Album of the Month: STRAWBERRIES by Robert Forster

I have to confess that the moment that I heard the first single from the album ("Strawberries", released in early March), I was extremely underwhelmed. It was a decent Lovin' Spoonful pastiche, charming and inoffensive, but was it not just a piece of prime good-time filler? Did Karin (Robert's wife and also musician in her own right) not overdo the playfulness bit with her vocal performance? (And just to make sure: I'm a huge Lovin' Spoonful fan, and could extol the virtues of songs like "Coconut Grove" for days on end.) 

My apprehension, though, was crushed seconds after the first riff of "Tell It Back To Me" started playing. Christ what a relief. And what an absolute classic of an opening song. Forster has always been so good at them, especially of late: "Crazy Jane On A Judgement Day". "If It Rains". "Learn To Burn". "She's A Fighter". And "Tell It Back To Me" is among his very best. It is a narrative song (one of several), with an optimistic lyrical twist, timeless vocal melody and blissful guitar hookline. 

The second song, "Good To Cry" is an effective rock'n'roll throwback that he still likes to do on occasion (think "121" from Calling From A Country Phone), but to be honest songs like that are not the reason why I love the man. It is the charismatic lyricism ('they made love quickly once, they made love slowly twice') and the tough, intelligent melodicism that does it, and it can all be found on the eight-minute epic "Breakfast On A Train" which is the centrepiece of this album and also the longest song he has ever done. The whole thing flows quite masterfully, with tension and intrigue bubbling underneath. 

In a recent video interview Forster mentioned that it had always been a dream of his, to make his own eight song album (think of something as stylish and pure as Astral Weeks and Marquee Moon). And it is a beautiful idea, beautifully realised. Strawberries is split evenly, with four songs on each side. The second one features the upbeat "All Of The Time" (think of "Learn To Burn" from 2015, but with shades of Leonard Cohen in the vocal melody), the wistful piano-based "Such A Shame", the stark, striking ballad "Foolish I Know" (with a surprising lyrical twist) and the free-flowing "Diamonds" that starts with a "For What It's Worth"-like guitar hook and erupts at the end with a great saxophone-led explosion. 

All through the album, he is backed by what he calls his 'Swedish band'. They are fantastic, and they also going to perform with him during the European tour later this year. But coming back to Strawberries for a second... It is not his strongest album (I would go for The Evangelist or Danger In The Past), but his melodies and his lyrics still sparkle. Plus, the album features what may well be the best use of the word "fuck" in a song in recent memory.

 

May Round-Up

It would be hard for me now to explain what a shock to the senses The Seer was 13 years ago. I remember playing "Lunacy" to my Celtic folk-loving sister back in 2012, and even she was impressed. The sound was brutal, hypnotic, truly monumental. And according to Michael Gira, the two-hour-long Birthing is supposed to be the end of that run. From the minimalist cover to the gruesome drama of the first few seconds of "The Merge", this is of course classic Swans. The final "(Rope) Away", where Gira recounts the name of friends who have passed away over the years, could be the most moving thing the man has ever done. No, this is not as good as The Seer, but then very few things are. Birthing is a fitting finale.

I have probably said or written a lot of negative things about The National over the years, but the odd thing is that I quite enjoy Matt Berninger's solo stuff. Serpentine Prison in particular helped me get through the harrowing events of 2020. Back in October and November that year, I probably played that album every day. Get Sunk is not as good - but only because it lacks the killer songs like "One More Second" and especially "Loved So Little". The overall feel is much the same, though, that of sentimental chamber pop introspection in a late night cocktail bar.

Peter Doherty's latest is not among his best, and I must have heard everything the man has ever done - be that as part of The Libertines, Babyshambles or in his solo career. The latter has generally been rather low-key and inessential, but I'm always curious. I still rate him as a great songwriter, and 2022's The Fantasy Life of Poetry & Crime, for example, was an understated and unjustly ignored gem. Not so much Felt Better Alive, though, which is charming but also extremely throwawayish in nature. In between the minor delights "Calvados" and "Empty Room", there are a lot of decent folk tunes you will forget as soon as they stop playing. 

Since I have already talked about Arcade Fire's new album, Pink Elephant (rather unjustly slammed, I should say, but then try writing about it and not slamming it - full review here), so let's talk about the comeback of Stereolab instead. While it would be true to say that I have never been a huge fan, I have utmost respect for albums like Emperor Tomato Ketchup and particularly Dots and Loops (my personal favourite). Their new album, and the first in 15 years, is titled Instant Holograms on Metal Film. It is tasteful, addictive music full of beautiful guitar grooves and electronic undertones. The album won't set the world on fire, but it has a lot of warmth and style and real melodic substance. You just want to get lost in its rich textures. 

Blondshell's new album is getting good reviews from almost everywhere, and it is easy to see why: she plays solid indie rock music with hooks and melodies and attitude. The problem of If You Asked For A Picture is that I still find it all very derivative, and wouldn't pay much attention to these overly familiar power chords if I heard them played in a public place. Consistent, moderately catchy (annoyingly so on "23's a Baby"), but there's just not enough oomph. The last minute of "Change" is great, though.

Ezra Furman remains an excellent songwriter, but I just can't get excited about Goodbye Small Head to the extent that I was excited about Twelve Nudes or those brilliantly unhinged Harpoons albums. I am still a fan, though, and the strings-drenched screamer "Jump Out" and the gorgeous ballad "Veil Song" are worthy of Furman's previous work. I just need a little more catharsis, I guess. 

There's certainly some catharsis on the new LP by Sparks, but out of all their 21st century output and excluding the soundtracks, I would only rate Balls and A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip as less interesting. I could of course come up with some clever reasons for that (and mention the messy production, which I actually don't have a problem with), but I guess it is quite straightforward: the songs are slightly less good. I mean, doesn't "My Devotion" have a little too much cheese in its melody (and lyrics)? Still, the highlights are numerous ("Hit Me, Baby", "I-405 Rules", "Drowned In A Sea Of Tears", "Love Have Mercy"), and even the silly and repetitive "JanSport Backpack" features some beautiful sections. MAD! is excellent, mind you, just a little below their lofty standards. 

Finally, I've always been all for loving These New Puritans, but their brand of intellectual art rock has never really grabbed me. Crooked Wing is a good album but I just can't find enough substance here. Sorry, but Talk Talk they are not. 

Songs of the month:

"Tell It Back To Me" by Robert Forster

"Drowned In A Sea Of Tears" by Sparks

"Aerial Troubles" by Stereolab

"Veil Song" by Ezra Furman

"The Pink Floyd Research Group" by Luke Haines & Peter Buck

"Got To Have Love" by Pulp

"Empty Room" by Peter Doherty

"Bonnet Of Pins" by Matt Berninger

"Disintegrate" by Suede

"Change" by Blondshell

Its own category: "(Rope) Away" by Swans

"Tell It Back to Me" by Robert Forster

Nobody can do a classic opening song quite as well as Robert Forster does them. "Baby Stones". "If It Rains". "Crazy Jane On A Judgement Day". I will have a lot more to say about this new Robert Forster in a week or so, but for now I'll just say that "Tell It Back To Me" is one of his best ever. It is intense, intelligent, endlessly tuneful. From the melody to the lyrics, it is just about everything I have ever loved about the man. 

Pink Elephant

The tragedy of the new Arcade Fire album is that it is honestly quite okay. And it is the bleakest, most indifferent 'quite okay' I can think of. Pink Elephant is the kind of record you make when you feel like you have composed forty minutes of music. It is not the kind of record you make when you have something to say.

So how did we get here? Because it all started with a bang, back in 2004, and the bang was so loud that the reverberations are still audible. Fickle fans be damned; Funeral is one of the greatest albums that have been released this century. From there, we got Neon Bible which saw them eschew a little bit of their charisma in favour of a few Springsteen-like anthems. Still, a great album. The Suburbs was magnificent; a double album that was Arcade Fire at their most sprawling and expansive, with the rather anaemic "Wasted Hours" being its only piece of filler. Reflektor was messy and unwieldy but the ambition and the songwriting pulled it through. 

For all its patchy brilliance, Reflektor spelled trouble. There was a sense that Win Butler and company got a little too high on public and critical adoration and proclaimed themselves invincible. Well, they were not, hence the aftermath of Everything Now. I would still say it was not a worthless album, and both "Put Your Money On Me" and "We Don't Deserve Love" were excellent and I even had time for the clumsy little pop number "Peter Pan", but Christ what a career suicide it was. Everything Now was an artistic disaster, and most of the songs ended up being both banal and overwrought. Clearly the band got lost, and tried to fix the universal dismissal, if not downright hate, by releasing the consolatory WE that saw them go back to the roots with semi-successful results. "The Lightning", for instance, was great, but WE is an album that I never feel like going back to. Because I had heard it all before - but much better.

And so now, more than 20 years after Funeral, we are treated to Pink Elephant, that bloodlessly decent indie rock album that back in 2004 would have sounded like a nightmare or a bad joke. The problem is that there is no ambition to it, no sense of urgency or purpose. While Everything Now was clearly a failure, at the very least it was an ambitious failure. Pink Elephant is... just there. That said, other than the clunky "Alien Nation", there is nothing to actively dislike about the album. "Circle Of Trust" is catchy (if overlong), the title song features a decent (if terribly diluted) melody and "Year Of The Snake" is a powerful mood piece (by far the best thing on the album). Perhaps Arcade Fire just need to be ambitious, loud and anthemic to succeed. Without any of those qualities, the pink on the cover looks like a small drop of blood dissolved in big tank of water.

And I do not even want to talk about the sex scandal that Win Butler has been involved in (and which, quite annoyingly, made many people revise history and say Funeral and The Suburbs were not all that good to begin with). All I'm talking about here is creativity and artistic merit, which are in such short supply by this point that I do not see them digging themselves out of this hole. Really, the tragedy of Arcade Fire is that it feels like they will not make a great album ever again.

"Maxine's Parlour": perfect pop song

I asked Chat GPT the other day to give me some negative feedback. I actually fed it huge chunks of my writings from this blog and specifically requested harsh criticism. In the midst of the sea of bullshit that AI is known for, two things stood out: 1) I use too many personal anecdotes and 2) some of my references are too niche. 

Valid points. My own experience, though, remains the best way for me to establish the emotional connection with the work of art as well as the audience. Personality comes through the writing style as well as the stories we tell. These are not diary entries and nor are they magazine articles, but I would like to think there is a balance there. The second point is tricky in the sense that it is absolutely true and yet there is not much I can do about it. In the end, you write the sort of pieces that you yourself would like to read, and niche references as well as obscure subject matters have always intrigued me. I hate instructions and overstatements and I believe in the effort from both the creator and the beholder. 

Which is all a somewhat fitting setup to talk about a piece of music very few have heard. 

I have always been searching for the perfect pop song. For reasons too numerous to name, the focus of my attention has mostly been the 1960s. "(Do I Figure) In Your Life". "Different Drum" "Sunny Goodge Street". "Care of Cell 44". "Walk Away Renee". Countless others. This is, of course, not about the final result but, rather, about the process of searching. Because there are few things as rewarding as hearing that crackling sound of an old recording and getting something magical out of the muffled sound of your speakers. Which is exactly what happened when I heard the original version of "Maxine's Parlour" a few weeks ago. 

Interestingly, I knew this song from way before. There is a rare BBC session by Honeybus where they played this song along with a few other pop gems like "Françoise" (one of those slight masterpieces Peter Dello was so very good at) and John Phillips' "Like An Old Time Movie" (one of those lengthy and verbose choruses that actually work). In the version by Honeybus, "Maxine's Parlour" seemed like a delightful little pop song that I thought was actually written by the band. Years later, as I was reading the song credits from a Honeybus compilation, I realised that the song was actually composed by one William Fay. Moreover, the song was released as a 1968 single by a completely forgotten band with one of the worst names in existence: The Crocheted Doughnut Ring. And it was a great single, too (their sole one), except that I also realised who William Fay was.

William Fay was none other than Bill Fay, the sadly overlooked English singer-songwriter who recorded two excellent but obscure albums in the early 70s and was then rediscovered about forty (!) years later, at which point he released a handful of sweetly melodic, introspective albums that I have reviewed for my blog (Life Is People and Who Is The Sender? are especially good). Moreover, 2004 saw the release of the compilation From the Bottom of an Old Grandfather Clock that collected 25 demos and outtakes from Fay's largely unknown career in the late 60s. One of those songs was, naturally, "Maxine's Parlour", and it was utter perfection.

Now the sound quality is not great, but I have always believed that a good song will come through. And it does, and how. All that melodicism, all that yearning packed within three minutes of soaring wistfulness that reaches absolute catharsis with the unlikely slide guitar that romps through the background. The harpsichord could make it too precious and cute, but the melody is just too timeless to be hampered by the muffled noises and dodgy tape hisses - never mind the harpsichord!

I think it is telling that Dan Bejar (of Destroyer and New Pornographers) recognises that genius of that song and has performed it live a few times. Bejar, whose latest albums feature songwriting that I would call unfocused and even meandering, does know his way around a great melody. Records like Streethawk: A Seduction are simply dripping with classic tunes.

So there you have it, an article full of personal anecdotes and obscure references. Most importantly, though, it is about "Maxine's Parlour". The perfect pop song.