New Music: The Men - Ex Dreams

Last year's Leave Home from Brooklyn pysch/noise-rockers The Men was one of the year's most exhilirating releases; it charted at #11 on KILAS' top 20 albums of the year, but it passed under a lot of people's radars. On the strength of Ex-Dreams, however, Open Your Heart, The Men's forthcoming album, will suffer no such problems; it has the sound of a band about to make the big time.

Listen to it here. Open Your Heart comes out 5th March on Sacred Bones.

New Of Montreal album Paralytic Stalks streaming now!

The ever-prolific wonder project of Kevin Barne's deranged mind Of Montreal are back with a new album Paralytic Stalks, out on Ferbuary 6th in the U.K., and its available to stream in full on Spin's website (the link below includes a full song-by-song guide from Barnes). Expect a review here very soon, but darn me if Ye Renew The Plaintiff isn't the most brilliant thing they've come up with since The Past Is A Grotesque Animal from 2007's Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer.

Paralytic Stalks - listen here

Review: Guided By Voices - Let's Go Eat The Factory

Do you know the main reason I will always prefer indie rock to pop? It's that in the case of the former, perfection can come from the most imperfect of sources. By necessity, the best pop is clinical, manicured to be fully-formed. But indie-rock? Well just listen to the run of records by the "classic" line-up era Guided By Voices, which started with 1992's Propellor, ended with 1996's Under The Bushes Under The Stars, and peaked in-between with 1994's Bee Thousand and 1995's Alien Lanes. These albums were a car-crash of ideas, one hook cast aside for another amidst a menagerie of scrappily produced songs which borrowed from post-punk, metal and British Invasion, played with more enthusiasm than technical proficiency. And therein laid the brilliance of those records.

And now GBV are back, with that same classic lineup (welcome back, for the first time since 1997, Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, Greg Demos and Kevin Fennell) for the first GBV record since 2004's supposed swanswong Half Smiles Of The Decomposed. Robert Pollard, of course, has never been away, having released an endless stream of albums of solo material and various side-projects, including the rather excellent Boston Spaceships. For better or worse, those albums have always carried Pollard's influences and distinctive touch, and so it would've been easy for Let's Go Eat The Factory to sound like a simple continuation of Pollard's non-GBV work.

That it truly sounds like the band who released those aforementioned classics is sufficient to make Let's Go Eat The Factory a successful return. The album's 21 songs are in glorious cut-and-paste lo-fi, and dispensed of within 42 minutes. Sonic details like the blast of organ on The Head cut through the musical soup in ungracious but certainly not unwelcome fashion. Doughnut For A Snowman opens with what sounds like the excerpt of another song entirely. Vocally, Pollard and the honey-voiced Tobin Sprout sound the same as they always did. To say that it recreates the classic GBV sound would be doing the album a gross misjustice, as in no way does it sound contrived or studious; it's like these guys simply don't know any other way to play and record together.

Where the album does stumble slightly compared to those previous records is in the song-writing itself. There's nothing on Let's Go Eat The Factory that quite hooks you in with the same force as an Echoes Myron or Game of Pricks, nor are the albums more curious moments in anyway as inexplicably spell-binding as the likes of The Gold Heart Mountaintop Queen Directory or Almost Crushed Me. In the past, the band's 30-second songs served as invaluable segues to the more comprehensive songs but somehow they don't function quite so well here, making Let's Go Eat The Factory an uneven listen, even by GBV standards. The album's lowest point comes during a typically ill-disciplined mid-section with The Big Hat and Toy Show, a directionless two minutes of noodly guitar and Pollard's warbling.

With that said, there is still much to enjoy here, with Sprout's contributions in particular a great reminder of why this lineup of GBV clicked better than any other. He provides the album's finest moment in Spiderfighter, a wonderfully gnarly rocker which gives way to a gentle piano outro, as well as the album's most direct hook in God Loves Us. Not to be outdone, Pollard's gorgeous mellontron-tinged Chocolate Boy and the album's hefty closer We Won't Apologize For The Human Race provide high points worthy of any classic GBV record.

Whilst certainly not up there with their best records, there are enough flashes of inspiration on Let's Go Eat The Factory to make for a highly enjoyable record and a welcome return, one which provides every indication that their next release (thankfully we won't have to wait long; Class Clown Spots A UFO is slated for a May release) might just hit those heights on a more consistent basis.

75/100

Classic Albums 10 Years In

I particularly rever artists with true staying power. Stereogum's Listomania feature recently came out with an inspired list of 10 Classic Albums Released 10 Years Into A Band/Artist's Career. The original list is here, but it inspired me to think of a few of my own, less obvious but equally noteworthy, inclusions. Alas, scanning quickly through my record collection I've only come up with a further six, so I would be interested in your own suggestions.

Animal Collective - Merryweather Post-Pavilion (2009)

A decade into one of the most unpredictable and genre-defying careers of recent times, Animal Collective finally hit the big time with this gorgeous yet vibrant concoction of ethereal pop. Arguments will rage on as to which AC album is the best (with the exception of Danse Manatee, I'll accept cases for any one of their releases), but there can be little argument that Merriweather Post-Pavilion is their most cohesive and consistent release to date. The world waits in anticipation of what they'll come up with next.

The Flaming Lips - Transmissions From The Satellite Heart (1993)

Transmissions Of A Satellite Heart marked the first unlikely success story for Oklahoma's acid-fried rockers, thanks to the wonderfully goofy single She Don't Use Jelly (the only song which dared to rhyme the word "store" with "orange"). It was indicative of an album with a wealth of deranged yet oddly endearing riches, whilst the uber-drums and digitised guitar sound of the closing Slow Nerve Action pointed the way towards the even more fruitful Dave Fridmann years.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Let Love In (1994)

There perhaps isn't such a thing as the definitive Bad Seeds album, a fact which owes more to their unwavering brilliance than any paucity in quality recordings. But Let Love In may be the closest they've got to it. It has textbook examples of all their calling cards: unhinged rockers (Jangling Jack); songs of unrepentent lust (Loverman); hilarious gallows humour (Lay Me Low); a clutch of Cave's finest ballads (I Let Love In, Nobody's Baby Now, the all-encompassing two-parter Do You Love Me?) and of course, in Red Right Hand, one iconic song about a man of shadowy deeds.

Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna Are You The Destroyer? (2007)

With 2007's game-changing Hissing Fauna... Of Montreal were transformed from fey, anglophilic popsters, to dark, damaged electro-glam-funksters. They hadn't completely forsaken their love of the UK; pushed to the brink by a messy break-up from his then-girlfriend, bandleader Kevin Barnes took on the persona of African-American tranvestite Georgie Fruit, a definite nod to Bowie's alter-egos of the 70's. Faberge Falls For Shuggie would casually toss out the titles for the band's subsequent string of releases, none as good as this landmark record.

Sleater-Kinney - The Woods (2005)

In what unfortunately turned out to be their swan song (though at least we now have Wild Flag as compensation), the Washington all-girl trio beefed up their guitar-playing chops and enlisted producer Dave Fridmann to amp up their sound even further, resulting in their heaviest sounding record. The Woods shamelessly revelled in a love for bluesy 70's rock - few suspected that Sleater-Kinney could write an 11-minute song, let alone pull it off with such fortitude - but the siren-like vocals of Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein gave it that crucial gut-punch.

Talk Talk - Laughing Stock (1991)

After a painstaking recording process which would ultimately break the band, 1991's Laughing Stock found Talk Talk worlds away from the (admittedly darker than most) New Romantic outfit which had started out 10 years previously. It stands alongside its predecessor, 1989's Spirit Of Eden, as a stunningly singular piece of work, Mark Hollis' haunting vocals put to music which, with the aid of a host of fellow musicians, resonated with atmosphere, managing to sound both wildly improvised and impeccably crafted. Few albums are so hugely influential, and yet so utterly inimitable.