Starring
Beachwood Sparks, LaBelle Epoque, Lo Moon, Middle Kids, Sam Morton,
The Show Horse
Across The River Of Stars : Beachwood Sparks
Beachwood Sparks have been around, on and off, since 1998. They cram a lot of melodic cosmic country into the 28 minutes of ‘Across The River Of Stars’, all of it good.
To give you a better idea of what that means in practice, just listen to the opening track ‘My Love, My Love’. It mixes exquisite Beach Boy harmonies, with rock style wig outs and surprisingly traditional folk. Wander into the second song ‘Torn In Two’ and you also recognise that it sounds as if it’s sung by The Flaming Lips.
It’s a heady brew, if a little over the top at times. Think of it as a kitchen where the chef has invited a few friends to join him and they all want to leave their mark. It means that there are a lot of flavours to like, even if some of them seem to clash at first listening.
Buried in its core is a love for country music. Somewhere deep in ‘Dolphin Dance’ there’s a hoe down kicking off. To call it a country album thorough would be misleading. The country element is like a doodle that expands to become a fully realised work of art.
Songs such as ‘Torn In Two’ and ‘Gentle Samurai’ are melodies coasting on a surfer’s wave. They’re warm, charming and extremely likeable, irresistible like an affectionate puppy.
Listen to this if you want to take a sprightly leap into Summer.
Taster Track : Gentle Samurai
The Front Runners
I Wish You Way More Than Luck : Lo Moon
Arriving quietly earlier this year, this album of underplayed, emotional but restrained songs may just prove to be their career high and a contender for album of the year.
This is grown up pop with grandeur but not overblown pomp. Its humanity and experience glows through every song. It sounds bewitching and ethereal, as if remembered through a fading colour Instamatic photograph. These are songs that dance in slow motion around their memories.
Matt Lowell’s vocals caress the songs into being. The backing vocals are uniformly lovely, straight from a memorial service where the music has been an important part because it means something. Guitars chime, synths flutter and swoon, woodwind adorns songs where it needs to.
They have their own voice too, not drawn from a pop template but carved out of life and experience. Songs are held and suspended in perfect balance between all four members. They’re not looking for cheap hooks, and these are songs that will creep into your heart and linger in your soul.
It’s an album to listen to as a whole. The mood builds across its 41 minute running time with regular peaks and highlights. Every song hits the mark, so I’ll single out just one. ‘Evidence’ is simply one of the best songs of 2024, its heartbreak failing to obscure the essential decency at its heart. It’s a lump in the throat moment.
With this album, Lo Moon show us what Talk Talk might have sounded like if they had continued to evolve as a pop band rather than mutating into something completely different. There’s an echo of Mike and the Mechanics too, particularly in the way it shares a willingness to explore the personal past. If you need a more up to date reference, they’re the human end of Nation of Language.
I nearly missed this album despite following Lo Moon since the start. I’ve not seen it reviewed in the main music media or heard it on the radio. That’s a crying shame. It deserves to be heard and loved far and wide.
Taster Track : Evidence
The Chasing Pack
Volume ll : La Belle Epoque
LaBelle Epoque’s luxurious approach to pop is appealing, intriguing and full of promise and potential.
Who are they? Heaven knows. At times they seem like a collective of like minded singers and musicians from the Netherlands. At other times they seem like a house band and songwriting team for an eclectic group of vocalists. They seem to have no personality of their own, flitting from style to style but that eventually becomes their personality.
There’s something about them that is hyper real. Like the album cover they pack a lot in and it's too carefully positioned and staged to be true. Perhaps they’re an amalgam of all lost, under the radar bands.
The short introduction to the album does not prepare you for what follows. It’s a pretty chamber pop piece that heads straight into ‘The Hoop’. The bluesy vocals that hit you upfront are so at odds with the civilised baroque opener that your ears suffer an unexpected pratt fall. It’s a good song, a little like Abbey Road era Beatles on ‘Oh Darling’ Abbey. There’s country in the mix too in the steel guitars of ‘Back Where I Belong / Take It Slow’. ‘Outnumbered’ is the sound of a song settling down to sleep. There are hints of showtime to ‘Stupid Girls’
Just as you think the album is close to, but not quite hitting the soaring and swooping melodies their songs deserve, along comes ‘I’ve Searched All of My Skies’. That’s the sound of honey dripping from warm toast and spreading across the plate. Gorgeous.
They’re a band drenched in the rich sounds of pop through the ages. They’ve evolved away from the mainstream without losing that appeal. Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeroes pulled off a similar trick.
The album is a heady brew of the best of pop.
Taster Track : I’ve Searched All of My Skies
Faith Crisis Pt 1 : Middle Kids
The Middle Kids’ new album is full of indie rock, radio friendly melodies. It’s lacking something though.
In some ways they’re unlikely stars. In interviews they come across as more sober and grounded than you might expect, enlightened older siblings that you can look up to. They’ve worked hard and planned their career carefully. They probably went to songwriting school and graduated with Honours.
Something’s missing though. For a start there’s no truly defining song on this album as there was with ‘Golden Star’ and ‘Today We’re The Greatest’ on their first two albums. Secondly, it doesn’t seem to have built on the foundations of previous work. They’re standing still and treading water - not at the same time, obviously.
If there is a development, it’s in the fact that they now sound more as if they’ve settled on a Middle Kids genre and are happy to stick with it. They’re writing songs that surge towards bigger audiences and their course is set for Alanis Morissette territory. To be fair, in reaching out to more people they still do so in a way that could make any of their songs special to any one person. They’re also making more songs for X Factor contestants to cover.
It’s telling that the instrumental interlude, ‘Your Side, Interlude) is one of the best things here. It shouldn't be.
This is an album that is not so much a disappointment as an anti-climax. Perhaps it’s a faith crisis that can be resolved in parts two or three
Taster Track : Bootleg Firecracker
Daffodils and Dirt : Sam Morton
Coming to this without any background I was completely wrong footed. I expected from the name and the cover, some form of guitar based rock. I was completely unprepared for the heavily produced, experimental and very dark tones within.
The record is the product of an odd sounding menage a trois. Sam Morton is actress Samantha Morton. Her partner on this record is producer and record label owner Richard Russell and jazz saxophonist Alabaster dePlume contributes to several of the tracks.
It’s fair to say that Morton had a difficult upbringing. Memories of that are the fuel for this album. It’s a dark and intense affair, slow and mournful too. There’s not an Americana chord or rock guitar in earshot.
It’s a very produced record, theatrical too. This is a dramatic, well made and affecting actorly record. In the spoken word passages, Morton’s cultivated voice bumps up against the coarse and damaged nature upbringing. ‘The Shadow’ with its inference of abuse is particularly disturbing. The touches brought by Russell strengthen the effect. The chiming bells in ‘Let’s Walk In The Night’, the sound of power being turned off in ‘Broxtowe Girl’, the anxious breathing in’ Purple Yellow’ - the colour of bruises - it all adds to the atmosphere. Perhaps it’s best described as a particularly gritty ‘Play For Today’ set to music.
You may be wondering why you would enter this world. Well, whilst it’s a slow and heavy collection of songs, there are also lighter touches amidst the darkness. Whilst ‘Double Dip Neon' is a dark, ambient, experimental musical collage, there’s a memorable melody to ‘Cry Without End’ and ‘The Little White Cloud That Died’ has a nursery rhyme lullaby feel.
Saint Etienne, Steven Wilson and Tindersticks have all dabbled in the same waters, but not to the same committed, unrelenting extent. Eels have also released albums that pick the scabs on terrible experiences. If there’s a criticism to level at Sam Morton it’s that in the end it sounds broken and defeated. There’s no ray of light to cling to.
Broken and defeated, yes. But it’s gripping and compelling too.
Taster Track : Cry Without End
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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