Starring
A Certain Ratio, Hiro Ama, Jon Brion, Liz Lawrence, Richard Sen, TV Pins
The Front Runners
The Avalanche : Liz Lawrence
Liz Lawrence offers eleven enduring delights, drawn from the well of pure pop.
Sometimes, the greatest joys can come from stumbling across pleasure in unexpected areas - a record sale in the basement of an office block, a pop up cafe with home made cakes or, I can now claim, a Liz Lawrence album that has languished on my ‘to play’ list since 2021.
She’s a mistress of the three minute pop song with a gift for pop melodies. Over the course of this album, that gift just keeps on giving. She seems to have nailed her influences to the period from 1978’s new wave explosion, through the first blooming of synth pop to the flourishing sophistication of, say, Altered Images ‘Don’t Talk To Me About Love’. Those influences are apparent in her vocals too. In the earlier songs you can hear Chrissie Hynde; by the album’s midpoint of ‘I’ll Go On’ you can hear Clare Grogan.
The songs are small scale but gems, pearls from an oyster’s shell rather than industrial diamonds hewed from a colossal mine. They’re not overdone and that’s fresh and revitalising. They appear, sparkling like the sun breaking through clouds over water.
This is an album to love. I should say that ‘The Avalanche’ came out in 2021. Her new album ‘Peanuts’ came out earlier this year. I won’t be leaving it so long before I dip into that.
Taster Track : I’ll Go On
Aircutter : TV Pins
TV Pins offer road trip pop that proves it can sometimes be better to travel than arrive.
Occasionally it feels as if I spread the definition of pop used for Pop In The Real World a little thin. Like a deep crust pizza, all the good business sits at the edge in the margins. Then a new band like TV Pins comes along and supplies the pepperoni that sits slap in the middle to provide the tastiest morsel of all. It doesn’t push pop’s boundaries but it delivers the centre ground very well indeed.
They know exactly what’s needed in a good pop song, without sticking to a template formula. There’s an American mid 80s feel at play. This is perfect for long road trips down long straight highways with the top down. It’s a sound to fill canyons and it’s often exhilarating.
The band genre hop with skill and confidence. Try the college rock of ‘Oh Yeah’, the pedal guitar of ‘Shining Light’ that calls to mind the Rolling Stones in their late Americana phase or the Matchbox 20 vocals playing throughout. You’ll soon hear what I mean.
The Stranglers’ Jean Jacques Brunel once commented that if you play pop you’ll inevitably be influenced by everything you’ve heard before. The trick is to keep it sounding fresh. That’s what TV Pins succeed in doing.
It’s a consistently strong album with no duff tracks. For me two tracks stand out as true highlights. The single ‘Bye Bye Reseda’ is E.L.O. classic pop shorn of excessive orchestration. ‘Wishing Pool’ is even better. It oozes from the speaker, propelled by one of the slinkiest bass riffs I’ve heard in a long while. It will be a monster live, giving the rest of the band permission to strut all over it.
Trends come and go, but there will always be a welcome place for TV Pins.
Taster Track : Bye Bye Reseda
The Chasing Pack
It All Comes Down To This : A Certain Ratio
The alternative sound of the 70s and 80s is alive and kicking in the 21st century.
One of the impacts of punk was to blow apart the music world and highlight that anything could be tried and achieved musically. Genre boundaries weren’t so much blurred as dismantled and packed away in deep storage, creating the space for an explosion of musical creativity. A Certain Ratio took full advantage, combining the spirit of punk with the sounds of post punk and the rhythms of the dance floor. They haven’t changed or softened their approach for this album.
It’s a balance you don’t often hear. Dance rhythms often serve as an escape from gritty lives. They’re less often used, it seems, to push the darkness of the songs as they do throughout this album on songs such as ‘Dorothy Says’. Heaven 17’s debut marries the same influences but across the album rather than song by song as ACR do here.
‘All Comes Down To This’ is similar. It’s the sound of pop flirting with a breakdown. It feeds into ‘Keep It Real’, a jagged, edgy song that swaggers its way along the path that separates post punk and dance.
It’s a lot catchier than you might expect, this blend of funk and post punk. ‘Surfer Ticket’ is surprisingly similar to James. If there’s a flaw it’s simply that the songs don’t build to a climax, and neither does the album. The lyrics are intriguing, as much stream of consciousness as poetry. Songs are often narrated rather than sung. ‘Estate Kings’ serves as a memoir of life in suburbia around the M23, a less rosy St Etienne.
It’s an enjoyable album, dystopia wrapped up in the rhythm of a good time.
Taster Track : Dorothy Says
Music For Peace and Harmony : Hiro Ama
Teleman’s drummer displays where he comes from musically, in this collection of experimental and oriental electronica.
It’s a standalone move, a statement that there’s more to him than meets the ear when he’s helping Teleman to make their gorgeous slices of radio pop. The album title may point you towards the world of new age wellness meditation music, but this is much more than that.
This is music that feels as if Hiro is coming home musically after years of embracing Western pop. At their best on something like ‘Roundabout’, these songs are sweet and warm like homemade bread and butter pudding. Elsewhere though the music creates a feeling that sweetness and warmth is not enough and Ama is already suffering itchy musical feet to explore more widely.
Some of that comes from the recurrent motifs that underpin the early songs. In the title track, an alternating four and five note theme keeps you attached to the tune while more experimental flute and ambient notes play above it. These refrains, together with the steady mid pace exotic feel of each song, create a feeling of formal ceremony that sounds unusual to these ears.
The two collaborations with Keeley Forsyth see the album wander furthest from Teleman’s pop. Her vocals on ‘Metal Wires’ and ‘Billowing’ are similar to Anonhi’s. Sometimes they’re a little too strange to be comforting or to promote peace and harmony. They ask you to accept differences even as they occasionally grate.
This is a personal album, part of a quest to align two musical cultures. It feels as if it’s good for me without making me love it.
Taster Track : Roundabout
Punch-drunk Love (Soundtrack Album) : Jon Brion
The soundtrack to this 2002 film has its moments but, more than anything, it highlights the challenges of listening to soundtracks out of context.
Let’s assume that you haven’t seen the film. You can look it up on Wikipedia and that tells you that it’s a surrealist rom com. You’ll have your expectations of what the soundtrack to that sounds like. You’ll notice that the album is 44 minutes long. The film lasts for 95 minutes. It’s not intended that you hear the music in one unbroken sequence. With another 50 minutes to fill between the songs you have pauses that allow you to switch between styles without those switches jarring. And an album in any other circumstances should be the performer's creation. With a score, they’re supporting the director’s vision. No matter how lushly you dress it up, they’re a hired hand. And, most of all, when you listen to the album at home you’re missing half the experience. It’s the pictures that drive the music and the music comes in fragments determined by how long the film needs them to be. It’s complicated.
All things considered Jon Brion has tackled the competing musical demands pretty well. The ambient pieces such as ‘Hands and Feet’ ‘Tabla’ and ‘Overture’ are rhythmic and experimental. Then there’s the more traditional rom com moments, all surging strings, romantic harp and Randy Newmanesque melodies.
‘Alleyway’ captures both sides in one, and its effective in showing how something dark and menacing can erupt at a moment’s notice from a bright and sunny scene. It’s the moment that works most effectively in giving you a sense of the film’s personality and character.
Then there are the standalone songs and tunes. ‘Punch Drunk Tack Piano’ is my favourite - a semi ragtime tune that bounces along. ‘He Needs Me’ is a top of the bill showtune, one that sells the film most successfully. By the time you arrive in the Elvis impersonator territory of ‘Danny (Lonely Blue Boy)’ things have whirled a little out of control. It’s an enjoyable song though, nicely done.
As a whole then the album lacks unity, but by all accounts the film is also one that flits wildly about so you can’t complain on that score. It’s hard to know though who this is aimed at. The film bombed at the Box Office even though with hindsight it is widely regarded as one of the greatest movies of the 2000s and the 21st century.
Perhaps the soundtrack will follow the same path.
Taster Track : Punch Drunk Tack Piano
India Man : Richard Sen
Here’s an engaging set from DJ Richard Sen that has one foot in the club and the other in the musical library.
This is dance music for non dancers. It’s easy to move too. The beats are regular, the rhythms have a line dance order and inevitability to them. If that sounds like damning with faint praise it’s not intended that way. It’s more that they set out their stall from the off and stick to it . They give you permission too, to duck away from the floor to catch your breath and simply listen from the bar.
These tunes may not be wild and frantic but they are listenable and appealing. ‘Eleven Eleven’ passes by like a float in a carnival procession leaving colour and happiness in its wake. ‘Moksha’ takes its time but lets you listen. The saxophone sporadically wailing across the track provides interest as do the chants in ‘Magadhan Empire’. The first few notes of ‘Mysteries of Meluhha’ sound like the opening of an on trend news bulletin. It brings just a little more energy locked under tight control.
For some, it may be an issue that these tunes are accessible, but they drift. ‘Hills of Kashmir’ is pleasant but nowhere near essential. It felt as if these songs are destined to be used for documentary backing tracks or to accompany gentle household tasks or the making of lists. They flit in and out of your attention span, but leaving you feeling chilled.
We all need a little music that provides a breathing space in our daily routines. This fits the bill nicely.
Taster Track : Eleven Eleven
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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