Oh. (Russ L going to and fro in the Earth)

This evening I encountered Decibel, a metal webzine-attached-to-a-magazine type of thing. I’ve spent a while reading some of their articles, which I have found to be surprisingly interesting. I therefore offer some links (this was originally going to be a couple of entries on the linklog, but it grew into enough to justify a post):

Decibel on homosexuality in metal (it still stuns me that this is contentious. Is there any genre that has worn gayness more on its collective sleeve?)

Decibel on comedy in grindcore/metal (much like the above link, it seems to be primarily the fans who don’t get it)

Decibel on National Socialist Black Metal (I find this lot too laughable to be worrying, but I suspect that might be a mistake)

Decibel on breaking Straight Edge: part 1

Decibel on breaking Straight Edge: part 2 (I’m a drinker admittedly, but holding people to promises they made at the age of sixteen seems bizarre to me)

Decibel on metal and major labels (primarily ‘cos some of this made me laugh)

Decibel’s Justin Broadrick interview (most pop/rock interviews are a waste of electricity, but this serves as a decent potted/streamlined history of the man’s canon)

Nothing to re-invent the wheel, but for different reasons I found them all to be interesting reads. Found via K. Khan-Harris.

The astute observer will note that my gig-going is nowhere near as prolific of late as it has been in the past. I think my antipathy towards the majority of people who are in-depth music fans is finally producing practical results. I have attended a couple since Supersonic, though.

I went to The Barfly on the 18th of July. While I’ve never gone as far as liking the place, I always used to think that it was about as good as big chain venues tend to get. Maybe it still is (that statement doesn’t exactly boast of excellence), but the place definitely seems to be going downhill. The lager, in particular, didn’t seem tooooo bad when I was first going there but certainly has seemed worse the last couple of times I’ve been. Much like Gloucestershire, water levels in The Barfly appear to be increasing these days.

I missed the first band on but arrived in time for Blakfish, a local band who I hadn’t seen before despite the fact that they play loads of gigs and seem to have become quite popular. I had a feeling I wouldn’t like them, and I can’t really put my finger on where that came from. Happily, this feeling turned out to be entirely wrong. The obvious writ-oh-so-large reference point would be At The Drive In, but they had interesting presto-chango songs, gave it some welly in terms of performance, and made me chuckle with their banter. I’ll definitely see them again.

The bill was topped by two bands on tour together. Meet Me In St Louis weren’t actually American, as I had assumed from the name. Silly ol’ me. Post hardcore-come-emo type of thing, anyway, which didn’t amaze. The songs weren’t especially memorable (jumping from one idea to the next for no clear reason or with no noticeable effect) and the atonal vocals really got on my tits.

Rolo Tomassi are a band I like a hell of a lot and have spoken favourably of many times before. On this occasion they seemed a lot more nervous on stage than they did on either of the two prior occasions I saw them (they did mention that this was the biggest venue they’d ever headlined. Maybe that was why). This may or may not explain why their controlled-chaos cut-up synth-grind-noise-hyphen-hyphen didn’t seem quite as frenetically explosive as usual. Bad sound also rendered the keyboards completely inaudible whenever played at the same time as the guitar or the bass, but they were still fun. The bits where the various strands all come together and start making sense will always put smiles on faces.

On the 27th I went to The Basement (formerly Cocoon and, apparently, The Jester) in Birmingham. The gig at hand was meant to happen at Epic Skate Park in Moseley, prior to its license being taken away. Those Robot Professor folks played a blinder in not only finding a replacement venue, but also a venue that doesn’t normally host live music (as far as I’m aware, anyway). If this has opened up the place for future gigs then they’ve done everyone a favour. Lord knows we need more venues at the moment.

I didn’t actually like the place, though, which was a shame. Someone said to me that it reminded me of a VIP lounge under a club in a film, which I can sort of see, but it’d have to be a VIP lounge that had been left uncleaned and unloved for thirty years (general tatty air, chewing gum encrusted carpet peeling up off the floor etc). Despite being quite a big room there seemed to be an oppressive feel about it, too, although that was probably just me. The ‘cheap drinks’ promised in the advertising failed to materialise at first – when I arrived I was told that all bottles (no taps) were £3, and I nearly fainted. After a bit of negotiation from the promoter, bottles of Carling were reduced to £1.50. That’s closer to reasonable. I suppose.

Inertia Blooms opened, and I wasn’t feeling ‘em. Bog standard Mogwai/Slint style post-rocker-y, with some pretend yankee-doodle-dandy nasal vocals over the top at times. In their second song they did the Neurosis/UpCDownC percussion jam bit. Meh.

Mothertrucker haven’t been practising much later, as they’ll happily tell anyone who’ll listen. This (blessedly) didn’t show toooo badly – the odd slightly messy moment here and there, but nothing major. The crowd were comically enthusiastic (genuine German-style fistbanging took place), the Mike Goldberg commentary excerpt at the start of (what has become) “Liddell/Couture III” made me smile, the extra jingly guitar bit at the end of “Dark Destroyer” was quite nice, and they generally did everything all of the things that I always praise ‘em for and am fed up of writing over and over again. The dry ice was possibly a mistake.

I was actually going to leave at this point – even though I knew nothing of the next band and like headliners The Arm a lot, I was tired and bits of my anatomy (don’t be disgusting) were hurting. The negative vibez of the room weren’t helpful, either. As it happened, though, lots of people seemed to leave at this point, and thus I felt a bit guilty and ended up stopping for half of Corleone’s set. I really need to stop thinking like that.

Corleone didn’t amuse me too much, in the end. They mixed a(nother) basic standard post-rock sort of thing with something akin to the jangle of Polaris, but didn’t seem to have much in the way of the dynamic range that might have given it a bit more impact.

So I left.

I just started a TumblR page.

I’m not sure for how long I’ll be bothered to attend to it (the thought occurs that 99% of everything posted to it will either be stuff that could go on the Delicious Page/linklog or just stuff pinched directly off I Can Has Cheezburger), but we’ll see how it goes.

I’ve said before that Supersonic is my favourite annual event. Though the property developers may be trying to shut down all the venues and cast a pallor of silence across the land, and though 99% of music fans may be permanently trying to be as annoying as possible and suck the fun out of all that is good, Supersonic stands tall. It’s just about interesting stuff that interested people can go and see. Long may it live.

Friday the 13th (scary)

A pint in The Spotted Dog and a couple in The Rainbow saved standing in a queue in the rain but did mean that Bela Emerson was already on by the time I got into The Custard Factory. It was immediately apparent that there were a lot more people here than there were at a comparable time the previous year, and that remained the case throughout the weekend. I picked the wrong door through which to enter The Kitchen, and walked directly in front of several people filming. Doh.

Beautiful Bela, you were so much noisier this time than when I saw you in February, so much more dissonant and violent. Jagged splinters of cello-ing looped and coalesced into a teeth-gritting tapestry of savage splendour. Playing a saw-blade with your bow was a perfect visual metaphor. What angered you, Bela? Tell me who displeased you, and I will travel to the ends of the earth to smite them. But only if you promise to do this again.

Over to The Medicine Bar for another Last Ever Ever Ever No Honest Guv We Really Mean It This Time Ever Ever Ever Finished Finito Kaput Yes I Know We Said That The Last Two Times But This Is Really It Ever Ever Ever Deadsunrising gig. Their chaotic timechangey West Brom metal always pushes the skin back on the sides of your face, but they did (for some reason) seem a touch less full-frontal savage than usual this time. This, however, allowed some sense of just how epic a lot of their songs are, and you don’t normally get that from them live. I’ll miss ‘em. Until their next last gig ever ever ever.

With The Kitchen rammed beyond the point of even being able to visualise the thought of getting in and nothing due to happen in The Med Bar for quite a while, I decided to check out at this point and get ready for round two.

Saturday the 14th (less scary)

It was Saturday by the time I got home, of course. A couple of naps, a trip to Sainsbury’s and a bit of general pottering took place before heading once more unto the breach. It wasn’t raining this time, which was very kind of God.

The unpleasantly named Shit And Shine (I’m gonna start a band called “You Can’t Polish A Turd, Beavis” in response) opened the day on the main/outside stage. A whole buncha drummers banging out a synchronised tribal rhythm brought Neurosis immediately to mind. Initially and for the most part doom with a trance-like ritualistic air induced by the constant duh-dudu-duh of the drums and the lady intoning phrases in Spanish, before speeding up and adding some more almost Motorhead-y riffs (Motorosis, imagine that. Brutal). The initially solemn drummers were by that point flailing away for all they were worth, and it was spectacular. An absolutely magnificent start to the day.

I nipped around the back after this, to have a look at The Arches stage (in a little cleared warehouse on the other side of the railway arches. Is this The Rojac Building?). I quite liked it, for a venue of its size (huge) – it had a bit of ‘industrial decay’ character about it, and one mighty soundsystem. The bar at the back was selling cans of Red Stripe, too, which turned out to be the tipple of the day – although stupidly dear at £3 a can, The Kitchen was charging the same for a pint of Carlsberg that seemed to have been siphoned from the drip tray. Plus you have an excuse to pretend you’re Jamaican when drinking the ol’ Red Stripe, and that’s always fun.

Crippled Black Phoenix (‘Crippled Black Pheonix’ according to the legend projected onto the screens either side of the stage. Oops.) were on while I was in there, but the little bit of their set I saw didn’t really come across as all that impressive. They just seemed like your basic melodic rock band, really, albeit one with long instrumental passages in the middle of their songs. They certainly didn’t sound like the sort of act you’d expect to find at Supersonic. I only watched for a couple of tunes, though. Maybe hidden depths are revealed if you see/hear more for context.

I returned to the outside stage to see a bit of Strings Of Consciousness. They started using their wide away of instruments to create an attempt at a pretty soundscape, but it didn’t really have much of an effect. I gather most of their music is improvised, though, so I suppose that inevitably will happen sometimes.

After it became obvious that they weren’t getting any more interesting, I gave up and headed into The Med Bar for Voice Of The Seven Woods. Lord o’ mercy, it was busy in there. I was stuck right at the back, pressed against the shutters by an uncomfortable density of other people. VOTSW were an electric band this time (it was just an acoustic man when I saw them/him in February), playing middle eastern influenced prog-rock. It’s a really familiar sound (although no reference point comes smoothly to mind), but a good one – the soundtrack to some Turkish drug-den where beautiful exotic ladies pass around hookahs and clouds of sweet-smelling smoke float through the air. Sadly, my significantly less opulent surroundings were the gig room of The Medicine Bar with 7,123,381 other people sandwiched in (that’s just an estimate. I’ll check the figures later), and it was beginning to make me feel sick. I saw about fifteen minutes before having to bail out, which really was a shame.

I briefly returned to Strings Of Consciousness and found that they’d progressed onto a heavier and more industrial-ish bit, but it still wasn’t really going anywhere. In the name of having a sit-down and finding something to do, I went and did something slightly out-of-character: I went into The Theatre Space to go and have a look at the fillums.

I’m glad I did. Film isn’t really my medium and I don’t often get a lot out of it, but I did quite enjoy the series of short pictures I saw courtesy of 7 Inch Cinema. When I entered they were showing a thing where people on pushbikes had things thrown at them to the tune of The Damned’s “New Rose,” and then subsequently gave us a chance to have a look at: a trippy thing where paper swans, people, clocks and other things swirled around (the colours seemed a bit faded. Could have been a good sensory overload otherwise); “Powers Of Ten” (“A film dealing with the relative size of things in the universe, and the effect of adding another zero” - an absolutely amazing seventies short documentary. Go and watch it on YouTube now. I was glad when people applauded at the end, so I could join in. My initially instinct was to clap, but I didn’t know you actually did that for films until everyone else began to); some sepia-coloured footage of a gang of blokes standing round a tree and singing a blues/spiritual; a video for an indie band’s song involving a little plasticine fella creosoting a tree instead of the fence around it and getting dismembered as punishment (I didn’t like that, it seemed a bit cruel); the video for Modified Toy Orchestra’s “Freeno And Olaf” (in which a soft toy elephant and a soft toy chicken travel over huge distances to be with one another. I love this so much. I’m not being silly when I say it brings a tear to my eye. I can’t find the video itself online, but here it is projected onto a big screen behind them); “A Storm And Some Snow” (did exactly what it said on the tin); “Amazing Tiger” (really sweet animation-with-toys. A circus tiger escapes from his cage but goes to see the elephant before he runs away, and nearly gets caught as a result. He escapes, though); and a scratching demo (involving records being literally smashed onto the turntable).

After emerging back into the light (blinking a lot) and then generally faffing about for a bit (I would have liked to have seen some of Calvados Beam Trio being as they’re a really good band, but I’d written The Med Bar off as a no-go area by this point), it was time for Tunng and their folk come space-rock on the main stage. Surely they’re one of the finest bands of current times, but alas they were having some technical difficulties to begin with (Glastonbury mud in the firing wiring, it seems). It wasn’t the worst thing in the world, though - they may have looked very embarrassed, but the sudden and unexpected interjections of pumping synth bass gave us a new perspective on them. The Tunng club mix, if you like. Halfway through it all seemed to settle down, and their usual gently anthemic glory re-asserted itself. They’re playful and bright but at times also slightly creepy; lots of fun but always interesting too. A wonderful band.

By this point a couple of problems were writ large and it seems worth suggestin’ a suggestion for next year: More toilets (the portaloos from 2006 were absent) and more bins (surely more economical than having people wandering around picking litter up all day), please. If there’s a similar increase in the number of punters next time without a corresponding increase in facilities, we’ll (at best) be alarmingly close to an infrastructure collapse.

Modified Toy Orchestra were next on the main stage, performing at their third Supersonic in a row (”Our spiritual home,” said they). I really do love this group, and it was edifying to see them and their toy-based electronica/synthpop enjoyed by so many at this gig. I’ve said this before, but they really work on so many different levels – grooving, catchy, technically clever, novel, arty, and fun. One of the best sets of the day, and I was happy to get my second blast of Freeno And Olaf in a few hours. I do wish Mr Duffy would stop trying to make it sound all smutty when he introduces it, though, with his talk of “forbidden interspecies love”. It’s a beautiful thing and deserves to be treated as such. I may well write a letter of complaint, in fact.

A little bit of Qui’s set came next, over at The Arches Stage. I’m a bit annoyed, really - I found their Unsane-come-Shellac shizzle a bit dull, but that’s by the by. Old Man Yow (of Jesus Lizard fame) is meant to act the giddy goat when you see him. There’s no point to him otherwise. I’m told that he was charging about like a man unhinged at some point during their set, but it didn’t happen while I was watching them. Bah.

Chrome Hoof were the band that I was looking forward to the most out of the ones that I wasn’t already a fan of. This only intensified as they were setting up. “Wow, they’ve got a bassoon!” “Wow, they’re wearing bacofoil!” (It wasn’t actually bacofoil as it turned out, more like silver glitter-ball material. Or maybe an homage to Birmingham Selfridges, who knows. The only none-silvered individual was the singer, who was wearing what seemed to be rune-inscribed cross between a robe and a maternity dress). I really don’t know why anyone hasn’t tried to create Krautrock-disco-metal (or something) before, but I’m glad they have now. Spectacular, and lots of fun. I do get a hint of a feeling that they’re not quite as grooving as they seem to think they are and the frontwoman not quite as charismatic as she seems to think she is, but by any sensible measure they were fantastic.

It seems that after this there were too many people in the main area and re-entry was limited after you left, but keeping half an eye on the entrance and picking the moment made sure there was no problem. It’s not really surprising – outside stage headliners Mogwai were by far and away the ‘biggest’ band ever to play at Supersonic. I only ended up watching a bit, though. The sound was worse for them than it had been for anyone else all day, but even beyond that they just didn’t seem to have the impact that they had when I saw them at The Wulfrun last year (either melodically during their melodic bits, or woooaaarrrghIroarlikeatigerandeatyou-ly during their woooaaarrrghIroarlikeatigerandeatyou bits). I was half-thinking at the time that maybe part of the problem was that every second band currently extant are attempting to be Mogwai being Slint, but that was just as true in 2006. It just felt like something was missing.

I cut out and nipped around the back to catch Arches Stage/entire festival closers Sunno))). Despite the Official Biggest Supersonic Headliners Ever, there were a fair few attendees for whom SunnOhBracketBracketBracket were the real main event. Apparently they were bolstered by Justin Broadrick of Godflesh/Jesu and Attila of Mayhem for this gig. I dunno – it could have been The Sisters Of Mercy on stage, given the amount of dry ice floating about the place. For the majority of the time I could just see a vocalist bloke – initially in a black cowl, which turned out to have a long blonde wig underneath (no, me neither), and at the end a (presumably different?) bloke in a red cowl. Occasionally a hint of a hand, guitar neck or hooded head of one of the others appeared menacingly from amongst the mist. It did look bloody cool, that has to be said.

The sound , sadly, was not the physical trial it’s meant to be. For those unaware, Sunn0))) for the most part play long rumbles of feedbacky bass, twisting with microtonal variation. Shrieks and screams over the top melt in. It’s always reputed, however, to be a hugely powerful and punishing physical experience. It wasn’t. I’ve heard/felt bass as powerful as most of this set (i.e. a shortarse like me could feel it distinctly in his legs and ooblocks, and a little bit in his chest) at loads of different venues before, albeit not as constantly, and I was near the speakers. It got a bit stronger (i.e. I could feel it strongly in my chest and a bit in my throat) for a ten-minute-ish stretch that started about twenty minutes before the end (if that makes sense), but it really wasn’t even remotely close to the sort of thing I’ve heard about. It brings new meaning to the oft-used phrase “I wasn’t feeling that band”. I literally wasn’t feeling them enough, in this case.

So there we go. Without wanting to sound even slightly negative, this was probably the least of the three Supersonic festivals I’ve been to, but crucially it was still a ridiculous amount of fun and surely better than whatever else you to which you might want to compare it. Thank you Lisa & Jenny Capsule, thank you bands, and thank you everyone else involved. Now I just need to kill time for a year until the next one.

P’Ashton be compilin’ links to all the blog posts and features and reviews and photo collections and videos and such here.

I had chance to make one post on The Stirrer’s message board before I was suspended (for the heinous crime of trying to change the email address I registered with, it seems. No, me neither). I will show admirable restraint and not make any needling little comments like “That’s probably a blessing, really.” No. You won’t catch me saying anything like that at all.

Said post was on the subject of The Spotted Dog pub (which I’ve never been to, incidentally. I’d like to at some point soon, though, as a gesture of support as much as anything else) furore. This establishment has, apparently, been having gigs in its beergarden for ever and ever and ever (give or take a fifteen minute margin of error). A block of posh flats (The Abacus Building) was recently built overlooking said garden, seemingly without any planning forethought being given to questions of noise. The inevitable has happened, complaints were received, and the council apparently has its hands tied and is forced to take action. This sounds remarkably similar to what happened to The Fiddle And Bone near the NIA. Inevitable enough, in that I’m sure everyone was just as certain as I was that the redevelopment of Digbeth (an aside - the name ‘Eastside’ makes me want to puke up a f’ing lung) would amount to little more than gentrification, but still very sad.

A thread on The Stirrer’s board addresses this. The main voice (the only voice bar one post, at the time of writing) presenting any sort of argument against The Spotted Dog is one Martin Mullaney, councillor for Moseley & Kings Heath. His insistence that the debate must be framed in terms of “Irrespective of who came first, do you not consider it unreasonable to have music late at night in a beergarden near residential accomodation?” is frustrating. The debate does need a focus to stop it turning into the sprawling vague thing that, well, it already has, but that’s far from the only way that it could be looked at. “In what mad version of the world can you move into an area and expect it to change to suit you?” strikes me as a completely pertinent question. I also think that an important side question (which I asked on there, but was ignored) is “Are such events to be allowed at all, anywhere?” If this is the precedent then we have a de facto ban, albeit a ’sleeper’ that might not instantly come into action in every circumstance.

The councel for The Council posits that Digbeth is a dump at present, and that developments like this are necessary. It’s strange that he continually uses the word ’soulless’ when the alternative he initially kept positing was Brindley Place (ah come on now. I like Brindley Place, but who would call it soulful?), but there we are.

Give the man his due, though - in the interest of sportsmanship and acknowledging that he might be wrong, he went on a crawl around Digbeth on Friday evening and wrote of what he found. Even if you’re not in the slightest bit interested in the question at hand, this is a very good article (it’s on the main Stirrer site, so be prepared to have your browser resized for no obvious reason other than to wind you up), full of information about the detail and history of the pubs under discussion. It’s a great read and I really would recommend it. I’m having the first inkling of the thought of doing my own version, although I’d probably be focussing on very different things.

Digbeth, apparently, was near empty. While I do find that slightly hard to believe (I’m not suggesting he’s making anything up, just that Digbeth High Street isn’t usually like that on a Friday evening. The backstreets are, I’ll give you that), there’s a fairly obvious problem with his methodology regarding this. What Mullaney has either not realised or conveniently ignored is that for many people Digbeth is a clubbing corner more so than pubbing place. Your old Irish fellas probably feel differently, but for a lot of young ‘uns this is a fact. He left at ten past nine to go and play over his own end, and thus missed the crowds of people that Air/The Barfly/The Med Bar would have brought in. I can assure you there would have been a lot.

The thought occurs that a lack of understanding of this sort of culture informs many of his opinions.

(As an aside - are the pubs in Digbeth suffering? He keeps asserting that they are, but I have no idea whether or not it’s the case.)

Off to the NIA to see Al Green on the fourth of July (yee-ha and so forth). This was my first time using one of those barcoded ‘tickets’ that they email to you as an attachment for you to print. Naturally, I was petrified. I know they’ve been in use for a while now (even if I hadn’t heard of them until recently), but I still couldn’t help but imagine in the run-up that I’d get the one doorman who has never heard of them or that the barcode wouldn’t scan or whatever-have-you, and it’d end up being a long and embarassing pain in the arse to get in. I’m like that. I’m a worrier.

Candi Staton was a pretty high-profile support act for a non-package tour, but despite that (and although I know I probably should) I don’t in all honesty know particularly much about her beyond the obvious couple of hits. Her first few songs turn out to be polite and distastefully tasteful soul (including none-too-thrilling covers of ‘Stand By Your Man’ and ‘In The Ghetto’). You could feel a distinct sense of “Just get on with it and play ‘Young Hearts Run Free’” in the air. She did, and everyone was happy. She then did the customary boring ‘introduce the band and have them all do a solo’ bit, and I wasn’t happy. Any punch that “You Got The Love” might have had as a set-ender was rendered moot by that point.

The crowd stayed more unresponsive than you’d expect for Al Green. This surprised me, a lot. When writing about Smokey Robinson the other day I mentioned (in the vaguest way possible) the amazing atmosphere shared by the first Al Green gig I saw, at the Symphony Hall. It’s hardly likely to be the same thing in the NIA (even this half-curtained off ‘NIA Academy’ version), but even given that this felt like a ‘cold’ audience. I think Al knew, too (not to suggest he was anything less than professional. Or as professional as a man who seems to forget what he’s going on about halfway through a long rambling story can be. Which is still extremely professional, funnily enough. I like that, though. I do that myself. It’s nice to know someone of his stature gets a bit lost sometimes too).

It put a damper on things, anyway. The other shocker was the ending - Al said his goodbyes before leaving the stage, and the band jammed on, solo solo solo. And on. And on. Naturally, one would expect him to be coming back for an encore. They stopped playing… and up came the houselights. Eh? Finished at ten (not a problem in itself) and the grand finale consisting of some buncha lads going “Diddly doo diddly doo diddly doo” over and over again? Not impressive.

Still: Albert himself, “Let’s Stay Together,” “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart,” “Take Me To The River” (hurrah! He didn’t do that last time), “Love And Happiness”… you can’t go wrong, really. It wasn’t anywhere near as good as the first time I saw him, though.

Forget what I said the other day about them both sounding like Bill Cosby, by the way - Smokey’s Cosbyism pales in comparison to the Cosbyosity of Al. I’d forgotten just how strong the similarity was.

(Continued from here).

“Slow Motion Addict”, then. My first thought is that the photos of Carina on the front and back cover seem to have been chosen with the specific intention of “Giving someone who can use photoshop as many opportunities as possible”, but never mind that. I don’t want to encourage The Internet to turn her into the next Moshzilla.

To summarise quickly, my feelings about the album have several different layers. I do like it; and I like it more than I possibly expected to. This is a good thing. It’s not even remotely close to being as good as either of the previous two, of course, but I’m not disappointed as such. I think this is mostly because I’ve known for a long time what it was going to be like. Disappointment dissipates if only you can get a good run-up at it.

‘Stolen Car’ kicks the album off. A busy production and the doubling up of high and deep vocals at the same time gives a faintly unsettling feeling, boosting what would otherwise be ‘Not Bad, Alright’-ish bit of angsty alt-rock. It’s reasonably catchy but I can’t see it blowing anyone’s socks off. ‘How Many Times’ sadly just seems mundane. Again, it’s vaguely catchy. That’s about as much as I can offer.

‘Gravity Lies’ has an interesting and menacing-sounding beginning, utilizing glitchy throbs and clicks overlaid with twanging guitar. The chorus sounds somehow familiar (dunno where from. A Pixies song? I’m really not sure), but it melts down in the middle before going into electronic squiggling, combining with some riffing that probably might sound fairly uninspired in other circumstances but works with all this. Or does it? This is one of the two songs on the album that I keep going back and forth about, but alas my positive feelings here aren’t as positive as the negative ones are negative.

I have to say that – while I hadn’t actively disliked anything so far – on first listen I was a bit worried at this point. Fortunately, we now hit what I definitely consider to be the best four-song-run on the album. ‘Ready To Confess’ is where things begin to get down and dirty, and it works. While initially not as savage-sounding as it seemed live, it works in a spaced-out yet somehow adrenaline-filled way. The nails-down-the-blackboard shriek of guitar running towards the end is a great detail. It’s possibly a hint at what this whole thing could have been.

It gets better. For all of my whinging about the music leaning closer to the sort of thing we’ve heard before, my two favourites are the two most obvious rock/pop songs (mildly ironic but it shouldn’t be surprising. Boo to idiomatic distinctions. Hurrah for qualitative ones). ’I Want More’ would probably garner my vote for the best on here, a hugely catchy up-tempo thing with the most immediately ear-catching line of lyrics on the whole album (“It’s not me. I’m representing someone that died during the conversation”). It’s simply a strong, memorable song, and I like it a lot. ’Take The Money’ isn’t quite as good, but is still massively catchy and fun. Both of these are surely future singles, and happily both of them have a lot more to them than the greedy/acquisitive feel that the casual observer might inaccurately derive from the titles.

“Down Slow” is lovely. Its gentle and playful air shows a side to Carina that her recorded works have never really displayed before, as her sleepily intoned words and the dreamy chiming guitar contrast with the pulsing bassline and the slightly scarier sounds faintly captured in the background. A unique and sexy triumph.

I’m still undecided about the first single ’Come To You’, though. It’s catchy enough (I think we can safely say she’s mastered that, by this point in time), but… It could soundtrack a montage bit in a crap film, before the main character finally makes a difficult decision. Or whatever-have-you. Don’t worry, it makes sense to me.

’Slow Motion Addict’ is a rum little do, starting all off balance and jazzily wonky (perhaps this is the bit most similar to her earlier material, outwardly), before eventually exploding into something approaching post-rock. The spacey blurbly beeps in the background just pull the roaring guitars slightly out of their element. This is probably the only song on the album on the album that really wrong-footed me and did something I wasn’t expecting, but that isn’t the only reason why I liked it.

‘January Heart’ is another really ‘obvious’ one, but it is affecting. This is our first hint that even when ‘produced’ six ways to Sunday, her voice can still tug at the old emotions at times. It almost threatens another biiiig guitar squalling, but backs down.

Having a song called ’The Disconnection’ (i.e. the title of her prior album) on here is presumably designed to confuse people. That’s not a bad thing, though. I’ll take as much contrariness from her as I can get, by this point. I have no idea whether it’s actually from the previous era or not, although I can imagine that it was. It does sound like something that could have been on the eponymic LP, with the lush strings especially recalling the tracks towards the end of that album. A bit of electronic jiggery-pokery has been added on top, but never mind that – this is the one where the voice really comes back. Some of her old pitch-ascending tricks are employed, and my attention is caught. She can still do what she did. She would still have the ability to break hearts and tear souls if she so wished.

’The City’ is the obligatory big and epic album-ender. Dynamically, as well as in the use of nursery-rhyme-ish glockenspiel (I think) it recalls Radiohead. She sings really, really high in the chorus. Not quite Janet Kay high, but still really high. I like it.

There we are, then. I do like it, and that’s about as much as I can ask. The thought occurs that the central tenets of Carina fandom – “Thou Shalt Not Compare Her Wonderfulness To P.J. Harvey, And Thou Shalt Go Out Unto The World And Argue With Those Who Do” – are rendered invalid, since there’s nothing on here that you couldn’t imagine being voiced by Pretty Polly. Somehow, though, that feels like the most outre and unexpected move Carina could possibly have made, even if she herself will continue to insist on Patti Smith being a more accurate comparison.

Right, that was fun, what shall we do now? Wait for the next one, I suppose. Will Interscope make her rich and famous in the meantime, or will she end up as yet another re-run of Albini’s “The Trouble With Music” essay? I suppose we’ll have to let events unfold.

Allow me to relate a parable about a woman I once loved. Possibly I still do, I don’t know. Carina Round’s name first came to my attention about seven years ago, when a mate of mine went to some gig or other at the old Ronnie Scott’s on Birmingham’s Broad Street (Alarm bells need not ring. This was a long time before said establishment became a naked lady place). I forget who the headliners were, but when talking about it afterwards he spoke many-a pleased word about a singist who performed supporting act duties. Carina, she was called.

“Sounds interesting,” I responded, before sticking her name at the back of my mind in the usual fashion (not forgetting as such - how could I forget a name like that? - more just nudging her out of harm’s way).

There she stopped for a fair ol’ time, until aroundabout Spring 2001 when a couple of small features in the music press (I was foolish enough to read some of it at the time. I believe, in this particular instance, we’re thinking of the NME and The Fly) beckoned her back to a position of cognitive prominence.

She was due to play a headlining gig at The Flapper & Firkin (for ’twas it’s name at the time) on the 31st of May. On a whim, I bought a ticket from Swordfish records. This isn’t something I’d generally do for a gig at The Flapper, and it turned out to be a good job since A) It sold out; and B) Her set remains the greatest I’ve ever witnessed. Never have I seen emotion so effectively expressed through singin’ and musicin’ and such.

I acquired, as quickly as I could, her mini-album “The First Blood Mystery” (a taped copy at first, before buying the actual CD). Amazing. Nothing is ever perfect (good lord, check out that silly pseudo-continental accent she adopts in the middle of “Message To Apollo”), but this is about as close as most things tend to get. It varies between heartbreaking fragility and restrained venom; restrained, that is, until the harrowing album-ending expectoration of howling and screaming at the close of “On Leaving.” The instrumentation is loose and jazzy, never failing to suit the (her) mood perfectly. It remains one of my absolute favourite albums of all time, and I would disagree with Carina herself in her retrospective labeling of the tracks from this album as “Whiny bitch songs”.

Time passed. I saw her another eight times (and there were another two more after this, but bear with me. I’ll get to those) and each of those was am-a-zing, if not quite as much so as the first time I saw her. I got the second album ‘The Disconnection’, which while not quite as good as the first one was still absolutely wonderful. The sound of it was much less jazzy, and the tone much more abstract rather than tied to specific emotions, but a real sense of wanting to escape seemed to run through it. Songs like ‘Paris’ (“…is beautiful, during the summertime I hear”) and ‘Motel 74’ (with its sonic evocation of broad, expansive American plains) voiced a tale of “anywhere but here”.

More time passed. I heard that she’d signed to a major label, which worried me (ah come on now, how often does that turn out to be a good omen? Both in terms of ‘quality of music made’ and ‘artist ending up dropped and in a pile of debt after a few years’ it rarely turns out to be a happy story) but I chose not to be cynical. She moved to America (as far as I could/can tell), lending post-facto credence to my ideas about the wishes for displacement in ‘The Disconnection.’

The first local gig (no. 10 for me) in ages took place on 15/12/5 and I was ever so slightly perturbed, even if I didn’t really want to admit it to myself at the time. Lots of new stuff was played and (although her ’sound’ hasn’t ever been easy to sum up) this had a very different feel - much more straightforward, much more ‘rock/pop’, and much closer to the PJ Harvey references she always used to attract but were hitherto never even close to true. Decent enough but not ‘my’ Carina. Another gig a couple of months later confirmed that they were good songs but also confirmed that my fears were probably true. As I wrote on this very blog at the time, I’m not one of these silly people who thinks artists shouldn’t be allowed to change. If she’s happier playing her new music then I’m not cretinous enough to see it as a betrayal. It doesn’t mean I’m obliged to like it, though.

Spin on a bit further. Time passed, the release of her new Interscope album was delayed, then delayed further, and further. It actually ended up having been released for a week before I realised it was actually out, which is something that absolutely would not have passed me by a couple of years ago. I ordered it, and after a bit of faffing about from that bunch of indolent coke addicts who run HMV.co.uk it arrived…

To Be Continued…

Call it Soul week. On Friday the 29th I went to see Smokey Robinson (I like that link) at Symphony Hall. On Wednesday I’ll be going to see Al Green (for a second time).

Numerous parallels existed between this and the two soul gigs at I’d attended at Symphony Hall previously (Gladys Knight and the aforementioned Al Green). Parallel #1: A comedian opened rather than a musical act, as at the Gladys Knight gig. This Paul James (I think) from London was thankfully nowhere near as bad as that scouser last time around. Reasonably amusing, although funnier when taking the piss out of people who came in late than when doing his prepared material.

Parallel #2: Both Smokey and Al Green reminded me of Bill Cosby when rambling on between songs. I mean that in a good way. Parallel #3: … is hard to explain. Everyone there was so in tune with performer at all three gigs. It’s difficult to explain what I mean. Massive shared wavelength-ery agwaan.

Great songs a plenty, anyway, as well as his engaging manner and a hell of a band (with the twelve piece string-section being local, apparently. I’ve no idea if that’s true or not). Smokey is described by many as one of greatest songwriters ever (was the “America’s greatest living poet” quote from Dylan? That’s something else I don’t know), and of course as well as his solo stuff and stuff from the Miracles era (‘Tears Of A Clown’, ‘I Second That Emotion’, ‘Cruising’ etc) he has variety of songs he’s written for others that he can have a blast through (The Temptations’ ‘Get Ready’, ‘The Way You Do The Things You Do’ etc). Parallel #4: As with Gladys, he’s apparently recently released an album of versions of jazz standards, so we were treated to some of those too.

The main set finished with an absolutely amazing arrangement of “Tracks Of My Tears” (one of my favourites ever), which I doubt I’ll ever forget. That’s how you build up to a crescendo.

Also: see his Stevie Wonder impression at least once in your life before you die.