The Black Keys, El Camino (2011)

Mexico wasn't particularly gentle with me today. A combination of jet lag and the endless struggle that is the language barrier left me a little drained. Sometimes you just don't want it to take 15 minutes to explain that you want to buy credit for your phone, or for it to take the rest of your lunch hour to understand the instructions of the pre-recorded lady at the end of the phone when it comes to actually uploading said credit. Sometimes you just want the simple things to be... well, simple.

So it was, I swear, a coincidence that I decided to listen to El Camino on the walk home. I needed a bit of a pep, but I genuinely didn't expect this album to do it so well for me. I tend to think of The Black Keys as raw, gutteral, angsty blues. And I love them for that. Attack and Release is one of my all-time favorite albums - definitely on the desert island list. I love 2010's release Brothers, and I love Chulahoma. In fact, I'm of the strongly held view that The Black Keys can do no wrong. Because of this, I bought El Camino for my brother before I'd even heard it. I knew it would be a quality album because The Black Keys are and always have been awesome.

Well then. El Camino is in fact a very different album from The Black Keys as we know them. It's still them - it's still dirty bluesy-ish rock, but the emphasis here really is on the 'rock'. This is a rock album with bluesy touches, not vice versa. And I happen to think it's pretty damn good. In rush hour traffic through a capital of 23 million people, the jaunty riff and excitable organs of 'Lonely Boy' set the tone for a renewed energy to deal with this City. The first seven or eight tracks of this album are a strut, a confident, in-your-face, riot of a time. What's not to love about the syncopated hand-claps in 'Dead and Gone'? The album plays with different textures and structures ('Little Black Submarines' is an excellent experiment with a pretty little ballad, bridging into the raw, angrier Black Keys as we know them from previous work) and even though some of the sounds are a bit of a surprise, I think it works. 'Gold on the Ceiling' is like some kind of sugar-coated little jaunt, and in a city where I'm constantly harassed as a "rubia", I couldn't help but smile at the opening lines of 'Money Maker'.

What I love about this album is that it's still distinctly the Black Keys. It's still gnarly guitars and wailing organs and those distinctive vocals. It's just now overlaid with this new energy. It's more polished and less raw, but it's good.

So I put this album on and I walked home and people were still staring and probably shouting rude things at me, but finally I was having an awesome time in my ears with this great band who I love. The Black Keys got me home in a good mood, delivering me safely to my beloved rooftop terrace with a beer and a $1-a-kg lime, to enjoy another of this city's epic sunsets. How can the world possibly be stressful when this is what I get to come home to?

cheers

The Guardian describes this album as "undemanding" which I personally think is an uncharitable description. But even if that was the case, in a world where ordering lunch is a 10-minute ordeal in public humiliation, maybe the undemandingness of this album is all part of its appeal.

Roky Erickson with Okkervil River, True Love Cast Out All Evil (2010)

This is Okkervil River as you've never heard them before, and this collaboration with Roky Erickson is surely them at their very best. Occasionally psychedelic, often low-fi, and unashamedly Texan, this collaborative album is made up of 12 previously-unreleased tracks by Roky Erickson, and is clearly something of a gritty process of catharsis for him. It's a reflective, redemptive album - I'm sure it's no coincidence the album is bookended by raw, blazing devotionals written by Erickson during a period of incarceration. 'Ain't Blues Too Sad' gave me chills all over, and 'Be and Bring Me Home' is no less affecting. This is a brutally honest, inspired album, which in my view only adds to its charm.

I love this album first and foremost because it's a country album (witness the foot stomper 'Bring Back the Past', and the softer but no-less-awesome 'Forever'). It's chock full of spectacular songs written by Erickson over a long and turbulent career; songs which really did deserve to be released rather than a collection of unworthy B Sides, and Okkervil River give Erikson's music a take on life that must surely do it justice. There's a lot of debate about the sincerity of this album, and whether O River were the best band to collaborate with. There's little doubt that their input into the album helps to make it the stunning listen that it is. But my interest lies not necessarily in what O River can do for Roky Erickson, but what Roky Erickson does for O River. Like all good ventures of this kind, it's my sincere belief that each side in this clever collaboration brings out the best in the other - I genuinely feel that Roky Erickson's music has brought out something beautiful in O River that I have always thought them capable of but that they never quite achieved alone: to make a beautiful, unashamed country album, and to embrace their Texan roots. It might not necessarily have taken Okkervil River to help Roky Erickson make a commercially popular album, but there can be no doubt that it took Roky Erickson to help O River make a rawly Texan album and I love him for bringing that out in them.

This is an album of blisteringly good music, a journey, and a disarmingly sincere offering in humility. Erickson is front and centre of the project, and his music is treated by O River with with respect and care. The result is something really quite special.

Okkervil River, I Am Very Far (2011)

This is a different, bigger album from what I might have expected from O River; more ambitious than ever before, but in my humble opinion it's still nothing on the simplicity of 2007's The Stage Names. For all its ambition, the result is a decent album of indie rock, but in my view not much more than that. There's still something about Okkervil River's vocals that strikes me as kind of Killers-ish. I don't know if that should be read as criticism (I don't mean it to be) but it seems to be something that strikes me more obviously than others I've discussed it with. And perhaps it says something about the ambition of this album.

It is a solid, juggernaut of an album, that kind of relentlessly hammers away at its listener -  but it wasn't till track 3 'Rider' that I actually got excited about it. This is quite the charasmatic wee number, its excellent keys and thundering rhythm section give it a kind of anthemic feel. In fact much of this album is characterised by that epic sort of feel - I think it's the big dense choruses and sometimes almost breathless vocals that lend that effect. There's some interesting use of synths, particularly the layered effect in 'Your Past Life as a Blast'.

I've liked this band since first listen, but I fear they may be a bit hit and miss for me. This is definitely an indie rock album; there's very little hint of the alt-folk sound that I loved so much about The Stage Names. It's a good album, but I haven't yet found it to be a great album. There are moment of pure beauty - the opening of 'Show Yourself' has a dreamy Jeff Buckley-esque element to it; and the keys, oboes, and layered strings and vocals through the closing track 'The Rise' are just stunning and give a dream-like conclusion to the album - but there are also parts that I can take or leave.

It's new and dense and darker and heavier than Okkervil River as we know them. It's an interesting listen. I like this band, I like their ambition even if I prefer their earlier style. They write cohesive music with flashes of brilliance. So this album may well be a slow-burner, and it at least deserves another few listens to find out.

The Veils, Troubles of the Brain EP (2011)

I love The Veils, and credit an awesomely awesome former flatmate with introducing me to them. Like everything they do, this is a fascinating, challenging EP.

The contrast between the depth and fullness of opener 'Bloom' (which is probably most faithful to what I'd consider The Veils traditional sound, if they have such a thing) and the second track, 'Don't Let the Same Bee Sting You Twice' - which is a deliberately low-fi, bare kind of sound - is remarkable. The truly interesting thing about is that while the contrast is almost shocking, it works fantastically. And the cleverness of this juxtaposition (and indeed of this band) is that I couldn't decide which of these two markedly different sounds I liked better.

The third track is an upbeat poppy sort of number but retains interesting almost rough guitars overlaid with a cheerful synth. It is delightful. And the all of a sudden 'The Wishbone' returns to the darker, deeper sound that the EP opens with. I bet these guys listened to a lot of Radiohead growing up.

'Don't Let the Same Bee..' vies with the distinctly kiwi 'Grey Lynn Park' - a short, textured, interesting song - for my favourite track. The album is rounded out with the delicate 'Us Godless Teenagers', bare vocals, gentle acoustic guitar, built up with background strings.
A contemporary, interesting listen. The only complaint I have about this EP is that it's not a full-length album. Still, quality over quantity, eh?

Wilco, The Whole Love (2011)

I'm unfalteringly dedicated to Wilco. I can't imagine life without them. But I don't necessarily love everything they do - despite moments of pure loveliness (witness 'You and I' in collaboration with the endlessly lovely Feist) 2009's 'The Album' fell a bit flat for me.

This particular album required a bit of a mindshift. The opening track 'Art of Almost' is totally unexpected and a real shift in style - Jeff Tweedy's voice is a dead ringer for Tim Finn circa Split Enz, and the opening to the album itself is such a departure from Wilco's traditional style that I simply wasn't convinced I was listening to the right band.

But you know what? It's good. Crikey it's good. Self-produced and Wilco's first album on their own label, it is an experimental rock album, but the traditional underlying components are all still there. Genre aside, the phenomenon that is Wilco is still driven by an insane rhythm section, and the opening track's  guitar solo can only be described as a facemelter. Jeff Tweedy's vocal and lyrical talent is as comfortingly evident as ever. And Pat Sansone's jangly, organy keys often overlay the largely bass-driven tracks (I have long thought Jon Stirratt was an overshadowed force in this band and am pleased to see him have his day in the sun here.)

So, scratching beneath the surface, it's not a total departure from Wilco as we know them. Although it's an alt-pop driven sound, the delicate vocals and keys of 'Sunloathe' are as beautiful as we've come to expect from lovely Jeff Tweedy, and features a distinct folk sound too. 'Dawned On Me' is cuteasabutton and kind of reminiscent of Blur or other Britpop of a similar era. The opening riff to the gentle 'Black Moon' is as pretty an alt-folk riff as they've ever done, and is beautifully overlaid by an intense cello and a lovely wailing guitar. I think this is my favourite track. Or wait, it was until I heard the subsequent 'Born Alone', undoubtedly the most faithful to the traditional Wilco sound. Let's just say tracks 4 through 9 (oh go on, and 11 and 12) are my favourites and leave it at that.

'Capitol City' almost sounds like a show-tune in some ways, featuring a sneaky clarinet (or is it an oboe?) it's a cheeky little track and Tweedy's vocals again reclaim that very Finn-esque sound. I adore it. I was interested to read that the earlier 'The Album' was in fact recorded in Neil Finn's Auckland studio - maybe the influence is evident for a reason...

Although the album opens with a heavier psych feel, this is actually quite a gentle album and in many ways less aggressive than much of Wilco's earlier work. To me this album is epitomised by its title track, a pretty, guitar-driven meander through Tweedy's head. So for the most part, its components are endearingly familiar and play to Wilco's core strengths, but the sum of its parts shows a real growth in the Wilco sound. And I like it for that. It does what The Album failed to do, and breaks far enough from tradition to give us a fresh, excellent taste of this superb band.

It's new. It's interesting. I like.

Bombay Bicycle Club, Flaws (2010)

From the very beginning of opener 'Rinse Me Down', this album drew me in. The beautifully harmonised, stripped back, stunningly simple song had me at hello. And from that point on I fell swiftly and irrevocably in love with the album.

'Flaws' does everything I love a band to do - layers guitars and vocals to take the straightforward from something quotidien to something special. Classic, well-arranged, and skillfully-executed music will always win me over, and this album is 33-and-a-half minutes of exactly that. I've said it before and I'll say it again: there are few things in life so satisfying as a well-played acoustic guitar - and this album is the best example of this I've heard in a long time. Honourable mention to 'Dust on the Ground' - a compelling, yet almost lackadaisical, country-inspired riff, and a heartbreaker of a song (I mean that in a good way) that has a kind of Badly Drawn Boy feel to it.

As we all know (yes, you can quit rolling your eyes) I'm a sucker for Bright Eyes, and there's something about the occasionally slightly warbly vocals and poetic lyrics of this album that's kind of reminiscent of Conor Oberst. And though it's a cover, I also get a distinct Buddy Holly (circa 'Dearest') feel from 'Fairytale Lullaby.'

Other standouts for me are 'Ivy & Gold' which gave me a sort of Neil Young shiver, and the intimate, ambient 'Leaving Blues' which cuts almost too accurately close to the bone for someone who spends her life on the road. There's a compelling urgency to 'My God'; a banjo-inspired lift to the title track - not to mention the equally superb 'Many Ways'; and an ethereal beauty to the closing track (a Joanna Newsom cover) 'Swansea.'

Above all this album is just so easy to listen to. It is beautifully written. Skilfully executed. I smiled from start to finish. I'm addicted; I want to share this album with everyone I know. I listened to the whole thing twice in a row. In fact I'm not going to lie, even though it's obscene, I actually listened to it three times. In a row. And what's more I can't wait to listen to it over and over and over again. Especially on sunny Sunday afternoons.

Thank you, friend, for the recommendation. Your flawless taste prevails. Also, you should blog more.

A beautiful combination....

Two of my favourite things: The Smiths, and Question Time.

Just surprised no one mentioned Bigmouth Strikes Again.....