much classical beauty, start with the edits. They’ll be the steps that lead you to try full immersion in the music. They’ll also be the steps that lead you to full immersion in your own memories.
Taster Track : And Some Will Fall (full version)
The Front Runners
In Waves : Jamie XX
Jamie XX remains rooted in club culture. What marks him out is how he turns it into one of the most positive experiences around.
I was slightly wrong footed by this album. That was my fault. Having heard the debut albums by both his bandmates in The XX, I assumed he was following the same trajectory, one that took a poppier route than before. No, Jamie XX is more central to club culture than ever before.
These are songs with more samples, DJ fireworks and electronic wizardry than you’ll have heard since the days of rave. It’s the ideas he brings to dance music that mark them out. Take ‘Wanna’ which is full of gems that are simple but unexpected, and dazzlingly effective. They’re a combination of club songs (all samples and big beats) and the lighter flourishes of disco (soaring strings and 70s / 80s styled vocals.) It’s a heady mix, even before you listen to the words.
And the words are flooded with unambiguous positive messages. “Treat each other right” , “You’re giving me life, let’s make it last.” and, from ‘The Feeling I Get From You’
Being here with you
It's beautiful
It makes me feel
It's a little stronger than beautiful.
At times they're a little impersonal, as if heard by an observer on a 12 step programme to secure a higher happiness. That effect is most evident in tracks where the vocals are low in the mix, heard through layers of music and beats.
‘Dafodil’ can be found in the heart of the club but that club is the club of the heart. ‘Waited All Night’, with contributions from Remy and Oliver Sim, is effectively a song by The XX, but presumably with Jamie in complete control. ‘Still Summer’ is lovely, shimmering as if seen across white beaches through heat haze. ‘Falling Together’ is a hypnotic highlight.
Like me you may feel that your club years are behind you. But this is a club album for everyone, spreading good vibes across the world. You’ll enjoy it.
Taster Track : Falling Together
Gift From The Trees : Mammal Hands
It slipped by me at the time but Mammal Hands’ 2023 album demonstrates all the skill, energy and beauty of contemporary jazz.
Of course, you can’t simply describe Mammal Hands as jazz. That description might cover what’s at their core, but their music spreads beyond that label to encompass elements of electronica, dance and, on this album, a smidgeon of pastoral folk.
The casual listener to jazz, may marvel at what they hear, wondering “How do they do this? How do they keep such fast flowing music completely on point? Is this music instinctive or composed? What sixth sense binds them together?” They may wonder if it’s an illusion. It sometimes feels as if you’ve fallen into a dazzling pyrotechnic display that is slowly coming to an end.
More than most, Mammal Hands are a meeting of equals, a band of musical brothers with a common goal - to make music that stirs and soothes in equal measure. There’s an attractive urgency that propels something like ‘Riser’. ‘Deep Within Mountains’ will lift you into a deeper state of calm. The music of ‘Nightingale’ and ‘Sleeping Bear’ is simply some of the loveliest music you will hear in any genre.
Their music is polyrhythmic, with an insistent keyboard pulse and, crucially, an abundance of melody. The melody switches between piano and saxophone. The percussion changes mid tune to suit the music.
Mammal Hands offer you a giddy but calming experience. Ignore genre and try it for its own sake. You won’t regret it.
Taster Track : Sleeping Bear
The Chasing Pack
Only Hinting : Clinic Stars
Clinic Stars are a new band from Detroit. They’re shoegaze to the core.
Shoegaze suits the weather at the moment. This album is heavy weather, the musical equivalent of heavy and dark grey clouds that never shift. And as with the weather, it leaves you craving a crack in the clouds that allows just a little light and sunshine to break through.
That said, if shoegaze is your bag you’re going to love this. It has all the shoegaze elements - chiming and reverberating guitars, vocals coming through a thick fog (perhaps the fog on the album cover), ¾ paced movement and rhythm and, a little too often for my taste, a lumbering feel.
If I’m disappointed it/s only because the songs stick so fixedly to the shoegaze template. After a while there’s nothing to cling to. The music overwhelms you in a smothering way. It’s music that feels drugged, either through medication or through an extreme lack of sleep. Some may feel this is a benefit, a withdrawal from the world and its difficulties. If that’s your mood or ambition for what you hear, you’re in luck.
One of the things that could help lift the songs without losing the shoegaze community would be if the vocals were less lost in the mix. They sound faintly gorgeous. They may contain lyrics that give you something to think about. They feel as if they could be a massive strength for the band if they are given the chance to shine.
There are glimmers of the potential to reach out and engage those who like a shoegaze vibe without committing to the full hardcore version. ‘She Won’t Be’ feels a little more balanced, keeping the shoegaze vibe alive but capturing the beauty that can be found in the best versions of that. ‘Thoughtless’ is the album highlight, not least because of the sonar bass pulse that lifts the song with a more propulsive rhythm. It’s not much but it’s enough.
This is an album for the shoegaze faithful, not for the unconverted. As the album title suggests though, it only hints at what Clinic Stars could yet achieve.
Taster Track : Thoughtless
Big Anonymous : El Perro del Mar
This is one of the darkest collections of songs I’ve heard in a long time. Too dark for some, maybe, including me.
If you come to this on the back of her songs like ‘Somebody’s Baby’ or ‘You Get What You Give, take heed. There’s nothing here that is anywhere near the lightness of touch you find in those songs. She swims in the same pool as Emiliana Torrini, Bjork and even Kate Bush but on this album she’s dived very deep, tangled with the weeds down with the monsters. Look at the cover closely. That figure looks like a monstrous freak. It captures the tone of the album. The song titles won’t reassure you either - ‘Wipe Me Off This Earth’, ‘The Truth The Dead Know’, ‘Kiss of Death’. They’re not promising a good time.
You’ll have gathered that I’m not a fan but, even so, you have to respect the cinematic grandeur of the songs. She’s produced a work on a par with the films of Ingmar Bergman and the auteurs of Russian cinema in the 1970s. It’s a desperately ambitious and powerful production.
The trouble is that, for me, it’s a film I’d be sorely tempted to leave midway through. It’s a record that’s well outside my comfort and enjoyment zone, an internalised Gothic horror show, with very few interludes. It’s about as easy as suffering a raw wound in a salt bath.
If you’re new to this blog, I should say that when I have a strong reaction against an album I like to balance it with something more supportive. I don’t want my personal response to turn someone away from an artist’s work and to compromise the evident effort and passion that has gone into it. This 9/10 review appeared on The Line of Best Fit.
Taster Track : Between You and Me Nothing
Clota : Letters From Mouse
This is soothing ambient electronica that drifts pleasantly by like the best ambient music but without leaving much of an impression.
That’s not to say that it’s a failure at all. Like the frogspawn of the opening piece it doesn’t have a rigid structure so it spreads out of the speakers and seeps past you. You have to be careful not to let it just pass you by. You gain a sense of the piece and then it’s gone like a movement caught in a corner of your eye or a sermon in church at the point when you realise that, despite your best intentions, your attention has wandered.
That sense of church isn’t misplaced. ‘Juniper’ carries a faint suggestion that this might be music from a church recital, something in touch with some deeper understanding. It’s not religious music but it could be spiritual. Clota, who gives the album its title, was the patron Goddess of the River Clyde. It could be her inspiration that gives the sense of this being music with a state of grace and flow, emerging unknowingly and straight from some inner fount of creativity. It’s all sounding a little bit mystic, isn’t it?
What’s undeniable is that this music meanders gently and freely, conjuring up a sense of pastoral place and purpose. It feels safe and comforting, detached from the stress and bad things that are happening in the world. It’s melodic, but you won’t be whistling it as you walk down the High Street. The little passage of bird song connecting the end of ‘Juniper’ with the start of ‘Bowling Greens and Tennis Clubs’ isn’t overdone but feels and sounds lovely.
Turn to Clota when you need a respite from bad news and social media saturation.
Taster Track : Bowling Greens and Tennis Clubs
On The Lips : Molly Lewis
Molly Lewis is an Australian whistler. A very good one, as this album shows.
Her intentions are clear from the start, with a brief intro that refers back to Lauren Bacall’s famous scene with Humphrey Bogart in ‘To Have and Have Not’. Her sultry tones welcome you to the album:
Good evening
Thank you for listening
My name is Molly Lewis
And tonight
I’ll be whistling.
Those five lines contain everything you need to know about the album.
Molly Lewis certainly knows how to whistle. Her whistle comes across as an instrument in its own right. It’s unwavering and with a purity and timbre it’s easy to like. It’s quite heavenly in small doses.
That’s the catch. Whistling is a restricted genre. It doesn’t easily translate elsewhere as a lead element. Andrew Bird is another expert practitioner but even he limits his whistling to a key role within songs. He doesn’t make it the whole song.
Molly’s approach is to place her whistling in a lounge setting. ‘Lounge Lizard’ allows her to show that she has the admittedly niche genre nailed. ‘Crushed Velvet’ brings the spaghetti western into the lounge bar too. That sets the template for an album that for all its charm drifts into easy listening before it’s half way through. It carries the stamp of the BBC Light Programme and of acts like the Puppini Sisters. It’s a sweet novelty, but still a novelty.
This is an album best saved for when your elderly relatives come to stay, but it’s a very good example of that.
Taster Track : Lounge Lizard
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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