Women - s/t

Let's get the influence namechecking out of the way. Sonic Youth. Velvet Underground. Swans. Deerhoof. Liars. Can. This Heat. Should I continue? Somehow, WOMEN frontman Pat Flegel did when I chatted with him, briefly and a bit awestruck, after his band played in Regina recently. The list of bands spooled off with such ease it was like they were always there, waiting for the slightest tug before unraveling fully and wonderfully.

But of course this is a ridiculous thing to suggest, because every band and every artist has this list waiting at the forefront of their mind any time they are discussing their music. It's whether they choose to deny its existence or embrace it that makes the difference. Calgary's WOMEN embrace it, and good for them, because it means they constantly strive to prove that they are not those bands, they are their own.

Throughout WOMEN's brief half-hour self-titled debut, the songs sheathed in sustained bursts of noise, drones, crashing and clattering loops and general textural fuckery. Tape hiss is everywhere, the songs are drenched in reverb and odd tonal colours flash in and out when you least expect it - "Lawncare" gradually drops its yearning guitar line and, eventually, its rhythm as cascades of noise fade in, leading to the gorgeous textural wash of "Woodbine." "January 8th" strikes atonal, droning chords and builds its speed to a nervous, lashing energy, a pulsing Tesla coil of rock. Under all of these elements, however mathy or noisy, are the sinews and bones of really great tunes that borrow not from the above underground icons but instead find kinship in the pop music of the 50s and 60s.

Which brings us to "Black Rice." The centrepiece of the album, this track has already won a ton of acclaim, yet I can't help but add myself to the chorus. I've been listening to this record nonstop for the last few hours and so much of "Black Rice" is utterly stunning. The way the rhythm section dances neatly around those jangling, echoing guitar chords after the first chorus, the glockenspiel, the laissez-faire vocal melody that breaks into an aching falsetto. So much about it is wonderful, and that it's sandwiched between a gorgeous sheet of pink noise and a truly awesome instrumental piece constructed from feedback and ever-spiraling guitar lines makes it stand out further. It's a song so good you'd swear you heard it before, but shockingly none of the bands that have influenced WOMEN managed to write it. It belongs to WOMEN and it is wonderful.

There's an interview with Stephen Merritt that came to my mind while writing this review. Merritt comes off as someone who plays music but, for some odd reason, doesn't actually like it - he's hypercritical and sardonic and outright mean. It makes for an entertaining read, and I'm certainly a fan of Merritt's music, but it seems like such a bizarre attitude to take into the act of creation. The conversation I had with Flegel a while back gave me the opposite feeling. Here's someone - here's a band - who not only make music but listen to a lot of it, who like a lot of it, and the music they make reflects that. It's because WOMEN love music that they want to do something new and interesting, and that passion makes their album succeed marvelously.

Music by people who like music for people who like music. Imagine that!

WOMEN - s/t is available now on CD and LP from Flemish Eye Records, a Calgary micro-label that is also home to The Cape May and Chad VanGaalen. It is also available on iTunes.

The Evangelist, by Robert Forster

We didn’t know how important he was to us, until he was gone.

In Australia, not so long ago, it was accepted practice to make fun of Grant McLennan, or at least to not take him seriously. Before we all re-discovered the Go-Betweens, before the nation embraced them and recognised them as one of the best bands the country has ever produced, it tended to be a reflex action to dismiss McLennan. His song-writing partner Robert Forster got a bit more respect: even if you didn’t like his music, he was at least interesting to look at, a kind of Australian Bryan Ferry. McLennan just looked like a bloke. Anyone can be a bloke. Blokes with guitars make music that nobody really wants to listen to. Nobody paid much attention to McLennan’s post Go-Betweens solo releases.

Then Forster and McLennan revived the Go-Betweens, the band’s albums were all reissued in fancy new packages, some French magazine named them the best band in the history of pop or something, and Australia fell in love with the band almost everyone had forgotten about. Then, even more amazingly, brand new Go-Betweens albums started to appear, everyone who was suddenly an expert got over their initial “But where’s Lindy Morrison?” snobbery, Forster and McLennan took their show on the road, and we all lived happily ever after.

Well, not quite, because this isn’t a fairy story, it’s real life. In 2006, at the age of only 47, Grant McLennan died of a heart attack in his sleep one afternoon. The news was unbelievable. We didn’t know how important he was to us, until he was gone.

Robert Forster must have known, though. Since he and McLennan reformed the Go-Betweens there had been three new albums by the band, and it’s probably safe to assume that the Evangelist, or something in its place, would have been the fourth. Instead, the tragedy of McLennan’s death has forced the album to become Forster’s fifth solo album.

It’s impossible to escape the memory of McLennan when listening to the Evangelist – not that Forster shies away from that memory, with the opening page of the booklet explaining in detail precisely which lyrics on the album were written by McLennan. We can only imagine what Forster must have felt when singing those lyrics, but there’s a palpable heaviness, a weariness, to the first three songs on the album in particular. Not, I hasten to add, that the music sounds tired: just older, sadder, and wiser – the kind of wisdom that can only come through pain. Listening to these performances almost feels like an intrusion, especially on “Demon Days”, the second song on the album and the first of those partly written by McLennan. Forster sounds withdrawn and half-broken, as if it’s almost unbearable for him to sing the song – it very well may be, especially given the hauntingly prescient chorus McLennan wrote: “Something’s not right/Something’s gone wrong”. Very wrong indeed; it surely wasn’t meant to be this way. It’s the single most powerful performance on the album, but also the most uncomfortable: there’s something too private here.

After “Demon Days” the next song, “Pandanus”, arrives like a balm, telling a simple story of the healing powers of nature: the song starts “It was one day at five thirty – I went down to the beach”, and concludes “The sun has gone and it’s taken your troubles somewhere, somewhere”. We can’t know who Forster’s addressing when, on the second-last line in the song, he suddenly changes the personal pronoun from “I” to “you”, but it might as well be the listener.

Because of the tragic events foreshadowing its creation, it’s impossible to approach the Evangelist objectively, and it’s true that the fact of Grant McLennan’s death lends much of the album an emotional weight that it perhaps wouldn’t otherwise have. But it would be misleading, too, for me to suggest that sadness and tragedy dominate the album. Indeed, many of the songs have nothing whatsoever to do with McLennan; and not all of those that do involve him, or the memory of him, are sad: one of the album’s highlights comes just after the half-way point: “Let Your Light In, Babe” charges along, driven hard and fast by Glenn Thompson’s drums, as Forster sings another simple story that has something of the quality of a Biblical allegory – and not just because of the prominence of a church in the narrative – of a man (presumably) offering his house to a woman and child “new to this town”. The chorus, written by McLennan, urges: “Let your light in, babe, and don’t you be afraid.”

The second-last track on the album, “It Ain’t Easy”, has a very similar melody and feel to “Let Your Light in, Babe”, and also boasts a chorus by McLennan – but lyrically it’s a tougher song. The chorus states “It ain’t easy, when that love is blue, the love is blue”. More significant, though, are the opening words – Forster’s words:

“And a river ran and a train ran and a dream ran through everything
that he did
There was melody, there was harmony, there was sweet Sherrie,
But it was melody he loved most of all.”

We can’t, of course, impose our own meaning upon somebody else’s work and claim it to be the absolute truth. But these three lines are as good a memorial of Grant McLennan, the man who gave us songs such as “Cattle and Cane”, “Bachelor Kisses”, and “Bye Bye Pride” as one could hope for. For fans of the Go-Betweens, new and old, the pain of McLennan’s tragic loss still hasn’t gone; perhaps it never will, but with the Evangelist Robert Forster has at least given us something beautiful to hold on to. It might be easier for us to forget some things in life, but sometimes it’s better to remember, and to mourn, and to celebrate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCbyByY-A6w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_nn90p-tIg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpRFuADsdxc