Lenten listening - Accelerate by R.E.M.

Upon release R.E.M.’s penultimate album was greeted with something akin to relief. For a start it’s a genuine band album, by far the leanest, most direct and rockiest record in their 30 year history. Peter Buck’s guitar reasserts itself to take the band toward a heavier expression of its new wave roots. Mike Mills all-rounder contributions of bass and backing vocals sound fresh and lively, and Stipe, rather than blending into the background, returns a serrated edge to his voice largely missing since New Adventures in Hi-Fi. There’s an almost characteristic lull in the middle of the set, but no bad songs, and two exquisite numbers, both among their punkiest, close the album. Both sound unmistakably like R.E.M. at their most irresistibly rockstar, while quite unlike anything they’ve done before. Relevant 25 years in? Not 'alf.

Best track: Horse to Water

Lenten listening - Against by Sepultura

Sepultura embraced the loss of Max Cavalera by tailoring their sound to bring out the best of replacement vocalist Derrick Green. The result is Against, presenting an earthier, woodier, dare I say rootsier sound than late-Cavalera era Seps. This isn’t to suggest it’s not heavy: as well as their trademark variation of groove metal, at one point (Reza) the band launches into speed thrash and Green’s magnificent pipes rise to the challenge. But his USP is an ability to turn his voice more effectively to a greater range of textures than Cavalera, sometimes growling a rap-cum-recitative, sometimes incanting mysteriously, sometimes even singing, always with great effect. And crucially, when he lets rip it's with more richness and security, if with less punch than Max possesses. Although it would seem churlish to note an improvement in the lyrics with the arrival of a native English speaker, this also played a role in recreating Sepultura in a more thoughtful image that has since served them well. Is Against as good as Roots or Chaos AD or Arise? No, but it’s a more than adequate successor and ensured the survival of a great metal band.

Best Track: Old Earth

Lenten listening - American Splendor by Various Artists

The soundtrack album of this quirky movie delivers an equally unusual combination of songs: acoustic jazz and blues, film score and some decidedly odd American string band music with ukuleles, slide guitar and even theremins to the fore. There is also a priceless version of Marvin Gaye’s Ain’t That Peculiar by Chocolate Genius, as well as the original. It’s a fun mix, and connects to the movie’s hyperrealist depiction of a obsessive, flawed stoic.

Best track: 'Tain't Nobody's Bizness If IDo (Jay McShann)

Lenten listening - All Is War by Fun-da-mental

There was a lot of hype surrounding this album when it came out: either Fun-da-mental were the direct mouthpiece of Al Qaida or they were the leaders of an emerging consciousness in the British underclass, breathlessly compared to Public Enemy. Where All Is War deserves comparison with Apocalypse 91... is in its prophetic shock factor. Aki Nawaz holds up a mirror to some of the dominant discourses within British society in the same way as Chuck D did in the States, discomforting white Britain with an alternative image of itself. This is delivered in Urdu, Arabic, Spanish, English and Zulu, through African, Asian and European musical styles, and through some provocative characters and caricatures participating in a poetry slam to the death. Despite this, the streamlined power of opener I Reject is followed by some pretty overwrought and disjointed music, and for all its eclecticism most of the tracks wear themselves out with awkward rhymes or the juicing of one idea until it is but a husk. Still, there are good moments and when accompanied by a little humour (“Dream team Salah ud-Din” Nawaz raps gleefully at one point) his rage begins to connect.

Lenten listening - Adore by Smashing Pumpkins

Adore is quite beautiful. Elegiac melodies range over lush progressions and Billy Corgan’s rasp softens to a compellingly fragile utterance, his thoughtful lyrics narrating loss, longing and perhaps a glimmer of hope. Most of the tracks are simply crafted, and although they cast a large shadow in the light of sweeping synth drones and electronica, they are but little songs and retain their intimacy. If anything the album’s a bit too long, not that there are any poor songs but there isn’t the variation to warrant quite so much of the same. This is my only criticism of an otherwise excellent album.

Best track: Blank Page

Lenten listening - ...And Justice For All by Metallica

...And Justice For All is infamous for its diluted sound: Kirk Hammett lets rip on lead hoover, Lars Ulrich beats the crap out of some upturned tupperware, and newbie Jason Newstead makes the tea, for all that you can hear his bass. This characterisation has some truth in it but it isn’t the whole story. In fact, this is a collection of songs at least as strong as Master of Puppets, and James Hetfield’s voice sounds stronger and more versatile than ever. Every song on the album is carefully crafted, imaginatively but unpretentiously varying time signatures and tempi, and although most tracks are long they are not self-indulgent. The result is that ...And Justice For All has aged far better than even the best of its contemporaries, despite its production weaknesses. Also, on a personal note, it’s an album that will for ever remind me of Metallica’s 1999 tour for S&M, in which they played much of their 80s material for the first time in a years - but live there were no hoovers and tupperware, just blisteringly heavy thrash played by the masters of that art.

Best track: Shortest Straw

Lenten Listening: Attack of the Grey Lantern by Mansun

This is one of those pre-OK Computer albums that I’ve always thought of as inseparable from its time, but that's not to say it's exactly typical. It draws heavily upon Suede and late 80s new-wave, for example, but Mansun's glam and indie personae are only ever approximations which morph just as soon as you think you’ve spotted something you recognise. Rich orchestral strings give way to echoey guitars and drum loops, vocals are at times gentle and soaring, at others abrasive, with wry lyrics about odd characters, and there are some pleasingly strange samples and song transitions. Consequently, in the context of the album, their version of a radio-friendly Britpop blast, Egg Shaped Fred, emerges as an ironic, almost weary commentary on the real thing. There are no perfect, timeless songs on the album, but this is an unusual, wide-ranging but coherent, and sometimes wonderful record.

Best track: The Chad Who Loved Me

Lenten listening: American Idiot by Green Day

I don’t know whether American Idiot counts as Green Day’s best album or not, but it’s pretty close to perfect if you take it on its own terms. I can’t imagine every fan was happy when they decided to make a concept album about suburban ennui, but they managed to do so without any filler. Lyrically it’s interesting, with each song capturing something slightly different about life in the Bush era, from the personal (Whatsername) to the cosmic (Boulevard of Broken Dreams) via the social-political (American Idiot). More importantly, it's a great rock album and continues Warning’s journey away from four-chord jingly-ness towards a more epic sound which, fortunately, is just as energetic as ever.

Best track: Jesus of Suburbia Medley

Lenten listening: Accident of Birth by Bruce Dickinson

Early on Accident of Birth, Bruce Dickinson occasionally commits the cardinal metal sin: blandness, no more so than on the tiresome bawl Starchildren. In fact, before track five, little of note happens on the album except one decent guitar solo in Taking the Queen. This despite a lot of huffing a puffing from Bruce, in which the famous vibrato serves only to highlight that he’s not singing anything of note. Fortunately this changes with the compelling Darkside of Aquarius, which never lingers too long on a good idea, and a straightforward rocker Road to Hell, which allows his legendary pipes to deliver with reckless abandon. Man of Sorrows is an epic, and on the subsequent title track he finds his voice over a heavier base, even if the songwriting remains a bit laboured. Once or twice, great moments tend to dissipate in ill thought-out changes of pace, or unconvincing production ideas, like the BVs in The Magician. Fortunately, three superb and quintessentially Bruce Dickinson songs greatly enhance the album at the end - Welcome to the Pit, Omega, and the awesome closer Arc of Space. But his follow up, A Chemical Wedding, is darker, leaner, melodically more interesting and heavier. Start there.

Best track: Welcome to the Pit

Lenten listening: Amandla by Miles Davis

I’m not a Cool-era purist by any means. I love Miles Davis’ edgy Bitches Brew and the electric explorations of some of the greats, notably Herbie Hancock. Still, I find Amandla easy to admire and hard to love. This is mostly to do with the deployment of every 1980s production idea in the book, which at the distance of 20-odd years does more to obscure the shimmering Miles Davis trumpet improvs than to showcase them. And the powerful title promises an edge that I still haven’t really found in the album. Still there are moments when the harmonies are gorgeous enough to redeem gratuitous slap bass or echoey overdriven guitar way back in the mix. The album is best where Davis and his foil in any given break spa with freedom and abandon, breathing life into a somewhat synthetic-sounding set. In contrast, Mr Pastorius, which closes the album, is uniquely uninhibited, and to my ears its classic sound is more vital and fresh than nostalgic, especially in the context of the foregoing attempts at fusion.

Best track: Mr Pastorius

Lenten listening: August and Everything After by Counting Crows

There aren’t many things to dislike about this album. The voice of Adam Duritz can sound a little affected, and this occasionally grates, but he usually gets away with it because his lyrics, tunes and band are so darn fine. And when he relaxes into a song, such as on Rain King, a really engaging voice emerges. As for those lyrics, what impresses is his use of concrete images and scenarios, rather than hiding behind esoteric and inscrutable fragments. Although this means his tales feel deeply personal and rooted in place, this is never alienating precisely because he brings the listener into his world so effectively. Finally, the production is right on the money, without a fill or backing vocal out of place, with everything tight enough to maintain energy without sapping the songs of their rootsy appeal.

Best track: Sullivan Street

Lenten listening: Alright, Still by Lily Allen

Lily Allen’s take on London and (mostly loveless) love is smart and funny, and her unique sound makes me want to listen and to like her. The pastichey production (Ronson et al of course) is successfully cartoonish, with the exception of the half-arsed britpop of Take What You Take. But in the end this is a bit of an unhappy album. She proclaims her freedom from lovers who have done her wrong with style, acerbic wit, and a dose of straight up abuse, but she does so in six out of the first seven songs. The last of these, Shame For You is the best of the bunch and winningly exuberant, but this fixation on bad men becomes quite wearing before you get to it. The single, Littlest Things, is something of a catharsis at track eight then, because it makes sense of the album as a whole in its matter of fact vulnerability and tender reflection on the gnawing memory of a lost lover -whom in this case she actually misses. Thus it connects. Overall, she captures her world pretty well, but thank God it’s not my world.

Best track: Shame For You

Lenten listening: The Art of the Baroque Trumpet, Vol. 2, by Various Artists

I have a few lovely collections from Naxos which showcase lesser known examples of Early - or at least earlier - music. This one, performed by Niklas Eklund, is one of my favourites, perhaps because his playing is so extraordinarily evocative of the human voice. The instrument alights upon notes smoothly and effortlessly, like the voice of a great countertenor, never insecure or precarious, and with a kind of lightness of articulation that makes the modern valved instrument blush. Many of the pieces themselves, written by lesser-known or completely unknown anonymous composers, come from the cusp of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. I found myself imagining a mythical time of pre-adolescent modernity, not entirely disdainful of its medieval parent, but optimistic about the world and where it's going.

Best track: Girolamo Fantini’s Sonata No.8

Lenten listening: Angel Dust by Faith No More

This album is disturbing and brilliant. Cheery doses of funky slap bass and wah-wah vamps add a kind of perverse bounce to Faith No More’s sometimes ear-haemorrhaging heaviness. And I haven’t heard a voice so blood-curdling and smoky-sweet in such rapid rotation as Mike Paton’s. That this disorienting record never allows the listener to stay in any kind of comfort zone isn’t to suggest even a hint of prog-stuffiness. Where it is eclectic it is gleefully so, often to the point of parody (redneck monologue, pipe organs, and that cover of Easy to close the album). But this always adds to the twisted fun rather than detracting from it. Listening to it in its 20th year, its clear that everything that was melodically interesting and unhinged (though punkier and more accessible) in, say, System of a Down, had been mastered by Faith No More years earlier.

Best track: Kindergarten

Occupation as Sin

So I got a little feedback on my Tweet of Hanna Katancho’s statement that the Occupation is a sin:

Mr X: Does thatr include the sin of US occupying Mexican territories? How about Muslim occupying the Temple Mount?

@MideastMC: Q1, possibly; Q2, category error. Should Isr leave WB and be Jewish democracy; annex it, and forget J majority; or ditch dem claim?

Mr X: So also Occupation Of Scotland and Wales by English, Elzas by France, And almost every other nation on earth...Why Q2 differnt?

I’m hoping one of us is misunderstanding the other, so thought I’d bring this off Twitter for the sake of space.

It seems that the word ‘Occupation’ here is being applied to several different things.

1. Conquest, in which territory from one sovereign entity is taken by force by another (7th Century Islamic conquest, England-Wales, US-Mexico).
2. Building within a newly conquered land but on unused property (Al Aqsa Mosque built on Byzantine rubbish dump, itself built on Hadrian’s temple on site of Jewish temple).
3. Political union with a disparity of power (Britain [i.e. England and Wales] and Scotland to form Great Britain according to 1707 treaty).
   
   To this list we should add the various Israeli activities which have been called Occupation:
   
4. The assertion of sovereignty by force over a land in which the majority of people reject that sovereignty (as in 1948).
5. The political and military control of a territory not fully annexed wherein the inhabitants lack recourse in the political apparatus of the occupying power (as in 1967-present).
6. Forced displacement of people from land to which they have prior legal claim (as in 1948-present).

Although these are all (except perhaps for category two) injustices per se, with category two being a function of category one injustice, I think Katanacho was referring to categories five and six. This matters because the reason we ought not to call for Jewish immigrants to leave who have settled in the land with the legal cover afforded by category four, is because category six is a moral imperative rather than a legal one.

In material terms it matters little whether the West Bank is run by a Palestinian ‘Authority’ or an Israeli Government. What matters is that people who live in this land have the freedom to live, move, work, tend their land, be secure in their homes, and have the ability to hold the power to which they are subject to account and change the regime and government which controls its apparatus.

The Israeli Occupation (category five proceeding through category six) is to be resisted in so much as there is a population subject to a power without having equal rights as subjects/citizens. Israel has to make a choice, will it assert its sovereignty over the West Bank fully and give its residents full and equal rights within the polity, or will it cede sovereignty to a fully sovereign Palestinian state with a fully autonomous Palestinian Government?

Does that answer your question Mr X? Please feel free to Tweet me if you want to remain anonymous on this thread.

Christ at the Checkpoint 2012

Christ at the Checkpoint has been subject to huge opposition - Google it if you can stomach slander. I can testify to the graciousness and inspirational patience and love of organisers and speakers alike. Please support it by visiting the website and tuning in to some of the talks.

The highlight for me so far was Munther Isaac's talk, which will be available on the website soon. Don't miss it.

Lenten listening: Absolution by Muse

Muse make nothing but spectacular music, complete with virtuoso piano, thunderous guitars and more irony-free theatre than the Phantom of the Opera. That they are also the best arena-filling live band of their generation makes them a genuine phenomenon. If there’s one criticism of them that sticks, it is that Matt Belamy’s Thom Yorke-isms sometimes come across as overwrought and a bit dull. That’s true of the first third of Absolution, but with the change of pace at the start of Falling Away with You the album begins to feel more differentiated and textured, paving the way for a collection of seven immense songs as accomplished as any they’ve ever written.

Best track: Butterflies and Hurricanes

Lenten listening: Abandon by Abandon

This five-track is a worthwhile addition to the collection of even CCM-suspicious music fans. Opener Providence is arresting and blisteringly performed, but wait for tracks 3 and 4 to launch away from merely appealing WYSIWYG alt-rock into really promising territory. With mid-tempo worship song All Because of You and Prodigal Son-inspired Here Waiting, Abandon demonstrate an ability to craft good songs into great performances, produced to perfection and not to death. The hooks are catchy, the lyrics meaningful, and the breaks and builds artfully constructed. They sound like a band that have brought gig-tested songs into the studio rather than vice versa. 

Best track: Here Waiting

Lenten listening: Around the Sun by R.E.M.

R.E.M. have often suffered from being widely listened to but rarely heard, and never more so than with this record. Almost universally panned, Around the Sun actually consists of invariably good songs, a point borne out by how they sound live. Admittedly, this is not a band record as such, and its energy is sometimes exhausted by production which smoothes a few of the edges that make R.E.M R.E.M. Still, listen through the polish to some elegant and intimate lyrics, sweet if restrained melodies, and some of Michael Stipe’s most giving vocal performances.

Best track: Wanderlust

Lenten listening: About a Boy by Badly Drawn Boy

I don’t buy many soundtracks. This one came bundled with my wife when we got married. But it’s actually rather excellent. The stand-out pop tunes, Silent Sigh and Something to Talk About, are eminently hummable, although it’s Damon Gough’s instinct for the cinematic that really makes this album rewarding on repeated listens. His is a playful, George Martin-esque kind of drama, best evidenced in the instrumentals but in fact definitive throughout, notably in the gorgeously orchestrated song Above You, Below Me.

Best track: Above You, Below Me

Lenten listening: Alone in the Dark by Steph Macleod

Steph Macleod’s voice is one of the most instantly recognisable I’ve heard. In this, his debut EP, he deals only obliquely with his artistically formative experience of coming off the streets, going dry and meeting Jesus. For me this increases its appeal rather than lessening it. The luscious title track is a tender acoustic love song, at once effortless and earnest. This is possibly surpassed in emotional intensity by track two, Grace, in the voice of a tormented killer wrestling with his conscience in isolation and fear, paranoid and desperate. And you know that when he switches from first to third person - “Is he gonna jump or shall we push him?” - he’s singing about voices he still has no difficulty hearing. Of course, an artist struggling with darkness is hardly a rarity, but it’s the combination of pain-forged rawness with an almost wide-eyed guilelessness as the colour returns to his world, that makes listening to Steph Macleod’s so life-giving.

Best track: Grace

Lenten listening: A-Lex by Sepultura

On this 18-track epic, bracing thrash gives way to unselfconscious silliness (Beethoven medley anyone?) yet remains thoroughly satisfying throughout. In both veins this is unmistakeable Sepultura, sounding more comfortable in their metallic skins than ever. Occasionally there is a tendency towards riff tetris, in which every 8-bar chunk slots a little predictably into the next, but somehow this never becomes enervating. In fact, as a unit it is the most coherent album Sepultura have released since the departure of Max Cavalera, and several of the songs deserve to be Seps classics.

Best track: The Treatment.

Lenten listening

Part of my Lent thing is to listen to music. Really listen. Listen like I listened when I was a kid and could only afford one CD every blue moon. Listen even when I think I've decided such and such an album isn't very good, but it's there so I should give it another go.

You see, sometimes I prefer discovering new music to listening to music I already have. So I've set myself a rule: I can't listen to any album beginning with B until I've listened to everything beginning with A. You'd be surprised how rewarding it's been already, having listened to seven albums beginning with A!

And strangely, something that someone said recently in the wake of Whitney Houston's death has stuck with me, about how we tend to disrespect and certainly fail to appreciate the artists that impart colour to our lives. So I'm going to post some reviews here and on Amazon to say thanks! Why not?