The Beast of Ego and The Soothing sounds

I shouldn’t be allowed to be put into a position to look into the lives of the general public and to in any way compare and contrast my existence with the greater population, it makes me feel ill and makes that red mist of anger course through my veins and cloud my vision. As a population we have made a country that is bland and disinteresting where mediocrity is accepted and even applauded and where true individualism is labelled as abnormal and abhorrent, for a while it makes me feel sorry for those that don’t see the bigger picture but ultimately it fills me with an apocalyptic rage that tempered by the knowledge of my powerlessness drives me back into my own space where art and expression can mean everything and the small worlds that we create for ourselves can be painted in bright colours and twist into interesting and exotic shapes.

I have been weighing my own ego and using it to benefit my future but when it gets out the box it is like a rabid beast that must feed, feed on human flesh. There is a stunning lack of honesty between us as a race that leads to appreciation of what you have achieved being seen as mouth-watering arrogance and there are so many things that we are for some reason not supposed to say that most people end up saying nothing at all. There are great contingents of creative and interesting people and they are no different biologically from anyone else they just broke the cycle and believed in themselves enough to make themselves heard, it’s only a rarity because we take such pleasure in crushing people. Capitalism is a system that thrives on competition, now I do believe in competition, a healthy competition that pushes our own goals ever upwards while inspiring those around us to do more, to be the best that they can be, what I can’t stand is the competition that crushes others underfoot as one person rises ever upwards. Be mindful of your potential and remember to congratulate yourself for your achievements, but do it quietly and in the small company of those who are invested in your journey – don’t shout it and don’t ever believe that it makes you something more than any other person. Face challenges with confidence and a faith in your abilities but without arrogance and reverence for what the task involves because it demeans any endeavour and you for engaging in it with a closed heart and a caged mind.

My head is full to bursting point with ideas and new situations and trying to conceive how I will extract the best out of them, trying to come to some agreement with myself about how I will deliver what people expect from me while staying true to the person I think it is important for me to be. I will have to learn to remember that I can’t always take the simplest option and be resolute in my determinations and the small and subtle acts that can colour the way you are perceived. I have to have faith in my judgment while still having an open hand and a head to accept the ideas of others, I will have to tame the ego so that it still operates, still accepts nothing but the best but requires nothing more than the soundtrack of my life to keep it sedated. As the rest of my life becomes more crowded and bustling with new concepts and pulling me further into the rabbit hole of culinary exploration it becomes even more important for me to remember my love of music and the part of my soul that is happy satisfied and ready to wallow in other people’s creativity.

Soaking myself in new music as I missed the first two weeks of 2012 and it highlights what an addiction it can become and how behind you can feel for even missing a single day of trawling and listening. The years and the months will go into competition as I select what is the best that I have heard and become aware of and share that with you in the order it fell into my ears. I have already been blown away and had some near religious experiences with sound this year so the bar is set very high and I wait with baited breath to be excited and entranced by what the year has to offer. The promise of releases from some big hitters this year that immediately spark my interest The Shins, Marc Lanegan, Queens Of The Stone Age & even possible new material from Rage Against The Machine & Soundgarden but there are many more artists who won’t be filling a stadium near you who I can’t wait to get my ears round there new offerings and I’m sure many bands who I have never heard of that will pop up and become firm favourites. As I always say the enjoyment and appreciation of an album can be a journey, they can grow and evolve in your appreciation so I will try to let you know what is sticking in my head and where my musical journey is taking me this year, I look forward to sharing it all with you.

 

   ‘Future This’ by The Big Pink  straight of the bat and we can tell that these scamps plan on re-cycling the anthem success of ‘Dominoes’ by turning up loud and giving us a big riff we can’t help but yell at the top of our voices. I do hate the way the music press can turn on an artist for delivering anything too much like their previous work but also castigate them for treading too much new ground. This group found a good sound in their first single and it’s no surprise that they would try to utilise that style again and I couldn’t get enough of ‘Dominoes’ so I am certainly listening with a smile on my face and yes yelling out the chorus even though I don’t know the words. There are some lovely little beats dotted around the album and as well as the singing style that sounds like a football terrace rowdy rant there are the hints of quite posh accents and subtler lyrics than you might expect. The production is warm and deep and polishes the edges of the group to give them a big and professional sound. It’s not hit after hit but its toe tapping fast driving stuff that will get into your head and endear these boys into your ear space.

You can’t beat turning it up loud and waiting to yell a lyric at the top of your voice with a track like ‘Stay Gold’

   ‘The Dreamer, The Believer’ by Common I realised on looking back at my albums from 2011 that I had nearly completely stopped listening to any Hip-Hop or Rap and that maybe such genres could save me from permanently being tarred with the miserable old cardigan wearer moniker, but I have to say I find it hard to gel with the modern propensity for high brag and overpowering stacks of sounds on top of sounds production value, we’ve come away from your small scratchy noise Kool Hurc, and one Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jnr has come away from guesting with Erykah Badhu on a love song ode to the glory of the original days of hip-hop.

The album opens with an explosion of bravado and swagger setting the stage for a Kanye toppling mega album with glitz and glam that won’t be ignored but that is needed when you are trying to write yourself into the company of the modern aspirational black figures. Martin Luther is name checked in the same breath as Denzel Washington shortly followed by Run DMC and a vocoded tip of the hat to Jay Z, this is American Dream stuff – filling kid’s heads with the notion that your young talent can topple the kings. But there are subtler moments where a seasoned artist calls from inspiration from a true legend who deserves bringing into the Hip-Hop domain with the brilliant Curtis Mayfield sample on the track ‘Lovin’ I Lost’, for me this track makes the album and highlights the talents of an open hearted rapper with a good flow using those original breaks and grooves to make a standout modern track.

   ‘Into The Wild’ by The Maccabees and then she comes, the album to start your year with a revving engine and dreams in your heart. Already hailed in the popular press as an album of the year and the future predicting boffins of NME prophesising this to be the Maccabees year, but in many ways I can see their point. Five years and now three albums in they are a band you can listen to their talent increase and their sound not change but become a more coherent product as if the skill of the hands is catching up with the scope of their ideas, so yes they drop this album at the start of a year that could see many people discovering the burgeoning talent that has flourished to life in the wild.

That magical feeling when you enjoy a piece of music so much that you are completely hooked in, the hairs standing up and every note and line seeming to seep straight into your consciousness and you feel so lucky to enjoy something so much, you hope that other people can take this much enjoyment from something as simple but at the same time you think it might be specific to you. Me driving home with ‘Pelican’ playing loud in my ears my fist pounding the rhythm on the car door, every lyric hitting home and every beat driving me on. Maybe I have grown to love lyrics about the inevitability of growing older but ho hum.

The album really is a tour de force as grandiose as it is delicate and with the truly original voice of Orlando Weeks telling us tales and swooning us through every track. The drum track is brilliant up-tempo and precise with uplift to the beat that gives that fist pumping rhythm, there are some great switch ups that give the songs new elements and can quicken the tone even when the vocal soars far overhead. This album is going to ring out over festival summers and play out loud over long drives with cars packed full of lucky music fans, lucky to have a musical heritage that has our new breed of bands living up to the heroes they adored as kids and making albums as good as this.

Though I hasten to tip the single here because there are so many great songs it is with ‘Pelican’ that I had a near religious experience and lead me in to the rest of the album more fully, I feel that this album will stay with me though and I will find my way through all the tracks being my favourite and I urge you to let it into your lives – why because it will make it a better place.

     ‘Baby’ by Tribes another hotly tipped and hyped group of London scamps break out of a lot of initial buzz and high hail’s to drop their full long player to welcome ears. I get the feel of a lot of good bands in an interesting blend Supergrass, Cribs, Weezer and other such successful acts but there is a good London shout along chorus that gives the music a good riot boy sound that we love at the moment. But this release has more tender moments and an aching heart desperation a sort of drunken rant that while doesn’t have the chaos of a Titus Andronicus there is a rasp that is hard to ignore and its tempered by the slow drawl which may draw vocal comparisons to the recent Arctic Monkeys, a lot of comparisons I know but they are all solid and make for a good blend.

Maybe they lyrically fall into the traps of melodrama and trite try hard traps but if you are sold by that point you will swallow it and sink into it. Let me wait a while and let the hype boil down and I will get a better picture and form a more solid opinion but for now listen to ‘Half Way Home’ and make your own damn minds up

   ‘The Lion’s Roar’ by First Aid Kit Will we ever reach market saturation of folk singer songwriter songstresses? But when you get young pretty and Scandinavian into the mix it makes for a heady combination then add songs name checking the great and good of country legend and a Fleet Foxes cover and exposure will follow. The close harmony is rich and there are trills in all the right places, the single ‘Emmylou’ has an authentic country twang mixed with that Swedish Folk edge that makes it quite a jaunty affair but I really don’t hear it sticking in your mind for too long. This is a genre that now requires you to have an edge to be noticed, doing it well just aint enough. Not till the last track ‘King Of The World’ do I feel a spark of lasting interest that maybe they have conjured something a happy sad ballad that mixes in some Spanish bandit horns and a hoe down string section and also a big endorsement from the king pixie of this genre Conor Oberst with a final verse, maybe we watch this space.

   ‘Attack On Memory’ by Cloud Nothings From a distraction to fill in time while at university to a home recorded track that caught the right peoples ears to this the third album release Dylan Baldi has created something quite special that could herald a return of a musical form that has been too long missing from our airwaves and record shelves. The album is dynamic, screams of desperation and skill a measured emotional path between shy retiring and full on rage at the world and at themselves making anthems for the self-deprecating masses and hymns for the disillusioned – this is quite simply brilliant. This album could be a nail in the head for the emo movement when we see the same angst and power can be on show without bombast and over sentimentality but sheer talent and a use of music to paint a landscape and convey anger. Punk has come a long way and I find it hard to say I love punk music because of so much of the trash that is performed in its name but with ‘At The Drive In’ reformed a new ‘Cursive’ album on the way I will once again be proud to call myself a filthy punk. Everything from the recording, the guitar sounds, the dead thump of the drums and the nihilistic lyrics oozes the essence of punk. Hard to pick a favourite from this great concise and clearly brilliant record but for its duality and precision guitar work I will pick ‘Fall In’ I urge you to listen to this and listen loud.

So welcome to a 2012 that I hope will be full of challenges and changes and will be overflowing with the mastery of old favourites and the discovery of new talent. Take care of yourselves and each other and I will speak to you soon enough.