Review: The Life Of The World To Come by The Mountain Goats

Of Beginnings

A bassy, palm-muted, minimalist acoustic guitar. Dabbings of bass drum and an occasional hissing, rattling hi-hat. The Life Of The World To Come by The Mountain Goats starts brilliantly. Lyrically, the opening is similarly strong:

I became a crystal healer

and my ministry was to the sick

creeping vines would send out runners

and seek me in their numbers

I sold self-help tapes

Go down to the netherworld, plant grapes

It's been a while since my attention was so rapaciously grabbed by the first few bars of an album. And the first song ('1 Samuel 15:23') is, I'd say, pretty much faultless. An intense, enigmatic lyrical voice. Sparse instrumentation extremely skilfully recorded and superbly produced. Brooding, ominous. Unshakeably it establishes a thickly pervasive atmosphere for the entire record. Sets (if you will) the stage. It's as good an opener as 'Airbag' is to ok computer.

And that's good.

So – how about you download an mp3 of 1 Samuel 15:23 by the Mountain Goats? Come back when you're done, won't you?

Of Good Music

Good music means something to its producers. It's not just spewed out from refinery to factory to outlet.

Good music demands; it communicates. Expresses.

And The Life Of The World To Come is the most interesting album I've listened to since Bill Callahan's Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle. World To Come isn't as clever (from a literary point of view, or with respect to its songcraft) as Eagle. But it's cleverer than most. And, in common with Callahan's record, it is saturated with powerful, intense, thoroughly sincere emotion.

Now, Heavy Soil doesn't know about you, but Heavy Soil grows immensely tired of the capriciously ironical 'whimsy' and trendily self-aware posturing that dominates the alternative/folkish musical genres.

So a bit of emotional saturation goes down very well with us.

Of Versatility

Musically, the early stages of the record demonstrate a good deal of versatility: the sparseness of the opener gives way (excellently) to the spitting, pulsing, juddering momentum of 'Psalms 40:2'. As the album progresses, there's less pronounced contrast between songs (a pity), but musical imaginativeness is evident in some lovely string arrangements (don't expect swooning orchestral lines: these are sparse, dry, intelligent.)

And one of the most commendable of the features on display is musical restraint. Download an mp3 of the lovely Hebrews 11:40, won't you? Notice the point (around 2:20) at which the arrangement swells toward a climax, only to pull back at the last moment.

Excellent.

Of themes

(always the most boring and obvious part of an English essay, so I'll keep it short)

The Life Of The World To Come is, conceptually, a very tight album. It is unified by clear and consistent themes – the clearest of which (revealed by a single glance at the 100% biblical tracklisting) is religion/faith. We'll come back to this later – you bet.

Less overtly, the songs are bound together by strands of imagery (cars, sickness, the domestic) and feeling (detachment, introspection, passivity). This is a very cohesive piece of work. And imbuing the whole record is a narrative (played out without linearity) of death and bereavement.

Of theological wrangling

So, it's going pretty well, so far. You'll be surprised then, perhaps, to discover that The Life Of The World To Come has nevertheless been giving me – your beloved reviewer – some trouble.

'Romans 10:9' is the crux of it. Without ado, here's the chorus:

If you will believe in your heart

And confess with your lips

Surely you will be saved one day

Uh huh.

Now, my review-writing muse – an enigmatic character known only as FieldVole – was pretty down on this. She called it 'Praise music'. And, in isolation, that's a criticism (and boy did she mean it as a criticism…) I cannot counter. I don't much like pop songs of the ilk implied by those lyrics above. It reminds me of awful freshers' week experiences. Christian Rock.

But hold on a minute. Wasn't it TS Eliot that wrote –

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death

Pray for us now and at the hour of our death

– and suchlike? Yes, it was indeed. Of course, there's no comparison between the two in terms of poetry (Eliot's lines are brilliantly written); but it's clear enough that Eliot (along with many, many other poets and novelists whom I admire) produce work that explicitly deals with Christian faith and the issues surrounding it.

So I should be clear: I have absolutely no problem with art – be it a poem, a song or a painting – that's created from an explicitly religious perspective. I would never decry a creative work because it was written from a Christian perspective. 'Ash Wednesday' (from which those above lines of Eliot's are quoted) is one of my favourite poems.

The problem with 'Romans 10:9', though, is that it is bland. Not only lyrically, but also musically (over to FieldVole again, who crushingly pointed out the song's slight whiff of 'keyboard demo'. Ouch.) And so much else on this album is far from bland. Indeed, 'Romans' is so bland that, on my first few listens, I didn't even notice it. And was preparing myself to write a resoundingly positive review of the album.

Then FieldVole came in with her 'Praise Music' jibes. And I had to think again.

There's a defence (of course there's a defence: there's always a defence). Here's the chorus of 'Philippians 3:20-21':

Nice people say he has gone home to God now

Safe in his arms, safe in his arms

But the voices of the angels singing to him in his last hours with us:

Smoke alarms. Smoke alarms.

The idea is, then, that we're being led through a series of perspectives on questions of faith. The 'Smoke alarms' is our moment of camera-panning-out-to-an-empty-room objectivity. The grounding. It's like the end of Lord of the Flies (the novel, yeh?), at which we see the warring boys suddenly and powerfully through the eyes of the first and only adult in the novel.

A WHOOOMP-type moment.

So this treatment of faith – at once exploratory and sceptical – gives us a cue to take a song like 'Romans 10:9' (the bland one, right? I know: all these biblical names may make for conceptual unity, but they're bloody confusing) as just representative of one perspective. One voice. It's not supposed (I assume) to be preachy.

Problem is, it's just not a particularly convincing song. Sorry.

Of Non-Blandness

But I want to return to this: there are some truly superb things on this record. And let it be indicative of my overall feeling that I choose to close on this note.

First off, the album's final song, 'Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy Of Grace', is brilliant. It draws together the themes and imagery (it seems to me) in an almost faultless way. And it's musically sparse, haunting, atmospheric. A mirror image of the opening.

[Download an mp3 of Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy Of Grace by the Mountain Goats]

And, finally, let's talk about 'Matthew 25:21', which I'd take to be the record's core. It charts the journey of the narrator for a last visit to a terminally ill person (a relative, we presume). The first time I listened to the album, I was not prepared for the intensity of this song – and the degree to which, by the time it played, my attention had been transfixed. Emotionally, it is sparingly effective. And lyrically. Lyrically, it is very, very good. Here's the best bit of the whole album. Right here:

I felt all the details

Carving out space in my head

Tropicanas on the walkway

Neon red.

This is fucking excellent. Absolutely superb. It's why I love literature. Because it simply, elegantly, unfussily describes a sensation that is both complex and 100% familiar and convincing: in this instance, the foreknowledge of nostalgia to come.

If only this kind of lyrical pellucidity could carry through to those small islets of blandness. That's all I want to say.

The Ben Folds Bastard Effect

1 solemn face.

After a week of having my ears assailed by monstrous amounts of compression (and not for the first time), I thought a sonic palate-cleanser would be in order.

You see, when I review a record for Heavy Soil, I listen to it a lot. I listen to it on my iPod – on trains and pavements and (occasionally) in my workplace, in a vain attempt to insulate myself from the hubbub of competing telephone conversations in a too-small office. I listen to it hoofing out of my Denon stereo. And, best of all, I listen to it on ludicrously (to some) expensive headphones, lying in bed, the only illumination the cyan of my alarm-clock radio (which, incidentally, has FUCKING STOPPED WORKING AFTER ONLY 6 MONTHS.)

... And, by the time I come to write the review, my spongey brain is sopping. Pretty much saturated with the music in question. Sometimes, it's like being saturated with Champagne. Others, like being saturated with less pleasant liquid.

And perhaps that's why the posts on Heavy Soil always end up so goddamn long. Because I'm trying to wring my brain dry of all that music.

Sometimes, I almost hate writing reviews. I know: weep for me.

Why in the name of Beelzebub are you telling me all this?

Fair question. I suppose in an attempt to convey the degree to which posting an album review on Heavy Soil is like bursting from a dank and fetid tunnel into glorious, airy, sunlit countryside. All of a sudden, I am free to listen to whatever I like.

And what I liked was this:

Download an mp3 of One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces by Ben Folds Five

Ah – Mr Folds ...

You may remember that Heavy Soil was no admirer of Ben Folds' latest solo album, the childishly narcissistic and spitefully misogynous Way To Normal.

It was, therefore, a palate cleanser in more ways than one to return to Whatever & Ever Amen – released in 1997, back when Ben Folds was still plural. 'One Angry Dwarf' is definitely one of my favourite songs on the album (alongside the fantastic 'Kate') – and what an album opener. It grabs, dear reader, it grabs. It holds. It shakes.

It's also refreshingly unproduced. The album was recorded in a house rented by Folds, and is free of studio-induced ubercompression and innumerable overdubs.

Anyhow, it got me thinking

Specifically, thinking about musicians' perceived personality. You see, before listening to Way To Normal, I'd tended to assume that Ben Folds was a pretty decent sort of chap. Perhaps a touch irritating at times – but extremely likable. Way To Normal radically changed that perception. It left me thinking that, actually, Mr Folds might just be a bit of a twat. And an unpleasant one, at that.

And, since then, I haven't fancied listening to Ben Folds (Five) once. Until now. So that's 9-10 months of abstinence from a band/artist to which I'd previous listened frequently.

That's a pretty considerable effect.

I can't imagine that an album that was simply bad would've had this kind of effect. Sure, there'd've been disappointment; maybe a touch of disillusionment, were the artist in question to be one I'd hallowed as reliable. But not wholesale avoidance.

It seems pretty clear, then, that there's a degree to which my liking for an artist is connected to my conception of his or her personality.

I don't actually think this should be the case, from the perspective of critical integrity. It's my view that one should review product, not producer. But I'm pretty sure it is the case, nevertheless.

I should add: this doesn't mean that I must like an artist's personality before liking their music. There're plenty of musicians whom I either know or suspect to suffer from various character flaws, and this doesn't necessarily affect my opinion of their music.

Instead, it seems to have something to do with betrayal. Because I'd previously extrapolated a personality for Ben Folds on the evidence of his work pre-Way To Normal, the sudden revelation of misanthropic-Folds was deeply disconcerting and repellent.

Whereas if I'd thought from the beginning that the guy was a bastard, I reckon I'd just have thought, 'That was a pretty crap album' and had done with it.

What do you reckon, then, soilers? Am I a weirdo? Or have you experienced similar feelings yourselves? Oh com[m]e[nt], all ye faithful.

Review: Dragonslayer by Sunset Rubdown

So – later this month, Sunset Rubdown release their new record, Dragonslayer.

My first acquaintance with Sunset Rubdown came in the form of their previous album, Random Spirit Lover. I still remember sitting on a dark coach (sadly, the petrol-propelled rather than horse-drawn variety) gazing at the smeared lights of London through a window lashed by the rain, with wildly cascading scales and arpeggios ringing in my ears, and feeling myself suddenly encaptivated.

(It was only later that the congruence between that view through my window and the album's artwork struck me.)

Amongst other things, I loved the witty juxtapositions of sound, key and lyric. Most of all, I loved its joyous haphazardness, its infectious mania. It was definitely one of my favourite albums of 2007 (2007? Bloody hell, that's two years ago!) – and sparked an ongoing admiration for the band.

So you may well imagine that I have been eagerly anticipating Dragonslayer. And I stubbornly refuse to apologise for the fact that I shall doubtless be measuring it up, herebelow, against the yardstick of Random Spirit Lover.

Okay then, Heavy Soil – get out your yardstick

First song 'Silver Moons' establishes the pace in the same way that the excellent 'The Mending of the Gown' did for 'Random Spirit Lover'. But where 'The Mending...' was helter-skelter, bubbling over, madly inventive, scarcely contained, 'Silver Moons' is measured, atmospheric, grandiloquent. There's a heaviness here that's quite a departure from Random Spirit Lover's flightiness.

To me, the record approaches, at times, the sound of Wolf Parade (one of lead vocalist Spencer Krug's several other musical outfits).

And with the move away from flightiness, there's also a move in the direction of higher-fi. That's not to say that this is a glossily produced release – but the rawness of Random Spirit Lover (with its grittily massive kick drum sounds and oh-so-brittle guitars) is decidedly tamed, here – resulting, perhaps, in a more balanced mix ... but (to Heavy Soil's ears) one that's also less charming, more conventional.

The band recaptures the thrill of the earlier album fitfully. 'You Go On Ahead (Trumpet Trumpet II)' kicks satisfyingly into its outro, with the sense of surging into a home straight ... And there's still musical wit in here. The little guitar soloed snatch of 'We Wish You A Merry Christmas' in 'Silver Moons', the pass-the-parcel countermelodies of 'Apollo And The Buffalo And Anna Anna Anaa Oh!'...

So, yes, let's talk about more of the good stuff

'Idiot Heart' is a standout track – possibly the album's best (we've already written about the song in isolation, but – for your convenience, here's a link to Idiot Heart mp3). 'Black Swan' is also pretty kickin', with its eerily insistent taps, snaps and clicks, and sudden tempestuous gusts of sweeping melody. It's no coincidence, I suspect, that these are two of the record's most uptempo and dynamically varied songs.

Download mp3 of Black Swan by Sunset Rubdown

The heavy sinuousness of closing track 'Dragon's Lair' (= Dragonslayer, if you say it aloud, see?) is handled well, and the song justifies its ten-and-a-half-minute length, as themes (both lyrical and melodic) are teased out and organically developed.

And there are still those ebullient surges into Casio toy keyboard tomfoolery – but they're somehow a bit more sensible, a bit less adventurous, a bit more subdued.

Subdued, you say?

Yes, subdued.

Everything about this record feels safer than Random Spirit Lover. And perhaps that means more people will like it [what do you mean, 'jadedly cynical'? This is a music blog, damn it: what did you expect?]. But Sunset Rubdown have taken a step away from the territory that made them so interesting to me.

That's not to say there's nothing new here. There's more extensive (and effective) use of Camilla Wynne Ingr's backing vocals, which often superbly offset Spencer Krug's reedy squawks. And there's perhaps more consideration given to the delicacies of arrangement and mix – a more transparent sound – which allows details to shine through.

But there's nothing here that surprises me.

And I like surprises.

(Surprise presents are particularly nice. Postal address provided on request.)

So what you're saying is ...?

What I'm saying is: this is quite a good album. If I hadn't been bewitched and betwitched by Random Spirit Lover and were coming at this afresh, it would certainly be strong enough to make me take notice. It's just that, relative to the slapdash brilliance of the band's earlier work, it's slightly disappointing.

Get this: not enormously disappointing. Just slightly.

The omnipresent disclaimer: the mp3s herefromlinked are provided to allow you better to gain an impression of Sunset Rubdown's work. If you like, 'em, please go and preorder the album (Amazon UK)

A Majestic Piece of Friday Splendidness by the Impressions

It's Friday, the sun is shining, and Heavy Soil is in a moderately jubilant frame of mind. In celebration of this fact, we present: sunnyfridaysong.

Download an mp3 of Gone Away by The Impressions

This comes to us courtesy of the recommendation of the wise Mr Craig (here he is on Twitter; here he writes about things cinematographic; and here is our opinion of his own superb musics), who is pretty hot on the jazzward side of the musical spectrum.

So … back to 'Gone Away'.

I love the opening, with its dark, reedy horns and shimmering tremolando strings – and the thoroughly unexpected harmonic shift as the intro steps up into verse 1. Altogether the arrangement is a majestic piece of splendidness, inspired glockenspiel figures, insistent syncopations, seamlessly interwoven countermelodies and all.

2.23's shift to major is ace, too, as we burst into the middle-8. Then, twenty seconds later, we're treated to an exhilaratingly vertiginous interlude of triple time. Brilliant.

Nice bass, too. And, of course, the vocals are superb – backing and lead.

(Incidentally, I realise that – lyrically – this isn't exactly sunnyfriday in spirit. But, hell, it's good, innit?)

Review: Further Complications by Jarvis Cocker

Great artwork, by the way

I absolutely understand why some people would find themselves utterly turned off by Jarvis Cocker. He is deeply, deeply self-conscious in a way that has the potential to be frustrating, especially if interpreted as clever-clever yet empty irony.

I, however, am an enthusiastic admirer. One of the first five or six albums I owned was Pulp's This Is Hardcore – an album I'd still rank amongst the most sublime of my record collection. And I really don't think he's ever been fey, arrogant or poseurish in his irony – qualities to which I would object.

On the newly released solo album Further Complications, in any case, he is probably the straightest he's been. Even when he's self-consciously punning, it's rather beautifully constructed, rather dignified in its rueful self-deprecation. Here's the opening of Leftovers:

I met her in the museum of paleontology

And I make no bones about it

I said if you wish to study dinosaurs,

I know a specimen whose interest is undoubted

Trapped in a body that is failing me

Well, please allow me to be succinct

I wanna love you whilst we both still have flesh upon our bones

Before we both become extinct

And, hell, Jarv delivers the lines like a pro. He's human, all too human.

Jarvis Cocker at – or near – his best

The best songs are 'Angela', which is a fucking brilliant single – definitely one of the year's best –and 'I Never Said I Was Deep', which is maturely angry, ambiguous and sad. And damn well instrumented, too. Have a listen to the whole song, why don't you? Download an mp3 of Jarvis Cocker's 'I Never Said I Was Deep'. I defy you not to get into this groove. Er, man.

Thanks to the engineering/production (whatever you want to call it) of the to-all-intents-and-purposes-deified-by-Heavy-Soil Steve Albini, this album is very different from Cocker's previous work (both in and out of Pulp). Immediate, urgent, three-dimensional. Production-wise, 'Fuckingsong' is a highlight, with its scrapes, raking-claw feedback and reversed guitar slices.

And when the momentum is up, this is terrifically compelling. Check out 'Angela' (if you'll excuse the expression), and you'll see what I mean. Like an artist working with a new medium, Cocker's songs take on a wholly new aspect under the uncompromising fingers of Albini. At times, this is Cocker at or near his best.

But?

I do feel, though, that the album does the same thing as did Pulp's swansong We Love Life and (to a lesser degree) Cocker's debut solo record, Jarvis: it loses its momentum and focus toward the end. Goes slightly to seed. Things get a little too long, slow and delay-soaked … And (more damagingly) start to sound very very much like other Pulp/Cocker songs – exactly the trap the majority of the earlier songs had not only avoided but disarmed and converted into dootzy mantlepiece ornaments.

Aside from this sonic wavering towards its end, I like this record's colours: off-blacks – slate and charcoal – dashed through with coppery strands. The nasal resonance of the horns tessalating seamlessly with the no-edge-smoothed signature Albini sound. Cocker's vocals have always tended (in a good way) toward the oily – and sit fantastically in this context. A hugely satisfactory contrast of textures: it's like eating scallops with crunchy-fried bacon.

Awesome, in other words.

If only there wasn't that shift down in musical gears – accompanied, crucially, by a shift down in musical originality – towards the end. It not only undoes the admirable work of the earlier songs; it also prevents me fully from grasping the album as a whole. And this is the problem with which I've been grappling since I first bought it. Because, on the strength of the first two-thirds, I'd rate this album very highly (though probably still shy of This Is Hardcore). But as a whole, I can't quite say.

Hey, how about you buy it yourself (iTunes, Amazon) and let me know what you think, eh?

Musikhorizon 2: Sunset Rubdown jiggle and surge

Sunset Rubdown is an imaginative, witty, lemon-zesty-fresh kind of a band. If you read yesterday's post, you'll not need to be told that Heavy Soil slathers its rabid admiration over their excellent album Random Spirit Lover.

And, next month, they have a new album out, the intriguingly entitled 'Dragonslayer'.

So today's appetite-whetter is the single from said album. Download an mp3 of Idiot Heart by Sunset Rubdown.

I know what Allan of AWMusic means when he says that 'I usually don’t like Sunset Rubdown tracks as stand alone but rather in one cohesive unit'. It's fair to say that Sunset Rubdown is a big-concepts sort of band.

Nevertheless, this is a pretty promising song, spikily swooping, tight-yet-loose. There's a breathless, jiggly-legged insistence to its momentum, and the usual Sunset Rubdown lyrical oscillations between wrily youthful refrains and mythologically tinged fragmentation.

… And a wonderful surge into melody from 'If I was a horse', with nice sprinklings of female backing vocals. It has the thing that Heavy Soil likes in a song: organicism. The music develops and the arrangements billow and contract in a way that is neither rigid nor predictable.

So, yes. Dragonslayer is out on 23 June. Good good.

Review: Random Spirit Lover by Sunset Rubdown

Once again from the archives, this is another review that I originally wrote, something more than a year ago, I believe, for MOG but which that site's redesign has rendered painful to read. So I reproduce it here. It'll also link (in the seamless manner you've come to expect) to the next Musikhorizon song – due tomorrow.

Wit in music.

Not in lyrics, which is easy enough – but in the way one chord leads to another, or a melody appears, or pauses are used. It's a rare phenomenon: one found in the work of classical composers such as Handel and Joseph Haydn, say. A (rather more modern) witty album, in my opinion, is Weezer's Pinkerton (leagues better than anything else by the band) – and Sunset Rubdown’s Random Spirit Lover reminds me, in some ways, of that record.

To start off by comparing Sunset Rubdown to Weezer is (to put it mildly) potentially misleading. These two bands are not coming from the same place. But the ebullient, inventive playfulness – coupled with musical intelligence tempered with irreverence – is common.

And, despite the many differences between the bands, there is also a certain similarity in sound between Random Spirit Lover and Pinkerton (which, if you don't know it, is quite, quite different from Weezer’s more recent, heavily produced releases).

A brittle, unproduced, spindly quality.

Defining Sunset Rubdown's musical wit isn't necessarily easy. Much of the time, it's to do with juxtapositions and an almost slapdash approach to traditional musical devices. Keys change with abandon (just as they do, brilliantly, in Weezer's 'Across the Sea'), and, at times, the music puts me in mind of an excitable school music class, all of whom have unplugged their keyboards while practising (and messing around with) their scales and arpeggios.

Which, of course, would actually sound awful.

But here, it doesn't: Random Spirit Lover isn’t ever cacophanous. There’s even a certain strange, deliberate cheesiness to it all, with its retro synth sounds and scale-based melodies. Which, again, might sound derogatory – but is in fact laudatory.

Troubadour synth-pop

Before I allow the cement to dry around my Weezer comparison, I should note that Sunset Rubdown’s music is far more experimental and eclectic. On the latter quality, indeed, few artists or bands successfully combine aspects of everything from troubadour-esque, quasi-Medieval balladry, through Music Hall, to 80s synth-pop. This outstanding ability to bring together disparate musical elements sets the band alongside artists such as Joanna Newsom – different though their respective 'sounds' and influences may be. There's a baseline of irreverence and deliberate messiness, backed up by strong musicianship, that is reminiscent of The Dresden Dolls – and a marriage between traditional rock instrumentation and the unashamedly synthetic that makes the band sound, at times, ever so slightly like Grandaddy (albeit Grandaddy on speed).

Here, download an mp3 of Sunset Rubdown's 'The Mending of the Gown'.

Hugely energetic, idiosyncratic, inventive – it's one of the best opening tracks I've heard. As throughout the album, melodic instruments (guitar or synth leads) feature prominently. Set-piece solos are rare, with these intricate, rather fragile melodic lines instead being woven into the texture of the whole song, often cleverly offsetting the vocals. Lead instruments, then, are integral, not gratuitous.

Lo-fi-electro-intellipunk jig

Elsewhere, there is further proof of adventurous eclecticism: 'Up on Your Leopard, Upon the End of Your Feral Days' might be best described as a lo-fi-electro-intellipunk jig, with its vaguely courtly feel even (appropriately, given the lyrical content). 'For the Pier (and dead shimmering)', meanwhile, is a kind of jerky, arpeggiator-laced take on Rogers & Hammerstein ('When You Walk Through a Storm').

'The Courtesan Has Sung' pairs sparsely-set vocal imitation (a kind of 'round') with martial rhythms – and then, when the rest of the instruments enter halfway through, there is a fantastic effect of sudden 'grounding' – new and unexpected life is added to the melodies.

An entirely different vocal texture – male and female vocals, doubled an octave apart and blended into a curiously androgynous hybrid – is explored in 'Colt Stands Up, Grows Horns'. (The band Mew does something similar, at times.) Then, the song blossoms into a dark, retro delayed-synth interlude—vaguely prog-rockish, but with far better chord changes. The result is brilliantly atmospheric, like instrumental music to a lo-fi indie science fiction movie.

Lyrics are often abstract, literary and somewhat opaque. But, when they need to be, they are clear, powerful – and brilliant:

But the pattern of flight is chaotic and blind

but it's right

Because chaos is yours and it's mine;

And chaos is luck, and like love, and love blind.

And – just to show that the band's wit isn't limited to the music alone – note the self-referential touch of the device called Verfremdungseffekt (or, more prosaically, according to wikipedia, 'alienation effect') – so beloved of absurdist theatre:

And explosions make debris

and catching it kind of suits you

well it doesn't suit me

She said, "My sails are flapping in the wind."

I said, "Can I use that in a song?"

She said, "I mean the end begins."

I said, "I know. Can I use that too?"

Listening to Random Spirit Lover, it is sometimes easy, in fact, to forget that these are songs – so well-considered and cleverly paced is the album. Tracks merge into one-another so that, often, inter-song transitions are barely noticeable – despite drawing on such disparate influences and sources, and vary so considerably in almost any musical sense. Impressively, dramatic and attention-holding variations in tempo, rhythm, key and arrangement are nevertheless bound seamlessly into a balanced, unified whole.

Seldom, I think, have I come across an album that successfully – entirely convincingly – covers so much musical ground, yet loses none of its focus and integrity. Excellent, and – I predict – enduringly interesting and rewarding.

Review: Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle by Bill Callahan

Bill Callahan is one of the relatively few songwriters who'll actually make me think about his lyrics. Because his delivery is so refreshingly opaque, so stripped of interpretative clues, listening to his work often approaches a literary experience.

That sounds fucking pretentious, doesn't it?

But it's true. The vast, vast majority of artists ram their meaning (such as it is) squarely in your face. Even those whose lyrics may be obscure or surreal will commonly deliver their performances in a way which offers precious little emotional ambiguity.

Bill Callahan is different. He performs as though he were reading poetry from a book, or covering someone else's songs. He does not presume, with his delivery, to govern the listener's response.

This endows his music with several a massive integrity. And makes interpreting it something of an endeavour.

... Which means, I suspect, that this review – of his 13th album, Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle – is going to be like a bloody essay. Good news, eh?

Well, let's get started, shall we?

'Eid Ma Clack Shaw' is the most intelligent song I've heard so far this year.

(So why not download an mp3 of Eid Ma Clack Shaw by Bill Callahan and pop it onto your stereobox?)

All pert piano, sonorous horns and 'Eleanor Rigby' strings, the song prepares us for the preoccupation of the record – the core to which so many of the songs may be nibbled down: coexistence of contradictory states. In 'Eid Ma Clack Shaw', it's dream-world and reality. The speaker dreams 'the perfect song / [that holds] all the answers' – the answers to his lonely desire to rid himself of memories (we presume of a departed lover). Waking, he 'scribble[s] it down' – but the words turn out to be incomprehensible.

(We'll come back to this.)

... Meanwhile (Christ a-fucking-live) I can't remember the last time I found a line of song as moving as the climax of 'Too Many Birds': 'If you could only stop your heartbeat for one hearbeat', sings Callahan, dispassionate as ever. Except that's not how we first hear it. The line is stoically repeated, eked out:

'If.

If you.

If you could.

If you could only ...'

– and so on.

Here: have a listen, won't you. Download mp3 of Too Many Birds by Bill Callahan

As the line is painstakingly built and its meaning and emphasis shimmers and shifts, we witness the evolution of a beautiful melody, its character changing with each added word.

There's something of TS Eliot in this. The way in which a simple device (in this case repetition) is deployed in such a way (in concert with achingly dispassionate delivery) as to apply an emotional mace to the belly.

You're used to my grinding pretension, by now, I suppose – so you won't mind me illustrating my point with a quotation from the fucking excellent [that's a literary term] opening of Eliot's 'Ash Wednesday', will you?:

'Because I do not hope to turn again

Because I do not hope

Because I do not hope to turn'

... Similar idea. Similar power.

Grand, Beautiful, Metaphorical.

And then there's the grand, beautiful metaphor that plays itself out across these songs. Like all good grand, beautiful metaphors, it is complex and not manifested outright. It doesn't govern the album, and it is not unambiguous. But it's all the better for that – and let's continue our jamboree of literary magpieism with a few lines from the wise and awesome Walt Whitman:

'Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)'

Well put, Mr Whitman.

So, with that in mind, I'm not about to elucidate what I take to be the grand, beautiful metaphor – except to say that the whole of the album flits around the push and pull of togetherness (horse & rider; flock of birds) versus independence (the eagle). Around the concept of belonging; of possession, fixity and ownership. But I don't want to start explicating and ascribing symbols (even those bracketed equations I've just made are jarringly black/white) ...

And, in any case, the skill (and the magic) is not in the arraignment of neat symbols or allusions, but in their combination with one another and the shades of overlap and ambiguity. Take the song 'All Thoughts Are Prey to Some Beast', which opens with the lines,

'The leafless tree looked like a brain

The birds within were all the thoughts and desires within me.'

To this tree flies an eagle – causing the birds scatter – leaving the the eagle to alight, powerful, independent but alone – and ushering the song to its climax:

'All thoughts are prey to some beast.

Sweet desires and soft thoughts: return to me.'

If we plod through this record as though we're dealing with simple metaphor/personification, we run into trouble. Where's Callahan in all this? What represents what? Tempting questions. But probably futile ones.

Let's return, then, to this idea of coexistence.

And let's think about the title of the record: Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle. In the context of 'All Thoughts Are Prey to Some Beast', that's clear enough. Independence and power (the eagle) are good; but togetherness is also good. Hence the desire that the contradictory states of independence and companionship be reconciled.

But – like the gibberish refrain of 'Eid Ma Clack Shaw' – this only makes sense in a dream world. And the speaker is left trying to pull together fistfuls of air.

The record's title, and the eagle's lament, and 'Eid Ma Clack Shaw' ... In all of these, there's the sense of Callahan the storyteller pushing together two repelling magnetic poles. Of straining at a metaphor or a narrative to try and make it contain and reconcile experience. Which it ultimately fails to do.

So what's the answer?

'I started telling the story without knowing the end', says the speaker of opening song Jim Cain. 'I used to be darker, then I got lighter, then I got dark again. And something too big to be seen was passing over and over me.'

The record ends up hinging upon storytelling. Running in counterpoint to 'Eid Ma Clack Shaw' and 'Too Many Birds' – with their ultimately futile struggle for comprehension of and control over emotion – is the notion of control through rationalisation and narrative:

'I looked all around

And it was not written down

I will always love you

My friend'

... is the opening of 'My Friend'. And there's something very touching about this – the sense of liberation by which the song is buoyed – the empowerment of the simple declaration. It's no coincidence, I'd argue, that this is the record's most upbeat, straightforward song.

... And this in turn makes a sort of sense of the album's expansive final song – 'Faith / Void' – and its gently insistent repetition: 'It's time to put God away.'

More than just a paean to atheism, isn't it a kind of epiphany? A realisation that there's not an external power to be found that will easily reconcile all contradictions, pull together all strands.

God, in this sense, is just another image, another entity onto which the speaker (is it Callahan, by now?) may project – and through which he may imagine completion (or 'peace'). And the song is about retreating from the struggle for resolution or control or comprehension – in favour, perhaps, of simple (bittersweet) reflection.

And it don't get much more Ash Wednesday than that.

Yeah, anyway.

What did I warn you? Like a bloody essay, I said. And that's what you got. Your fault for persevering, innit?

So, to summarise: if you haven't bought an album yet this year, end your streak (you fucking streaker, you) with Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle. And if you have bought albums already this year, add this one to your shiny horde. Here's an iTunes and an Amazon link (both UK) to speed you on your way.

Without any doubt at all, I say that this is the best album I have heard so far in 2009.

[And may I close with my customary gentle reminder: Heavy Soil provides mp3 downloads so that you may dab a little of Bill Callahan onto your tongue and sample his muskily complex flavour. If you're licking your lips after this amuse-bouche, please buy the album.]

He is a rock. And he has a new album out.

I like Bill Callahan (he of Smog fame) very much indeed. Ever since seeing him play in Belfast, Heavy Soil has been a confirmed admirer of his low-key, modest sincerity.

His new album, Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, was released yesterday, and is currently making its way down the tubes and ventilation shafts of the mighty www onto my iTunes. Rest assured, o soiler: it shall receive its review in due course.

Meanwhile, as an amuse bouche, if you will, I leave you with this video for 'Rock Bottom Riser', from his A River Is Not Too Much To Love album. If you remain unacquainted with the delights of Callahan, I urge you to give it a whirl.

Bask in the unhurried delivery, the mature and matter-of-fact way in which his voice navigates some lovely harmonic/melodic waters. Many an artist, had they come up with this chorus, would've milked dry the 'owe it all to you' passage, for instance. But Callahan has the restraint to let the melody sing itself.

... and what a delicious, warming change to major at 1.45. Enjoy.

Review: Beware by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy

The Obligatory, Obliquely Self-Revelatory Anecdote Part

When I was a nipper, I used to have singing lessons.

And I was a fortunate nipper – to have been taught, successively, by two very pleasant singing teachers.

The latter of these – the magnificent Nicholas Perfect (magnificent, hear ye, not merely in name) – once posed an insightful rhetorical question that has stayed with me: 'But don't you think it's so much easier to write an interesting sad song than an interesting happy one?'

Remember that nugget of Perfect wisdom. It'll come up again later.

The Long-Have-Been-My-Struggles, Difficult-And-Painful-Is-My-Task Part

It's not particularly easy to review an artist such as Bonnie 'Prince' Billy (hereafter, 'BPB'). The last time I did so, I grappled with Ask Forgiveness – itself a tricksy wee album – and now I grapple with the newly-released Beware.

Perhaps you've read a review or two already. Who knows? You might be into that kind of thing. If so, you'll perhaps have observed that early reactions have been subdued. Drowned in Sound's Alexander Tudor isn't keen, for instance, damning the album with a slightly-worse-than-mediocre 4/10.

Straight off, I'm going to ask you to forget that (slightly smugly iconoclastic?) rating. No way is this album worth a paltry 4/10.

Indeed – [Here, Heavy Soil pauses for its own interlude of smug self-reflexion] – this is why Heavy Soil avoids any kind of rating system. Because it's all too easy for a reviewer's score to be warped beyond recognition by the forces of his or her expectation. A rating system works, perhaps, for new or unknown artists, simply as a filter. But applied to a superb, versatile and seasoned musician such as Will Oldham (the human behind Bonnie 'Prince' Billy), a rating is something of a joke. We need to be nuanced, here.

Beware is not I see a Darkness; not The Letting Go. It is considerably less dark (at least on the surface) than much of Oldham's work; more whimsical. It is also more lavish and expansive in its production. In these two respects, it moves away from what might be considered BPB heartlands – from the territory in which many of his fans may have cemented their raptness.

So let's beware [a ha!] of measuring Beware against a scale extrapolated from BPB's earlier work. For the moment, at least. Let's consider it on its own merits.

The Actually Talking About The Songs Part

Opener 'Beware your only friend' strikes out with an exuberance that characterises many of these songs – and (again, typically) the sense of ensemble and musicianship is strong. The whole record is peppered with jubilant instrumentals (provided, of course, by BPB's intimidatingly distinguished and extensive array of collaborators) – and these are carefully, neatly, sensitively combined, thanks to fine, transparent production (the kind that's good enough seldom to be noticeable).

So on 'You Don't Love Me', raucous fiddles swoop and peck, saw and squall; mandolins shimmer and accordians flutter on 'I Don't Belong To Anyone'. Meanwhile, 'Heart's Arms' opens with a wash of vibratoless fiddles and deep, buzzing, woodily resonant bass – but masterfully swells to a resounding series of fuller-textured climaxes, before ebbing away back to its original sparseness.

A good many of these songs, I might add, have rather splendid middle-8s/C-sections. 'You Can't Hurt Me Now', for instance, suddenly breaks from its leisurely, countrified swing into an affectingly direct injunction to 'Do it now and not let someday / Get in the way'. In my characteristic, achingly pretentious manner, I couldn't help but be reminded of Lambert Strether in Henry James' brilliant (but long) novel The Ambassadors:

'Live all you can – it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?'

Like Strether's impassioned outburst in the novel, its directness is striking in the light of what has gone before it – in James' novel, the mannered, restrained conversation of high society; in Oldham's song, the settled, predictable, conventional country swing.

Indeed, I suppose this is actually a symptom of one of the record's most pronounced qualities: its organicism. Whether its in terms of their structure (BPB commonly eschews or adapts familiar verse-chorus-verse-chorus sequences), or the fluctuation of their instrumentation, these songs feel natural. They feel like a conversation between friends – led not by the conventions of polite discourse, but by the desire to communicate.

This means that they develop in unpredictable yet uncontrived ways.

Often, you'll be swept away by a flurry of unexpected key-shifts, or drawn in by a sudden dynamic change. Thus, whilst the form of many of these songs is more accessible than BPB's bleaker and more experimental earlier work, it does not follow that they are simpler.

Want to hear what I'm blathering about?

Download an mp3 of Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's 'I Won't Ask Again'.

Dig, first of all, that woozy, fluking fiddle line, and the way it subsides into the vocal entry. Then feel how the change begins at 0.57 with the unexpected, colourful move to minor (accompanied by the addition of the organ) ... is temporarily relaxed by the resolution at 1.10 ... before kicking into a beautiful change of key at 1.23, full of sunbathed backing vocals and flutes.

This is songwriting with the harmonic deftness and nuance of the Beatles at their best. Notice how superbly judged are the swells of dynamic and instrumentation – how the music gathers pace, density and urgency to keep pace with the motion of the chords – so just as the song is moving into new grounds of harmony and key, so the instrumentation and tempo are subtly augmented to further the impression of movement.

The Part Where He Seamlessly And Not Even Remotely Predictably Brings It All Back To The Anecdote From The Opening Part

So this is where Mr Perfect's words re-echo in our ears. Crack on some reverb, so he sounds like Obi Wan Kanobi talking to Luke Skywalker, if you like:

'Don't you think it's so much easier to write an interesting sad song than an interesting happy one?'

I think you're right, Mr Perfect. And I think – for all its apparent breeziness and countrified charm – this is a pretty damn intelligent album; a pretty damn sensitive album; a pretty damn worthwhile album. And it would be a grievous mistake to follow the likes of Drowned in Sound in equating light with lite.

(Heck, these days, it'd probably just be a mistake to follow Drowned in Sound, full stop. But I'll never learn.)

All that said, however, I will – as promised – return to the subject of Beware in the context of BPB's earlier work. And I will say this: personally, I do not find it quite as engaging as 'I See A Darkness' &c. Personally.

Somehow, these songs do not address me quite so directly, emblazon themselves quite so starkly upon my mind as I listen. There is that small degree of distance. A slight sensation of mutedness.

Less powerful, perhaps.

But I'd be very, very wary of saying less good.

The mp3 provided is there in order that you may gain a flavour of BPB's loveliness. If you like, do please buy a copy of the whole album. Here's an Amazon link, free of charge.

Searing Mash. Grand Opuses. Orchestral? The Rest.

The occasional borderline-tweeness of Belle & Sebastian.

The crooning-through-an-anguished-yet-twistedly-sardonic-grin tones of Guillemots' Fyfe 'Dangerfield'.

The grandiose sweep of Arcade Fire (and accompanying tendency to sweep grandiosely back and forth over the same (by now very well-swept) harmonic territory).

The softer-edged, crowd-friendly aspects of Wolf Parade/Sunset Rubdown.

The reverb-saturated woo-oooo-oooooing of Sigur Ros ...

... The Rest.

This is a band who have spent 'a laborious, fulfilling year and a half' writing and recording Everyone All At Once, an album due for release 'this April', according to the rather nice bulk email that plopped sonorously into Heavy Soil's inbox, some weeks ago.

I thought I'd write about this one, because it distinguished itself by virtue of not being chronically let down by a shoddy vocalist. By virtue of being an album to the whole of which I actually found myself able to listen to without losing patience by track 2.

For this fact – along with their apparent general competence and their pleasant mode of mass-correspondence – I commend The Rest. This is clearly a band composed of musicians with some talent, the ability to play and sing in tune (so much rarer than it should be, this one), and the inclination to construct arrangements that are dynamic, organic and expansive.

Heavy Soil writes these words. But Heavy Soil's withered heart is not in them. Because for all that there is to commend (yes, to commend – that most rock'n'roll of verbs) about Everyone All At Once, Heavy Soil cannot find anything to love. Nothing by which to be excited. Nothing that makes aforesaid withered heart beat faster.

Sure, there are some grand opuses. Some rather nice string samples. Some stirring crescendos. There's dynamic contrast, musical confidence and competence, a solid ensemble feel.

But there's so much slow-progressing harmony, one-chord-to-a-bar ... So much mid-tempo extemporation ... So much overdubbing ... So much wall-of-sound reverb.

Commonly, people refer to these big, Arcade-Firey arrangements as 'orchestral'. This is one of the things that pisses the shit (yes, pisses the shit. Got that image?) out of Heavy Soil.

Because 'orchestral' is Beethoven; 'orchestral' is Stravinsky; 'orchestral' is Verdi. 'Orchestral' implies a complex, intricately-interwoven web of instrumental lines, masterful contrasts of texture. 'Orchestral' conjures elaborate fugues, in which themes are played off against one another, sudden changes of pace, whereby a single root chord might be suspended for 32 bars, before a breathtaking flurry of harmonic movement, key-changes and counterpoint, all crammed into the following 8. It's about a hell of a lot more than just playing the same chord/melody in unison on as many instruments/gutar sounds as possible.

In writing this, I feel churlish. I review virtually none of the submissions I receive from bands. A hell of a lot of bands do 'orchestral' much worse than this. Indeed, this album from The Rest is about the best thing I've received unsolicited, whilst writing this blog. But I want it to be better. Chaps, you're up against Arcade Fire. They got there first. Now, I'm no Arcade Fire devotee. But when they were first doing this stuff, it was (by mainstream indie standards) reasonably fresh. Now, it's old. You have to do something damn good and damn interesting within this subgenre if you want to stand out.

And, at the moment, you aren't. I'd love it if you were. Really, I would. But you aren't.

I wish this band well. But I wish they would sometimes change chord several times in one bar. I wish they would occasionally change key as dramatically as they build to a searing mash (y'know ... mash can be pretty fucking searing. The trick is to use near-boiling milk and make sure you don't leave the potatoes to drain too long ... Oh, Christ, never mind) of guitar overdubs. I wish the not inconsiderable talents of their vocalist were more often matched by musical ideas that we haven't heard many times before.

(And I wish they'd stop singing 'whoa-a-oh-oh', too. Because that shit annoys me.)

Anyhow. Have a listen. See what you think. I reckon a lot of people might like this. But, boy, I've sold it to you well, haven't I?

• 'Modern Time Travel (Necessities)' mp3
• 'Apples & Allergies' mp3

Andrew Lloyd Weezer

Weezer's Pinkerton is a brilliant album. Some people debate its preeminence, focusing their adulation instead upon the band's debut 'blue' album.

To them I say, 'I respectfully yet emphatically disagree with your point of view.'

Heck yes.

Falling For You (download mp3 via YouSendIt) is all about the guitar solo from 2.10, and the accompanying extra-matured-cheddar-cheesy sequence of key-changes, which could almost come from an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

IN A GOOD WAY.

... All culminating in a lovely interrupted cadence (/key change) at 2.35 (translation: you were expecting triumphant and happy; it goes sad and wistful). The beauty is that these are such hackneyed musical motifs and devices. It's almost banal. But – crucially – not even slightly so in this context.

It mentions cellos, too, thereby notching up several bonus points.

Weren't Weezer so much better before they went compression-mad? Why the hell doesn't Rivers Cuomo write songs like this any more? Songs that teeter majestically on the upturned drawing-pin balanced on the hairline division between irony and intense self-revelation.

Buy Pinkerton on Amazon

Blithe Pop From Ben Kweller

Ben Kweller is going to do us the favour, today, of kicking off a new theme – falling – with his song of the same name:

Listen to Falling by Ben Kweller (live) free on last.fm

My first encounter with Mr Kweller was at a gig back in my student days. I went along to see Mull Historical Society – who were, frankly, dire – and this chap was supporting. He came onstage wildly strumming a guitar and doing his best country & western yowl.

As one, the audience – stunned into silence – turned their horrified gaze in his direction. A unilateral WTF.

Just as the jeering threatened to begin, he made a seamless transition into breezy-extrabeat-bopalong 'How It Should Be (Sha Sha)'. Mischievously superb.

Not only accomplished in terms of the musicianship on display, his set was also witty and varied. Exactly the opposite, then, of the headliners.

'Falling' was on the EP Phone Home CD that I bought at that gig ... And subsequently reappeared on Kweller's debut album. A lovely, simple, airy pop song.

(His second album, though, is a bit pants. Stick to the first, I recommend.)

The Uncoolness Continues: Inspiro-prog

Hell, Heavy Soil's current theme (Songs It's Not Particularly Cool To Like) is fucking killing me. Damn it, it's a recipe for evenings suffused with nostalgic tears.

This in mind, I give you:

Ammonia Avenue by The Alan Parsons Project (listen free on last.fm)

This song fucking owns. I don't care who disagrees. Flutes, a cor anglais, brass section fanfares ... Gongs and strings aplenty ... Then some quasi-flamenco guitar and vibraphone (?) action. Guitar solo in parallel thirds at around 3.20. It's all here, my friends.

Imagine a young Billicatons, if you will, absolutely entranced by this. Never mind the Rolling Stones, Sex Pistols, Doors or Nirvana ... Heck, it was songs like this that made me yearn to play guitar, as I sat in the back-seat of the car, my childish breath misting the window.

(Don't cry for me: I'm already dead.)

Anyhow, listen to this song. Listen to it, I beg of ye, with an open mind. Luxuriate in the progness of it all. And that lovely, melancholic first-inversion-based piano chord sequences. Luscious.

Free Eels with strings. And caps lock.

Eels fans are already spoilt for rarities, thanks to the release of Useless Trinkets, earlier this year (er ... hmm ... strictly speaking, though, they ain't all that 'rare', are they, once they've been included on a major release compilation?).

Now, though, they have the chance to get their probably-not-all-that-grubby mitts on yet more music.

A 'DELUXE NUMBERED & SIGNED 4 LP EDITION - LIMITED TO 2500' of the lovely Blinking Lights and Other Revelations ships tomorrow, according to the band website.

(Caps lock, eh? Who doesn't love it?)

So, this release consists of Blinking Lights... reproduced on 3 LPs, plus (on the fourth) an 'exclusive 17 track live album, MANCHESTER 2005'.

Right now, you can download four free mp3s taken from this live collection – featuring some nice strings. Hurry, though, won't you? Apparently, these tracks are only available until Tuesday (tomorrow).

Here's the link to the free Eels mp3s. Once you've recovered from the colour scheme and 'interesting' font choices, look for the beigeish box on the lower left.

For the lazy or cautious, though, here's Heavy Soil's pick of the four:

Download Eels Climbing to the Moon live mp3 via YouSendIt

Your Latest Trick

Anyone who has seen the fantastic (fantastic, I tell you!) finale to the second season of The West Wing will have encountered ample evidence of the following fact:

They may not be cool, but Dire Straits fucking hit the button.

'Brothers In Arms' is the obvious song – and I'm pretty tempted to hunt down a YouTube clip of that aforementioned West Wing sequence. But I won't. I'd hate to spoil it for those of you yet to watch the episode in question.

Instead, I nominate another Dire Straits carjourney companion of old: 'Your Latest Trick'. Here's the music from YouTube – or you can listen to the song on last.fm.

Dig that sax.

Oh how clever I thought these lyrics were, when I used to listen to this song on my walkman. That stunning wordplay '12 keys hanging off of my chain' ... Ah! Such things were the meat and drink of the young Billicatons.

Don't Be Embarrassed

With a deft manipulation of her rudder, the good ship Heavy Soil heads into tempestuous waters with a new theme:

Songs It May Not Be Particularly Cool To Like

This theme, my friends, is screaming out for your comments. Heck, your suggestions.

What are the songs you hate to love? The songs that would make the most tolerant indie-kid (what do you mean, "Oxymoron"?) sneer? The songs that went out and never came back – but for whose loss you secretly weep while others celebrate?

Heavy Soil wants to know. Comments, please, ladies and gentlemen!

As grease to lubricate the cogs of your mind, here's our first pick. 

Dig that lipsynch and the fact that, disturbingly, some of these guys look pretty close to the fashionistas of the moment (drummer and keyboard guy particularly) ... But the best still in store: 2.18.

I fucking love this song. It could make me cry, with its nostalgia-rich overtones of childhood car journeys.

And I bet Fieldvole will dig the video, pyrophiliac bibliothequarian that she is. So this one's for her.

Grizzly Bear covers dead relative

Most of Grizzly Bear's album Yellow House was recorded in the (ramshackle) house of vocalist Ed Droste. Although the arrangements are fairly complex, and production is at times painstaking, it is still very much imbued with the feel of that house. So the album title is fitting.

Today's song of the day – Marla (download mp3 via YouSendIt) – is particularly interesting, having been written not by the band, but by Droste's great aunt – a "failed musician that [died] at an early age in the 1940s".

I'm not sure how many other bands have covered songs by deceased great aunts. Any offers?

Anyhow, this is rather a lovely, atmospheric, wearily melancholic song.

Listen to the creaks of the piano stool – and the woolly-yet-gongy tones of a damp old piano. There's a very nice subtle string arrangement, and all the ambient touches and subtly-mixed effects and sounds that are actually so hard to capture.

Beautiful shivery strings at 2.17 (and the way in which the figure is echoed by the piano subsequently).

Sunset Rubdown: 21st century troubadours

It doesn't take a conceptual leap of impenetrable genius to observe the connection between recent fiscal events and the legend of King Midas – whose wish that all he touched should turn to gold ultimately came back and kicked him up the arse (that's a direct translation from the Ancient Greek, you realise?).

Well, Friday's (ahem) song of the day is Sunset Rubdown's Magic v Midas (download mp3 via YouSendIt).

This is a fantastic song by an equally fantastic band (read my review of Random Spirit Lover, the album on which Magic vs Midas appears).

One of the album's more sedate songs (yes indeed), it is sparsely eloquent, with its confident use of silence and textural variety. Just as a fashion designer might be able to put together a mesmerising outfit composed of a multiplicity of contrasting yet complimentary fabrics, Sunset Rubdown understand how to make boldly contrasting types of sound work together.

The various parts (voice and instruments) move in a folksy kind of parallel, giving the impression of a messy Renaissance chorus: 21st century troubadours.

I like the rumbling drum rolls at around the 3-minute mark, ushering in a relentless yet reigned back accelerando, egged on by spurts of bloated-spider guitar ... And the spiraling snatches of melody, spinning like twigs in a circular current.

Great song; great album; great band. Heavy Soil endorses emphatically.

Opulent Bacharach and Costello

Painted From Memory, an albumsworth of collaboration between Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach, is goddamn fantastic. The two complement one another wonderfully.

Download 'God Give Me Strength' mp3 via YouSendIt

Instrumentation-wise, this is fairly opulent stuff: harp glissandi, velvety string lines, brass sections, et al. And the arching melodies and harmonic progressions are luxuriant. This is proper songwriting - the musical equivalent of an expensive clockwork watch, all its parts meticulously assembled.

Perhaps some will find it all a bit lavish, a bit put-together, a bit musicalesque. But Heavy Soil deems it very fine indeed.

Seriously, the whole album is brilliant.

May financiers everywhere find strength – God-given or otherwise – when their phones don't ring ... (And there you were thinking there was no link ... Oh ye faithless!)