Album of the Month: ALL QUIET ON THE EASTERN ESPLANADE by The Libertines

If you love The Libertines of 20 years ago and your heart does not start pounding faster during the verse melody of "Run Run Run" (which did not impress me as a single but which is a perfect opener for this album), you are simply lying to yourself. Because this is it, plain and simple, the best album by The Libertines since Up The Bracket. 22 years, too. No small thing.

It is easy to sense how much craft and thought went into making this album. That said, it never feels overwrought, overbearing or overproduced. When they do the Swan Lake sample in the beautiful "Night of the Hunter", they sound clever rather than pretentious. 

To me, the pleasant surprise is definitely Carl Barât. While Peter Doherty never really lost it, Barât has done nothing of note in years. Well, he sounds completely rejuvenated here, and gives us tough, terrific rockers "Run Run Run", "Oh Shit" and (to a slightly lesser extent) the reggae-fied "Be Young". Brilliant hooks, great energy. Best of all is the swaggering "Mustangs" that features quirky lyrics and a truly cathartic coda. 

Doherty is in good form, too (I'm actually in the small minority that enjoyed the pastoral delights of his 2022 album The Fantasy Life of Poetry & Crime). Regardless of its Libertines-by-numbers title, "Merry Old England" is a lovely melodic ode to Britain, "I Have A Friend" is a brilliant rush of energy and the old outtake "Songs They Never Play On The Radio" wraps things up nicely, with a wistful tune and a few giggles. 

Only the fragile, folksy "Baron's Claw" and the aforementioned "Be Young" miss the mark slightly. Everything else is tight, engaging, tastefully ragged and filled with great songwriting. If you were looking for something else, you should not have bothered with The Libertines in the first place. 

April Round-Up

Somehow, this new single by Fontaines DC is all wrong. "Starburster" is a busy, well-realised song, with strong hooks and clever production, and yet each time that I listen to it I start thinking of fucking Kasabian. Merged with Massive Attack. With an ending lifted off some 90s ballad by Blur. Or Broadcast. I don't know. NME called it their most experimental song to date, but if that is so, then why does it sound like a heavier version of Gorillaz? I guess they crammed so much into one song, they ended up sounding like everyone else. Also, the rapped chorus comes off as ugly as that new album cover. 

Slightly disappointed with the new album by House Of All, too. Second time around they bring the style but not the tunes. And while I like the style, I can't find much to be excited about on Continuum beyond the upbeat "Aim Higher" and the murky, dreamy "Murmuration". The lyrics are mostly good but those genius bass lines by Steve Hanley are in very short supply.

Thank God for Einstürzende Neubauten. Their new album Rampen (apm: alien pop music) is as weird and stimulating as you would hope. Listen to them do the minimalist, experimental "Planet Umbra" and engage you into its primitive groove with Blixa Bargeld's smooth, silky vocal delivery. Even when they are disjointed they remain oddly appealing. As ever, with their clanks and clatters they take you to a dark and damp place that offers glimpses of somewhat uncomfortable beauty. 

On a completely different end of the spectrum, there was a new album by Mark Knopfler. With song titles like "Watch Me Gone", "Before My Train Comes" and "This One's Not Going To End Well", it all feels a little grim. Sonically, One Deep River is your usual well-behaved latterday Mark Knofler album with a tired voice you have long learned to love. The hook in "Two Pairs Of Hands" is as familiar as it is irresistible. 

Connla's Wall is a new EP from the Manchester band Maruja that occupy a post-punk world inhabited by other British contemporaries like Squid and Black Country, New Road. With their adventurous instrumentation (lots of alto saxophone) and charismatic sound, they may end up as big as those two I have mentioned above. The intense, swirling "The Invisible Man" towers above everything else here and I can sense some production issues, but this is excellent stuff. The last instrumental is just beautiful. 

Finally, I still do not understand what it is about Vampire Weekend that does not quite sit well with me. The easy answer would be Ezra Koenig's fey vocal mannerisms but there is more to it. That "Classical" riff, for instance, just gives me headache. That said, I see no problem with Only God Was Above Us being one of the most celebrated albums of the year (many already call it the best album of 2024). It is inventive, diverse and well-written, and I can get behind the pretty "Hope" that closes the album, but otherwise I'm left slightly annoyed and mildly amused.

Songs of the month:

"The Invisible Man" - Maruja

"I Have a Friend" - The Libertines

"Reaching Out" - Beth Gibbons

"Aim Higher" - House of All

"Le Silence" - Juniore

"Hope" - Vampire Weekend

The Necks in Warsaw, 19.04

Now that I have finally seen them live, I know for certain: these three are the only three musicians in the world who could be doing what they are doing. While this may not be a unique thought, I had never felt it as strongly as I did last week in Warsaw. The degree of idiosyncratic chemistry, of sheer professionalism, was such that any tiny moment of distraction on my part seemed like a terrible waste of time.

A Necks live performance does not feature too many songs. This night in the grand but intimate setting of the Concert Studio of Polish Radio they played two extended hour-long pieces separated by a brief intermission. Famously, a live piece by The Necks starts as a very quiet, minimalist, jazzy piano melody augmented by a subtle drum roll and a barely audible bass line. It is fragile and slightly unnerving but also hypnotic. This initial groove never really goes away. Rather, it grows in intensity and acquires new details, constantly, over the next thirty minutes or so. These details are sometimes very slight but let your thoughts take you away for a short while and you will suddenly notice that the groove is much wilder now, and fuller, and louder. Look closer, and you will see that the double bass is currently being played with a huge bow.

                                                                                                   photo: Krystyna Kubacka-Góral

There will be many twists and turns before we reach the ending but to me the most exciting bit is this lengthy denouement, the part when they start to unwind and deconstruct the groove. All of a sudden, there is a new beauty that you had previously missed. Slowly but assuredly, the music begins to subside while never giving up any of its insane technicality. The groove is just as tight as ever. The groove is totally controlled, and I cannot even begin to imagine how much stamina it all requires from the musicians. Actually, the final few minutes reminded me of a story I once read about The Who's shows in the late 1970s. During one of those, Keith Moon passed out onstage due to drugs or alcohol and they had to find a replacement in the audience. A young drummer climbed onto the stage and managed to hold the beat for a song or two before succumbing to exhaustion. Well, I can't imagine anyone doing a minute of this Necks stuff. It is totally breathless. 

The New York Times once called The Necks the most powerful trio in the world, and while I have always loved these Australians (hard to say how many times I must have heard LPs like Hanging Gardens or Aether), it took this live performance to really drive home the point. I do not know how much of it is improvisation (I'm guessing none of it) but the whole thing sounds incredibly tight and professional. Interestingly, while technically this is quite impeccable, there is an emotional substance to them. Sooner or later, the beauty gets through. Genre-wise, what they do is mostly jazz but there are also distinct rock and classical overtones. Speaking of the latter, some of the elegant piano lines reminded me of classical minimalists like Satie or Debussy. 

Admittedly, I often treat The Necks as great background music for writing (again, it would be hard to say how many pages I have written listening to Three during the Covid times) - they have this tight, driving rhythm that rarely gets in the way of your thinking. However, seeing these three ordinary-looking men take the places on that vast, empty stage (occupied by nothing but their instruments) created a new sensation in me. They had my undivided attention, and they held it all the way through. There was a lovely complexity to their music, but there was also something greatly appealing about it. Breathlessly, I spent the whole evening watching how effortlessly they go from quiet and unobtrusive to wild and absolutely mind-blowing. A once in a lifetime experience, and quite unlike anything I had ever seen. 

Godspeed You! Black Emperor in Warsaw, 14.04

How many crescendos can you take in one evening?

Quite a lot, as it turns out. When Godspeed You! Black Emperor got into the last crescendo of the night, that of "The Sad Mafioso", I had a strong feeling that I could take on the devil. Drained both physically and emotionally, I suddenly realised that I was getting locked into some endless loop together with the band and the audience (a loop as haunting and breathtaking as the one that ends the vinyl version of their debut). It was a great feeling. It was, too, all you ever wanted from a live concert. 

And "The Sad Mafioso" was not even the last performance of the night. Miraculously, GY!BE did something they almost never do. They performed a song as an encore: "Moya", the side-long classic from their Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada EP. Another crescendo, then, and I distinctly remember breathing out, heavily, at the very end. My stomach was cramped and too much tension had stuffed my chest.

That the concert of Godspeed You! Black Emperor in the Warsaw club Progresja ended up being one of the three or four best in my life was hardly shocking. The Canadian band is known for the intense grandiosity of their live performances. Unsurprisingly, it was every bit as good as I had hoped it would be. Efrim Menuck and the rest (GY!BE are an eight-piece live, including no less than two drummers) built it all up, again and again, the songs smouldered and evolved, and by the end of it a young guy in front of me was contorting ecstatically on the floor. 

Basically, what you get from them in concert is their studio recordings - albeit expanded and amplified. Live, you are able to inhabit them, not just listen. You see them mine noise from beauty and beauty from noise. You can see Sophie Trudeau doing endless bow-runs on her violin. You can smell the fucking chords. It is aural bliss. Visual, too, as each piece is accompanied by a huge screen with obscure, jittery projections of flowers blooming, buildings burning and an old man dancing. There is also, at the very beginning, the word "hope" as they slowly but intently get you into the right kind of mood with the eerily beautiful warm-up drone. 

Last night, they did a piece each from Lift Your Skinny Fists, F♯ A♯ ∞, G_d's Pee at State's End! and Slow Riot. They also did three new songs from the upcoming album (still unannounced). And it all went for more than two exhausting hours, which is something I cannot quite explain. What is it about the Polish audience that makes Nick Cave play "The Weeping Song" for the first and only time during a tour? That makes GY!BE play for 30+ minutes longer in Warsaw than they did the previous night in Vilnius? And do an encore, too, a thing almost unheard of during their concerts? That said, there may have been a hint dropped during "The Sad Mafioso" when, totally unexpectedly, Polish audience started to sing along to an especially haunting section of the song. I guess this could not go unnoticed.

I have always believed that great art happens when everything else ceases to matter - all you are left with is a canvas, or a melody. Which is what happened last night, while Godspeed You! were playing in Warsaw. The world died, and all that mattered was this particular live performance. The world died, and it was like you were inhabiting the words that famously start F♯ A♯ ∞: "The car is on fire, and there is no driver at the wheel...". And what a sweet death that is. 

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