Liars- Liars

I have a hard time with Liars. Not because I don't enjoy their music, but because I enjoy the often-hysterical critical response even more. OMG THEY WERE WRONG SO WE DROWNED IS INACCESSIBLE ART-CRAP! OMG DRUM'S NOT DEAD IS THE GREATEST RECORD EVER *BECAUSE* IT'S INACCESSIBLE!

Now add to the screeching blogger-refrain "OMG LIARS ARE WRITING POP SONGS AND THEY KIND OF SOUND LIKE BECK NOW WTF!?!/!"

Okay really, there's only one song on Liars that sounds like Beck (track 2, "Houseclouds"). But Liars are writing pop songs again. From the opening stomp of "Plaster Casts of Everything" through album-closer "Protection," we're getting what would otherwise be fairly typical indie-rock songs filtered through the Liars' now-signature Kraut-goth reverb desolation.

For me, it's this delivery that really sells the songs- they'd be horrendously boring if, say, Chin Up Chin Up were playing them. As Liars tracks, and as a refreshing palate-cleanser after two albums' worth of relentlessly experimental music-making, they work.

Is it the best record of their career? Probably not. But it's a worthy addition to their discography, and for folks turned off the band by They Were Wrong or Drum's Not Dead, Liars could be the hook that brings them back into the fold.

Man, that one song really does sound like Beck, though. Just saying.

Three bands you might not have heard of.

We’re a pretty international mob here at Yelling About Music. Not only do we hail from three different countries, but in fact three different continents. Which is neither here nor there, really, except that it helps to explain why today I’ve decided to tell you all about three bands that have been doing the rounds and building substantial reputations for themselves here in Melbourne, Australia, where I live.

I haven’t always lived in Melbourne. In fact I’ve only been here for three years; but in those three years I’ve comfortably been to more gigs than I had in the entire twenty-five years I was around before I moved down here. Melbourne’s like that: when even a judge on the cravenly bottom-dollar Australian Idol refers to a city as “Australia’s live music capital”, there must be some kind of scene worth sitting up and taking notice of. Naturally, most of these bands don’t get too much attention outside of Melbourne – which is where a site like this comes in.

I

There’s a phenomenon that people are fond of talking about here in Australia called the Cultural Cringe. It’s two-sided: first, it assumes that anything Australian is automatically inferior to anything from overseas; secondly, when in some cases this assumption is proven to be false, the Cringe dictates that this fact must be cause for great joy and celebration and pats on the back all round. It’s absurd, of course, but it’s a difficult habit to break out of. So it’s always a happy surprise when a band springs up that’s genuinely world-class. It doesn’t happen as often as we’d like, of course: a bunch of times in the 80s, supposedly, but not much since then. The last one of any significance might have been the Dirty Three, but it’s been pretty lean since then. So it’s with a slightly unsettling sense of pride that I can confirm that one of the greatest gigs that I’ve ever been to was last year, in Melbourne, and the band was a Melbourne band.

It was at the Salon room in the Spanish Club on Johnston Street in Fitzroy (now bitterly defunct as a major live music venue), and the band was Martin Martini and the Bonepalace Orchestra. The occasion was the launch of their debut studio album, entitled Dream Until You Die. The band had been around for a while by then, and the first time I’d seen them I’d quickly dismissed them as being overly gimmicky. The second time I’d seen them, at a friend’s urging, they were reaching the tail-end of a very long residency at a small out-of-the-way pub in Fitzroy, playing in front of small and not overly enthusiastic crowds. They were good, better than I remembered them being, but I didn’t find them particularly gripping. I left early, though not without regrets at missing the remainder of the set. But by the time the Spanish Club gig rolled around, I was well and truly a fan. This was largely because I’d finally hit upon the band in its natural habitat: upstairs at Bar Open, on the famous Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, which is surely the epicentre of the Melbourne live music scene.

A great gig is composed of numerous parts that must all be working in harmony, and only one of them is the band itself. The audience, too, is important: if they’re not that into the music it’s hard to get swept away; on the other hand if they’re too into the music it’s hard to hear the band. But of course the venue is also crucial: some bands, like it or not, just don’t work in a large space. Doesn’t matter how full the space is, some bands just fall flat in all that air; but the same band could be a life-changing experience in a smaller venue. Some bands build up such a reputation at a particular venue that it’s difficult for the devoted fan to imagine them somewhere else; such is the case with Martin Martini & the Bonepalace Orchestra whenever they play at Bar Open, which they do fairly regularly. Sure, they play a lot of gigs at other venues, but whenever they play at Bar Open it feels like a homecoming. It helps, of course, that Martin Martini himself can be regularly spotted strolling around Fitzroy (often putting up posters for his own gigs: the Melbourne scene is nothing if not hands-on). Even so, when they play at the Evelyn, just down the road, it doesn’t quite feel right somehow. Perhaps it’s the fact that you have to climb up the stairs to the band-room at Bar Open, and then work your way around the corner so that you can snatch a glimpse of the band, and that by the time you’re there you’ll probably be crammed in with a lot of other people into a fairly small space, and everyone’s getting right into the music because if they weren’t they’d be downstairs, in the bar. Undoubtedly it helps that Saturday night gigs at Bar Open are always free: there’s something magical about discovering something so wonderful just by chance, because you wandered in to check out a free gig. I expect Martin Martini & the Bonepalace Orchestra have picked up a lot of fans that way.

Of course, all these are well and good but the final and, possibly, most vital component of a gig is the state of the gig-goer’s mind: if you’re not into it you’re just not into it, and it’s probably not the band’s fault. When I went to that album launch at the Spanish Club I was in a rather turbulent head-space: I’d received news that morning that my grandmother had died. She was 92 and had been ill, so it was neither tragic nor unexpected; but she’d been a constant presence in my life, so it was sad and, as death always is in one way or another, brutal news. If I’d received the news in the evening maybe I wouldn’t have felt like going out at all; but the phone call came at breakfast time, and by the time the sun went down and I’d been thinking about it all day I needed a release. I’d been looking forward to the gig for weeks, and I don’t think it even occurred to me not to go.

Still, as much as I’d been excited about the gig, I’d also been sceptical: the Spanish Club was not Bar Open. Bar Open is tiny, and sweaty, and almost like a secret; the Spanish Club was cavernous, and the only other gig I’d been to there (by Vulgargrad, on whom more later) had been sparsely attended. The room didn’t work too well with a small crowd. And if ever there was a band which could be defined as “cult” or “niche”, it was surely Martin Martini & the Bonepalace Orchestra.

At which point, of course, I should tell you a little bit about the band. First up, there’s Martin Martini himself. Mr. Martini writes the songs, and sings them, and plays keyboards, and does them all with the same sort of jumping-out-of-his-seat enthusiasm that Dr. Teeth brought to the band in the Muppets. He has a similar kind of voice, too, now that I think about it – a gruff, gravely voice, which he sometimes projects through a megaphone. The Bonepalace Orchestra is made up of drums, a tuba, a clarinet, and trombone, and a violin. When a guitarist was added at a recent gig, it was so unexpected that it merited a special announcement by Martini.

The music played by the band makes no secret of its debt to Tom Waits, with whirling and sometimes almost cataclysmic collisions of jazz and folk and anything and everything in between. Indeed, it might be easy to dismiss Martin Martini & the Bonepalace Orchestra as Tom Waits wannabes, were it not for the fact that the band is clearly having too much fun being themselves to be easily written off as anyone else. Furthermore, if this is Tom Waits then it’s Tom Waits with a distinctly Australian bent: not just in Martini’s singing accent (nine out of ten Australian bands sing in an faux-American or, less commonly, faux-British accent), but in the dark, dry yet ribald humour of his lyrics, for instance: “A child born ugly/Can make friends with a rat”; or “Well I’ve tried counting sheep/I’ve even tried the goats/But none seems to get across the fence/And the sleeping pills/Make my dick go hard/And I think about house insurance”; or “Lucky’s hanging from the ceiling/With a noose firmly round his neck/Frozen in space like a cupie doll/The blood rushes to his head/It’s about time he left this place/And Lucky smiles within/Till that old mud brick roof/Comes a tumblin’ in.” In Mr. Martini’s songs there are always death, and taxes, and sex, and birth, and god, and inebriation – in short, life, twisted, surreal, grim and uplifting, but always undeniably life. To bring the Dirty Three up again: Martin Martini & the Bonepalace Orchestra’s songs are like Warren Ellis’s fabled mid-gig monologues, rendered into song form.

Which is precisely why a Martin Martini gig was the greatest gig I could possibly have gone to on the day I heard that my grandmother had died. My fears about the Spanish Club were, it turns out, completely unfounded: the gig was sold out, and someone had sensibly moved the tables and chairs that were usually in the room out of the way, and Martin Martini held the entire crowd in his sway like some kind of joker-shaman, and the band teased and tempted and roared and whispered and the crowd clapped and danced and sweated and felt, for a couple of hours, like it had stumbled upon the most amazing religion in the world. And me, well, I didn’t forget about my grandmother’s death, but somehow the music of Martin Martini & the Bonepalace Orchestra helped me make sense of it. For at least those couple of hours, I understood that death was part of life, just like taxes, and sex, and birth, and inebriation, and all those other things we stumble into when we’re looking for something else – and that was all right.

II

As mentioned above, sometimes sharing the bill with Martin Martini & the Bonepalace Orchestra are another Melbourne band called VulgarGrad. It’s easy to see why the two bands go well on a bill together. They’re both great to dance to. They both have gruff-voiced singers. They both have an unusual instrumental line-up. And they both give off the same air of devil-may-care love for life, including the bad bits.

That VulgarGrad manages to convey this last point to the majority of the punters who regularly flock to their gigs is quite amazing, because the songs they sing are entirely in Russian. VulgarGrad play Russian criminal songs, with the occasional Russian punk song thrown in for good measure. They look snappy, all in hats (of varying kinds) and black-and-white striped t-shirts – the latter of which some of their more loyal fans have taken to wearing to gigs. And this is a band that builds loyalty.

It’s always a good sign, with a band singing songs from another country, when ex-pats from that country turn up to the band’s gigs time after time. At a VulgarGrad gig you’re more likely to hear Russian being spoken – or shouted jubilantly – than at any other time in Melbourne. I didn’t know there were so many Russians in Melbourne until I started going to VulgarGrad gigs; maybe there aren’t, maybe every single one of them goes to see the band. They’re in good company: the band also seems to have a sizeable following in the local punk community, though their music is not particularly punkish (even the punk covers). Plus, of course, there are the indie kids, which I guess is where I fit in. Well, also Russophiles in that case: it was the idea of hearing Russian criminal songs that first enticed me to go see the band.

That first gig was at the Old Bar, again in Fitzroy. As Bar Open is to Martin Martini & the Bonepalace Orchestra, so the Old Bar is to VulgarGrad. It’s sad to think that they might possibly be getting too popular to play there much longer: for the past couple of years they’ve appeared some time in autumn and set up camp in the Old Bar for a series of gigs that have seen more and more people cram into the tiny space each week. Once the band gets going there’s no room in there, but people dance anyway. It’s that kind of music. The band have self-released one short C.D., but I desperately hope that somebody records one of their gigs at the Old Bar because if ever there was a band that needed to be experienced live, it was VulgarGrad. It helps, of course, that their singer is the seasoned actor Jacek Koman (those of you reading this outside Australia will probably best know him as Tomas from Children of Men): he knows how to work a crowd, even when most of that crowd doesn’t have a clue what he’s saying (he stays in Russian mode almost exclusively throughout gigs, though he’s Polish in origin). He doesn’t engage the punters through grand gestures or wild actions; in fact, he’s quite reserved on stage. But like any good actor, every move he makes has maximum impact. And, of course, he knows how to use his voice: the meaning of words is only partly literal.

A VulgarGrad gig, when it’s up and going and their loyal fanbase has come out of the woodwork to support their heroes, is an electric and transcendent experience. Even more so than a gig Martin Martini & the Bonepalace Orchestra: with Martini and co the energy comes in a large part from the sense of discovery, from the fact that the music is so fresh and exhilarating that you can easily recall the first time you really started listening to it, and thus you can feel the excitement of those in the crowd who are experiencing that epiphany for the first time themselves. At a VulgarGrad gig, the excitement stems from being part of the in-crowd: from knowing that nobody in the city is having a better time or listening to better music than you, right at that moment. Being at a VulgarGrad gig is like being receiving a jolt from some other universe, and just barely getting a grasp of it before it disappears again; before the band disperses to their various other pursuits for the rest of the year, as they’re wont to do, and are unheard of for months on end. In those long months it all becomes a bit of a dream, something you vaguely recall and whisper to your friends about, without being able to fully explain just what happened. Still, there’s always next autumn.

III

The last band I’m going to talk about today couldn’t really be more different from the two discussed above. Anthony Atkinson & the Running Mates are one of the numerous bands who recorded for the much-loved, much-missed Candle Records, home to (the rather better-known) Lucksmiths, Simpletons, and Darren Hanlon, as well as the Mabels, of which Anthony Atkinson was the lead singer. If pushed to genre-box them, I suppose you’d say that Atkinson’s songs are pop-rock-alt-country-singer-songwriterish, which is a description that could be matched to any one of a thousand other bands currently doing the rounds. And it’s true, there’s nothing particularly unique or startling about Anthony Atkinson or his music – certainly when compared to Martin Martini & the Bonepalace Orchestra, or to VulgarGrad (who, although they are technically a covers band, play covers of songs that the vast majority of Australians have never had a chance to hear – and, as the saying goes, put their own stamp on them). But nonetheless, pretty much since the moment I first saw Anthony Atkinson perform (at one of Candle Records’ annual birthday gigs: I was there solely to see Darren Hanlon) he’s been one of my favourite singer/songwriters.

If anything, Atkinson is proof that if you do the old things well enough, you don’t have to do anything new. After all, it’s all very well listening to experimental or avant-garde or otherwise unusual music, but sometimes you just want to lie down and listen to good old-fashioned songs. Songs about people falling in love, and worrying about their girlfriends, and going for drives, and watching a bit too much T.V. Songs that have a solid beat, and a good tune, and are performed by musicians who all know what they’re doing and enjoy doing it, and what’s more do it really well. If that sounds like damning with faint praise then I can only apologise, and offer this endorsement: Anthony Atkinson is one of the finest songwriters currently working in Australia. Not musicians, nor composers, but songwriters: because writing a song is as much craft as it is art, and Atkinson nails the craft just about every time.

And the art, too, of course. With two solo albums under his belt, plus his previous career with the Mabels, Atkinson has been around long enough to know what he’s doing. If there’s a better break-up song than “Shifting Sands” I’m yet to hear it. Take this verse: “He kissed a girl who’s now on T.V./She can’t believe he tells everybody/She kissed the coach of the rowing team/But he doesn’t know she was only fifteen.” Atkinson cuts straight to the heart of the matter, but he trusts his audience enough to leave some gaps unfilled, some questions unanswered. He doesn’t create characters in his songs, so much as set scenes: sometimes jubilant, sometimes wry, and sometimes downright heartbreaking – I can’t imagine how anybody could hear “City of Gold”, the final song on his 2006 album Loyalty Songs, without wanting to cry.

Loyalty Songs saw Atkinson’s current band, the Running Mates, recorded for posterity, and that’s something music lovers everywhere should be thankful for. For the last couple of years this band has been playing the odd gig around the traps in Melbourne, and they’ve been getting better and better with each one. When he’s performing solo Atkinson is very much in the quiet singer-songwriter mode – but the band brings out the rock ’n’ roll in the man and in his songs. Sure, the songs remain as thoughtfully and gently worded as ever, but those words are driven home with a passion and energy that can sometimes seem lacking when it’s just Anthony Atkinson by himself. And this is not just because suddenly the songs have a drum-beat behind them: Atkinson also transforms, singing with spirit and striking every chord on his guitar like there’s a thousand essential words written right there in the notes, and the crowd just has to hear them. And this enthusiasm, of course, is readily transferred to the crowd: even now, remembering that slight pause before Atkinson and the band launch into a collective chorus of “Ba-ba ba baaa” to close out “Sunday Drives”, I catch my breath slightly. It’s this kind of moment that makes me rush to a gig every time I see his name on the bill.

I just hope that his next album includes “The Night Ruth Cracknell Died”.

http://www.martinmartini.com/ / http://www.myspace.com/martinmartiniandthebonepalaceorchestra

http://www.vulgargrad.com/ / http://www.myspace.com/vulgargrad

http://www.myspace.com/anthonyatkinson

Rilo Kiley - Under the Blacklight

I have a huge crush on Jenny Lewis. I have tried to fight this fact for a long time, but basically I just want her to be my girlfriend. As a result, I am far from the most objective of listeners when it comes to Rilo Kiley records. Despite my bias however, I think their new record, Under The Blacklight, is pretty damn good.

Admittedly, the record starts slow. The opening track, "Silver Lining," is bland at best. The chorus is unimaginative, and she really doesn't even seem to be trying with the vocals. The album stays slow for 3 songs, including the single "The Moneymaker" which sounds like some kind of watered down Yeah Yeah Yeahs outtake. Up to that point, the record sounds like all the worst parts of More Adventurous without the novelty of hearing the band move in a new direction.

Fortunately, as "Moneymaker" ends, the synth comes in at the start of "Breakin' Up," and the record takes off. If it weren't for the vocals, it could almost pass for a Rapture track, but Lewis's unique voice elevates it past mere mimicry. The the chorus kicks in and suddenly there's Supremes esque backing vocals out of nowhere. It nicely sets the tone for the high points on the rest of the record.

The title track is slightly too ballady, despite the synth line which I really want to love, and "Dreamworld" is Blake Sennett trying really hard to ruin anyone's fond memories of his songs on previous records, but it's worth the wait for "Dejalo." There's an infusion of world music in this song, the percussion and guitars working throughout to take you away from the typical "I am Jenny Lewis and I sing songs about Los Angeles and feelings" that everyone is so used to. The song also proves just how good Rilo Kiley is at songs with hand claps.

The driving rhythm and horns of "15" come next, followed by "Smoke Detector" and "The Angels Hung Around," both of which are just Rilo Kiley songs. Nothing exceptionally special about them, but not bad, by any means. The record closes with "Give a Little Love," a far sparser song than anything else on the album. Considering the intensity of most of the songs, it's a bit like they wanted to just give us a chance to lie back and breathe.

I've heard this album is based on the Porn Industry in Van Nuys, California, and that they're trying to make some sort of statement. Unfortunately, the lyrics are weaker on this album than anything else I've heard Lewis sing, so the message is mostly lost. It's refreshing though, to see a band that is so established in the hearts and minds of their fanbase take such a drastic change of direction. It doesn't hold a candle to Execution of All Things, but hearing the same thing again and again gets boring. They took a risk on this one, smooth production, catchy hooks and all, and I think it paid off.

Nina Nastasia + Jim White - You Follow Me
(Fat Cat Records )

We are genuinely spoiled to be hearing from Nina Nastasia again so soon after last year’s triumphant ‘On Leaving’. The unabashed poeticism of that record caught a number of her fans off guard and the tide of early reviews dismissed it as a return to less adventurous territory. Myself included. It took several dedicated sittings before I could appreciate the unadorned subtlety and wonderful restraint behind the deceptively simple set of songs. Retrospectively, it now seems an easy contender for the best record of last year. Similarly, you can bet that the same people who chastised Nastasia for playing safe on the previous record will criticise this one as indulgent. I know there are deadlines to meet but with certain records you have to give it some time. ‘You Follow Me’ is much the same.

It should be said that this record is a collaboration with drummer extraordinaire Jim White, best known for his work with avant garde masters the Dirty Three. White also played on Nastasia’s two previous records but on these songs there is a crucial difference. The use of drums are so central on this record that it’s actually more accurate to say that Nastasia is accompanying White, instead of the reverse. Recorded in just two days at Electrical Audio studios in Chicago, ‘You Follow Me’ is quite a challenging listen at first. White seems busy and overbearing. Only when the shock resides do you realise how incredible his playing is. To his credit, not at any stage during the modest half an hour duration do you miss Nastasia’s full complement of backing musicians. Obviously, White can’t afford to be as gentle as he has been on previous Nastasia records but that becomes part of the thrill.

The opening track ‘I’ve Been Out Walking’ is a master-class in tempo and controlled aggression. White clips and snatches at his kit as Nastasia’s voice gasps and confides. For two glorious minutes White teeters on the brink of the drum assault we all know him to be capable of. When it comes he sounds like he is suddenly everywhere at once. Like a cartoon bear growing larger and larger, dwarfing the panicked Nastasia. The result is stunning. The sort of song you will play again and again. The rest of the album is not as immediate but with these two at full stretch, you really wouldn’t want it to be. ‘I Write Down Lists’ menaces and stomps. ‘Odd Says the Doe’ draws you into a typical Nastasia reverie before White beckons in a cloud of percussive cacophony. Nastasia is on fine venomous form during the aptly titled ‘The Day I Would Bury You’. After the placid ‘On Leaving’ it is very welcome indeed to hear her hiss “I wanted to tell you how much I blame you/How hard this has been” as White clatters the song to an uneasy resolution.

The most difficult song of the collaboration is the relatively quiet ‘Our Discussion’, which is the only time the formula shows a weakness. Had this song been on previous records, White wouldn’t have found it necessary to use such busy drumming. As it stands, it’s an interesting failure and I wouldn’t mind hearing it revisited again at some point in the future. Thankfully, the rest of the album is wonderful. On the glowing ‘There is No Train’, White regains the hazy, drunken pace he captured so wonderfully on ‘Run to Ruin’. Though this album isn’t the masterpiece that record was, it comes very close on the shattering ‘Last Night’. The song reaches a crescendo with a full voiced Nastasia hacking at her guitar. As White wheels in arsenal towards the end, there’s nothing at all you could add to make the song anymore perfect. As a collaboration between two of the world of underground music’s biggest talents, I am struggling to think of a finer excursion. Not an easy record at first but ultimately the most rewarding you will hear for a long while.
- Tommy Dski

Baroness- Red Album*

If you like Mastodon or Pelican, you will probably like Southern metal band Baroness, particularly their newest effort, Red Album.

In case that isn't enough of a description of the band for you, here goes: take raw-ass vocals a-la Gojira or Mastodon's more subdued moments, amp up the country-style chicken-pickin' and dueling Skynyrd riffs, and sprinkle liberally with proggy chord progressions and song structures.

The production is tight, and the band are all bitchin' musicians. It's nice to hear a metal band where the bass player is not only audible, but actually contributing something worthwhile instead of just pounding root notes the whole time. Drummer Allan Bickle is more than capable of carrying the weight of a song, evidenced particularly on "Teeth of a Cogwheel," but as with most metal, the guitars are front and center (or more accurately, hard left and right).

My only real complaint with this record, if it can be called a complaint at all, is that at times Baroness veer a little too close to the established sounds of Mastodon or Pelican (much like math-rockers Russian Circles sometimes evoke their forefathers in Don Caballero to a ridiculous extent), but fans of either band will probably find this as a selling point rather than a turnoff. To be fair, there ARE key differences. Baroness are more overtly melodic (the gorgeous instrumental "Cockroach Un Fleur" owes more to Roy Buchanan than Black Sabbath) and, well, Southern-sounding (listen to those string-bends!) than Mastodon ever have, and they're significantly heavier-sounding than Pelican, particularly Pelican's more recent (and well-known) work.

Overall, Baroness have put forward a strong effort and produced one of the best metal albums I've heard so far this year. They've taken unpretentious technical skill and a strong songwriting sensitivity and forged a record without a dud to be found anywhere on it. I'm happy to recommend Red Album.

Les Savy Fav- Let's Stay Friends*

Let's Stay Friends is the group's most accomplished release to date. Guitarist Seth Jabour has only improved as a player since he last stepped into a recording studio. Tim Harrington has always had a knack for catchy choruses, and his raw-throated howl is as iconic as ever.

There aren't any radical stylistic shifts to be found on this record, but LSV seem to have figured out exactly what works and refined it to a science. Studio embellishments (the horns on "The Lowest Bitter", backing piano on "Comes&Goes", the refreshing female vocals on "Kiss Kiss Is Getting Cold") give the band's music a sonic depth that they have previously lacked on record, and the crisp, punchy production (WOW the guitars and drums sound good!) goes a long way toward bolstering this same depth. I never would have expected to listen to a Les Savy Fav album with headphones on, trying to catch all the little auditory nuances they crammed into every nook and cranny.

All in all this is a really good record! It's a great jumping-in point for those unfamiliar with the band, and a welcome treat for those already converted. I highly recommend it.

Some Loud Thunder, by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Every business has its clichés, the music business not the least of them. Among the most persistent in music is the idea of the “difficult second album”: the idea that while a first album might be a bolt from the blue, some kind of flash of divine inspiration, repeating that success (because we’re talking, of course, only about those few lucky bands or individuals who have some measure of success with their first album) is a grind that can wear down even the most talented artists. It’s not an idea unique to music: literary critics, too, are fond of talking about the difficulty of following up a stellar debut. The argument goes that an artist (writer, musician, whatever) has their whole life to produce that first artefact, but only a couple of years to come up with the next one.

There’s also, of course, the issue of expectation: when the genius of an artist’s first major work has been shouted from every hill and every rooftop, coming up with something else that replicates that fervour is, supposedly, an intense pressure. This is a pressure that the artist might place on themselves, out of their own desire not to disappoint anyone – but it’s just as much something that others impose upon the artist. I think it’s a kind of artificial pressure, in a way: not so much something that critics dream up to give themselves something to write about (or to save them the trouble of thinking up something new to write about) as a manifestation of those critics’ – or the public’s, let’s be fair – own desires for the artist. Of course, this is something that most artists will have great difficulty escaping throughout the course of their career: witness the disappointed comments that greeted Cat Power’s gorgeous album the Greatest, which some critics would have us believe “doesn’t sound like a Cat Power album”. This is a patently absurd argument: it sounds exactly like a Cat Power album, precisely because it is a Cat Power album. What it doesn’t sound like is a particular person’s idea of what a Cat Power album should sound like, but that’s not something that an artist should have to worry about. You can’t please everybody, as they say.

Of all the bands out there at the moment, the one you’d least expect to suffer “difficult second album” pressure is Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Oh, sure, all the classic ingredients are there, not least a raucously applauded debut album that seemed to pop up out of nowhere and take the world by storm (or the indie world, at any rate) and had just about everyone who listened to it gagging for more. The pressure must have been almost unbearable. But to a very great extent you only feel pressure if you allow yourself to feel it, and from the very beginning Clap Your Hands Say Yeah have shown every sign of not giving too much of a damn about what anyone else thinks. There’s that ridiculously unwieldy name, for starters. And the love-it-or-loathe-it singing style of Alec Ounsworth. And, most famously, the band’s D.I.Y. ethos (which serves to remind us all that punk, after all, is infinitely more significant as an attitude than as a sound). This is a band that gives every indication of just doing what they want to do, and to hell with the consequences. Fortunately for them, the consequences have been pretty good so far.

Still, there are all those fans to please, some of whose job it is to write the reviews that could make or break the band. The band’s attitude might have won them admirers, but it was their music that made those admirers (well, most of them) into fans. On their first album the attitude and the sound merged perfectly to create an album that was more sneer than angst, more shrug than anger, and more fun than a hell of a lot of other stuff that’s going around these day; sure, you can put on Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois and go on a tremendously moving emotional journey for an hour and a quarter, but you’re not going to get anyone to dance to it.

I don’t know what anyone really expected from the Clap Your Hands’ second album, Some Loud Thunder. I expect the vast majority of their fan base were wishing and hoping for more of the same – more flat-out fun that you didn’t have to be embarrassed to show your friends. But as to whether anyone actually expected that . . . Well, they probably did, because let’s be honest, the band didn’t show much else on their first album. Apart from the opening track, but I don’t think anyone was anticipating a whole album of faux-carnival spruiking. So more of the same would have suited us all just fine, thankyou.

Which might explain why the reaction when Some Loud Thunder came out was one of muted disappointment: the sound of thousands of indie music fans the world over trying to convince themselves that they liked the album more than they actually did. I know I was one of them. I love that first album, it pulled off the rare feat of jumping straight into the upper reaches of my favourite albums collection from the very first time I heard it – and with the number of albums I buy, that’s no mean trick – and, yes, when I first heard Some Loud Thunder I was disappointed. My disappointment was derived largely from the fact that, while it wasn’t the first album all over again, it seemed like it was trying to be: but there were too many slow songs which interrupted the fun, too many tracks that didn’t quite seem to resolve into anything. It just didn’t seem to hang together, those first few times I listened to it.

Sometimes, I guess, you just need to put an album aside for a while. Again, with the number of C.D.s (yes, C.D.s) I buy this is pretty easy to do. I haven’t even listened to the band’s first album in months, so what could motivate me to revisit an album I was kind of nonplussed by? But all the same, there was something there. Something about the album made me want to write this review (instead writing a review of the first album, which surely would have been a much easier task). All these months the album’s been lurking in the back of my mind, it seems, never quite letting me forget it’s there: and I haven’t been able to forget the album because whatever else the band might be perceived to have lost between their first and second albums, attitude certainly isn’t it.

Right now, for the purposes of this review, I’m listening to the album again, from the much-reviled recording of the title track to the slow, oceanic “Five Easy Pieces”. And I’m loving it. I’m thrilled and exhilarated by it. I’m still hearing the same songs, and I’m not exhausted from jumping around in my seat like I usually am after listening to the first album, but for the first time while listening to Some Loud Thunder I’m finding myself thinking: this is a really, really good album. Curiously, everything that had seemed a weakness at first now seems to me to be a strength: when the album first came out it seemed as if the band had bottled it, as if they’d choked on the pressure of their own surprise success. It seemed like the band couldn’t make up its mind whether it wanted Some Loud Thunder to be Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Mk. II or some new kind of album altogether, so they decided to have a bet each way. And viewed like that, yes, the album is a disappointment, because inevitably it’s neither one nor the other. That was how I originally perceived the album.

But now I find myself thinking that maybe the album is exactly what the band intended it to be: just another album, no more, no less, just them doing what they wanted to do. Really, this should have been obvious to me from the start: the clue’s right there in the beginning, with the outrageously over-produced opening (title) track, which sounds basically like producer Dave Fridmann turned everything up to 11 then went to find something to eat. Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only fan in the world who just loves this version of the song: maybe it’s because I haven’t heard the fabled “clean version” that was apparently floating around on the band’s MySpace or wherever, but there’s something so utterly uncompromising about the recording that I find it absolutely thrilling. (An aside: I wonder how many people who decried this recording of the song also adore, say, the tape-hiss and boombox-distortion on early Mountain Goats songs? If the song “Some Loud Thunder” had been recorded with “authentically” bad sound, would anyone complain?).

And ultimately, that’s what so excites me when I listen to Some Loud Thunder these days. No, it’s not as good an album as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, but to me it’s just as exciting – albeit, for somewhat different reasons. The first album was just so fun and so accomplished, and so unexpected, that it couldn’t help but delight (apart from those few people who always sniff about “influences”; for the record, I don’t hear any Talking Heads in Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: the former band was all paranoia and nervousness; the latter is all swagger and cocksureness). But the second album is the one that shows this band is going to keep doing things their way and nobody else’s; in other words, it’s the album that shows they might just be around for a while yet: although it might sound at first like a misstep, I now think quite sincerely that the album is in fact a bold stride from a band who has never shown any sign of doing anything they didn’t want to do. It may not be a better album than their debut, but it’s a much braver one. The band knows that people aren’t always going to follow them, but they’re walking in the direction they want to go all the same. Personally I can’t wait to see where their foot next falls.

- Harry Saddler.

Mission Statement

Welcome to Yelling About Music, the collaborative music blog of the Questionable Content music forum.

Why collaborative? Because as much as I would like to write about music five days a week, I strongly suspect that I would not be able to maintain that schedule myself. Also because there are some damned fine music writers on the QC boards, and I think their opinions would be a nice contrast to my own. Also, because more writers = more content, and content is a good thing.

The mission of this blog is simply to talk about music. Record reviews, live shows, reminiscences of classic bands and jumping on the latest Hot Leaked Releases from the steamy bowels of the internet. My goal is to edit as little as possible- I want the folks writing on it with me to bring their own interests, vision, and talents to the table, and I'll try to do the same. On my end, I'll probably be focusing primarily on new music, but I have no doubt nostalgia will get the better of me one day and generate a 1,500 word love letter to the mid-90's Champaign, IL music scene.

People will post stuff as they feel like it. I strongly encourage use of the RSS feeds, as until/unless we arrive on some regular schedule that will be the easiest way to keep track of articles as they go up. When talking about albums that aren't "officially" out yet but can be found on the Internets, we'll put an asterisk in the title of the post. You may see reviews of the same album or band by multiple writers- I think that could be an interesting way of approaching music. You may see thoughtful, well-considered pieces comparing a band's current release to its past work and the environment from whence it came. You may see horribly-misspelled drunken post-show text ejaculations ('OMG U GUYZ TEH HOLD STEDY R SO GOOD LIVE AND I AM SO DRUKN RIGHT NOEW'). There won't be any silly number or star rating system or whatever. There are plenty of other music review sites that do that already. You can find some of them on the sidebar immediately to the right of this post. We're not gonna enable comments on the blog. That's what the message board is for.

Anyway, welcome. I hope you enjoy it.