Teeter on the brink with Ida Maria

Today, Ida Maria. Who released her debut album about a month ago (which I have not heard). And whom Cogwheel Dogs, in fact, supported when she was in Oxford.

So – quite a good single with quite a cool video. The song is called, not so immensely surprisingly, 'Oh My God'.

It's interesting to reflect that this whole song is made by the simple fact of that delayed attack in the chorus - a quaver's hesitation before the word "God".

Were it not for this tension-raising hiatus, the song would be somewhat unremarkable, save for its aggressive tempo. With the sudden loss of balance – the sense of teetering on a cliff's brink – it's fresh.

Nevertheless, the song is too long, in my opinion, and wears out this initially effective hook. And – for all its raw energy – I don't find her performance quite intense enough to do battle with the PJ Harveys and Bjorks against whom she is pitted ... though the cigarette-serrated edges to her voice are pretty impressive in the high registers.

Finally: the overtly sexual way in which she is presented as an artist (or in which she chooses to present herself? Who knows?) is rather tiresome and unconvincing. Again, she needs either to take a leaf out of PJ Harvey's book in this respect, or else take a different tack. At the moment, it's not working.

Ida Maria's website, Ida Maria on last.fm

Who'd cover Joanna Newsom?

A San Francisco band called Sholi, it would appear, who have committed to tape their own version of Miss Newsom's Sprout and the Bean.

And I think it's pretty good, in a loose, sparse, indified sort of way. It goes beyond mimickry to reinterpretation – which is good. The mix is not great, it must be said (vocals too low at times). But I applaud, nevertheless.

I guess it does raise a question, though: how wise is it to cover the work of an artist whose sound is so original; whose musicianship so accomplished? This is a good cover – but it simultaneously highlights the fact that Sholi are not of Joanna Newsom's calibre (at the moment, anyhow).

You can listen to the song (and download freely) on last.fm

Compare it with the excellent Newsomnian original (also on last.fm)

... And, if that's the way you like to do things, have a peek at the Sholi website. Line drawings and all.

Matt-laminated emotional ambiguity: Metric

Metric (myspace, last fm) is a rather interesting band, fronted by Emily Haines (also worth investigating as a solo artist in her own right: here's her last fm page).

Today's song, then, is Metric's Grow Up and Blow Away – which you may download (quite legitimately, it seems, here, or just stream from last fm) ... There is something rather French-sounding about this, isn't there? Think Air. The way in which it flits rather whimsically between major and minor keys, lifting you back up just as you think you're about to sink into melancholia. I enjoy the resultant overall emotional ambiguity.

... And it's well-produced. There's a sort of matt-laminated quality to Metric's sound. Like a nicely-printed flyer for a very high-end restaurant. Smooth, refined – but not glossy.

Best … chord-change?

Happens at 0.41 - takes the progression one step further than you expect. Makes the song.

Reservations?

The second half is a little more bland than the first, and the middle-eight is far less striking than other parts of the song – a bit safe.

Heavy Soil Is Changing

For some time, now, this has been a deserted blog. The soughing saharan winds have whistled over its arid pages. Tumbleweed has tumbled unheeded.

(Poetry. Pure poetry.)

But Heavy Soil is going to become fertile once more. I am drawing up plans. To this end, I have made it look a little less ubiquitous. Even though, I must say, it still looks pretty ubiquitous. But it'll do, until I create something better.

What about content, though?

Heavy Soil will, from next week onwards, offer you this:

Each weekday (Monday to Friday), one recommended song or piece of music, a line or two about why I think it's interesting – and, godwilling, a link to somewhere you can listen to it. Last.fm, most probably.

So. Fire up your feedreaders! It's going to be one heck of a ride.

Caged birds and complimentary colours: Portishead's Third

Beth Gibbons has a brilliant, extraordinary voice.

This does not mean "she sounds nice when she sings"; "she has the 'voice of an angel'", or "she'd do a mean aria".

It means: she sings, and you listen. She sings, and she communicates. In my view, she has one of the most distinctive, affecting, expressive voices in modern music. (What a horrible phrase - "modern music".) Listening to her sing after any number of 'cool', 'trendy' vocalists, there really is (for me) a sunlight-breaking-through-clouds sensation. A fascinatingly three-dimensional voice, heavy with real, complex, organic emotion. Not a trace of artifice or empty posturing.

What do you do with a voice like that? If you're Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley (the other two members of Portishead), you throw it into relief. I've always found Portishead compelling because of the brilliantly-managed contrast between vocals and arrangements/instrumentation/production. And on 'Third', the contrast is starker than ever: listening to these songs might put one in mind of an exotic bird, enclosed in a stainless steel cage. Even on the more analogue, retro-tinged numbers, there is a pervading iciness and detachment to the arrangements. When, on previous records, beats and samples may've been infused with the warmth of vinyl, on 'Third', they're stripped to their raw essentials. The uncompromisingly mechanistic rhythms of 'Machine Gun' exemplify this quality at its most extreme - but even the more 'rounded', woody instrumentation of songs such as Nylon Smile sounds filtered, cold -- desaturated. As if bathed in fluorescent laboratory lighting. Sounds may be treated with copious delay - but they reverberate in bleak, unfurnished spaces: cold, hard.

There's always been something 'designery' about Portishead - a strong aesthetic sensibility. And the combination of Gibbons' vocals with these arrangements is like the sonic equivalent of complimentary colours: a vibrant, powerful shade against a strongly contrasting backdrop that serves only to maximise its impact.

'Third' is to Portishead what 'Kid A' was to Radiohead. The two records - to my ears - share a striking degree of similarity. But 'Third' is the better album: Gibbons' performances are the more mature and weighty than Thom Yorke's.

And I'd go further - to say that this is Portishead's best album. Like its predecessors, it's aesthetically uncompromising. But, this time, it's that bit more convincing; more substantial; bolder in its juxtapositions and contrasts, yet hanging together absolutely unquestionably as a unified whole. There are few concessions to the easy listening, coffee-table crowd, as we might've predicted.

... But this is, nevertheless, a hugely dramatic record, and certainly not the po-faced affair the above might suggest. 'Plastic' is a standout track, with its stuttering, stammering drum fills and tape warbles. When the bass kicks in, the power is huge - somewhat reminiscent of the climax to Radiohead's 'Exit Music [for a film]' (high praise indeed). And 'We Carry On' and 'Machine Gun' (masterfully separated by the breath of fresh (if still sanitised, hospital) air that is the Inkspots-tinted 'Deep Water') are shapely and mesmerising, despite their repeating, insistent, inhuman beats.

Flaws? Only one, really - that lyrics just occasionally veer into the realm of the slightly banal and cliched. I'm not, personally, convinced by lines such as "wounded and afraid inside my head", which are a little too much like the blandly extreme soundbites of MySpace emo kids for my liking. That said, my gripe is tiny - as there are also some incredibly memorable lyrics - notably, the closing "I never had the chance to explain exactly what I meant" of Nylon Smile.

This is an album that demands space and engagement. On headphones - or played loud through a good stereo - 'Third' is certainly no less immersive and atmospheric than its predecessors - even though it may lack their broad appeal. This is a brilliant album, and one which I recommend without hesitation to a listener drawn to a highly defined aesthetic - intrigued rather than deterred by a certain degree of austerity.

Nirvana + Bjork / Albini = Niblett

Scout Niblett is like a bizarre cross between Nirvana and Bjork - with the former's rawness, powerful yet spartan aesthetic, and passionate intensity; and the latter's eccentricity and vocal capriciousness. Her music is, I have no doubt, not to the taste of many.

But if it is to the taste of Will Oldham (who appears on four of This Fool Can Die Now's songs - watch and listen to the two of them on the video to brilliant single 'Kiss') and Steve Albini (who engineered the record), she arguably shouldn't worry too much.

Kiss video


It's not necessarily easy to approach Scout Niblett for the first time. Until I saw her play live, I had doubts. I'd found myself frustrated or annoyed by the couple of songs I'd heard (fleetingly) - hastily categorising Niblett as a rather over-'quirky' artist who ought to pay a bit more attention to her guitar's tuning.

It was only when I engaged with the music in a live context that I became conscious of its intensity and seriousness - quite the reverse of the trite glibness and forced idiosyncrasy I'd originally identified.

I think one of the most engaging things about Scout Niblett is the extraordinary synthesis that her music creates between Grunge, punk, country and folk. Despite her American accent (she was born in Nottingham), there is something absolutely, indubitably English about her melodies, which feel rooted in English folksong. Not enough interesting is done with the English folk tradition - its purveyors are all too often either guilty of facile and derivative bolt-on-folk stylings or guided by sentimental, risk-averse traditionalism.

Nobody, I think, is going to accuse Scout Niblett of derivativeness or risk-aversion.

Bipolar grunge-lullaby 'Let Thine Heart Be Warmed' neatly exemplifies this synthesis, pairing modal folk melodies and savage distortion. Probably the best song on the album, it is sensational live, and the recording does a fantastic job of capturing the vital - hugely energising - dynamic contrast between verses and chorus. The metallic ringing and scraping of cymbals in the background (complementing bowed steel pedal notes) works well, serving to draw the listener right in, before bludgeoning him/her with the sonic assault that is the chorus.

Production touches such as this help offset Niblett's tendency toward wilfulness and obscurity - in the same way that her presence and performance provide a key to the songs, live.

I'm not sure that previous recordings of Niblett's songs have focused attention as successfully on the more attractive aspects of her music. Perhaps a tendency towards brittleness and sparseness has been partly responsible. Often, a pared-down production ethic (of the sort that is Albini's trademark) may act to remove veils of grandiloquence, pomp and overcomplication that marrs many artists' output - allowing the essential qualities of the music to shine without artificial polish. In this way, Albini often helps bands trim off excess (metaphorical) fat.

Scout Niblett (I suspect literally as well as metaphorically) didn't have much of that to begin with. And I've tended to feel that previous records such as Sweet Heart Fever suffered from under-production. Their edges are a bit too rough. Just as indulgently-produced, multi-instrumental bands may frequently benefit from the stripping-down treatment, so may an aesthetically spartan artist like Niblett benefit from a touch of the reverse.

... And that's where This Fool Can Die Now succeeds. It is by no means a 'produced'-sounding record. But it has the vaguest hint of varnish. And I mean vaguest. Emphatically. Don't - please - come to it expecting Everything Must Go string arrangements.

(As if you would.)

I'd like to leave you with an ardent request: watch the video for 'Nevada', below. Do it now.

Nevada video

You Sound Like You Are Properly On The Edge

Lately, I have been listening to PJ Harvey. Copiously.

Rid of Me. Setting aside Nirvana's In Utero (no prizes for spotting the common denominator here), I'm struggling to think of an album that rocks more than this. I mean properly rocks. In what I like to call a real-full-on-you-sound-like-you-are-properly-on-the-edge kind of way.

The choice of opening track ('Rid of Me') is bang on. It encapsulates pretty much everything the album is about. The production is inspired. As is the fact that PJH makes you wait through 24 bars of cycling palm-muted guitar and brushy drums before singing the first line.

Rebecca and I were talking about Albini's production, last night. There's definitely the sense of being in the rehearsal room with the band. Especially if you listen to the record on headphones (and - oi! - I mean good headphones). In the dark.

... Just don't do the above if you're planning to drop off to sleep straight afterwards.