Do You Remember The First Time? #4 Grandaddy - Jed's Other Poem

In my review of Mercury Rev's performance of Deserters Songs at the Roundhouse a few months ago, I was initially sceptical of the album's place in the pantheon of modern Americana classics, alongside the likes of the Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin, Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Grandaddy's Under The Western Freeway. But in truth, when anyone compiles such a list, it's inevitably Grandaddy that gets missed out. That was the story of their career in a nutshell; perenially underloved and under the radar, their eventual dissolution in 2006 nonetheless caused considerable mourning amongst their followers, and an outcry for this band to be acknowldeged by a wider audience.

Their call has, in part, been answered by this coming Monday's release of the deluxe edition of 2000's The Sophtware Slump. Every bit as good as debut Under The Western Freeway, it consolidated the band's knack for odd, yet deceptively simple and strangely affecting indie-rock songwriting, underscored by the sadsack voice of front man and chief creative talent Jason Lytle. On its release, The Sophtware Slump gained, with some justification, comparisons with Radiohead's OK Computer for its similar underlying themes of extraterrestrialism, loneliness, and man's struggles with technology. But in contrast with Thom Yorke's cut-and-paste lyrical vagaries, Lytle's words give us a strong visual image and carry real emotional resonance, no matter how strange the circumstances. Broken Household Appliance National Forest for instance, simultaneously draws anger at man's wastefulness and lack of regard for natural habitat, and yet we are able to draw a warm feeling of satisfaction from the deers, frogs and other woodland critters that contentedly make their home amongst the deserted refridgerators and air condition units. Then there's the poor soul in Miner At The Dial-A-View (what is the Dial-A-View exactly? Some kind of pay-per-view precursor of Google Earth perhaps?) looking at images of his home and longing for his return. It's a fine distillation of the feelings of loneliness and re-kindling of long-distant memories (both in terms of time and physical distance) that the band first touched upon on Under The Western Freeway's Everything Beautiful Is Far Away.

Perhaps the strongest recurring theme within The Sophtware Slump is one of obscelescence. There's the astronaut who touches back down to Earth on He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's The Pilot to find a planet which has moved on without him (possibly the same character who makes his weary getaway on the album's final song So You'll Aim Toward The Sky). And then there's the sorry story of Jed The Humanoid who, on becoming despondant after his neglect by his creators as they go on to devise more advanced creations, goes off the rails and ends up meeting an early robot grave. Perhaps the album's most stirring moment is Jed's Other Poem, a reprise of the story which unearths a hitherto undiscovered poem,written by the humanoid  himself, recording his own downfall. It delivers what is both the album's most humourous and devestating passage ("I try to sing it funny like Beck but it's bringing me down/Lower than ground/Beautiful Ground") before fading into the ether over a rippling piano. Listen to it below and then, if you haven't already, go out and get The Sophtware Slump and give this band some posthumous credit.

Zaireeka! - reappraisal of a misunderstood classic

Pitchfork Media is celebrating its 15th birthday this week. Love it or loathe it, there's no denying the site has had an almost unparalleled influence on the indie/alternative music scene over that time. It's also hard to deny that since its inception in 1996, the standard of writing has improved substantially.

For me, one of the greatest travesties that P4k ever inflicted on music journalism was its 0.0 score of Zaireeka!, the Flaming Lips' mind-boggling 4CD album from 1997. One of the worst things about that review was the fact that it failed to provide any critique of the album's music whatsoever, but instead laid into the album's concept (for the uninitiated, the four CDs which make up Zaireeka are all meant for simultaneous play, meaning you need 4 CD players, or else three other friends with CD players, to get the full listening experience).

First of all, let me say that the concept to Zaireeka! is brilliant on so many levels. You never get the same listening experience twice. To keep 4 CD players perfectly in sync over 8 songs and 45 minutes is simply an impossible task, but that ends up being half the fun, especially when you start hearing echoes of a vocal before the original vocal has even been uttered. And then you're able to play around with the whole album dynamics. Which CD should I play in this player? How loud should I have it? Where should this CD player go in the room? And whilst 4 CDs is undoubtedly the recommended  set-up, Zaireeka! can be enjoyed with 3 or even just 2 CDs, giving all manner of permutations (just make sure you have CD1 included in there somewhere).

And then there's the intended communal experience of Zaireeka!, the idea of friends coming along, bringing their CD players, having some drinks, and sitting back and soaking up the madness. I've experienced the album once in this manner, and it has really stuck in my mind in a way that I've never had from simply sticking on a CD, either before or since.

But all of this would be moot if the music itself was a load of old cobblers. It's here where Zaireeka! transcends mere gimmickry, offering a wonderful, and surprisingly focussed set of songs which actually runs the gamut between 1995's Clouds Taste Metallic (when they still sounded like a band playing actual instruments) and 1999's polyphonic masterpiece The Soft Bulletin pretty well.

As part of their 15th birthday celebrations, P4k have dug up a number of journalistic pieces from their archive, one of which is a reappraisal of Zaireeka!, originally written in 2002. It goes a long way to addressing the original misdemeanour, by pretty much outlining what I've said here. Hopefully, moments of agenda-driven, attention-seeking drivel such as that original review are a thing of the past on P4k. But should there remain a dearth of level-headed, objective writing on P4k's pages....well you've always got KILAS, haven't you?

Review: The Men - Leave Home

Joining the ranks of bands with ungoogleable names - Rate Your Music reliably informs me there are at least five artists with the same name - the bleary front cover of Leave Home is similarly inscrutible. And whilst the band's searing noise rock, with its nods to Sonic Youth in particular, hints at the band's Brooklyn roots, there is, in truth, no single overriding influence  to The Men's sound. But if there's one binding factor which ties these 8 songs together, its that whatever The Men put their hand to - be it no wave, garage, space rock or doom metal - they push it deep into the red and beat the living crap out of it.

Leave Home, the band's second full-length, has a kickarse factor that few albums this year are likely to match. Vocals are largely undecipherable, except for when the band what them to be heard, such as the cheeky lyrical lift from Spacemen 3's Take Me To The Other Side on (). For the most part, however, they're simply there to add another layer to The Men's sonic assualt. 

The album's midrift is The Men at their most unyielding. Think is snarling hardcore, punctuated  by disintegrations into jazzy noise. LADOCH's gruelling, slow metal grind and monstrous vocals recall Harvey Milk. Repeated listens soften the blow, but those two songs feels like a deliberate false turn in anticipation for the album's outstanding second half. ()'s lyrical steal is aptly put to a searing Spacemen 3-esque guitars. Shitting With The Shaw takes the other side of that sound, its patient build of  slow wah-wah guitar providing the album's sole breather, before culminating in an explosive finale. Bataille, a potent garage rocker loosely similar to Sonic Youth's Hey Joni, is the album's most immediately gratifying cut, whilst the swarmy dub-punk closer Night Landing suggests at yet another direction this band could go in.

For all that, Leave Home holds together extremely well, its blend of genres not pulling against one another, but bound tightly together by The Men's sheer conviction. Hopefully they'll feel no need to rein in their influences on future records; if they imbue all of their albums with this amount of energy, they'll have no problems forging an identity of their own.

85/100

Shopowners Of The World Unite!

As London, and many other parts of the UK, are beseiged by riots, the likes of which have not been seen in some 30 years, it's easy to reflect on the similarities between the situation all those years ago, and how it is today. In both cases, the protaganists primarily originate from poor households, often from ethnic minorities, at a time with a Tory government in power, and a surge in unemployment. There are, however, clear disparities. For all the bait which there's been to bite on, what we have witnessed in the past few days has provided little evidence of a true motive; these are rebels without a cause, who stand for nothing.

One only has to look at the current neutered state of the music industry to see just how well it reflects what's going out on the streets. Any sense of  lyrical depth or socio-political insight has been snuffed out, any greater meaning rendered worthless. If there's any motive in today's popular music, its to further the relentless march of consumerism; when music videos have become so rife with product placement, is it any wonder that looting of mobile phone shops and other electronic goods has been the order of the day? During the riots of '81, the ominous "Ghost Town" by The Specials took its icy grip of the top of the chart; today we have Cher Lloyd  the product of a programme whos very take-home message is that you can have it all, and achieve it with the bare minimum of hard graft.

The finger cannot, and should not, merely be pointed at pop music. With UK punk and its aftermath in the late 70's and early 80's, there emerged a glut of bands and artists, from privileged and poor backgrounds alike, documenting how they perceived the government to be failing its people. There's been no shortage of source material for artists to draw upon in recent years - the war in Iraq, the global recession and the resulting cuts - and yet the current UK indie crop is worryingly scant on artists who have something to say, seemingly quashed by an overwhelming sense of tolerance and indifference.

Of course, a good song, be it mainstream or otherwise, should serve to entertain first and foremost, and many of us may listen to music as a means of escape rather than engagement. Yet it seems no coincidence that these most senseless of riots are breaking out a time when the UK music scene is at its most directionless.