It's been a while - Jamie Lenman, of Montreal, Pavement, Young Knives and others

Since I last posted an age ago, I've been atrociously busy at uni, so I've not had time to write a blog. Technically, I don't really have time now, but music's so much better than essay-writing.

Exciting news - last month, I had the chance to interview Jamie Lenman again! My last interview was a rushed emailer in 2009, so it was exciting to actually get a phone call with him, during which he was achingly affable and a really good interviewee. Read the interview here if you want. As usual, I've had an atrocious and near-irrelevant title edited onto the article (I really should make the effort and write them myself), so please don't blame me for that. Jamie's new album is very good, especially the second half. Fans of metal may prefer the first half, but I don't think it really shows off Jamie's melodic and harmonic skills as well as the second - because he's split the album into 'Muscle' and 'Memory', the 'Muscle' half lacks the dynamic and contrasts which make tracks like 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' so beautiful. If you're a die-hard Reuben fan, by the way, and you want the full transcript of the interview which the article above is based on, comment and I'll send it to you - he says a lot more about Reuben and his solo stuff than I have the chance to mention in the article.

As well as interviewing Jamie, I've talked to the Young Knives this month, reviewed their album and been to their Oxford gig. Also since my last post, of Montreal have released an album - a great one. Lousy with Sylvianbriar is a departure for them in that it isn't as expansive and avant-garde as Paralytic Stalks, or as party-drugged and electronic as Skeletal Lamping. It's got quite a 60s vibe going on, actually, and it has some great album artwork too. I'll post a couple of tracks here.

'She Ain't Speaking Now' has a lot in common with earlier of Montreal material - 'Coquet Coquette' has a similar guitar-driven style, and the melodies and lyrics are recognisably Kevin Barnes' work. The chorus broaches great new territory though, and the production is a lot cleaner than on earlier records.

'Belle Glade Missionaries' is Barnes at his wackiest and most incisive lyrically, but the tune has a jaunty Americana feel which hasn't been present on many of of Montreal's more recent releases. It's a long track but it's insanely catchy from beginning to end, and works with its fairly conventional bluesy chord progressions really innovatively. And it's fun.

Finally, I'll post 'Sirens of Your Toxic Spirit'. Because of his way with melody, Kevin Barnes writes really great 'slow' songs - 'Touched Something's Hollow' is really addictive, and a lot of Hissing Fauna gets the haunting atmosphere spot-on too. Rebecca Cash's complementary backing vocals add a new layer of richness to the of Montreal sound, which really works on this track.

Besides these three, I've been listening to quite a bit of Pavement recently, so I just thought I'd post 'Embassy Row' without passing comment... other than to say it's fantastic and uplifting and great.

2012 according to last.fm

This year, my once perfect relationship with last.fm has been rocky - it stopped adding my iPod plays to my music charts, and I moved out and forgot about it for a while, so my last.fm page doesn't really represent my music listening these days. Still, here's what it says were my top albums in 2012.

At the top is Portishead, reflecting the grim few months I had listening to Dummy. It's a great album, but if you're listening to it without drugs, you're probably not in a great mood.

Then, of course, coming in next is Paralytic Stalks, of Montreal's second-to-last release - a mind-blowingly good album. The first song I heard from it, 'Spiteful Intervention', arrived in my life at the perfect time, but even without that, I think I would have fallen in love with it. Wildly experimental, the whole album sounds like a man vomiting out his soul, gradually, starting with the bilious complaint of 'Gelid Ascent' and gradually spewing up every negative and unsustainable emotion he's ever felt towards a lover, ending with the bitter after-spasms of 'Authentic Pyrric Remission'. Thanks to Paralytic Stalks, I went and found False Priest and Skeletal Lamping, both awesomely crazy albums, but Stalks remains my favourite. There's a depth of darkness there which takes the absurdity out of the sound effects; the earlier albums lack that, and so they're emotionally tiring. Still worth a listen though. And a dance.

Then there's the project of Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band, One of my Kind, the new album. I wrote about it recently on here but it deserves another plug. Oberst said in an interview once that his Bright Eyes material was usually made mostly in the studio, messing with sounds, whereas the Mystic Valley Band run through with much more of a live focus, recording together, and so you get a different listening experience from the two projects. I like the Mystic Valley Band's output - it may be less analysable than Bright Eyes' music, but it's very listenable.

Lee Ranaldo and The Cribs are, of course, also in amongst my most-listened - both albums are atmospheric, though for different reasons - Between the Times and the Tides is rich with Ranaldo's warm guitar and vocals, whereas In the Belly of the Brazen Bull is violent, raw, unhappy, but provides an escape from reality in much the same way, though into a greyer, more desolate realm.

I've also been listened to the old favourites - Reuben, Bright Eyes, Mother Mother and Belle and Sebastian appear (I can't stop listening to Tigermilk for some reason) and a couple of artists I hadn't given much attention before - most notably No Doubt and Joan Armatrading.

I recommend all of the above, and say to anyone who reads this - Happy New Year, and have a safe journey into the post-apocalyptic world of 2013.

Of Montreal vs Marmaduke Duke

If you've read this for a while, you'll know that my music taste fluctuates seasonally - in winter, I ply you with my Seasonal Affective Disorder and am generally a miserable sod, until the springtime when I find sunshine bands and am generally a miserable sod with manic patches. About three years ago, I loved Biffy Clyro (winter) and then Simon Neil went and made an album with Marmaduke Duke (summer). This year, I've gone from Portishead to of Montreal. I sense distinct similarities between the style of song which heralds my sunshine. Compare (and note how the music taste has improved).

of Montreal

A few years back, my friend Nita showed me a band who were a little bit like Belle and Sebastian (in the contrast between their upbeat music and insanely downbeat and bitter lyrics), a little bit like Franz Ferdinand (in the rhythms), and as I found out later, a little bit like Mother Mother (in the tight production and smooth, versatile vocals). All of these are things that made me open to listening to them, using my past loves to strengthen connections, give me the springboard from which I could plunge into the joys of this new band. I downloaded a track, listened a bit, thought it was a bit cool, then left them alone.

of Montreal didn't really reappear until today. Depression got to the point last night where I didn't even want to listen to Bright Eyes, Reuben, Portishead, any of those... I didn't want to write, I didn't want to hear myself talk. I wanted to sleep, but I couldn't sleep. I finally went to bed and woke up unrelieved, and Nita had posted this song onto my Facebook page.


It was unforgiving. "Nothing happens for a reason, there's no point even pretending, you know the sad truth as well as I." Unforgiving. Angrily snarled. A cacophony of ambient sounds, drumbeats, vocal harmonies like bad 60s acid spilling over a manuscript. Could music like this really have been released this year? I had been plagued and haunted by "I got the moves like Jagger" and bad Bob Dylan covers, and "wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle, yeah". No-one now seems to be saying anything, and bad pop is as bad as ever, converging in my perception into a relentless barrage of banal sexism, boring dancefloor rhythms and almost scientific replicability. Yet I heard that song and it felt like everything inside me had been thrown up and made into music by someone living and breathing right now. So next, I went and listened to this.


He drawls "now I'm considered ugly from every angle - you're the only beauty I don't want to strangle"; the maligned and the marginalised making music, at last bubbling to the surface, bubbling through the dross which dominates my consciousness. Music in the charts is all about loving someone forever, or wanting to have meaningless sex in a club, or eyeing people up with intent, or losing someone and feeling a bit sad, or dancing. The lyrics are generic, that's part of why it's popular. The words mean nothing. If a decorator left paint one layer thick, you'd say it was a bad job. You can identify endlessly with generic lyrics, or not identify at all - the art of vagueness and stereotype is well mastered by the lyricists, who have been told to write a hit, not something with any kind of analytical quality.

Not that "I want to get all fucked up and tell you how I really feel" could be considered poetry, pre-Bukowski. But it's being sung by the person who wrote it, over a cacophony of music he also wrote. It's powerful because from its core, the moment in which that line was born as a feeling, to its release as a record, it carried its base honesty and never let it go.

Who's the pop-queen of the moment? Adele. Yet at any point, anyone could feel they wanted to be with "someone like you"; it gives the listener freedom to input a name, a person, a set of qualities. In fact, all the line says is that there is someone that someone likes. By contrast -

"Lately I'm rotted in the filth of
self-offered agonies that really should
fill me with shame,
but all I have is this manic energy."

That quotation from 'Spiteful Intervention' is very specific. Shame, mania, filth, agony - they're not emotions akin to the platitudes of pop. They're not Kevin Barnes' alone, however. That's why it's so wonderful: it's shared, at any moment in time, by an exclusive class of miserable, angry and self-pitying people, and it taps into a mood of division and exclusion.

I love it today, and I don't care if I'll love it tomorrow. This blog is getting rawer, probably since my partner expressed the fact he doesn't care about my writing, so I know he won't bother with reading it. I hope whoever reads this is enjoying the good music, and to a lesser extent, the commentary. of Montreal's new album, Paralytic Stalks, is definitely worth exploring, in my opinion.