Sunday at Devil Dirt

Smart things Isobel Campbell has done:

1) Leaving Belle & Sebastian (sorry, sniveling indie kids, they are by far the most overrated band in all of indiedom)

2) Teaming up with Mark Lanegan on 2006′s Ballad of the Broken Seas.

Ballad of the Broken Seas was one of the most underrated albums of 2006 and its follow-up, Sunday at Devil Dirt may be one of this year’s most criminally ignored albums. That may be due in large part to its dogged old-schoolitude: these songs sound old, really old, like as old as Tom Waits wanted to be when he was in his 20′s. There’s not much uptempo pep to go ’round on this album (Broken Seas at least had “(Do You Wanna) Come Walk With Me”, a kickass, shuffling acoustic number); where Campbell and Lanegan’s last outing lilted over hill and dale on its way to grandma’s house, Sunday at Devil Dirt smolders, sulks, seduces, and broods. So it’s not the sort of thing that’s going to be a hit at the clubs and none of your local radio stations are going to know what to do with it (unless your local radio station is The Current, which, thanks to the internet, it had damn well better be). It doesn’t have any soundtrack-ready songs on it, so it won’t get the one-year-later introduction that M.I.A.’s Kala did because of “Paper Planes.” And that’s just as well, really. These Campbell/Lanegan albums are custom-built for curmudgeons like me who are predisposed to liking stuff like this (I’ll give Mark Lanegan a listen anytime; even when he’s in The Gutter Twins).Point is, this may be the only place you hear about this album this year, so listen up.

Due mostly to the awesome combination of Campbell’s whispery, soft voice and Mark Lanegan’s wounded growl, the overall feel of Sunday at Devil Dirt is that of a beautiful woman out of an old western who gets you up to her room, talks you out of your clothes and gives you one passionate kiss before holding a knife to your throat and demanding your money. What, this hasn’t happened to anyone else? Put it this way: if Deadwood were still on TV, Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell could very well be the house entertainment at the bar.

This album is a fitting enough follow-up to Ballad of the Broken Seas, meaning that if you couldn’t really get into that album, you probably won’t find much to love on Sunday at Devil Dirt. If you loved Broken Seas, you’ll probably love Devil Dirt. If you didn’t even listen to Ballad of the Broken Seas, go do so right now. I’ll wait while you listen.

Done? Good.

Now, another dozen songs by this dynamic duo might strike you as a good idea, yeah? Like its predecessor, Sunday at Devil Dirt is wonderfully old-timey, packed full of songs about wandering the world, finding and losing love, finding and losing God, and of course, plenty of references to the sea, trains, and sad sad lovers. This go round even features the explicitly haunting “The Raven,” which should be released as the Edgar Allan Poetic B-Side to The Decemberists’ “Crane Wife” trilogy. Same story, darker bird, possible beastiality. Good times. The lost, unlucky-in-love characters of Ballad of the Broken Seas are more lost and even less lucky in love this time around and, lacking their former innocence, they’re looking for good times in some dark fucking places. Check out “Shotgun Blues,” if you don’t believe me. You’re greeted by a sauntering acoustic slide guitar and then Campbell slyly whispers, “Ooh, Daddy/ lay on my bed.” You’d better do what she says.

Sunday at Devil Dirt is the kind of album that you have to be in the right mood for. It’s a rainy day record. If you live in an area that’s cold and rainy this time of year, put this album on the loudest system you’ve got and crank it up. I’ve had this album since May (when it came out) and have had a hard time getting into it because I live in Los Angeles where it never rains and was 90 degrees today. You know, in fucking November. Sunday at Devil Dirt is the kind of album that should warm you up on cold winter days and put some impure thoughts in your head. Now I’m not saying that I’m lacking for impure thoughts here, but the sunshine just doesn’t fit with this album. I’ve had to work hard to get into Sunday at Devil Dirt, but now I don’t want to get back out of it. Campbell and Lanegan are a fantastic team and Sunday at Devil Dirt is a whispering beauty of an album.

I began this review with a list of smart things Isobel Campbell has done and I will end it with a list of people Mark Lanegan should always make albums with:

1) Isobel Campbell

2) Will Oldham (do this next, please, Mr. Lanegan. Those of you who bought the Soulsavers album last year understand where I’m coming from on this)

3) Tom Waits (because, I mean… Jesus, that would be awesome.)

We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

“I identify my star sign/ by asking which is least compatible with yours,” sings Gareth Campesinos on “Ways To Make It Through A Wall,” the first song on the second (!) Los Campesinos album of 2008. And I think to myself, “Here comes another awesome Los Campesinos record.”

Los Campesinos (which is Spanish for “The Campesinos”… just kidding. It means “The Peasants” or “The Farmers” in Spanish. And yes, Los Campesinos are from Cardiff, Wales.) scratched their name into my brain earlier this year with the outstanding Hold On Now, Youngster, a blistering set of snide pop tunes that lashed out at emo culture and romantic comedies with equal cleverness and ferocity. Needless to say, that album was, from its inception, bound to get stuck in my car’s CD player forever (or until Stay Positive came out three months later; but suffice it to say Hold On Now, Youngster got serious rotation between April and July).

And now, a scant 7 months after Hold On Now, Youngster, Los Campesinos are back with We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed. A debut as impressive as Hold On Now, Youngster would be hard to follow up at any point and We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed is not quite the masterpiece that its predecessor is, but it’s still really fucking good. And, you have to admire their work ethic.  For the sake of contrast: The Killers re-released their debut and a singles boxed set (yeah, after one fucking album. Brilliant) before getting around to dropping the steaming turd that was Sam’s Town, an album that wanted so badly to be Born to Run that people reported spotting Brandon Flowers attached to Springsteen’s cock at those free Obama rallies The Boss played this year.

Ahem.

We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed is riddled with the same bombast and wit that made Hold On Now, Youngster a success, packed with great lines like “We kid ourselves there’s future in the fucking/ but there is no fucking future,” followed by “I’ve taught myself the only way to get along in love/ is to like the other slightly less than you get in return/ I keep feeling like I’m being undercut” in the title track. Los Campesinos are a cyncial bunch particularly when it comes to love, but they never tend toward self-pity like so many emo bands do. Nope. With Los Campesinos, it’s “I’m okay, the world’s fucked up.” Imagine love songs that reflect a worldview that’s equal parts George Costanza and Friedrich Nietzsche, set to the bouncingest pop-rock beats and you’ll end up somewhere near We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed.

The six Campesinos use a mountain of intstruments to create the wall of twinkling bells and thunderous guitars  that serve as the backdrop to Gareth and Alecksandra Campesinos’ back-and-forth (and sometimes overlapping) barbs; both vocalists are more than capable of weaving in and out of the music or shouting over the top of it where necessary. And lest you think Los Campesinos are merely good writers, I should like to point out that they have  a really kick-ass guitar sound. Check out “Miserabilia” for the proof. While we’re on the subject, Los Campesinos also employ the best-ever discretion when electing to have everyone in the band sing at the same time. This worked brilliantly on Youngster‘s “We Are All Accelerated Readers” and is employed wonderfully on the last lines of “Miserabilia”: “Shout at the world/ because the world doesn’t love you/ Love yourself/ Because you know you have to.”

So if the Arcade Fire is the magnetic north of your indie rock compass (’cause they’re from Canada. See what I did there?), consider as their polar opposite (in a good way; let us never forget that The Arcade Fire is incredibly rad) Los Campesinos. Where The Arcade Fire are downcast and serious, Los Campesinos are merry pranksters, the guys (and gals!) who know they can’t beat you in fight but they’re going to get you with incomprehensibly awesome one-liners until you cast off your football helmet and go pound them to a pulp, soaking their K Records T-shirts through with blood. Both bands use a billion or so members to create unique and beautiful textures for their respective moods and both write incredibly well, noticeably better than many of their contemporaries.

I will end this review by quoting “You’ll Need Those Fingers for Crossing” at length because it contains some of my favorite lines of of 2008:

“You worry a million raindrops will die/ with the last memory of you and I/ in the soft-porn version of the end of the world/ I quake at the knees as my intentions unfurl/ you wrote a letter to God/ just in case/ you said/ “I’m nothing if I’m not a pragmatist/ you needn’t worry about us/ we can look after ourselves/ we’ve learned not to rely/ on you or anyone else.”

Time to Blow

Leila Arab is an Iranian musician/DJ/producer currently based in the U.K. I’m guessing the reason for that is that the current regime in Tehran permits about as much rocking of the Casbah as the one The Clash sang about (can I refer to The Clash and/or Joe Strummer in any given situation? Bet your ass I can!). In any case, her third album under the name Leila, Blood, Looms and Blooms, is a nifty electronic trip that will delight the bleep-’n'-blip loving Pitchfork crowd and people like me who are usually deeply skeptical of electronic music, LCD Soundsystem and the first DJ Shadow record notwithstanding.

Blood, Looms and Blooms can be divided into basically two categories: the creepy, atmospheric instrumental tracks (featuring percussion eerily reminiscent of Herbert’s Bodily Functions album) and the sinister, poppy tracks featuring guest vocals from Martina Topley-Bird and Terry Hall (you know, from The Specials. Yeah, those Specials. You know, “Message to You, Rudie”? Jesus… will you just go get the first fucking Specials album right now?) The former type of song is exemplified in album opener “Mollie” and the latter in the excellent “Time to Blow,” which features the aforementioned Terry Hall.

One of my favorite things about Blood, Looms and Blooms is that it’s not as dance-happy as a lot of electronic albums I hear. It’s broody and dark, like if Tom Waits was laying down beats and daring someone to sing something happy over them. Of course, this can make the journey across all 14 tracks a little bit daunting (but take heart – “Deflect” is a poppy oasis on the back end of the album, one of the most infectious songs I’ve head in a while. It’ll wash the dirt off ya for the rest of the record). Generally speaking, instrumental tracks always feel like filler to me and Leila doesn’t really change my bias; she does, however, successfully tweak it. This album contains pretty interesting filler, but it’s still nowhere near as captivating as the vocal tracks, especially the eerie (and wierdly named) “Daisies, Cats, and Spacemen” which features vocals by Leila’s sister Roya Arab. And then there’s the elephant in the room – an audacious cover of The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” featuring vocals by Luca Santucci. Beatles purists will probably shit a brick, but I dig this version. And, love it or hate it, it’s way better than hearing Beatles tunes in fucking Target commercials. You can’t hear this and say Leila didn’t do something unique with the tune and I would argue that she took it’s hauntedness and turned it up to eleven.

This album is a slowburing grower, but it’s worth the work. Leila has constructed a dark beauty of a style that appears rarely in my own record collection (Mezzanine by Massive Attack probably comes the closest to it) and probably more frequently in other people’s. It’s hard for a rock snob like myself to really know how to talk about an album like Blood, Looms and Blooms – the fact that I was compelled enough to actually buy the album was a surprise in itself. I’m pretty floored that actually like it and, in fact, listen to it repeatedly. Leila has reaffirmed my belief that there is good music in all genres, if you’re willing to dig for it. It just so happens that rock music has produced the music that satisfies me the most (and whatever genre you would call Tom Waits. Is “awesome” a genre? It is now). That doesn’t stop me from getting super excited any time I hear John Coltrane (very, seriously excited. Dude was amazing – listen to A Love Supreme and if you’re not feeling that, you’re not feeling shit) or every time a new Atmosphere album drops (apparently, when life gives you lemons, you pick up the ball that Sage Francis fumbled and run it into the end-zone for a game-saving, life-affirming touchdown. Sports metaphor over, we now rejoin our review in progress). That’s about all I the wisdom I’ve got for you as regards Leila and Blood, Looms and Blooms. It’s the quirky person at the record store who you’d never talk to except that they’re checking out the same obscure album you love by that one obscure artist you’re sure no one else knows about. But then you start talking and they’re all like, “I made this trippy fucking music, you might dig it.” And you know what? You just might.

At Mount Zoomer

Wolf Parade is responsible for 3 of the best songs of 2005. In no particular order, they are “Shine A Light,” “This Heart’s On Fire,” and “Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts.” It’s with that good ol’ 20/20 hindsight that I see this and, in the three intervening years, I’ve had plenty of time to build up my expectations for the follow-up to the album upon which those songs appeared, Apologies to the Queen Mary. Sure, I could’ve gotten lost in the glut of side projects that Wolf Parade vocalists Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug have between them, but why bother? I wanted the old Wolf Parade magic again, the real stuff, accept no substitutes, etc.

So now I guess I’ve got it. Wolf Parade released At Mount Zoomer in June, having only recently retitled it from Kissing the Beehive, which is the album’s closing track. After three years, Wolf Parade has graced us with… um… nine tracks. Yes, one of them is nearly 11 minutes long, but Great George Carlin’s ghost! Albums are fucking pricey these days (you can get like 2 gallons of gas for the cost of an album nowadays) and kids who are socking away the money they earn from selling their Ritalyn prescription to classmates might be tempted to invest elsewhere when confronted with a 9-track album. Nine Inch Nails just gave fans 10 songs for free, for example. Free albums definitely help you manage expectations.

If I sound disappointed by At Mount Zoomer, it’s because, initially, I was. Apologies to the Queen Mary was produced by Modest Mouse mastermind (mastermouse?) Isaac Brock and it smacked of his warped pop sensibilities. Initially, At Mount Zoomer is a lot less accessible than it’s predecessor. It’s not without it’s charms – far from it, in fact. Each listen yields new rewards. Wolf Parade, obstinate Canucks that they are, have tried to craft an album in an age of singles. There are individually outstanding tracks on At Mount Zoomer, but the full effect of the album is not felt unless you play the sucker through from start to finish. I didn’t have any favorites until about my fourth time through it (for the record, they are “Language City”, “California Dreamer,” and “Fine Young Cannibals”) It’s not a concept album, but it does have a dreamy, poppy vibe that is best experienced by listening to each of the 9 tracks in the order they are provided. At Mount Zoomer is a thumb in the eye of our national attention span and I, for one, am grateful. If this album scares fratty kids away from their show in a couple of weeks, so much the better (although it must be said that in LA, fratty/sorority type kids find their way into every show – three such tramp-stamped sorority sisters nearly ruined an Ani DiFranco show for my girlfriend and I earlier this year).

The attempt to make an essentially single-less album did not, thankfully, prevent Wolf Parade from employing their various melodic gifts. “California Dreamer,” one of the highlights of the album, is melody-rich, psychedelic trip with twangy, 60′s style guitar and sinister synthesizers in the background. And, it features a guitar solo straight out of the Marc Ribot playbook (dude’s ears must be burning – I’ve mentioned him in two straight reviews, but if you know his work and you listen to “California Dreamer,” and the entire new Old Haunts record, you’ll agree with me. Or you’re an idiot).

At Mount Zoomer is, like Apologies to the Queen Mary, a record unstuck in time: it’s entirely new but it incorporates conventions from various decades in music history. At Mount Zoomer manages to blend the 60′s pop and surf sounds with 80′s synthpop in a way that is entirely more pleasing than the combination might initially sound (seriously – if I told you my band sounded like Jan and Dean, The Cars, and a dash of Bowie, you’d puke, right? You just did!). The guitar work on At Mount Zoomer that is not “Ribot-esque” is either Talking Heads or the Cars, depending on the track. The fact that there is a track called “Fine Young Cannibals,” on the album does little to refute my claim that At Mount Zoomer is a blender for pop decades – the song has the aforementioned Cars-style riffs but it is not, as far as I can tell, about the one-hit wonder band from the 1980′s who brought us the gem, “She Drives Me Crazy.” (Note: “She Drives Me Crazy” is not really a gem)

At the risk of contradicting myself (which, I know, human beings never do), the fact that four of the nine tracks on At Mount Zoomer pass the five minute mark helps balance out the fact that there are only 9 songs on the record. More songs of such length would make the album unwieldy and the nine represented here do fit together pretty seamlessly, from “Soldier’s Grin,” right on through “Kissing the Beehive.” I complain more about artists who record every fucking idea they have (are you reading this, Ryan Adams?) than artists who give me a short, sweet set of near-perfection. Okkervil River, Band of Horses, TV On The Radio, and My Morning Jacket have all released albums of the ten-songs-or less variety and they’ve all been superb.

At Mount Zoomer will probably not win too many new fans to Wolf Parade’s side, but it’s a satisfying follow-up to a fantastic debut and, having scoped out some of their live stuff on the merry ol’ internet, I’m definitely looking forward to these songs live in a tiny little space that is entirely free of fratdicks.