Demob Happy

I never thought it would happen to me but finally I’ve succumbed to external pressures and have been unable to update this blog with any regularity. Firstly, I’ve been concentrating efforts on a new English-language website for my new home town, Grenoble, in south-east France. Secondly, I’ve recently become a father for the first time. Enough said.

Instead of the usual in-depth (and exceedingly hyperbolic) music, book and film reviews, I’ve done a little summary of my current listening habits.

Vecktamist - Grizzly Bear

This one weighs heavily under the burden of its own hype for me. A very accomplished record with many delights but its sometimes perhaps a bit too over-wrought production-wise, the result of much handringing in the studio I supect. Thus on one hand there is a greater lucidity and pop sensibility than on ‘Yellow House‘, it’s predecessor, but arguably less of that album’s perculiar bucolic charm. There are a few more ponderous tracks where lightness of touch is foresaken for bombastic gravitas. Listening to it right now, some of what I am writing seems rather churlish give how great tracks such as ‘Two Weeks’ are. But while it’s clearly one of the year’s better records, is it really better than Grizzly Bear member Dan Rossen’s album of last year ‘In Ear Park‘ under the Department of Eagles’ guise? Time will tell.

Wilco - W’ilco (the album)

This one won’t please fans of the band who had been hoping for an about-turn to the more impressionistic dissonance of ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot‘ and ‘A Ghost is Born‘. Others, like me, will be temporarily peeved by the thowaway in-jokery of the album title and opening track ‘Wilco (the song)’. Not a concept album this, but while it continues in the vein of the more conventional alt-country pop of ‘Sky Blue Sky‘, the overall effect is arguably more satisfying: great pop songs embellished with the band’s typically intricate musicianship. The devil, as always with Wilco, is in the detail; and while this is unabashedly up-beat, at times joyous stuff, there is plenty of sonic invention to marvel at throughout.

Bibio - Ambivalence Avenue

Have to thank Robert Pisani for putting me on to this one, out on Warp. It’s a curious mix of Boards of Canada’s tape-fuddled nostalgia, Californian psych and filtered Baleric synth pop, just right for these sweltering July days.

The Field - Yesterday and Today

Axel Willner, follows his acclaimed ‘From Here We Go Sublime’ with another album of pulsating, blissfully shimmering techno. Whereas Sublime was a touch too minimal for my tastes, ‘Yesterday and Today’ is more richly textured but equally epic - with an fuzzy, shoe-gazey quality that welcomes listeners normally alienated by more orthodox techno.

Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas - II

The Norwegian producers return with an album that is as much groove-based psychedelia as cosmic disco. An album to get pleasantly lost in; a lusciously produced, multi-instrumental pleasure from start to finish. Epic and evolving but always human and accessible, this couldn’t categorically be called ‘dance’ music - some of this sounds like German psych pioneers Can. A label-defying treat.