Bad Religion: No Control

BAD RELIGION: NO CONTROL (1989)

1) Change Of Ideas; 2) Big Bang; 3) No Control; 4) Sometimes I Feel Like; 5) Automatic Man; 6) I Want To Conquer The World; 7) Sanity; 8) Henchman; 9) It Must Feel Pretty Appealing; 10) You; 11) Progress; 12) I Want Something More; 13) Anxiety; 14) Billy; 15) The World Won't Stop.

As awkward as it is to say, No Control is only the very first Bad Religion album in the Bad Reli­gion catalog that sounds exactly like its predecessor — meaning, apparently, that for the first time in their life Bad Religion hit upon a formula that they really, really liked. Or maybe they were just so proud that Suffer managed to sell a few thousand copies, it seemed like a good idea to try and do the same thing all over again. Surprisingly, it worked, and the next album already sold a few dozen thousand copies — an amazingly high record for a record that places its listener in be­tween packs of pummeling, breakneck speed punk riffs and lyrics that can be quali­fied as poetic adaptations of everything from existentialism to neo-Marxism for the middle school level.

There is no way that a review of a 25-minute long album that sounds exactly like its 35-minute long predecessor could be longer than a few paragraphs, so here are just a few scattered observa­tions on individual songs:

— ʽI Want Something Moreʼ runs for a record-short 0:47, of which the last eight seconds are brilliantly shaped into a one-breath coda. All of B.R.'s songs are «anthems», one way or another, but this one takes the cake as the greatest use of laconicity on a B.R. record, period;

— ʽSometimes I Feel Like...ʼ leaves the last slot in its title conspicuously open, to be occupied within the song itself by the album's only straightforward moment of musical gimmickry, and it does seem possible that Graffin sometimes feels himself like that, because, heck, don't we all?;

— ʽSanityʼ and the beginning of ʽProgressʼ slow down the tempo (although the latter quickly picks it up again) for no reason in particular, but the Gurewitz-Hetson guitar tone retains its nasty crunch regardless of the number of beats per second;

— ʽThe World Won't Stopʼ has the only example of the adverb phylogenetically that I can think of in a lyrical piece — and it is not that easy to pronounce it at that kind of speed, mind you. The song itself, melody-wise, is as non-descript as they come, but "Your achievements are unsurpas­sed / You are highly-ordered mass / But you can bet your ass / Your free energy will dissipate / Two billion years thus far / Now mister here you are / An element in a sea of enthalpic organic compounds" — boy, that's gotta count for something. We sure have come a long way here from "And I wanna move the town to the Clash city rocker, you need a little jump of electrical sho­cker", not to mention "beat on the brat with a baseball bat" — each of these lyrical approaches has its value and its effects, but Graffin's professorial verbosity seems unprecedented, regardless of whether one likes it or not.

Most importantly, No Control rocks with the exact same frenzy and conviction as Suffer. Pena­lizing it for recycling the already worn-out riffs would be silly — the whole idea here is to ask themselves the question: «Gee, that worked so well, can we do it again, but faster, tougher, even more focused and compact?..» and answer in the positive. Unoriginal, yes, but sometimes all you need is a little inspiration, a little fire, a little intelligence, and (last, but not least) a reasonably short running time, and you got yourself a certified thumbs up.

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Badfinger (Iveys): Maybe Tomorrow

THE IVEYS: MAYBE TOMORROW (1969)

1) See-Saw, Granpa; 2) Beautiful And Blue; 3) Dear Angie; 4) Think About The Good Times; 5) Yesterday Ain't Coming Back; 6) Fisherman; 7) Maybe Tomorrow; 8) Sali Bloo; 9) Angelique; 10) I'm In Love; 11) They're Knock­ing Down Our Home; 12) I've Been Waiting; 13*) No Escaping Your Love; 14*) Mrs. Jones; 15*) And Her Daddy's A Millionnaire; 16*) Looking For My Baby.

Curiously enough, Pete Ham's Badfinger actually spent more time playing as The Iveys — they were known under that name as early as 1964, when they were still mostly doing small gigs around Swansea, although back then, Ham was still the only member to remain as part of the clas­sic lineup (it is a bit ironic, though, that he'd actually been out on the scene almost as long as the band itself that was supposed to nurture and foster Badfinger). But throughout the mid-1960s, the band never found its proper way to a recording contract until the (mis)fortune of contacting Apple Records; and as «The Iveys», they only released one sole LP, which, furthermore, never even had any UK or US distribution, being limited to Germany, Italy, and Japan. (Yes, Badfin­ger's streak of bad luck was already there even before they got themselves their name).

There is not much to say about this album, really, since seven of its twelve songs would eventual­ly be incorporated into Magic Christian Music, undergoing only a cosmetic remixing job along the way. The very fact that it did get a limited CD release in the early 2000s, remastered, repack­aged, and with bonus tracks, is somewhat surprising and goes to show the serious amount of re­verence for these guys that some music lovers still hold (good for them). On the other hand, the release was not a total waste, since it adds one more informative stroke to the exciting story of Badfinger's musical evolution.

It is usually assumed that, in creating the running order for Magic Christian Music, the band took what they considered the best of these early Iveys tunes, and left out the dreck. This is not quite the case — the «rejects» were not awful, they just represented additional directions that they were unable to explore properly and convincingly. Or at least, they themselves must have thought that at the time.

Probably the most telling example is Ham's «epic» mindset on ʽI've Been Waitingʼ, an experi­ment in heavy progressive blues-rock à la early Deep Purple / Led Zeppelin, with lengthy distor­ted guitar solos, brutally aggressive drum bashing, and an acid smokescreen — the new-look Bad­finger wouldn't get thus «terrifying» again until Ass. But they do not have a chance to leave their own imprint on the basic melody here (borrowed firstand off ʽMilk Cow Bluesʼ), and the heavy-psycho instrumental jam section can hardly be too exciting if it competes in the same line of duty as, say, Led Zep's ʽDazed And Confusedʼ.

Other unlucky rejects include: ʽYesterday Ain't Coming Backʼ — a loud, anthemic ballad with a quintessential «UK Nuggets» spirit, maybe discarded because it reminded them too much of all those other Brit bands; ʽThink About The Good Timesʼ — an upbeat, but slightly «hushed» pop-rocker with a funky wah-wah guitar arrangement, maybe discarded because they eventually got afraid of the wah-wah (again, the only time they would later use that effect freely would be on the heavy arrangements for Ass); ʽSali Blooʼ — lumbering blues-pop that is neither heavy enough nor memorable; and the triumphant power-pop opener ʽSee-Saw, Granpaʼ, which they could, per­haps, see as way too simplistic and happy (but maybe not).

(The CD reissue adds a few early outtakes as well, even more heavily derivative of contemporary acts — The Kinks, The Move, The Small Faces etc. — all of them kinda cute and cuddly, but the final denominator still remains Manfred Mann: dedicated copycat practice without a face of one's own, only The Iveys happened to lack Manfred Mann's sole serious advantage — musical profes­sionalism. They did well to restrict these harmless, forgettable pastiches to B-sides).

All in all, you are not missing much if you already have Magic Christian Music, but you will not harm your ears, either, if you take a brief listen to these scattered remainders. It doesn't hurt to condescendingly pat somebody on the head for diligently doing their homework on Led Zep and Manfred Mann, and it is also fun to realize that, before getting into real close contact with The Beatles, The Iveys never even attempted to model their sound upon the Fab Four — apparently, there must have been some heavy «Beatles-conditioning» in the air of Apple Records.

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Arthur Brown: Strangelands

ARTHUR BROWN: STRANGELANDS (1969; 1988)

1) The Country; 2) The City; 3) The Cosmos; 4) The Cosmos (cont.); 5) Endless Sleep.

There are quite a few «from-the-vaults» releases from different stages of Arthur Brown's long and diverse career, judging by the discographies. Most of these, however, are quite hard to get, some have only semi-official or bootleg status, and, most importantly, it is not exactly clear if any of them are worth hunting down for anything other than historical purposes.

I have managed to locate one of them — Strangelands, recorded in late 1969 and originally supposed to be the second official LP by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, although this world was crazy in a different way already: Vince Crane was out of the band, and the songwri­ting was dominated by Brown and his drummer pal Drachen Theaker, even more advanced in the ways of progressive avantgarde than Arthur. Different, but not any less crazy: how could an album re­corded at the Jabberwocky Studios in the merry land of Puddletown be anything less than compe­tely and utterly bonkers?

It seems hard to deny the decisive influence that Trout Mask Replica must have had on this re­cord, next to which The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown sounds like a bunch of innocent teen-pop singles. No more verses, choruses, hooks, or anything targeted at instantaneous memorability and seduction. Instead, we have several lengthy, multi-part suites, performed in semi-improvisa­tory style over a mesh of blues-rock and jazz-rock patterns that occasionally descend into free-form chaos. Whee!

How is this different from early Kingdom Come? Well, much of the musical philosophy is the same (and a few of the melodies and vocal passages actually made their way over to Galactic Zoo Dossier, eventually). But compared to this, even Kingdom Come was more «commercial» — the sound was tighter and tougher, the riffs were better fleshed out, and there were sometimes even perfectly «normal» tracks like ʽSunriseʼ. Strangelands has no masterplan, other than some vague, constantly fluctuating ideas on how to fuck your brains in the most effective way. Or, put it differently, in the most boring way?

The reason why this second album never even found a proper distributor is that it never had any real meaning. Trout Mask Replica, at the very least, was a diligently planned, carefully crafted experiment in creating a new face for music. It took lots of inspiration from progressive jazz mas­ters and transplanted it into a pop / blues-rock setting with the utmost care. This here stuff, how­ever, has fairly little to add to what was already quite normal ever since Frank Zappa's Absolute­ly Free came out in 1967, except for Brown's «now I'm Dr. Evil, and now I'm the little goat in your backyard, and now I'm actually being serious but you won't be able to tell anyway» routine that gets annoying in about five minutes.

Decidedly, this is one of the most «far out» recordings of 1969, but individually, every single in­gredient here will be done better by either Pink Floyd, Can, Captain Beefheart, or Amon Düül II, and collectively they do not amount to a singular vision — the whole thing is very much transiti­onal, before the whole plan became realized in a slightly more accessible and coherent way on Galactic Zoo Dossier. Recommended only for completists and serious historiographers of weird brain cell movements; thumbs down otherwise. PS: Apparently, there is something called Jam, credited to Kingdom Come this time, another archival release that is also mostly bent on im­pro­visational ravings and stuff. There is an infinitesimally small chance that it will ever manage to cross your path unless you make it your destiny, but beware all the same.

Billy Fury: Billy

BILLY FURY: BILLY (1963)

1) We Were Meant For Each Other; 2) How Many Nights, How Many Days; 3) Willow Weep For Me; 4) Bumble Bee; 5) She Cried; 6) Let Me Know; 7) The Chapel On The Hill; 8) Like I've Never Been Gone; 9) A Million Miles From Nowhere; 10) I'll Show You; 11) Our Day Will Come; 12) All My Hopes; 13) One Step From Heaven; 14) One Kiss; 15) Hard Times; 16) (Here Am I) Broken Hearted.

Unsurprisingly for 1963, Billy's best-selling LP was his artistic nadir — and with the Beatles on the near horizon, ironically, it would also be his last proper LP. Nothing here is self-written; most of the songwriters involved in the project are hack-like professionals, long since forgotten; and the emphasis is rapidly shifting from light, cutesy pop-rock to saccharine balladry.

The voice is still there, and, actually, Billy's range and art of imitation are the only things that seem to have been improving with time. For instance, Ray Charles' ʽHard Timesʼ will never make anyone forget the original, but it is not a bad cover: sung with the proper feeling, without su­per­fluous over-emoting, and it's hardly probable that the record industry people forced this cover on Billy — why not just another hack tune from a local craftsmanship instead? Even at this point he might have been allowed the liberty to make a small bunch of «artistic choices», and this one's not bad, and neither is the LaVern Baker nursery-R'n'B of ʽBumble Beeʼ (with Billy's British audiences, most likely, wondering their heads off about the title, because instead of the expected "you hurt me like a bee, an evil bee, an evil bumble bee", Billy prefers to sing "oo-wee, my life is misery, get out of here and don't come back to me". Was «bumble bee» a slang term for some­thing offensive at the time in Britain? Who knows?).

But the rest of the songs leave rather faint traces, to put it mildly — even a bare glance at song titles like ʽThe Chapel On The Hillʼ is quite enough to get a preliminary idea of the content and the style: strings, strings, more strings, superstrings (okay, not really), and epic romantic vocali­zing over passable, ten-for-a-dime melodies, of which old Tin Pan Alley standards like ʽWillow Weep For Meʼ are actually the «highlights». The upbeat, but still heavily orchestrated, ʽHow Many Nightsʼ and especially ʽLet Me Knowʼ are the only tracks on here that could even barely suggest that four years earlier, this here gentleman was the unofficial head of Britain's rockabilly scene — on ʽLet Me Knowʼ, the familiar Elvis «snap» reaches out from under the softcore arran­gement — but barely suggest is the key phrase here.

Overall, this is just for those who can't get enough out of their Paul Anka records; but, perhaps, Beatles fans also deserve a listen — it would be interesting to try and imagine the Fab Four's re­action to this act of «musical betrayal» (and appreciate their own force of resistance: as we all re­member, even George Martin almost fell into the trap of «taming» and «teenifying» their act by trying to saddle them with silly soft crap like ʽHow Do You Do Itʼ at the beginning). An utterly ignoble thumbs down.

Bo Diddley: Bo Diddley Is A Lover

BO DIDDLEY: BO DIDDLEY IS A LOVER (1961)

1) Not Guilty; 2) Hong Kong Mississippi; 3) You're Looking Good; 4) Bo's Vacation; 5) Congo; 6) Bo's Blues; 7) Bo Diddley Is A Lover; 8) Aztec; 9) Back Home; 10) Bo Diddley Is Loose; 11) Love Is A Secret; 12) Quick Draw.

This one finds Bo slipping further and further into «comic» mood — with no fewer than four songs directly referring to him in their title, and no fewer than just about everything else being a veiled or unveiled account of Bo Diddley's adventures, either, with jokes, gags, puns, and musical slapstick all over the place. Not surprisingly, the more this man talks about himself, the less he somehow seems to be able to say. And no matter how irresistible the LP title might have been for the ladies — at least those well-versed in the art of mirror-reading — this was the first of Bo's LPs not to yield even one single radio classic or fan favorite.

But this does not necessarily mean that the record is a complete failure. First, there are some top notch instrumentals. On ʽCongoʼ, Bo recycles the string-scratching trick of ʽRoadrunnerʼ, this time imitating a jet plane engine rather than a Harley Davidson, then engages in some playful surf soloing à la Duane Eddy, all the while strutting his stuff and shaking his shimmy in classic Bo fashion. And on ʽAztecʼ, he leads the listener into Spanish territory — again, not really trying to emulate any of the masters of Latin art (which would have been an obvious embarrassment), but rather with the purpose of doing a little bit of deconstruction, randomly swapping the predictably simplified chords with squeaks, squirts, scratches, and rumbles. This is not «parody» — just good old Bo trying to place his personal mark on yet another style.

Elsewhere, it looks like all he is doing is recycling, re-recycling, and re-re-recycling ideas that have already been in heavy use for about five years. But repeated listens show that, even at this time, each song has just a little bit of individuality, that one little «shift» in texture that prevents it from completely repeating its predecessors. It might be a slight change in the beat, one extra note in the riff, one transposed chord, some prominently placed backup vocals from the man's loyal female staff... something,  and it all rocks fairly hard (which is also a plus, considering the general softening of US «mainstream» rock'n'roll standards in the early 1960s — besides, Bo was the only one of the major black rockers left at that time, with Little Richard going to church and Chuck Berry going to jail).

For instance, ʽNot Guiltyʼ is a nursery-rhyme-style dialog between Bo and his backups, with a Chuck Berry-influenced lead guitar part, suitable for a steady 4/4 beat, set against the syncopated Bo Diddley beat — a good example of Bo's «sonic illusion» technique where your ear is slightly thrown off course by the dissonance. Another Chuckified number is ʽBo Diddley Is Looseʼ, where the lead guitar carries on a sharp, but merry dialog with Bo in the vein of ʽCarolʼ and ʽLittle Queenieʼ: the licks may be borrowed, but the party atmosphere is all Bo anyway. And ʽYou're Looking Goodʼ is among his most convincing speedy R'n'B numbers — for once, the wobbly guitar patterns and the Isley Brothers attitude are combined to fine effect.

Open missteps and blunders are arguably limited to the generic 12-bar ʽBo's Bluesʼ, which does sound like an unintended parody — controversial as that might sound, Bo has less feeling for the slow 12-bar form than Mick Jagger, and is unable to do anything interesting for it; and to the happy R'n'B ballad ʽLove Is A Secretʼ, which, on top of it all, is rendered physically unlistenable by the never-ending backup crooning (three minutes of high-pitched ooh-wee-oohs that only pause to catch a breath from time to time is straightahead torture for the ears — forget waterboar­ding, this is the real deal).

Everything else ranges from «curiously nice» to «pleasantly mediocre»: a clear-cut step down from the weirdness / fun level of Gunslinger, but the man is still willing to combine brains, brawn, soul, and ego to good effect — the main problem is that, this time around, there has been just a little too much ego thrown in the pot, overshadowing the rest of the ingredients. Still, a modest thumbs up here for one of the few «real rock'n'roll» albums of 1961.

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Animal Collective: ODDSAC

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE: ODDSAC (2010)

1) Mr. Fingers; 2) Kindle Song; 3) Satin Orb Wash; 4) Green Beans; 5) Screens; 6) Urban Creme; 7) Working; 8) Tantrum Barb; 9) Lady On The Lake; 10) Fried Camp; 11) Fried Vamp; 12) Mess Your House; 13) What Happened?

Technically, Animal Collective's next project after Fall Be Kind was not a proper «album» — it was a joint visual/audio product, with AC providing the music and director Danny Perez provi­ding the spectral hallucinations on the screen. Since the whole thing was made in tandem, it might be reasonably asserted that the music is no good here without the visuals, and that the visuals are worthless without the music. However, anyone familiar with the whole story of Ani­mal Collective will immediately realize that the music is not that different from typical AC so as not to work without the accompanying imagery — and, personally, having watched several of the psychedelic sequences filmed by Perez, I can safely state that this is indeed so. If we can listen to, enjoy, and get inspired by ʽI Am The Walrusʼ and ʽFlyingʼ without necessarily having to watch the Beatles running around in funny suits on the former or delirious rainbow coloring of the sky on the latter, we can do the same with ODDSAC (speaking of which, I do have a suspicion that the experience of Magical Mystery Tour might have been one of the inspirations here).

So I'm just going to say a few words about ODDSAC (whatever that title deciphers to — I pro­pose Over­blown Demented Delirious Stories by the Animal Collective) as a collection of new music, free from any sort of ties to any sort of visuals. (Besides, with the aid of proper substances, anyone is probably capable of conjuring one's own visuals here — why should you feel chained to somebody else's artistic vision?).

In a way, the whole project might have simply been a clever ruse. With Merriweather Post Pavil­lion and its alarming success that almost (but not quite) put the band on the brink of main­stream acceptance, they must have felt an acute need to remind the world that they were, first and foremost, a bunch of musical crazies, not a school of musical gurus. Listen to ʽMy Girlsʼ and ʽNo More Runnin'ʼ long enough and, who knows, you might start discerning the meaning of life in their basic structures (just as your parents did with Pet Sounds a whole wide world ago). In other words, they got too serious, and the emotionality in their music got way too similar to normal hu­man emotionality. One step further and you turn into Radiohead. Two steps, and you turn into Prodigy. Three steps, and whoah, you're the Backstreet Boys...

...all right, that was really a joke, but the idea is clear enough. Hence, a change in direction, slyly motivated by technical reasons — being interested in adapting the music to a set of modern post-post-post-impressionist visuals. This gives the AC a good pretext for turning away from the «nor­malized» melodicity of Pavillion and for returning to their roots — chaotic psychedelia with no limits or boundaries. More than half of ODDSAC is closer in spirit to AC's earliest albums, only with much better production.

A few of the tracks are still made in their trademark psycho-folk style — with acoustic guitars, sprinkly chimes, falsettos, criss-crossed vocal harmonies, and a certain sentimental elegance; I mainly refer to ʽScreensʼ and ʽWorkingʼ here; plus, Beach Boys-like harmonies additionally crop up from time to time, for instance, on the closing track (ʽWhat Happened?ʼ). Atmospheric and re­specting the legacy of Pavillion, but nowhere near as memorable as the best stuff on their «main­stream masterpiece», they do an important job — providing some relief from all the weirdness — but they are not what ODDSAC is really about.

But what is it about? Overcrowding, I guess. With all the jungly overdubs, all the animalistic and totemistic vocalizing tracks, all the tribal beats and nature sounds, ODDSAC is probably their best attempt, so far, to emulate the living soul of a parallel universe. Not a sci-fi universe, mind you, of the kind usually preferred by their colleagues in the electronic department — quite an or­ganic one, with busy street life (ʽMr. Fingersʼ), ghosts spooking lonely wanderers in the woods (ʽSatin Orb Washʼ), collective celebrations on feast days (ʽTantrum Barbʼ), large swamps spew­ing out poisonous, hallucinogenic fumes (ʽLady On The Lakeʼ), and whatever else you'd like to extract from your own mind to substitute Danny Perez's unnecessary fantasies.

Even the album's lonesome attempt at emulating an «industrial» mood (ʽUrban Cremeʼ) never attains the icy, mercyless, robotic cold of, say, Autechre, as the busy, static sonics of functioning equipment are still accompanied by «organic» sounds. Scary robotic equipment can never be that scary when it is humming, beeping, and clanging against a background of chirping birds and croa­king frogs. Or, to be more precise, of chirping-croaking frogbirds, because the world of AC is full of non-trivial species whose evolution path followed the same individual mutations as the brain cells of Avey Tare and Panda Bear.

What makes this stuff better than, for instance, Here Comes The Indian (this early AC release is probably the closest in spirit to ODDSAC) is — apart from extra complexity, improved pro­duction, and shorter length of the individual tracks, all of which helps — the fact that in between the two, there was Merriweather Post Pavillion, a demarcation line, having crossed which the band could never really be the same again. Yes, they are making a different album here, but they are not fascistic purists, and they retain all the gained experience, and this concerns not just the lovely vocal harmonies, but also the use of «light» electronic tones — chiming, jingling, sprink­ling, such as the sonic kaleidoscope of ʽMess Your Houseʼ, a track that is way too chaotic to fully match my tastes, but still sounds bright and optimistic, even despite all the jarring explosions and screams with which it is bombarded on a regular basis.

My only — minor, but real — disappointment is that, to a large extent, all of this stuff is some­how «nostalgic». It's as if they have grown up, matured, learned a lot, and now are returning back to base to «do it all over again» from scratch, so that you can now throw away all of their pre-Sung Tongs records and replace them with ODDSAC. But then again, who am I to com­plain?... seeing as how I am pretty much doing the same thing with my own reviews. Thumbs up, that much at least is for certain.

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Autechre: Untilted

AUTECHRE: UNTILTED (2005)

1) LCC; 2) Ipacial Section; 3) Pro Radii; 4) Augmatic Disport; 5) Iera; 6) Fermium; 7) The Trees; 8) Sublimit.

No news may be good news, but not for the unhappy reviewer. How am I supposed to stress this record's individuality over that of Draft 7.30? Am I really supposed to make good friends with these beats, measure their individual pulses, check their individual temperatures, and tuck each one inside his individual bed of a one-two phrase description? This is definitely not something I remember myself signing for on that unhappy day when I broke my «no electronics!» vow by acquiring the entire Tangerine Dream catalog.

All I can really say is that Untilted is, once again, closer in spirit to Confield: with Draft 7.30, it might have looked like Booth and Brown were taking one step back and reintegrating some mini­malistic melodicity into the package, but now the domain of the computer blip has won this next battle, so prepare yourself for seventy more minutes from the life of the microchip. And it does not even look like the microchip is leading an interesting life these days. No, just the same old routine — get up at 7:00 AM, a bath, a shave, some quick breakfast with the wife, commute to work, get installed, operate, calculate, lunch break, back to work again... everything happening in a rather fussy way, of course, but it's all normal, predictable, everyday fuss.

On second thought, some of these beats are indeed programmed in almost ridiculously complex ways. Something like ʽIpacial Sectionʼ or ʽAugmatic Disportʼ could never even remotely be app­roached by a human being — the same way no human being could ever beat the machine at coun­ting out chess move combinations. But this does raise the question of whether electronic music that may not be replicated or interpreted by a human being can actually be enjoyed by one. These robotic pulsations neither follow our natural rhythms (be it any standard pattern of the 4/4 or 3/4 types), nor do they provide sick deviations to which, after a bit of training, we can attune our rhythms (in a Captain Beefheart fashion). They are simply too much for the nervous system to handle — and end up as «curious intellectual achievements» with no purpose other than showing off one's professionalism.

The only track here which barely hints at a human touch is ʽFermiumʼ, where the beats suddenly become less complex and a little more «trance-inducing» in the good old sense of the word (al­though it still gets way too messy towards the end). And I only write this because, once its cycles started rolling in, it was the only moment on the album that actually made a brief swipe at my at­tention center. Everything else was just totally non-descript. What used to be «magical» is now perfunctory and boring; what used to be «curious» is now predictable.

Hence, one more thumbs down. I used to wonder how the heck these kinds of albums mostly get 5-star ratings and rave reviews on Amazon and other such sites — before realizing, of course, that nobody will ever get interested in a new Autechre album outside of the duo's hardened, de­voted, but very, very small handful of admirers, those who have done a fine job of rewiring their brains towards «The Future» or «The Alternate Reality», as they see it. For me, though, the big­gest problem is that this alternate reality, once you have already broken through, unpacked your tent, and are now beginning to hang your family's portraits on the wall, is pretty damn hard to keep yourself excited about.

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Bad Religion: Suffer

BAD RELIGION: SUFFER (1988)

1) You Are (The Government); 2) 1000 More Fools; 3) How Much Is Enough?; 4) When?; 5) Give You Nothing; 6) Land Of Competition; 7) Forbidden Beat; 8) Best For You; 9) Suffer; 10) Delirium Of Disorder; 11) Part II (The Numbers Game); 12) What Can You Do?; 13) Do What You Want; 14) Part IV (The Index Fossil); 15) Pessimistic Lines.

Imagine Woody Guthrie taking a crash course in modern sociology, plugging in, speeding up, and throwing on some distortion, and there you have it — one of the most famous hardcore albums of 1988. For Suffer, Graffin and Gurewitz, coming back together, managed to squeeze out the last traces of the Clash and the Ramones; this here is a natural «folk-punk» album, turned into hard­core only on a formal level. Behind all the fuzz, loudness, and vocal barking really lies the equi­valent of ʽThis Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Landʼ.

It is sort of fun to realize this, enough to forgive the stark, mercyless monotonousness of the fif­teen songs on here — ultra-short as they may be, the riffs, tempos, and moods are so similar that there is genuinely less diversity here than on Back To The Known, which was a five-song EP, if you remember. No guitar solos, no stops and starts, only a couple songs at best that sew together faster and slower sections, and permanent bombardment by «socially relevant» lyrics that occa­sionally sound like a complicated philosophical thesis set to rudiments of music. Prepare your­self for embracing some bombastic minimalism.

Normally, I should be hating an album of this kind, but, surprisingly, I enjoy Suffer quite a bit. Most of the thanks go to Graffin. By now, he is able to establish just the perfect balance between punkish bark, intellectual sneer, and — most importantly — distinct enunciation, and even if his lyrics add very little to what we already know about the flaws of society, they still cut a little dee­per than yer average leftist propaganda. (Besides, one thing that all the hardcore movement has always sorely needed , were good lyricists, capable of ennobling the genre). And it is mostly his singing that helps — not always, but often enough — to draw differentiating lines between songs. After a few listens, ʽ1000 More Foolsʼ, ʽGive You Nothingʼ, and the title track finally sink in as songs that actually have vocal melodies — rising and falling, falling and rising, sometimes resol­ved in a fascinatingly slap-in-yer-face way ("I give you me, I give you nothing!", to me, sounds like the album's absolute peak here).

The band's two guitarists, old warhorse Gurewitz and not-yet-veteran Hetson, mostly play in uni­son, without straying far from the base; this is probably not the easiest thing in the world to do even when you are playing these simple riffs — but at what speed! — and it gives the music a thickly scrumptuous coating, the notes under which still manage to sound distinct: you can hum these riffs quite easily (unlike, say, something by Agnostic Front) — not that you'd probably want to, but it is possible.

The record takes an almost fascist approach to «gimmickry»: the only «out-of-line» bit on the en­tire album is a distorted, slowed-down recording of Graffin (or somebody else) robotically into­ning "delirium of disorder, delirium of disorder" at the beginning of said track. Consequently, there is no sense in extending this review — describe one song and you have betrayed 'em all — but it might be useful to stress, once again, the main reason why I am giving it a thumbs up when, normally, records of this kind get negative ratings.

Basically, Suffer is a hardcore album that respects all the formal requirements of hardcore (short length, fast tempo, distorted heavy rif­fage, angry anti-social mood, etc.), yet dispenses with the true spirit of hardcore — playing the whole thing out with much more precision, collectedness, melodicity, and lyrical complexity than one usually expects from the genre. Even set against How Could Hell Be Any Worse?, Suffer is the well-printed hardcover equivalent of the former's ex­citing, but carelessly glued paperback. Monotonous, repetitive, not at all inventive, it's far from a «masterpiece for the ages», but the limited task that it sets out to accomplish — that one it accom­plishes to complete perfection. And, for that matter, where else on a hardcore album are you go­ing to meet brave lines like "When will you try to change the logarithmic face of kissing things good-bye?" Oh, you just wouldn't believe all those tricky things we do to impregnate all those young punks' minds with the joy of mathe­matics...

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Badfinger: Say No More

BADFINGER: SAY NO MORE (1981)

1) I Got You; 2) Come On; 3) Hold On; 4) Because; 5) Rock'n'Roll Contract; 6) Passin' Time; 7) Three Time Loser; 8) Too Hung Up On You; 9) Crocadillo; 10) No More.

Badfinger's last album was recorded throughout 1979 and 1980 with more lineup changes: no Joe Tansin, a new guitarist in Glenn Sherba, a new drummer in Richard Bryans, and a new keyboard player in ex-Yes member Tony Kaye. Since the band was quite heavily touring at the time, the lineup turned out to be a bit more stable, tight, and focused, and Say No More certainly sounds much more like a «rock'n'roll band» product than the shiny gloss of Airwaves. But this is where the good news ends (provided this is good news at all).

Because, honestly, Say No More must have been designed as a conscious «antidote» to the gloss, sweetness, and poppiness of Airwaves. Everything here is loud, upbeat, more often fast than not, and usually relying on keyboards and guitars battling it out in a melodic, but «aggressive» man­ner. In other words, this is Badfinger trying to be what Badfinger never were — a muscular, an­ti-sentimental, sweat-pumpin' pop-rock band and just about nothing else. Not a single ballad in the pot. Not that Molland and Evans were inept at rocking out, of course; it's just that their melody skills rarely stood out whenever they began to «crank it up».

Here, for instance, despite the relentlessly bash-it-out attitude, there are next to no memorable rock'n'roll riffs, apart from a few basic chord sequences nicked off past experiences: everything that could be worth something is invested in the pop choruses. The rock'n'roll attitude seems to be all-pervasive here for one reason only: to prove Badfinger's ongoing «authenticity» — none of that commercial shit, none of those New-Wave-style gimmicks, just good old power-pop straight out of 1971 and forget about the last ten years. (Renegade Tony Kaye does manage to slip in a few new-fangled synthesizer solos and effects from time to time, but never long enough to make the listener suspect «relevance in a modern world» within even a single song).

The vocals are sweet enough, though, and Say No More is never a total waste. The single ʽHold Onʼ, a last-minute collaboration between Evans and Tansin, even made a tiny bump on the charts — for a good reason, since Tom's singing here is excellent; it captures a shade of Badfinger's trademark romantic chivalry with some nifty mood-sequencing (going from calm, unexciting se­renading to the heated-up passion of the chorus and then to the seductive falsetto resolution of "baby hold on..." — quite a respectable example of songwriting as far as I am concerned). ʽToo Hung Up On Youʼ is also a nice love confession, but with nowhere near as much personality as there is on ʽHold Onʼ (maybe it's all the double-tracking that spoils the effect).

The basic rock'n'roll stuff, in comparison, just sounds tasty for 1981, a year in which basic rock'n'roll stuff mattered about as much as Doris Day (maybe even less); thirty years on, there is little reason to listen to ʽI Got Youʼ or ʽCome Onʼ if you can just throw on some vintage Stones or T. Rex in­stead. Still, even despite the garage rock clichés of the former and the wannabe-Slade attitude of the latter, the only real failure is the ridiculously titled and ridiculously delivered ʽCro­cadilloʼ, which they try to do with a bit of a «pop-metal» flair: a big mistake on Evans' part, since playing it really down-and-dirty is a no-go for these guys.

There is also a remake here of ʽRock'n'Roll Contractʼ which, as we now know, was originally re­corded in 1974 for Head First; as could be expected, the song is tightened and sped up, and now features longer and leaner guitar solos, yet its gloomy pathos still feels a bit out of place on this generally cheerful record. As we now know, too, it wasn't really out of place, given that, in two years time, Evans would be joining Pete Ham in the noose; but on the whole, Say No More is even less indicative of the tragedy to come than Wish You Were Here and Head First were in­dicative of the upcoming suicide #1.

Fact is, as troubled as Badfinger's life was, they rarely let their everyday personal problems in­fluence the atmosphere of the music — unlike, say, Fleetwood Mac, theirs was the old-time ide­o­logy of keeping their «routine» feelings apart from the artistry, and leaving most of their troubles behind the doors of the recording studio (even on Wish You Were Here, most of the real-life in­spiration they brought with them was based on positive, not negative emotions, ʽGot To Get Out Of Hereʼ being the major exception). Of course, some would condemn this as artistic insincerity, while others might praise it as a sign of lack of vanity («ain't it just grand, the way I can make myself suffer and show it so well on my recordings?»).

But, in reality, it's just whatever works for you that really matters. And Say No More does not work all that well, I'm afraid. Not a bad album by any means, but doomed from the start by the wrongly chosen direction, it now has to formally count as the band's «swan song» while quali­fying more for a sparrow rather than swan level. It's one of those moments where I wish time would loop the wrong way and let Say No More be the first, «tentative» effort of the two reunion albums and Airwaves be the second — because, despite all the gloss and Joe Tansin, Airwaves has more of the old Badfinger spirit in it.

On the other hand, who knows how Molland and Evans would have fared in the future, had Tom not been driven by fate to the same level of insanity as Pete. Fantasizing about a whole string of Say No More-like albums throughout the 1980s actually makes me feel happier than listening to one single Say No More — the way these guys went about their music in 1979-81 makes one suspect that they might have withstood the synthesizer / drum machine onslaught, had they ma­naged to hold on to a record contract. But maybe that was impossible even in theory, and with the Eighties upon us, Badfinger just had to finally go down, once and for all. Maybe, had they not reunited to take this last chance, Evans would still be alive and well. Maybe it was all a very bad idea. Still, something deep inside me says that it is a nice thing, after all, to have these two al­bums as a last-minute, half-hearted souvenir — Badfinger have always had this simple magic aura about them, such that even their worst records can still sound endearing... under certain cir­cumstances, at least.

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Arthur Brown: The Voice Of Love

ARTHUR BROWN: THE VOICE OF LOVE (2007)

1) Love Is The Spirit; 2) Gypsies; 3) Kites; 4) I Believe In You; 5) That's How Strong My Love Is; 6) The Voice Of Love; 7) All The Bells; 8) Shining Bright; 9) Birds Of A Feather; 10) Devil's Grip; 11) Safe Now &... .

First thing to be noticed about Brown's latest studio venture is that it is now credited not to the crazy, but to «The Amazing World Of Arthur Brown». Sure enough, modesty and humility were never an integral part of this guy's artistic image, but there is still an even bigger contradiction here, because The Voice Of Love is, in fact, arguably the most modest and humble album ever released by the God of H.F.

On here, Arthur returns back to the acoustic environment of Tantric Lover: he is accompanied by much-talented, little-known multi-instrumentalist Nick Pynn, proclaimed by Brown to «play every string instrument on the planet» or something to that effect — however, the choice of ins­trumentation is generally quite simple: about 70% guitars, and the rest divided between violins, mandolins,  harps, whatever... nothing too exotic as far as my ear can tell. Furthermore, about a half of the songs are recycled from the past — be it very recent past, such as ʽAll The Bellsʼ and ʽVoice Of Loveʼ from Tantric Lover, much older past, such as yet another rearrangement of ʽLove Is The Spiritʼ, or pre-deluvial past, such as ʽDevil's Gripʼ, which was the very first single put out by Crazy World in 1967. In addition, there is a cover of Hal Hackady's ʽKitesʼ, a song first turned into a hit by Simon Dupree and the Big Sound (the original Shulman brothers band before the emergence of the most awesome Gentle Giant) also around 1967. Sweet, sentimental, a bit tangoish compared to the original, and — nostalgic, of course.

Yes, the whole album is drowned in nostalgia this time. Most of the tracks, formally, are ballads: Arthur pouring his soul out to tasteful arrangements of romantic-natured songs, all firmly rooted in mid-1960s and early-1970s R&B (yet another cover is the old Otis Redding chestnut ʽThat's How Strong My Love Isʼ, which Arthur approaches here like a master archaeologist would ap­proach a freshly unearthed relics — almost literally dusting off and professionally polishing each syllable, with such great love and respect for the object that the care shown in his singing ends up more lovable than the cover itself). True enough, there is very little «craziness» here, at least not until ʽDevil's Gripʼ comes along at the end of the album and shakes us up a little bit with some of the old maniacal frenzy (yet there is only so much maniacal frenzy one can conjure with just a couple acoustic guitar tracks and some screeching violin passages. Say what you will, electricity does matter when it comes to these matters). But still, it would have been more honest to call themselves «The Shadow World Of Arthur Brown» at this juncture.

Of the new stuff, meticulously mixed with the oldies and thoughtfully levelled with them in style, ʽGypsiesʼ is probably the standout track — make sure you neither confound it with ʽGypsy Es­capeʼ off Galactic Zoo Dossier or with ʽGypsyʼ off Journey; yes, Arthur doth love the word — if only because it deviates from the general «love is the spirit» standard and digs into a darker, Mid-Easternish, violin-dominated pattern, before picking up speed, fury, and frenzy and leading us to a climactic conclusion (by the way, Arthur's screampower has not decreased in awesome­ness one small bit — at this time in his life, he can probably do better than Ian Gillan, which just goes to show that you never really know your luck until you hit sixty).

Generally, though, there are no standouts. For you and your grandmother, this is a wonderful pre­text to simply lower some barriers and bask in the excellence of Brown's intonations, modulations and manifestations. This is still theater, replete with exaggerations and mannerisms, but a very stripped down, life-like, and meaningful sort of theater — and maybe quite a turn-off for the adventurous fans of Kingdom Come and the Requiem era, or even those who got a minor kick from the ab­surdist minor extravagance of Vampire Suite. Personally, I tend to favor Arthur Brown, the evil clown, not the paternalist-sentimental one — but at this time in his life, he might actually be doing better as the latter rather than the former. A pleased, if not too excited thumbs up — and [obligatory old fart addendum] needless to say, Voice Of Love still shows more genuine soul than any given starry-eyed indie market record from 2007.

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Billy Fury: Halfway To Paradise

BILLY FURY: HALFWAY TO PARADISE (1961)

1) Halfway To Paradise; 2) Don't Worry; 3) You're Having The Last Dance With Me; 4) Push Push; 5) Fury's Tune; 6) Talkin' In My Sleep; 7) Stick Around; 8) A Thousand Stars; 9) Cross My Heart; 10) Comin' Up In The World; 11) He Will Break Your Heart; 12) Would You Stand By Me.

This marks the end of Fury's transition from «wannabe-rocker» into the «lite entertainment» ca­tegory: the cover of Goffin & King's ʽHalfway To Paradiseʼ, originally recorded by Tony Orlan­do, sent him to the top of the charts, lost him a squadron of devoted hardcore fans but gained an army of newly evolved softcore ones. But was he really to blame? The British Elvis, after all, had to follow in the footsteps of the American one, and now that the real Elvis, back from the army, was softening up his act, the UK shadow had to follow suit — no serious alternatives. «Guitar bands are on their way out», after all.

Even worse, Billy is no longer willing to (or allowed to) write his own songs — apart from a little semi-nostalgic, semi-comic number (ʽFury's Tuneʼ), a folk-poppy ditty where he amuses himself by quoting as many titles of his own past hits as possible. Everything else is just stuff by contem­porary US and UK professional songwriters, writing for the lite-pop scene: I mostly do not recog­nize the titles, other than ʽYou're Having The Last Dance With Meʼ, which, for some reason, in­vents new lyrics for the recent Ben E. King classic ʽSave The Last Dance For Meʼ.

Still, if you have nothing against early 1960s «soft-rock» per se, Halfway To Paradise is as nice and elegant a ride back into the epoch as anything. There is only one syrupy, orchestrated ballad, floating along at a slow waltz tempo (ʽA Thousand Starsʼ); most of the rest is upbeat, catchy pop with occasional echoes of blues and R'n'B, and if only the arrangements were relying a little less on keyboards, strings, and girlie harmonies, than on a well-recorded guitar sound, the whole thing could have been a cool, tasteful example of pre-Beatles pop.

For starters, ʽHalfway To Paradiseʼ, want it or not, is a Carole King classic (perfect melody reso­lution and all), and Billy, with his Elvis-like style, does a grittier, less manneristic job with it than Tony Orlando. Then there's some piano-led country-pop stuff like ʽDon't Worryʼ and ʽTalkin' In My Sleepʼ (imagine Elvis guest singing lead on a Jerry Lee Lewis album from his «country» pe­riod, but do remember to dim the lights a little — this is Billy, after all, not Elvis or Jerry), some bossa nova influences (ʽHe Will Break Your Heartʼ), some further cuddlifying of the sentimental approach of Buddy Holly (ʽStick Aroundʼ)... nothing jaw-dropping, that is, but still a respectably diverse bag of styles, created with a modicum of intelligence, arranged with a big nod to catchiness, and, for the most part, delivered without any signs of overt «sweetening» or theatrical exaggeration.

Of course, all of it is way too smooth — the addition of even a single track that would have a faint hint at going a little deeper (such as ʽWondrous Placeʼ) would have helped a lot, but no dice. Still, this is just the kind of album that would get one of those «slanted» thumbs up — mildly plea­sant, «average» with a positive-rather-than-negative shade, etc. Historically, it helped make Billy a national star while at the same time forever burying his hopes of artistic growth — but the same could, indeed, be said about Elvis' early 1960s records, and we do still enjoy them from time to time. Seems like there is more to life than artistic growth, after all.

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Bo Diddley: Bo Diddley Is A Gunslinger

BO DIDDLEY: BO DIDDLEY IS A GUNSLINGER (1960)

1) Gun Slinger; 2) Ride On Josephine; 3) Doing The Crawdaddy; 4) Cadillac; 5) Somewhere; 6) Cheyenne; 7) Six­teen Tons; 8) Whoa Mule; 9) No More Lovin'; 10) Diddling; 11*) Working Man; 12*) Do What I Say; 13*) Prisoner Of Love; 14*) Googlia Moo; 15*) Better Watch Yourself.

The first of several «Bo Diddley is a...» type of records, starting out in an almost «conceptual» manner and then proceeding in whatever non-conceptual directions the original concept might have pushed the music. In other words — a nice pretext here for Mr. Bo to show off in some nice Western gear on the front cover. But whaddaya want, The Magnificent Seven came out that year, after all, and why shouldn't Afro-American rock'n'rollers have loved it, too?

The good news is: Ennio Morricone was not yet working with Sergio Leone, so there is no dan­ger of hearing Bo try out his own interpretation of ʽThe Good, The Bad, And The Uglyʼ. The bad news is that the proposed scenario might have been — who knows? — more exciting than hear Bo slap on a lyrical, attitud-inal, and, sometimes, musical country-western sheen on everything we'd already heard before. The ugly news, then, to dispense with the trio, is that this album con­tains what might be the worst cover of ʽSomewhere Over The Rainbowʼ ever recorded by a hu­man being. (At least, in the pre-1980s era.)

But cheer up: in the end, Bo Diddley Is A Gunslinger is a pretty funny concept, and a fairly ex­citing musical ride. What I mean is, anybody who appreciates, say, Weird Al Yankovic's bag of parody tricks, has no reason to cringe at the idea of Bo Diddley expropriating other people's ideas, adapting them to his own playing style, and coming out with something that is a shameless rip-off and a hilarious parody at the same time. The most important thing, though, is the humor and the playfulness of it all. If you have something against playing with Uncle Bo, stay away. If you're willing to accept the Gunslinger's rules, though... excitement awaits, crude as it may be.

The title track ever so slightly modifies the Bo Diddley beat (actually, the drums play without syncopation, whereas the guitars still syncopate, and this creates a slightly irritating, but clever  aural effect) to give us another episode of ʽThe Story Of Bo Diddleyʼ, this time set at the «O-K Corral». After that, Western references float away, only to resurface on ʽCheyenneʼ, which is ba­sically a synthesis — literally! — of the Coasters' ʽAlong Came Jonesʼ (again!) and LaVern Ba­ker's ʽJim Dandyʼ, taking the "and then?"s from the former and the "waaah-oooh"s from the latter. Both are classics of the comedy-R'n'B substyle, and the synthesis works much better than a sepa­rate cover of each would have had — and what is that «bubbling» percussion? Sounds just like certain patterns of electronic drums circa early 1980s. Later on, it reappears on ʽWhoa Mule (Shine)ʼ, a stop-and-start blues-pop account of a Southern mule, where its clippity-clop does re­semble a mule's slow, steady pace, instead of the light horsey gallop on ʽCheyenneʼ. Clever!

The most often covered songs on the record would probably be ʽRide On Josephineʼ (George Thorogood had a version) — a Diddley-style rewrite of Chuck Berry's ʽMaybelleneʼ, with a dif­ferent chorus but essentially the same verses; and ʽCadillacʼ, done by the Kinks on their debut al­bum — here, with a saxophone-adorned arrangement, which Gene Barge contributes in well-imi­tated King Curtis style. Again, though, it is not the saxophone itself that matters (we can all just go listen to the real King instead), but its interplay with the distorted lumps, shards, and splinters of sound spluttered by Bo and his second guitarist (Peggy Jones) in all directions. And then there is ʽSixteen Tonsʼ by Merle Travis, a track that Ed Sullivan, for some reason, once expected Bo to perform on his show, and got pretty upset when the man played ʽBo Diddleyʼ instead. Don't wor­ry, Mr. Sullivan — Bo Diddley takes his responsibilities seriously. A five-year wait period is ac­tually quite a sign of respect. And it's a nice cover, too.

Overall, the only true misfires are the ballads — once again, Bo proves that he's no ladies' man when it comes to wearing your heart on your sleeve: ʽNo More Lovinʼ is clumsy, rotten doo-wop, and ʽSomewhere...ʼ ... oh my God. (Then again, I never even liked that song in the movie — and I never really liked the movie — and I never ever liked a single cover of that song — and for some reason, Eric Clapton performed it live during my only live Eric Clapton experience — okay, I'm probably not the right person to pronounce judgement in this case).

But apart from that, Gunslinger is an oddball of an album in that it is not all that different in scope or freshness from the two that precede it, but somehow, is still hammered together in a more concise, exciting, and intriguing manner. Not surprisingly, unlike those two, Gunslinger has been remastered and issued on CD, with a bunch of bonus tracks (of which the wannabe-ancient road workin' song ʽWorking Manʼ is the finest), and is well worth locating. Thumbs up.

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British Sea Power: Valhalla Dancehall

BRITISH SEA POWER: VALHALLA DANCEHALL (2011)

1) Who's In Control; 2) We Are Sound; 3) Georgie Ray; 4) Stunde Null; 5) Mongk II; 6) Luna; 7) Baby; 8) Living Is So Easy; 9) Observe The Skies; 10) Cleaning Out The Rooms; 11) Thin Black Sail; 12) Once More Now; 13) Heavy Water.

From the enchanted misty coastlines of the Aran Islands, here we go back into well-charted wa­ters once again. What else can I really say? There is very little, if any, quantum difference be­tween this record and Do You Like Rock Music?, nor could we have justifiedly expected any, given Yan and Hamilton's firm indie stance: «we found our Muse early on, and one does not easi­ly commit adultery and get away with it». But I gotta admit, the album title is a good find — cer­tainly nowhere near as cringeworthy as when they ask you a stupid question, the answer to which is completely irrelevant for the music, anyway.

The experience of soundtrack brewing did leave some traces — the album steps away from the policy of continuously bashing your head into pulp with an endless stream of fast, furious, monotonous rhythms, and reinjects lots of atmospherics: starting with ʽGeorgie Rayʼ, continuing with ʽLunaʼ and ʽBabyʼ, and ending with the obligatory mammoth-length epic (ʽOnce More Nowʼ), we are exposed to lots of echos, dreamlike late-era Cocteau Twins-ish ambient-psychede­lic guitar pirouets, and even «angelic cooing», mostly courtesy of Abi Fry, credited not only for vocal effects and viola, but also for musical saw passages — you get the drift: we no longer like rock music that much. Who ever makes rock music with a musical saw?

In fact, the long list of «influences» now, apart from the perennial Arcade Fire, would probably also have to include at least Beach House — ʽBabyʼ (eat this, Justin Bieber!) moves at a slow, stately pace, weaves an aura of melancholic beauty, populates it with chivalrous lyrics ("I pow­dered rhino horns for you and I'll serve it on a plate to you" — where's the Animal Rights Watch when you need one?), then fades away like the remnants of a relaxating hot bath down the drain. Probably never to be remembered again, just like any given hot bath. If anything, the vocals are just too non-descript, compared to Victoria Legrand's cold-and-warm stimulation.

But even though each of these «moody» tracks, taken individually, is no great moody shakes, collectively they do a good job of slowing down and speeding up the record to move it through different emotional fields — technically different, at least. Who knows, maybe if there had been no ʽBabyʼ before it, I would have remained untouched by the impact of ʽLiving Is So Easyʼ — probably the album's best track, and a good choice for a single. Driven by electronics instead of guitars, it is a cool, intelligent «Anti-Party» type of song, whose simple, catchy chorus ("living is so easy, shopping is so easy, dying is so easy, all of it is easy") could easily be mistaken for pro­pagating a «don't worry be happy» attitude. In reality, it is a light-hearted indictment of the «easy living» attitude to which I wholeheartedly subscribe — and fun to sing along to.

Of the rest of the tracks, «tuggers» would probably include ʽGeorgie Rayʼ (not too transparently dedicated to Orwell and Bradbury), urging us all to beware of anti-utopian future with a few well placed, rousing "why don't you say something, won't you say something"s; and ʽObserve The Skiesʼ, where they finally manage to hit the Springsteen-ian bullseye, I think (yes, growing up with Born In The USA blasting from the radio will eventually do that to a man) — anyway, great piano parts, high-in-the-sky guitar solo, and another anthemic chorus that is fun to sing along to. Only problem — I don't think Yan's «whispering scream» suits the mood here. They really needed someone of The Boss's caliber to rip it up 100%. What's a fuckin' loud anthem with­out a fuckin' loud screamer, anyway?

Overall, I do find this one somewhat more consistent, diverse, and generally intelligently crafted than Rock Music — never by a long shot, for sure, but enough to raise the final count to a half-hearted thumbs up. Maybe the main problems these guys have is that they want this music to be stadium-wise anthemic and intellectually challenging at the same time, and you know how hard it is to intellectually challenge an entire stadium. But, regardless of that overall judgement, you can always succeed at different degrees, and Valhalla Dancehall succeeds at least as often as it fails, which makes up for about thirty minutes of genuinely good music and about thirty more minutes of a nutritious, but tasteless sonic bouillon. But maybe that's just the way they go about it up there in Valhalla. Come to think of it, they used to say the same things about Wagner, too.

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Autechre: Draft 7.30

AUTECHRE: DRAFT 7.30 (2003)

1) Xylin Room; 2) IV VV IV VV VIII; 3) 6IE.CR; 4) TAPR; 5) Surripere; 6) Theme Of Sudden Roundabout; 7) VL AL 5; 8) P.:NTIL; 9) V-PROC; 10) Reniform Puls.

The most revolutionary thing about Autechre's seventh LP is probably the song titles. Where they used to read like ordinary words garbled through electronic malfunctioning, these already look more like random strings extracted from sequences of machine code. And yet, at the same time, lo and behold, one of the titles is a noun phrase in ye good old plain Aenglisc, even though the sonics behind it sound no different from everything else. Ah, say what you will, but this duo simply re­fuses to be pigeonholed. Predictable stereotypes? Leave them for unimaginative suckers like the Beatles or Frank Zappa.

Other than the letters, though, Draft 7.30 should not come across as a major revelation to those who already know the whole story. It regresses a bit from the standards of Confield — once again, notes, tones, and hums get louder and fussier, drawing attention slightly away from the beats, as if they'd realized themselves that with the percussion paradise of Confield, they let their boldness carry them a bit too far. But in doing that, they are really «going back», losing their grip on the art of radical innovation. Scramble these tracks and the ones from LP5, and the only im­mediately felt difference is that Draft 7.30, like Confield, is «hoarser» and «hissier», generating a strictly «computer» ambience rather than trying to expand into outer space.

And I am afraid that difference no longer plays into the hands of Booth and Brown. There is only so much whooshing, scraping, dialing, ringing, pinging, and plinging that one can eat up before the inevitable question — «and...?» If Confield could have got you a-thinking about whether or not this could be the music of tomorrow in an alternate, post-Heat Death reality, Draft 7.30 will only get you a-thinking once more about what you have already a-thought before, presumably more than once. Where are the new sensations? Bring on the new sensations already! Why should it take us more than a decade to study this sub-atomic zoo?

In all honesty, this album is neither emotionally seductive nor intellectually provocative: it is sim­ply boring. Yes, the rhythms are still complex and diverse, but you'd think that, with the kind of creative experience these guys have accumulated, they'd be able to come up with a bunch of those in a matter of several hours or so. Worst thing about it, the individual tracks no longer have any individuality — lower your attention a bit, and you won't be able to tell where one stops and the next one begins, except for maybe a jarring change of rhythmics from time to time. They all just sort of roll along, at the same tempos, with the same gloomy attitude. Ever been a fan of standing in front of a large anthill and stubbornly watching them ants run along in all directions? Well, just replace the ants with electrons, and you have yourself your Draft 7.30.

Not that there is anything criminal about that — it was fairly clear that it would be tremendously hard to follow Confield with something equally puzzling or provoking. As usual, long-term fans with appropriately wired brains and a good deal of loyal patience will find plenty of opportunities here. But for those of us who would rather like to nibble on different pebbles of the musical kaleido­scope, Draft 7.30 might be easy to skip. Thumbs down for a lack of imaginativeness, which, I think, is the most offensive accusation one can throw at Autechre (I tried!).

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