A view from the hill

Just as with their first albums, "Towards the bright light" and "The back room", it's hard to ignore the impulse to compare Interpols new record "Our love to admire" to the new album "An end has a start" by The Editors. While I did reviews of the first two albums for plattentests.de (here and here), I haven't reviewed the new ones there, so I'm gonna take a step at an informed comparison here, generalizing a little and also taking into account the slew of other bands that people tend to ignore.

Die taz versucht sich an der Erklärung Wie Indie-Rock den Soul verlor. Die taz und/oder auch der zitierte Frere-Jones scheinen jedoch eher jeglichen Plan verloren zu haben.

Zum einen ist es absurd, so zu tun, als wäre in den 70ern die Rockbewegung voll von schwarzer Musik gewesen. Fakt ist, dass natürlich Bands wie The Clash im Reggae-Umfeld umtriebig waren. Aber das war bei weitem nicht bei allen so. Wo ist etwa das Reggae-Stück der Sex Pistols oder von Joy Division? Dass es zeitgleich zur Explosion der Punk- und Independent-Szene auch noch ein Revival (und somit nicht eine Initialzündung) der Beschäftigung von Weißen mit schwarzer Musik gab, ist sicher eher Zufall als Absicht. Erstens gab es in der Disco-Musik der 70er viel schwarze Musik, Soul, der den Namen auch verdiente. Zweitens war gerade Reggae populär. Drittens wurde nochmal (Revival!) die Musik, die die jamaikanischen Einwanderer in die armen Viertel Englands mitbrachten, populär: Ska, mit dem typischem Offbeat, wie ihn zu der Zeit etwa die Specials, Selector oder Madness spielten. Da die Skinheads und die Punks in den gleichen Ecken hausten, ist es nicht so verwunderlich, dass es da Vermischungen gab. Aber was gab es denn jenseits vom Offbeat-Griff bei Police und Clash? Man sollte sich vielleicht mal daran erinnern, dass nach dem Ur-Punk gleich der coole Synthie-Pop bzw. New Wave gefeiert wurde.

Zum anderen ist es ebenso absurd, zu behaupten, dass im heutigen Indierock keine schwarzen Wurzeln mehr erkennbar wären. Nehmen wir ein sehr plakatives Beispiel: Bloc Party. Sehr erfolgreich mit einem farbigem Sänger. Jetzt kann man sich natürlich streiten, ob der Sound von Bloc Party "Soul" enthält, aber "Rhythmusgefühl" und "genreübergreifendes Zitieren" findet sich da ganz sicher. Aber nehmen wir noch ein anderes Beispiel daher: Die Blues Explosion, besser bekannt auch als John Spencer Blues Explosion. Sie zelebrieren ausschließlich den modernen Rückgriff des Indierocks auf alte "schwarze" Musik. Dann hätten wir noch so Bands wie "At the Drive-In", die eine sehr moderne "schwarze" Variante des modernen Post-Hardcore feierten. Was genau ist denn eigentlich der angeblich verlorene Soul? Gilt etwa ein Jimmy Hendrix auch als "schwarze Musik"? Dann sind "Motorpsycho" oder "The Mars Volta" Beleg dafür, wie sinnlos die Behauptung ist.

Moderne Musik wäre ohne den Einfluss schwarzer Musik nicht denkbar. Das gilt für Indiemusik genauso wie für das alltägliche Radiogedudel.

Last week I went to see "Broken Social Scene present Kevin Drew's 'Spirit If ...'" playing in Heidelberg. I hadn't written about it earlier because the concert wasn't very exciting. The reason I do so now is that, like most concert I visit, it made me listen more closely to the records of the band. I also bought "Spirit If ..." at the concert, right before the start. Afterwards, I was afraid to have made a classic mistake: generalize from previously nice records to a new one and buy it without a first try, and possibly wasting time, money and emotions.

Where was I? Ah, yes, the reason why I'm writing this entry now: the concert of last week was the first in a very long time in which the concert wasn't up to match the records at all. In particular, I thought that the reduced amount of band members playing and especially Kevin Drews ambitions might be responsible for the uninspired concert, as I left with the impression that Kevin was a little to self-loving and maybe even a little jealous when Branden Canning played and sung two songs that got a lot of applause. But after having listened to "Spirit If ..." now several times, I must conclude that it probably was mainly due to the reduced possibilities of only playing with six instead of the usual ump-teen players. And btw: adding volume doesn't really help -- too often I had to put on my ear plugs which only results in even more reduced distinguished tunes.

Well, I'm sure Isaac Brock wasn't too happy about his injury. Yesterday I heard that because of his injury the Modest Mouse concert in Frankfurt in June had to be cancelled, which would have taken place during my holiday. Instead, the concert now took place yesterday at the Batschkapp, and I was even able to get a card via eBay. Yes! The concert went quite well, although the Batschkapp was completely sold out. The warm-up band was pretty bad, but Modest Mouse hit the roof, although they were aiming for ... you know. What I learned during the show was that I like the songs from "Good news ..." more than the ones from "We were dead ...". This is of course an over-generalization, e.g. "Dashboard" is certainly among the best songs of MM, but overall the songs from "Good news ..." have more variation and also more life in them. But, hey, I felt almost like the protagnoist from How soon is never?, seeing Johnny Marr. Now I only have to find out from which LP that song is that they played after "Float on". Update: Some good soul from the forum on plattentests.de said it was "Tiny cities made of ashes" from "The Moon& Antarctica" and indeed, I recognized it was. However, played live, it sounded quite differently, much more powerful. And something else I forgot to mention: after the Trail of Dead in 2005, this was the second concert which featured two drummers and just as with ToD, this had a terrific effect on the sound.

Well, this post was due since quite some time now, so I'll stop babbling and go for the latest additions to my CD archive (yes, I'm an old fashioned user of those tiny discs).

First of all, I did a review of The Mission "God is a bullet", currently to be found at plattentests.de. It's nice in it's old fashioned guitar-oriented wave, but also not to convincing. Perhaps I've just become too bored with this old stuff. (5)

The Queers new album "Munki brain" also landed on my shelf for a review, but at the time there were to many better other records. We're also not exactly a punk store, so that explains the omission. The record is what you would expect from a number umpteeemth album, and I'm sure every surf punk is going to have a great time with it. Me, I'm not a surf punk, and these days only rarely a listener to punk. (5)

The nicest addition as of late is from Modest Mouse with "We were dead before the ship even sank". It provides so much niceness and comfort that you'll feel as floating around, only to trash you to the ground a mere split second later. Any fan of indie rock will probably know that legendary Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr has become a member of the band, which hasn't exactly hurt the sound. The compactness of the songs is sometimes just stunning and mostly brillantly instrumented. I do have some complaints about the drums though, but nethertheless a fantastic record. (9)

I have my share of problems with The Arcade Fire and "Neon bile" is no exception. There are a lot of good tunes on the album, but sometimes it's just too pathetic. (6)

I'm more and more bored by indie dance pop, like e.g. made by Maximo Park, whose new album I've only dipped into but refrained from buying. But I couldn't resist to buy "Ten new messages" by The Rakes for no particular good reason. Indie dance pop, all the same, though sometimes a little bit rougher, i.e. more like The Dogs. (6)

Finally, there is "Myth takes" by !!!: Just like their last record, this is dance music made for the indie discos or maybe just the other way round. Again, there are some fantastic songs on it (Heart of hearts, for instance) but then again, I may be just too old to learn to dance to this disco sound. (7)

In the category "Yesterday", I finally have "13 Songs" by Fugazi, so I can now assign a name to those songs I knew it would know. Brilliant punk rock and a must buy for anybody. (9)

No, I didn't stop listening to music, I just forgot blogging about it. But, hey, I remembered today.

The readers's poll on plattentests.de is over. "Good evening, Germany. And here are the results of the German (readers) jury." "Sorry, could you repeat that?" "Yes, here are the results of the German (editorial staff) jury." "Thank you, Germany!"

Here's what I voted:

Looking for a present, I recently stumbled upon the book "How soon is never?" by Marc Spitz. In case you liked the band The Smiths some twenty years ago ... No. Let me try to put it otherwise. Around 1986 there was no one listening to the Smiths, you would have been hating or loving them. So, if you happened to love the Smiths, "How soon is never?" is interesting as it tells the story of some ex-Smiths-fan-become-rock-journalist's life. If you like to check out what your life might have been like in case it had not provided to get over the Smiths, that is. Or perhaps you know that already.

Anyway. Naturally reading the book led me to dig out my old CDs (I own only "Louder than bombs" on vinyl. It was the first Smiths album I bought - in 1987, I think - , although that doesn't really explain it, as I think that I already owned my CD player, which btw. is still the same today). It's true what Marc writes, also in 2007 that music is still worth listening to. Similarly for my favourite other band of that time, the The Woodentops -- their live album from 1987, "Live Hypnobeat Live" is still unbelievable wrt. its intensity -- and speed, of course. I did some web searching and discovered that they seem to have played some concerts again, last year, surprisingly. If they were to play in Germany again (I saw them in 1987 in Oberhausen), I would probably travel quite some distance. There is even a new website (Woodentops portal) on which one can download MP3s of old material, including raw live material.

Yesterday, I voted for Tool as the best live band, although I hadn't seen them yet, as the concert was tonight. Well, they didn't let me down, they easily did win the price as the best live band this year [1]. The concert hall, Mannheim's Maimarkthalle, was a particular disappointment. Or in fact it wasn't, it was just the horrible surrounding I've expected it to be.

The warm-up band, Mastodon, was also a nightmare. Usually, I don't care about bad warm-up bands, but this time the sound was so loud you couldn't ignore them. The loudness was really a problem. Sometimes I felt it was just too loud although I brought and used a pack of ear protectors. Apart from that, Tool were great, especially the light show was the best what I've seen so far.

[1] It was only the fourth concert for me this year. Tomte has been great, Til Brönner (my first Jazz concert ever) was very nice, too, and The Horror The Horror, this years' best newcomer in my opinion, played a nice concert, too (although they had to fight a rather tiny location, Freiburg's Jos Fritz cafe and its ridiculous time table). But Tool was way more exciting.

After about sechs years of XMMS usage, I think I'm finally done with it. Playlist handling is a major pain. And I usually just shuffle my way through my collection. But don't even try to find a song in that long, long way down south ... sorry, down the playlist.

I've tried Rhythmbox, but as it is to closely bound to Gnome (and gstreamer, in particular) it doesn't work for me (I'm using WindowMaker without Gnome on my workstation at home). And no, I don't have any KDE libraries installed and yes, I like it that way -- although I've heard quite a lot good things about amarok.

Dear Lazyweb, please what kind of audio player might fit my needs? I just need a little more functionality than XMMS. Selection by album, artist and/or genre would be nice.

Wow, it's been quite some time since my last records review. Not too bad, there's not that much new stuff on my desk. I'll give a quick tour.

Yesterday evening, I went to see Tomte, a great German guitar pop band. It was quite a funny evening, with Thees, the singer, showing dias upfront. The concert was quite great, too, btw.

Afterwards, walking the bridge over the Neckar, I encountered a view that makes living in real citites so interesting: At the head of the bridge workers were digging and ripping out lanes of the tram, producing lots of noise and smoke. With the huge lights illuminating the night, this alone was quite a scene. But at the same time below the bridge on the water, 19 swans were swimming silently on the river. I love these contrasts you only encounter in larger cities.

In between days, a sleigh of new records has arrived on my desk. A whole bunch of others isn't even worth mentioning.

First of all, The Twilight Singers "Powder burns" was already reviewed on plattentests.de. I really like it, although I still have
problems with the ever continuing intensity of Dulli's latest records. (7)

The new Tool, "10000 days", was a must buy. Like all their albums, that's not the kind of music you would like to play to your radio loving girl friend. It's also a dangerous record to get drunk to. (8)

A girl's record by comparison is "A feaver you can't sweat out" by Panic! at the disco, which comes across like a mix of Jimmy eat world with Franz Ferdinand. Light and nice. (7)

Finally, a not so new record. Refused, "The shape of punk to come" already done 1998. It's hardcore. No, make that Jazz. Err, electronics. Whatever, but the hardcore tag is rather sticky. What a brilliant record. If you happen to like At the drive-in, you'll also love this one. (9)

We won't publish a review of Viva L'American Death Ray Music on Plattentests.de, but it'll feature a review of The Organ'Grab that gun' instead (update should happen either today or tomorrow).

Viva L'American Death Ray Music have produced a very nice album, somewhere between Velvet Underground style (the singer sounds much like Lou Reed) and the Strokes, perhaps, although there are some punky dribbles all over the record. What hindered a review was mainly that the record is quite short (about 30 minutes) with eight songs and two songs are just alternative takes of other ones. Nice one to figure out anyway (6).

I have a whole slew of new records on my desk, some for review for Plattentests.de, some bought on my own. I'll use the same range of ratings as for Plattentests, i.e. between 1-10.


One of those records, 'Uninvited, like the clouds' by The Church will get a longer German review on Plattentests.de this night, so I won't go into details on this one. (5)

A week later, you will find a review for the new record from Viva L'American Death Ray Music at the same place. (6)


Until then though let me go through a quick review of what has also arrived:

The Alarm have a new record. Keep away unless you want a trip back to the days in the 80s when Simple Minds and U2 were terrorizing the ether. (3)

Mogwai have a new album 'Mr. Beast' that doesn't hold what it promises. There are some nice heavy rock opera songs on it, but it can become quite boring and annoying at the same time. (5)

Motorpsycho indeed may have made their best record since 'Trust us' but it still is nowhere near that one or 'Angels and Daemons at play' or 'Blissard'. (6)

'Meds' by Placebo, in contrast, is their best album since 'Without you I'm nothing', lots of high energy songs as well as some nice slow ones, even some experimental ones, which you won't hear on the radio, of course. (7)


Finally, I bought last years album from Dogs which is somewhere between Les Savy Fav and Franz Ferdinand, so that's quite nice disco-indie-rock music. (7)