The album enters your speakers mid-song. There is no introduction or extended build-up. "Song Of The Lake" swirls triumphantly into the room and you wonder where the hell it has been all your life. Because after a decade of grief and suffering, trauma and death, Wild God is Nick Cave's LIFE album. Or, as someone on the Internet has commented, "Nick's so fucking back that I'm not sure anyone's ever been as back as him".
Wild God is not exactly straightforward but it does not hide under any pretense. It is filled with joyous, expressive sound that swallows everything around. Grand orchestration, powerful piano chords, expansive backing vocals... So much so that there is a sense that the album is simply too big to clock in under 45 minutes. It almost feels like it should have been a double or even a triple album. Instead, Wild God is a concerted, life-affirming explosion of pure joy.
It is a beautifully sequenced, well thought-through album that only puts a foot wrong once, when in the otherwise excellent "O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)" Warren Ellis chooses to do the disturbing vocoder thing that reminds me of Bon Iver and thus fills my heart with cold dread. The song itself is Cave's heartfelt tribute to the great Anita Lane (whose two solo albums are essential listening as far as I'm concerned) and manages to be both anthemic and understated.
Wild God is a forward-looking album (and will sound fantastic live) but the past is not entirely behind it. The piano that cuts through "Final Rescue Attempt" is reminiscent of No More Shall We Part. "Cinnamon Horses" is informed by Ghosteen. The album overall has the glorious, freewheeling spirit of Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus to it. And it is also as entertaining as "White Elephant", with certain songs featuring multiple sections (the title song, for instance, or my current favourite "Conversion").
Other than the rather oblique but amusing "Frogs", the lyrics of Wild God are fairly simple. But that is perhaps the whole point. Again, it is a LIFE album. Perhaps the LIFE album, and life is not to be fucked with. Quite simply, it is there to be lived.
In my review of Skinty Fia I expressed a wish for more nuance and diversity from Fontaines DC. Two years and one excellent solo LP from Grian Chatten later, nuance and diversity are the order of the day. However, there is a trade-off. Romance, great though it is, compromises some of their identity. The start of the title song could be mistaken for Radiohead. There are sections that bring to mind Blur, Slowdive and The Cure. There are even parts of "In A Modern World" that sound like Lana Del Rey (Chatten is a fan, apparently). Add to this an explicit desire to become the biggest band in the world as well as unhealthy expectations created by the rap/punk/indie hybrid "Starburster", and this could be a major disaster. It is not. They are excellent songwriters, and James Joyce is still an influence.
Magdalena Bay is a band that everyone seems to give a damn about these days, and I, too, gave them a shot. Their new album is getting perfect reviews from all corners, and Imaginal Disk is, essentially, dreamy synth-pop with soulful undertones. While the supposed blissed-out brilliance escapes me (as of now), songs like "Tunnel Vision" do sound very lovely indeed.
I admit there are times when I find Gillian Welch a tad too perfect. For me, the rougher-edged Soul Journey remains her best work. She let it loose a little in 2003, and you got stuff like "One Monkey". Mostly, though, she goes for the transcendental. Woodland, her impeccable new album with David Rawlings (could I just repeat for the umpteenth time how much I adore "The Weekend"?), is, in essence, absolute perfection. From the very first single "Truckload of Sky" to the sparse, serene closer "Howdy Howdy", the album is transcendental country of the highest order that just gets better with every listen. Beautiful songwriting, accessible but not very approachable.
There was a time when I obsessed over Laurie Anderson. First time I heard Big Science, I wrote to my English friends who burned that CD for me and demanded another album exactly like that. Well, sadly there was nothing they could do, and even though I got my hands on Mister Heartbreak and Bright Red and Home Of The Brave, I was missing the chilling electronic novelty of her 1982 debut. Interestingly, with this year's Amelia (the album is about Amelia Earhart, the pioneering American aviator and the first woman to cross the Atlantic) gets us back to the topic of flying. And while nothing here moves me as much as the otherworldly "From The Air", it is a very consistent, and brief, work of modern classical with tasteful chamber orchestration.
Songs of the Month:
"Bowling de Diano Marina" - Juniore
"Joy" - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
"Green Rubble - Clean Shoots" - Godspeed You! Black Emperor
"TV Star" - Du Blonde
"Bug" - Fontaines DC
"North Country" - Gillian Welch & David Rawlings
"Holy, Holy" - Geordie Greep
"Tunnel Vision" - Magdalena Bay
"Rio's Song" - The Hard Quartet
"Zero Sum" - The Smile
"Crossing The Equator" (feat. ANOHNI) - Laurie Anderson
I thought I had the best joke in town when I said that we all wanted to see Jarvis Cocker at the OFF Festival this year, but all we ever got was Puuluup and Bar Italia. My sense of victory, however, did not last. The vocalist of Les Savy Fav beat me, quite comprehensively, with the nipple joke. More on that later.
This year's edition of the legendary Polish festival did not impress with its line-up as much as it did last year, but there is a certain joy to stumbling upon a lesser known artist giving a disturbingly great performance in a small tent at the edge of the festival grounds. There was plenty of it this time - in addition to the usual: rain, smell of weed and the great museums of Katowice. With that said, it was a little heartbreaking to see an older gentleman in front of me in a T-shirt with the full line-up of 2010 on his back. The Flaming Lips, Tindersticks, Art Brut, The Fall, Dinosaur Jr... Oh well.
Day 1
Who knows, though? Perhaps by 2038 English Teacher will have become a legendary act in their own right... Their early performance on Friday, to a scattered but receptive audience, made me reconsider my indifference to their debut album (This Could Be Texas, 2024). I was willing to write them off as yet another British band who wants to be like Black Country, New Road, but they were genuinely good here. Intense one moment ("Nearly Daffodils"), elegant the next ("You Blister My Pain"), they were charming, confident and quite humble. In fact, I have relistened to the album a few times since last Friday, and it just keeps getting better.
photo from Off Festival's website
Later on, in a tent, and just as the rain was starting to fall, Annahstasia was doing her intimate folk set. The two songs she did from her upcoming EP were nice, if little else. Still, while I do not find her music special in any way, she did create a pleasant, almost spiritual mood with her brooding lyrics and the gently fingerpicked guitar.
Polish hip-hop is not something that could entice me, but from what I could gather, Łona (Adam Bogumił Zieliński) is something of a legend in this country. His lyrics in particular are widely praised. What drew my attention was the fact that he was playing with the jazz musicians Andrzej Konieczny and Kacper Krupa, and jazz rap is something I do appreciate (I still relisten to Blowout Comb once in a while). They were mostly doing last year's Taxi (also available as an instrumental album), and I found the juxtaposition between atmospheric jazz and shouty rapping quite engaging.
Did I say English Teacher were confident, charming and humble? Well, Bar Italia were all that without the 'charming' and the 'humble' bits. A certain arrogance is healthy, no doubt, but then you must have the music to back it up. I know they are getting quite popular, and receiving a lot of coverage and rave reviews (not from Jarvis Cocker, though, who does not rate them), but their noisy indie rock just sounds like a racket and the hooks and the melodies simply drown in the sea of monotony and power chords.
Finally, at midnight (when else?), Imperial Triumphant were playing. This concert was worth attending for two reasons: for the experience and because I never really cared for Future Islands who were at that time playing on the central stage. It was thrilling to see the masked avant-garde metal band from New York performing in the pouring rain of southern Poland. I really enjoyed the jazzy interludes which, nonetheless, always gave way to the lead vocalist growling wickedly into the microphone. It was quite an experience, if nothing else.
Day 2
Best things in life happen on Saturdays. Klawo, a jazz six-piece from Gdańsk, kicked things off on the central stage. They dazzled without being overbearing, which is something I appreciate in jazz. To me, the highlight of the set was the brief, vibraphone-led, sweetly sung "I Feel Something" which exploded quite beautifully towards the end.
A little further away, on the experimental stage, the Estonian duo Puuluup were doing avant-folk using contraptions called talharpa (the sound is not unlike something you could get out of a pleasantly distorted violin). Catchy, whimsical, inessential and with some funny self-deprecating banter between songs.
Mostly, though, I was here for Baxter Dury. Interestingly, the man was so hyped up (cocaine?) that even his band members were a little shocked. Mad dancing was in full display. When I saw him in Berlin last year, he slowly built himself up into this total frenzy of dancing and screaming. This time, he was that way from the start, from the very first chords of "Leak At The Disco". And it was one hell of a show. He played his best songs, including three from his latest album, and he was shouting 'we love you Poland' at the end like he really meant it. A great songwriter and an entertaining performer. All you could ever wish for at the festival.
photo from Off Festival's website
Did I just say entertaining? Next up was art punk band from Brooklyn called Les Savy Fav, and this was one of the highest points of this year's OFF Festival. Basically, what we got was the vocalist Tim Harrington (who looks a little like the bearded man from a Gentle Giant album cover) stripping to his underpants and walking among the crowd while the band was playing tight, high-octane rock music without paying any attention to whatever was going on around. Harrington himself was a hoot, talking incessantly in between songs; at one point, he brought up the Polish language (sounds like an English person swearing), at another, he asked the audience if they knew the word 'nippy' and then said that actually, it was not nippy but nipply outside (true on both counts) and in fact, at least one of the band members had three nipples. I don't know, the whole show was intoxicating, and filled with great songs that span the band's entire career.
Finally, Saturday was brought to an effective close by Grace Jones. She started with her brilliant take on the Bowie/Iggy Pop classic "Nightclubbing" and then she was by turns salacious, majestic, totally irresistible. She played a half of Nightclubbing LP and other classics ("Private Life" and "My Jamaican Guy" were incredible). The extended ending was her doing a hula hoop for ten minutes while performing "Slave To The Rhythm". A night to remember, obviously.
And another OFF Festival that delivered the goods, even if sometimes against all odds and with the rain pissing down all over the tent camp.
These may or may not be the five biggest pop albums of 2024. Last month, I took the time to listen to all of them and these are my thoughts.
Charli XCX - Brat
This album is a perfect soundtrack to the world falling apart while you are sitting on your terrace drinking Red Bulls. Charli XCX's new album is, of course, a statement. This is largely nostalgic club music, done with style and great conviction. Not my kind of thing, but I do admire the gutsy inventiveness that runs through this thing. She throws so many ideas into the songs that they may on occasion sound quite messy ("Von Dutch", "Club Classics"). Still, the criminally catchy stuff like "B2B" or the opener "360" more than makes up for it. Extra points for the piano break in "Mean Girls".
Billie Eilish - Hit Me Hard And Soft
I'm sorry, but this is just boring. Forty three fucking minutes of a listless female voice whispering something or other. Call it subtle and sophisticated if you want to, I just find it bloodless. Side B is slightly more interesting, but not by much. Funnily enough, the most memorable moment on the whole album comes by way of Billie intoning the goddamn 'birds of feather flock together' cliche. Jesus Christ.
Dua Lipa - Radical Optimism
As far as I'm concerned, this is harmless pop music. Nothing sticks out in particular, nothing is terrible. She has a voice, I guess, and these songs have hooks. Decent, derivative dance pop. I have definitely heard worse, but I do not get the adoration.
Beyoncé - Cowboy Carter
This album has 27 songs on it. WHY?!? Why in God's name? This album is full of filler and what is not filler is hardly all that great either. Just your glorified country album done with aplomb, schtick and a lot of money. Not bad or anything, and occasionally quite worthy of your time, but there is nothing here that justifies the unbearable fawning from critics. Eighty (!) minutes, too.
Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poets Department
I wonder what will happen when she takes her show to Warsaw this weekend. Increase the rate of the zloty? Cause an earthquake? Legalise abortion? Hard to say. The fact remains that what looked like a stylish advert for lingerie turned out to be a cover of a new Taylor Swift album. It features a million songs and 95% of them sound like self-parody. Still, she is a pop machine and the algorithm is still working (if you are into this kind of thing). She mentions Dylan Thomas and says 'fuck' a couple of times, but this is way too derivative to sustain my interest all the way through.
