Four Tet - There Is Love In You

Kieran Hebden – the man otherwise known as Four Tet – has carved out a fascinating little niche for himself in the past several years, with a clutch of stellar remixes for the likes of Sia and Radiohead, a stone-cold classic album with 2003’s Rounds, and even a couple of brilliant singles such as "Smile Around the Face" and "No More Mosquitoes". He’s even spawned his own subgenre in the music press in “folktronica.”
With There Is Love In You, Hebden’s sixth as Four Tet, he largely sticks to what he does best; songs of beautiful, organic instrumental electronica, displaying the so-called folktronica for which he is known. However, as warm and lovely as these songs are, they somehow seem more inconsequential than on previous records; these songs are more content to slip unnoticed into the background, without demanding too much of the listener’s attention.
Part of the problem is that – in layman’s terms – these songs don’t “do” anything much. With songs like “Angel Echoes”, “Circling” and “This Unfolds”, Hebden seems content to find a pleasing rhythm, a few choice sounds, and stick with them for the song’s duration. The ingredients themselves vary substantially – compare the electric harp of “Circling” with the sliced-and-diced beats of the relatively up-tempo “Sing” and the rolling drums and guitar of “She Just Likes To Fight” – but the results remain fairly consistent throughout.
The same can’t be said for “Love Cry,” the album’s longest song, and it’s unquestionable highlight. Here, Hebden’s funkiest and most intoxicating rhythm to date pounds away for nine minutes, whilst a hypnotic stew of electronic noise and splintered, disembodied female voices bubbles around it. Again, it doesn’t “do” much, but when music is as wonderfully hypnotic as this, it doesn’t have to.
Even with any faults in mind, Hebden is still probably the best in the world at this kind of music. Even if it’s far from being essential listening, if you’ve enjoyed any of his previous albums, then chances are you’ll still find plenty to love in There Is Love In You.

7 / 10

The Essential Dozen: January

Here's the first set for the year: twelve great songs I've acquired in the past month. They might not necessarily be new, but they're all great and you should get 'em.

1. Animal Collective - What Would I Want? Sky.
2. Vampire Weekend - White Sky
3. The Acorn - Hold Your Breath
4. Madonna - Lucky Star
5. Ball Park Music - Sea Strangers (I Don't Really Know You)
6. Boy & Bear - Mexican Mavis
7. Fuck Buttons - Olympians
8. Girls - Hellhole Ratrace
9. Charlotte Gainsbourg - Le Chat de Cafe des Artistes
10. Gary Numan - Cars
11. Bridezilla - Beaches
12. Four Tet - Love Cry

Charlotte Gainsbourg: IRM

I'm approaching IRM, Charlotte Gainsbourg’s second album, with caution; on the one hand, as a child of famous parentage (she’s Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin’s daughter); on the other, the roping in of a high-profile producer, in the one and only Beck Hansen. Her first record, 5:55, was a major success in France, but barely garnered much attention elsewhere. With any luck, that may change a little with IRM.
As the principal songwriter and producer, Beck’s influence is heavy throughout this record; the heavy, swooning string arrangements recall his woozy folk masterpiece, Sea Change; the tight rhythms of “Le chat du café des artistes” and the title track hold echoes of the shadowy grooves of Modern Guilt or The Information. Meanwhile, on lead single “Heaven Can Wait,” Beck comes to the fore, backing up Gainsbourg’s vocals on the sort of lazy hipster folk that could come straight from his Mutations album.
Gainsbourg herself, meanwhile, is thankfully not overwhelmed by Beck’s presence – at least, sometimes not. Her voice – soft, understated and charming, yet apparently uninterested half the time – works fine for the kind of groovy hipster folk that pervades the bulk of the album. She’d be the perfect vocalist for just about anything by Air (who collaborated on her first album). When Beck’s arrangements are stripped back, however, such as on the moody “Vanities,” her voice isn’t really engaging enough to support the song on its own. At the other end of the spectrum, on “Time of the Assassins,” she sounds a little overwhelmed by the expansive, multi-tracked backing vocals swooping around her.
It kind of has to be said, then, that the best songs on IRM – “Heaven Can Wait”, “Me and Jane Doe”’s pastoral folk, and “Trick Pony”’s dirty funk – are the ones that exhibit the heaviest influence of Beck’s writing and production. Nevertheless, there’s the pervading sense that these songs, however Beck-esque they may be, wouldn’t have worked on any of his records. Certainly, the combination of Gainsbourg’s vocals and Beck’s famously eclectic tastes has allowed both of them free rein, playing around with some textures and ideas that may otherwise be left unexplored, such as the superbly swooning, vaguely exotic “Voyage.” Indeed, the album’s three French songs add a new dimension to Beck’s work as a producer.
Maybe IRM would’ve been better titled as “Charlotte Gainsbourg & Beck,” such is his influence over this record. It’s certainly a fine album, with a good clutch of fascinating songs worth returning too, but I can’t escape the sense that it could be replicated with someone like Feist, or Alison Goldfrapp, or – God forbid – even Carla Bruni, with much the same results.

6 / 10

2009's best albums

This is coming a little bit late, but in my defence, I was still listening to a couple of these on my commute to school yesterday (new job! woooo!) to decide on which records made the cut. Just for the record, and based on that commute, Wild Beasts just missed out. Close but no banana, boys.

Well, these records got the banana, that's for damn sure. Here are my top ten records for 2009, in order! They're all completely awesome, so go get 'em if you haven't already.

10. Them Crooked Vultures - Them Crooked Vultures
Virtuoso supergroup = the rockingest album that ever rocked. Also: it rocks.

9. Sarah Blasko - As Day Follows Night

She's utterly lovely, and I've finally fallen for her quirky charms.

8. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

A quirky, timeless delight; a generous dose of artful Americana.

7. Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport

An epic, mesmerising, hypnotic and kinda dangerous electronic symphony.

6. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!

The YYYs hit the disco, with Nick Zinner's guitar prowess thankfully still intact.

5. Passion Pit - Manners

An treasure trove of insanely catchy songs, just begging to be loved like a neurotic puppy.

4. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca

Lovable, adventurous art-pop for New York's trendiest - anything goes on Bitte Orca.

3. St Vincent - Actor

Elaborate yet concise, lurching from baroque pop to terrifying noise; her soft voices belies an undercurrent of danger and violence running throughout this amazing album.

2. Florence + The Machine - Lungs

Like a thoroughly modern, bohemian Kate Bush, Florence Welch's dramatic persona - and the songs to match - make her a star.

1. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion

Rock, folk, electronica and the avant-garde fused together into a single euphoric, transcendent whole. Nothing else comes close.

Academia FAIL.

One of the most tired and boring arguments made these days is the one about how TV / games / Internet / movies / music etc is making people stupider, destroying all our precious brain cells. It's not an argument I subscribe to (I won't go into why right now, but just go read this book), and think it's an overly-simplistic and generally incorrect way of looking at things.
That said, I'm not really helping my own cause when I go around saying things like "mayonnaise FAIL!" and "I are liberrian" and "mad phat driving skillz" all the time.
Academia FAIL.

Sort it out.

Two of my favourite things are pop music and the Dewey Decimal Classification. I think I figured out why.

The human brain (and every other kind of brain, I assume) needs to organise all of the information it encounters in order to make sense of the world; things are sorted, classified, put into categories automatically. Categories like “animals I can eat,” as opposed to “animals that can eat me”; “people I trust with my car” versus “people who are douchebags who would probably drive my Camry into a stobie pole if I gave them the chance.” I can’t imagine how we could function if our brains didn’t do this. It’s part of why we do things like organising the photos in an album chronologically, sort CDs by artist, or put our cookbooks in a different place to comic books.
It’s one thing to organise a stack of CDs. It’s another thing altogether to organise all of the amassed knowledge, the sum total of all information, into a single, consistent order. Not only that, but to systematically organise all possible knowledge; all potential information. That’s what the DDC does. It’s the ultimate framework for classifying knowledge, taking what our brains do automatically (only on a smaller scale) to the furthest extreme. Think of anything you possibly can, and there’ll be a specific number for it, a precise location, in the DDC. And if there isn’t, then there’ll be a framework laid for creating that specific number. If you’ve used the DDC (and if you’ve ever borrowed a library book, chances are you have) then you’d probably imagine it as a system for organising books. That’s a handy way to think of it, though of course, the DDC can classify anything; just add “a book about” at the front of whatever it is you’re classifying, and you’ll see how. Let’s say you have, oh, I don’t know... a single pear, floating in perfume, served in a man’s hat that needs classification? Well, think of a book about that single pear, floating in perfume, served in a man’s hat; that pear/hat combo will have it’s place in Dewey. Maybe under 730 for sculptures; you could make it 730.9 for sculptures arranged by time and place, and add coded suffixes for its location and time of creation (730.994 for Australian sculpture, for example); you’d probably want to add suffixes for the materials. You might end up with something like 730.95209613 (which I made up, but you see what I’m getting at).
So, why is that interesting? Why do I give a crap? Well, the thing is, the world does not come organised. Things do not happen, appear, exist, or die in any kind of order. In the grand scheme of things, nothing is planned or intended. I mean, sure, on a small scale, I planned my dinner, and Gustav Eiffel planned that tower. But in the long run, was the Great Rift Valley planned or organised? Or the long sequence of chance events that led to the colonisation of India? Or the unimaginable diversity of human art? Nope, nope and nope. When we create and employ classification systems like the DDC, we’re enforcing an order that simply does not exist in any objective way. We’re creating boundaries and categories which only exist in our minds. Is a book on Archaeopteryx a “dinosaur book” or a “prehistoric birds” book? When I think about it, things like Dewey seem to go against the whole natural order (well, lack of order) of the world. It takes all of existence and tries to put it in order. It takes the greatest of accomplishments and reduces them to a number. Picture the Taj Mahal, then replace it with its position in a sequence: 726.809452. That’s kind of a fascinating thought.

My love of pop music is kind of the same. When I say “I love pop music,” I mean popular music in all its forms – Cyndi Lauper to Mos Def to Frank Zappa to The Mars Volta to Nick Drake – as distinct from classical, jazz, ragas and sufi music and so forth. I’ve realised that my unending love of pop has nothing to do with the way it sounds – after all, I love Aretha Franklin and The Ramones equally – but with the way it’s organised. Popular music, as distinct from pretty much any other kind of music, is almost always clearly organised into sets of songs with unique titles, arranged in a deliberate sequence on albums. Usually, the songs are three, four or five minutes long; the albums usually have a square design of cover art; usually a selection of songs from the albums are released individually as singles. While there are always exceptions and slight changes to the format (singles nowadays aren’t as important as they used to be), the adherence of pop music to that framework is pretty remarkable. Operas don’t work that way. Neither do devotional chants or improvisational jazz freakouts or Aboriginal oral histories told through song or any other kind of music, pretty much. For some reason, I just find music so much easier to enjoy and digest if it’s organised in the way pop music tends to be. It comes back to what I was saying at the beginning of this very long post; to make sense of the music I enjoy, it needs to be categorised in some way so that I can absorb it, digest it, and remember it, even if that categorisation simply means assigning a title and an artist to a piece of music. That, however boring and nerdy it sounds, is really what defines the music that I fall in love with and come back to, day after day, year after year.

Wow, this entire spiel makes me look like the world’s most boring dork. Oh well, so be it. Guess I’ll have to go find a Dewey number for boring dorks.

Survivor: Heroes vs Villains Are Neither

Just weeks after washing out the icky flavour left by Survivor: Samoa in our mouths, Burnett, Probst and co. are back at again. This time, tying in with the show’s twentieth season, it’s another all-star season. It’s not just any all-star runabout, though; for reasons unknown, this season is going with tribes of “Heroes” and “Villains” as its theme.
Now, I like all-star seasons. I like that there’s no cannon fodder amongst the contestants, I like seeing the politics amongst people who already know each other, and I like how that upsets the way this show usually progresses. By way of example, think of how pretty much every season starts out – voting based on the criteria of “strong in challenges” and “works hard at camp” resulting in early elimination of old people and the lazy, skinny chicks. Then look at the first All-Stars – challenge monsters and/or alpha males (and Probst’s man-crushes, but we’ll get to that) Colby, Ethan, Richard Hatch and Rob Cesternino didn’t even make it halfway through. Then in the Fans vs Favourites season, the mostly-useless-at-challenges Cirie wasn’t even considered for elimination. See what I mean?
The problem with this season (well, one among many) is that it’s a purely subjective categorisation, and one that simply serves to play up to how the show’s producers chose to edit and present these people in the first place, regardless of that presentation’s connection with reality.
Take a look at the men on the “Heroes” tribe; simply put, Probst has gathered his five biggest man-crushes to date and mixed them together into his own wet-dream of a team. JT, Tom and Colby, fair enough – those guys were all strong leaders, well-liked by their other contestants, known for playing hard but fair, and being pretty decent guys, all round (if we conveniently overlook Tom’s treatment of Ian at the end of Palau, that is). Then we have James; James, who was set up in his original season as the Greatest Survivor EVAH, the softly-spoken and charming gravedigger… not to mention, hardly the sharpest tool in the box (he failed to use either of two immunity idols, lest we forget). That’s how CBS presented him, at least. In reality, he has never won an individual challenge (don’t forget, he’s had two whole seasons to do so), and not only made some unfortunate comments towards Courtney (going for “any swinging dicks” etc), and was kind of a bully to down-and-out Peih-Gee. Now, I don’t think he should be a “villain” or whatever – he’s probably a really decent guy, actually – but what exactly makes him a hero? Just being the object of Probst’s man-crush, I guess. Then, we have Rupert. Oh, Rupert. Has this show ever seen a bigger megalomaniac? This moron can drive me into a frothy-mouthed rage, so let me just review some things; this is the man who didn’t want anyone else to go fishing (it bruised his ego, oh it did); refused to acknowledge anyone else’s ideas or opinions, so convinced he was of his own greatness (remember his half-buried log cabin idea?); expected Lil to give a reward she’d won to him for no apparent reason other than that she was an easily-guilted woman; flew into a rage (complete with near-strangling) when someone dared vote for him (in a game all about… voting for people); and delivered the most ridiculous, self-serving, passive-aggressive speech imaginable when he was finally eliminated, which showed pretty clearly that he did, indeed, expect everyone else to let him win. Now, what part of all that makes him a “Hero”? Being the object of another Probst-man-crush? I thought so.
As for the “Hero” women; Stephenie and Amanda are obvious choices. Two hard workers, both are great in challenges, and pretty decent strategists (Amanda, after all, got second place twice in a row). Steph, meanwhile, was the only person to ever be on a tribe of one, thanks to being stuck on the Suckiest Tribe That Ever Sucked. Elsewhere, Cirie and Sugar also make sense and could make for a fascinating pair to observe – they both suck at challenges, and were lucky to survive more than a week in their first seasons, but they’re also two of the show’s most unlikely strategic masterminds. Cirie has repeatedly displayed crazy, Jedi-like mind-control powers over lesser beings, as well as a very wise tendency to sit back and let the knuckleheads sort themselves out. Sugar, meanwhile, controlled the outcome of the Gabon series so perfectly that, halfway through, she just got bored of playing (and also noticed that the jury hated her, no doubt) and engineered Bob’s victory rather than her own. The last “Hero”, however, is a mystery. Candice was a royal beeatch in the Cook Islands. When she wasn’t canoodling with Neanderthal-Adam, she spent her time mutinying against her tribe, playing Mean Girls with Parvati, and finally, hurling insults at Jonathan Penner (“rat!” “cancer!” “rat cancer!”) after he decided to vote against her buddies in order to save his own arse. More to the point, her best buddy and alliance-mate Parvati is considered a villain. Again… Candice… she’s a hero, how, exactly?
Onto the villains. Granted, most of these people are either genuinely wretched human beings, or at least created characters of themselves as wretched human beings. Russell, Tyson, Coach, Parvati, Randy – I refuse to waste any more words on these overexposed twits. Two of them – Rob Mariano and Jerri – I can understand being put here, though I wouldn’t do the same. Jerri is hardly a hero, and was a truly unpleasant wench back in the Australia series, but largely redeemed herself on the first All-Stars. Rob is definitely one of this show’s best players, and while he definitely comes across as very, very cocky (which he’s largely entitled to be), I think he mostly just doesn’t suffer nitwits gladly, and he’s resented for it. If you watch the truly ridiculous behaviour of the jury on the All-Stars season, most of the contestants speeches amounted to “you suck because you beat me!” The other three women considered to be “Villains” are a bit of a mystery, and in my opinion, are the precise opposite of Probst’s man-crushes. These women – Danielle, Sandra and Courtney – are all outspoken women who stood up for themselves and their own interests, and are apparently villains because of it. Sandra and Courtney are both unafraid to speak their minds – Sandra definitely has quite the potty-mouth, and Courtney was not shy about her dislike of other contestants. But really, where is it written that you have to like everyone? I always figured Courtney was smart for keeping her dislike of everyone to the camera confessionals, and not letting it boil over into the open with the other contestants. Because hating all the nitwits you’re marooned with? Fine. Hating those nitwits to their faces? Not good strategy. Finally, I cannot think of anything that Danielle (“Who’s Danielle?” Exactly.) did to warrant being labelled a “Villain.” All I can think of is the fact that she eliminated Terry, thus preventing Probst’s man-crush for that season from winning. In other words, she stood up for herself against her season’s macho-man and so, must be punished. Sort of.
If I had my way, I’d still do another all-star-type season like this, even with a lot of the same contestants, but I’d do away with this awful, awful theme. I’m expecting these people to buy into their labels, with the “Villains” trying to out-douchebag each other, and the “Heroes” trying to out-hero each other (i.e., out-famewhore and out-megalomania). It’s not going to be a pretty sight.
Then again, if I had my way, Rupert would be repeatedly smacked with a dead octopus, and, sadly, that’s not likely to happen any time soon. I guess I’ll just have to sit back and hope that Survivor: Heroes vs Villains won’t suck as much as I expect it will.

Vampire Weekend: Contra

Like Vampire Weekend's eponymous debut, Contra cuts right to the chase, with Ezra Koenig delivering the Horchata’s first verse within the album’s first few seconds, much like on "Mansard Roof" almost two years ago. But that’s about where the similarities end; Contra is not Vampire Weekend II, so don’t expect another “Oxford Comma” or “A-Punk.” That said, it isn’t quite a complete departure; rather, like all the best second albums, the band have taken what they already know and added a few new flavours. Those familiar Graceland-guitars are still present on the gorgeous “White Sky”, though with some warm, bubbly synths added to the mix; “Cousins,” meanwhile, works as a cousin to “A-Punk,” albeit a far more bonkers one, quite literally with more bells and whistles.
Contra is a very New York album; much more overtly so than the band’s debut. This isn’t the scuzzy New York of The Strokes or The Velvet Underground however; Vampire Weekend’s is a New York of modern art collectors, private schools, real estate, and summer holidays on the beach. It’s so completely not what we like to imagine rock’n’roll is about, so preppy, so well-bred and well-dressed, that in any other world a band like this would be completely hateworthy. What saves Vampire Weekend is their unapologetic sincerity with regard to their music, their inventiveness, and the fact that a great pop song is just a great pop song, damn it. Songs like “Cousins,” “Holiday” and “Run” are fun without being funny, with “Holiday” in particular crackling with such energy and sheer idiot glee (“Holiday, oh a holiday! / The best one of the year!”), it could almost fit on Weezer’s first album.
Best of all, this album maintains a stricter sense of quality control than its predecessor; where Vampire Weekend wavered slightly in its second half, Contra maintains remarkable consistency throughout. Even in its more adventurous, expansive tracks, such as with “Giving Up The Gun”’s jittery groove, and the six-minute “Diplomat’s Son” – which begins with a sample from M.I.A., of all people – there’s barely a single misstep. Sure, its brief thirty-six minutes may not provide as much opportunity for musical mishap as, say, Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness, but here, brevity is a virtue.
For any band looking to improve on a massively successful debut, look no further than Vampire Weekend. I can’t wait to see what they do next.

8 / 10