Album of the Month: THE MESSTHETICS AND JAMES BRANDON LEWIS

Generally I do not like the idea of reviewing jazz next to popular music. After all, how do you place Bob Dylan alongside John Coltrane? I love both of them dearly, but there is just something that makes these genres exist on two entirely different plains. This time, however, I totally give in to the urge as this album goes well beyond genre constraints. This is a collaboration between an American jazz saxophonist and former members of Fugazi. 'Wildly intriguing' is the least that you can say about that.

I shudder at the idea of jazz rock. Mercifully, The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis LP is not that. It is what it is: adventurous avant-garde jazz with an intense Fugazi rhythm section. The album has so much edge to its sound that it bleeds profusely all over the place and yet manages to keep everything extremely tight.

The album opens with "L'Orso" that sets the tone perfectly with great musicianship and a melody that builds up all the time and sometimes ventures into an ominous King Crimson territory. Then comes the single "Emergence" and this just may be my favourite piece of music from 2024. Three minutes of heart-pumping intensity whose sax-screeching climax is pure punk bliss. The second single is "That Thing" with an unforgettable riff that makes me think of a Moroccan bazaar in the middle of an African desert. Things calm down a little on "Three Sisters" with, again, some beautiful interplay and intensity bubbling under the surface. 

"Boatly" is one of the album's biggest highlights. A swirling, ballad-like composition with a memorable instrumental hook and a floating melody that stops in the middle and becomes this enchanting guitar-driven coda with sax, bass and drums piling up beautifully until the very end. "The Time Is The Place" is slightly less distinctive but nevertheless features some frenetic Fugazi-like sections. "Railroad Trucks Home" has a lot more restraint to it and gets by on a memorable soft rhythm that could be the most traditional thing on the whole album. After the brief but pretty interlude "Asthenia" we reach the end with the brilliant "Fourth Wall" that is built entirely on this part-beautiful/part-sinister Messthetics' groove that erupts occasionally with guitar and sax solos.

Interestingly, I am rarely in the mood to listen to Fugazi albums. When I do, they always sound great but their charms are mostly intellectual rather than emotional. This album (released by the legendary jazz label Impulse! Records) has it all: intensity, experimentation, warmth. I have been listening to it for a week now and I am still completely enamoured with it. This album is for those who are afraid of jazz. And, obviously, for those who are not.

March Round-Up

The problem with Jack Antonoff is that the guy has no identity. He may be a decent producer, but his own songs only make sense when he sounds like Bruce Springsteen or The National. Hence the new Bleachers album is average at best. At worst, it features some truly horrendous autotune.

I listened to the new single by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds almost the second that it was released, and it was a wild ride. After a few seconds of beautiful noise came a lovely if somewhat unremarkable folk-pop melody that could have been an outtake from the mellower side of Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus. That said, my complaints were effectively blown to pieces by the extended coda that was every bit as gospelish and ecstatic as the second part of "White Elephant". The "Wild God" experience will be cathartic live. 

Cathartic. Not a word I would use in connection with the new album by Liam Gallagher and Chris Squire. Christ what a dull mess. Tired blues, forced psychedelia and melodies so laboured and yet so rudimentary that I do not get why anyone would be bothered to listen to this more than once. And of course Liam calls one of the songs "Mother Nature's Son". Exasperating.

People should be banned from using words like Psychocandy when talking about a new album by The Jesus & Mary Chain. It just feels that whatever the Reid brothers might do at this point, it won't be good enough. They will either record a bland copy of "Just Like Honey" or will be criticised mercilessly for still playing the alternative game in their 60s (I guess they should start doing adult contemporary). Because Glasgow Eyes is a fine album. Not great or anything like that, but they are joyfully diverse and can still pen a simple but addictive tune. That said, that chorus of "Venal Joy" is a bit too fucking simplistic. 

While Kim Gordon's bold new album is commendable (The Collective is pure industrial noise infused with strong hip-hop leanings), it is more of a semi-successful experiment. Kind of powerful but also very one-dimensional. 

I am still not convinced by Yard Act. Are they as cool as they think they are? Judging by the first album, not at all (despite the dancing girl in "The Overload" video). But it is getting warmer, and Where's My Utopia? puts their post-punk charisma to better use. You do have to get used to the rap-like singing, but once you do, you may find this record catchy and intense without being grating. They do have a knack for making unreasonable creative decisions (the ending of "Grifter's Grief", the entirety of "Blackpool Illuminations"), but the intense soulful anthem "A Vineyard For The North" almost makes up for any missteps.

Adrianne Lenker is something of a cult hero these days. She is mostly known for fronting Big Thief, but Lenker is also an established solo artist in her own right. Bright Future is a country-folk album that I have seen compared to artists like Mount Eerie. I disagree. Her songwriting is much more substantial and incisive, and you won't find many songs in 2024 as gorgeous as "Evol", "Sadness as a Gift" and "Ruined". 

Almost each time that I listen to a new album by Ride, I wonder if back in the day I really liked Nowhere all that much. Because that colourful shoegaze noise is all but gone on Interplay and what we get here is pleasant dream pop without too much edge to it. It is all very agreeable and consistent, and the second half reveals some lovely vocal hooks (in "Sunrise Chaser", for instance) but ultimately the word is 'unexceptional'. 

Nils Frahm is a modern classical composer whose new albums I rarely miss. Day is every bit as raw and minimalist as its cover suggests. You hear the sparse piano notes that nevertheless retain a great deal of inner tension (not least due to the presence of the recording room which plays a very distinct role on the album). It is not his best work but there is a lot of ambient beauty to be discovered here.

Finally, Pete Astor released an album of rerecordings of some of his lesser-known songs that go back to his Loft, Weather Prophets and even Wisdom of Harry days (I want to seize this opportunity to say that those three obscure Wisdom of Harry albums are very underrated). The LP is titled Tall Stories & New Religions and features the usual Pete Astor fare: tasteful, economical songs with a soft but undeniable melodic edge. "Model Village" is a clear highlight, but it is all excellent (the man has taste). My only complaint is that he did not find space for "Boxed", surely one of the greatest songs ever. 

Songs of the month:

"Emergence" - Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis

"Wild God" - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

"Model Village" - Pete Astor

"Sadness as a Gift" - Adrianne Lenker

"Second of June" - The Jesus and Mary Chain

"A Vineyard for the North" - Yard Act

Steve Harley (1951-2024)

I remember how shocked I was back in the day on discovering that Psychomodo by Cockney Rebel was not regarded as one of the greatest albums of the 70s. That not too many people cared, or even knew, and that secondhand stores were filled with unwanted vinyl copies of that LP (like they are still filled with The Triffids' Calenture). That Steve Harley was mostly known for his 1975 hit single "Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)". A good song, no doubt, but one that plays too safe after the tastefully deranged brilliance of Cockney Rebel's two first albums, The Human Menagerie and Psychomodo. Electric violin, glam-rock grandeur, beautiful melodies, oblique lyrics and Harley's eccentric Bowie-esque vocal delivery. I fell in love with those albums almost at once. 

While Steve Harley would never reach those art rock heights again, he never really lost it as a songwriter. And through all these decades he remained frustratingly underrated, until the very end. Today, a week after his death, there are too many classic songs to mention. "Death Trip", "Hideaway", "Tumbling Down", "Psychomodo", "Back To The Farm"... However, it is this beautiful anthem at the end of his third album that I have been playing non-stop ever since last Sunday... Rest in peace. 

Oh you'll think it's tragic when that moment arrives

Oh, oh but it's magic, it's the best years of our lives

The Zone of Interest

Sometimes an idea is so good and so unequivocal that everything else will simply fall into place. Such was the idea that Jonathan Glazer extracted from Martin Amis's 2014 novel The Zone of Interest, a short but powerful book set in Auschwitz during the Second World War. The idea was to show the seemingly normal, orderly life of Rudolf Höss. To show the wife, tending the garden, and the children, running around the house, and to have the horrors of Auschwitz as merely the backdrop to picnics and petty laughter at the kitchen table. 

All great art gets off on a juxtaposition, and you will not find a stronger one than the juxtaposition at the heart of The Zone of Interest. It is as hypnotic as it is absolutely sickening. Across the street and over the wall, there is an unbearable cacophony of screams, shots and constant beatings (the kinds that, inevitably, ooze into the subconscious of Höss's children). Outside, there is unspeakable ash flying in the air. Inside, the wife of the camp's commandant (the quietly sinister Sandra Hüller) is considering the latest batch of clothes she got from Jewish women about to be led into the gas chamber. 

The film is a succession of simple words and insignificant actions but the underlying tension never leaves the screen. How could it?.. In fact, the only breaks from the gruesome routine come by way of a village girl who is seen in dream-like sequences leaving food for Auschwitz prisoners. These scenes bring some otherworldly humanity into this hell on earth, and in his interviews Jonathan Glazer tells a beautiful story about how he actually met this girl while shooting The Zone of Interest in Poland. Now well into her nineties, she really was doing that every night while living near the camp at the time and being a member of Polish Resistance. 

The Zone of Interest is clinical at showing the evil of the mundane. Hannah Arendt famously spoke about how there was nothing special about Adolf Eichmann and others like him. They were insignificant, one-dimensional people who were doing their small jobs. Rudolf Höss, too, was doing his job, and was only occasionally distracted by his wife's garden, sex with Jews, his great love for dogs and the efficiency of crematoriums. However, you will always be aware of the powerful impact of every small detail in this film. With that unnerving sound design, with those beautiful flowers of Auschwitz, the film has the kind of understated quality that overwhelms your whole being.