The Final Frontier
(Universal)
Iron Maiden are, for better or worse, a lot like AC/DC. They both ultimately serve one explicit role and have done so for the better part of their lengthy careers. AC/DC will always be the ultimate pub-rock band and Iron Maiden will always be the ultimate traditional heavy metal band. Genres aside, the only real difference between the two bands is that AC/DC have always known what they are – whereas Iron Maiden have an annoying habit of forgetting every handful of years.
The Final Frontier, like 2006’s A Matter Of Life And Death before it, is the sound of Iron Maiden once again attempting to prove there’s more to their work than galloping rhythms, guitar harmonies and a comprehensive collection of history textbooks – and, like each attempt before it, it falls well short of the band’s ambitions. There are some sparkling moments littered throughout the album but, for the most part, The Final Frontier is the band’s worst album since the late-90s.
It’s difficult to know where to begin one’s criticism. Kevin Shirley’s production is a dull, bass-heavy morass, Bruce Dickinson’s voice sounds positively haggard and the band’s trademark guitar harmonies are completely leaden. The album’s true albatross is its bafflingly atrocious songwriting – the band opting to eschew their winning formula of platinum choruses, galloping rhythms and power ballads in favour of pointless, meandering, mid-tempo tracks like Coming Home.
The record’s only saving grace is standout number Mother Of Mercy which, unsurprisingly, most strongly recalls the band’s earlier work. There are highlights elsewhere but the band ultimately waste every good idea in their arsenal, from the churning rhythms of Starblind to the sparkling guitar melodies of Isle Of Avalon, by surrounding them with mediocre detours and somnambulant vocal parts. Truly disappointing.
H½ Matt O’Neill
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Songs from the 86 Tram
(Shock)
Let’s hope musical comedians have an unhealthy tendency towards masochism. Otherwise subjecting your ego to a two-pronged criticism – Is it funny? Can he play guitar? – would hardly seem worth the effort. Stubbing your toe really hard for short-lived – but certain – gratification would surely be a more fulfilling pastime. Justin Heazlewood – aka The Bedroom Philosopher – is a pretty funny guy who has enough musical ability to almost pull off a comedy album with latest release Songs From The 86 Tram.
To be fair the record is actually the soundtrack to Heazlewood’s live show which, by all reports, is a riot when performed live. Heazlewood conjures a cast of passengers – bogans, hipsters, middle-aged mothers – with the accuracy and irony necessary for good comedy. YouTube favourite Northcote (So Hungover) is an accurate take on the obnoxious, ubiquitous, public-transport hipster, but – and the same could be said for the rest of the album – the irony lacks the acerbity to push it from being pretty humorous to outright hilarious.
Likewise Irish Girl has some memorably funny one liners – “Dear God, I know you work in mysterious ways/you should realise we’re pretty shit detectives” – but it’s not quite funny enough without the corresponding visuals for it to comfortably stand alone.
Musically The Bedroom Philosopher treads the same ground as acts of the same genre, emulating familiar styles but populating lyrics with comedic monologues and witty one-liners. It’s folk-tinged and well-played, but not spectacularly precise enough to be impressive.
Songs From The 86 Tram is undoubtedly funnier as an accompaniment to the live show. The problem, then, that The Bedroom Philosopher is yet to overcome is that the overarching narrative that propels that live show is lost in an album; precious few first-time listeners are going to do enough googling to find it.
HH½ Helen Stringer
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The Way Out
(Spunk/EMI)
New York two-piece The Books continue to create then explore their own experimental soundscapes on their fourth album The Way Out, and it seems the well of weirdness and bizarro samples is far from tapped out. It’s almost impossible to simplify what they do as any specific kind of genre or style, and one can only imagine the lengths that they go to in order to source the material that they weave together into these tripped out tapestries.
The Way Out begins with some barely plucked strings and harmonics while a soothing voice narrates an introduction to some kind of audio therapy recording which aptly describes the adventure ahead, and suggests the new-age, self-help, relaxation theme that the record is loosely built around. Things build slowly over the first few tracks, with glitched up snippets appearing briefly and sporadically – they whiz by until you finally get a beat you can nod along to and a disturbing story with children threatening to kill you on A Cold Freezing Night. When they let semi-traditional song structures settle in on tracks like Beautiful People and Free Translator there is no doubt that they could easily churn out a pop record if they wanted to, but thankfully they want to squeeze more out of what they’re doing.
The Books’ live performances rely heavily on a visual element interplaying with the sounds and the music, and listening to the record without this extra enhancement is a different experience entirely – if you can become immersed in the music and let yourself get swept up in the madness and imagination it’s a very different kind of journey.
HHHH Chris Yates
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Paper Covers Stone
(Longtime Listener)
Robert Fisher is a genius. It’s no wonder that people will travel half way across the world to be a part of his musical collective, the Willard Grant Conspiracy. Around 30 musicians from all over the world have contributed to the ever-evolving alt-country project since its inception in 1994 , and they’ve released an outstanding catalogue of albums and songs over the past 16 years. The latest release, Paper Covers Stone, is a collection of reworks, mostly of older songs from their back catalogue, the idea being to strip back the layers and expose the simple foundations of each one.
Despite its stripped-back nature, there are wonderfully dynamic moments hidden in the bowels of some tracks. Preparing For The Fall (a monster clocking in at just under 8 minutes) builds and builds until it is swimming in feedback and reverb. No Such Thing As Clean also pushes the limits, surprising, since the core of the song is a loop of only two chords. Fisher positively channels Johnny Cash in Fare Thee Well, sounding like he is sitting by your side, speaking into your ear. The lovely intimate moments just keep coming; the creaking of a chair in the studio, Fisher’s breath on the microphone, these instances lending themselves heartedly to the concept.
Fisher has a voice that you will always remember. His tenor is mournful and resolved in Vespers, the story of a man desperate to be of faith but eternally magnetic to sin. His voice is like an ache in your heart or a lump in your throat, and every note is heart-wrenching.
If you’re a fan, you probably already own this record, but for those first-timers interested enough to take the leap: be careful. You might find yourself having to buy the whole back catalogue as well.
HHHH Lily Luscombe
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Alive
(Soul Whisper Records/Sony)
Having spent the last 20 years in as the frontman for radio rock staple Live, Ed Kowalczyk should really be sick of rehashing the same formula when it comes to writing music, capitalising on a well structured solo album to maintain his current fanbase and expand it by reaching out to different areas through musical experimentation, but that doesn’t seem to interest him. Instead Ed sticks to what he knows with harmony driven power rock with quivering vocal work and slightly condescending lyrics.
Lead single Grace uses dynamic power shifts between the verse and chorus to give the song a rich sounding arrangement which has already seen it picked up by several Christian rock networks for its ‘faith inspiring’ lyrics, but it is also the prime example of the faults of this album. So many of the tracks feel contrived to fit a pocket of music that many Live fans would expect: the western acoustic strums introducing the processed vocal on Zion and dancing guitar melody leading itself into a cymbal crushing chorus of Stand both resemble what Kowalczyk did previously on The Distance To Here and Birds Of Prey, the only difference is now, without the aggressive backing of his former bandmates, you can sense the studio musicians taking up the slack and a strong sense of overproduction, stripping all the tracks of edge and any real emotion. Instead were left with empty husks of tracks like Just In Time and In Your Light which are just one bad wife-beater singlet from being Creed.
It’s disappointing to hear that someone so obviously talented has chosen to go down this path, but if he’s lucky, his former sparring partners may just take him back.
HH Mark Beresford
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Special Moves
(Rock Action/Spunk/EMI)
Mogwai live doesn’t work on record – especially when you have control of the volume. It’s only when confronted with the music face to face does that sense of the air being sucked out of the room make you tremble. You need to feel like your heart is going to stop, like you do in the actual presence of the band playing Mogwai Fears Satan. Live, it’s powerful. Live, it can reduce you to tears and that’s an impossible proposition at home – no matter how good your stereo is.
This live album is good and the 11 selected here some of their best – Hunted By A Freak, Cody, 2 Rights Make 1 Wrong and Like Herod immaculately and beautifully captured to tape – but captured no better than they were the first time in the studio. Anyone who’s seen them live will know and attest that Mogwai are a physical experience and there’s nothing here that doesn’t fall short. The closest you’ll get is the accompanying DVD.
Burning is a live film from the same series of 2009 Brooklyn concerts. It’s creative and gritty and gives you insights you can’t get from the CD. Shot in black and white with a heavy grain, these eight songs do not follow traditional conventions of documenting music. The 40 minutes of footage is as close as you can get to the band – closer than the front row. You are literally seeing the drummer’s sticks rebound, the guitar strings flick off fingernails and a real sense of entropy due to the proximity.
Mogwai fans should own this film – it works wonderfully because it’s not trying to “be there”, instead creating a parallel world where the songs become stories made anew. Special Moves, however, shows Mogwai are a force you need to feel in the flesh!
HHH½ Alex Gillies
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Weathervanes
(Dew Process/Universal)
Known as much for their comparisons with Sufjan Stevens and Death Cab For Cutie bard Ben Gibbard as for their self-appointed role to cheer up the subway commuters of New York one spontaneous song at a time, Freelance Whales sure are a talked about bunch.
Perhaps if songwriter Judah Dadone’s story as an avid collector of dreams growing up with the solitude of rural life was as well known, the comparison throwers would feel allayed by his delicate turn of phrase, graceful delivery and choice of instrumentation. Opening with banjo-ridden love in Generator ^ First Floor, Freelance Whales establish an insight to their serious side which balances the childlike wonderment felt elsewhere on their debut album. The lyrical impact of the record is immediate, though is not limited to the mere sound of the words. Starring at first threatens to go nowhere though arrives in a meeting of off-beat percussion and sweet melody, musically disagreeing with its lyrical story of being inside a nightmare. Broken Horse begins as a literal tale told over an acoustic guitar, though slowly, one by one, bird chatter, layered vocals, then finally competing vocals are introduced as the words and imagery become increasingly fantastical. It’s a showpiece moment in which the contradictory poles of undemanding and complex somehow meet, and consequently change the dynamic of the song and the entire album in the process.
Weathervanes is a curious, wandering album full of lyrical ambiguity that can either be pored over to find some greater meaning, or simply appreciated for their whimsical ability to dance easily with the music. Dadone’s intrinsic sense of place and home is truly felt throughout and lends a depth that could make some of the bouncier (Kilojoules) or lighter (Channels) moments take the album down as a pretty, throwaway pop debut. Weathervanes is far too clever in a gracefully dreamy way to be deemed that.
HHHH Tyler McLoughlan
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King Of The Beach
(Pod/Inertia)
A common criticism of lo-fi garage rock is that poor recording quality is used to obscure what is either a lack of musical aptitude or songwriting talent. Certainly in some cases this is true, but it has too simply become a reason for detraction from jealous and jaded careerists.
It is possible that Nathan Williams has reacted against comments, good or bad, made about his chosen recording methods in the past with his third full-length King Of The Beach. Put simply, King Of The Beach sounds good; classically good, palatable, easy to digest. With a push from Jay Reatard’s old rhythm section, the title track bursts out of the gates with a perfect juxtaposition of jangling and beefy guitars and Super Soaker’s magical urgent chorus sounds almost interstellar. The cute 60s pop of When Will You Come is passable, but not Williams’ strongpoint; he does short, sharp and silly and with aplomb – as evidenced on Post Acid and the surprisingly quirky Convertible Balloon.
There won’t be much praise circulating for his lyrics, but the part-careless, part-utterly-pained libretto always sounds 100 percent genuine. Idiot, Green Eyes and Take On The World are demure and introspective as is his wont and while they’re elementary in construction, they’re quite powerful.
Williams ought to be credited for his gall in opting to crawl away from his noisy security blanket and trying something different. The slickness here will undoubtedly be met with some backlash from old fans, but one would hope the record does more good than harm to his future. If the songs were of the same standard as, say, his 2009 Wavvves record, he might be in some trouble, but what he has delivered here has lifted the bar, he’s proven he’s a fine and versatile pop songwriter.
HHHH½ Dan Condon
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Alive Till I’m Dead
(Virgin/EMI)
Lucky doesn’t even begin to start with this East London MC. Stabbed in the neck with a broken bottle in 2009, the mere fact that Stephen Manderson is even alive little own rapping to a successful degree is a victory that any future record sales will probably be dwarfed by. Having already fell in and out of one recording contract with Mike Skinner’s The Beats label, this is the Professor’s second bite at the cherry and this time, he has given it a far more solid chomp.
His nasal tone gives an Eminem-like spin to his grime flow and the production is simple yet effective, the vocal samples and loops on tracks like Jungle and opening highpoint Kids That Love To Dance really shaping a fresh sound that jumps from the speakers. And he holds the humour of the former great from Detroit to, lines like “I’m rap’s George Best with a lot more cess/A little more liquor and a lot more sex” (Oh My God) working with his tongue-in-cheek nature rather than an overtly cocky overture.
Although weaker moments like City Of Gold and Do For You threaten briefly to derail this single-filled LP, Alive Till I’m Dead has enough readymade hits on it to see Professor Green shine bright on the musical landscape for at least the immediate future. It’s danceable, it’s fun and it’s as much a party record as a dark tale of redemption.
Hopefully listeners will look further than the Lily Allen assisted hook on ultra-catchy Just Be Good To Green and take this album for what it is – another solid stone in the street level freestyle that’s taking the spotlight from the east and west coasts and planting it square on Ol’ Blighty.
HHH½ Benny Doyle
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Church With No Magic
(Warp/Inertia)
It’s difficult to feel anything other than disappointment following one’s initial hearing of PVT’s Church With No Magic. The follow-up to the Sydney/London trio’s staggering 2008 breakthrough record O Soundtrack My Heart (delivered under their original Pivot moniker before recent legal proceedings forced a name change), Church With No Magic represents such a stylistic departure from the band’s previous output so as to immediately predispose most dedicated listeners against it.
The dense precision of the band’s former incarnation has been replaced with layer upon layer of synthesisers; Laurence Pike’s hyper-dextrous kit-work has been pared back to an austere pulse and the intertwining instrumental melodies that haunted O Soundtrack My Heart have been superseded by Richard Pike’s texture-driven vocal work. Whereas Pivot’s output was angular, complicated and confronting, PVT’s is lush, moody and minimalistic.
Fortunately, time heals all wounds. Once one is willing to suspend one’s expectations regarding what PVT should sound like and simply engage with the record that the band have made, a decidedly different listening experience is revealed – a better listening experience, even. The record’s more atmospheric and inviting aesthetics may represent a stylistic shift for Pivot fans but, in truth, there is little to no deterioration of the band’s quality or invention.
Song-oriented works like surging lead single Window or the album’s title track are deeply intelligent, warmly engaging and subversively challenging while less conventional numbers like Waves And Radiation are gifted with a depth and richness not previously showcased by the band. The whole album, meanwhile, revels in a truly distinctive atmosphere and a remarkable cohesion – ensuring the band’s position as one of Australia’s most unique exports.
HHHH Matt O’Neill
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