Archives for March 2011

With pre­dictable unpre­dictabil­i­ty, this year’s Choice Music Prize went to Two Door Cin­e­ma Club. Their Tourist His­to­ry is exact­ly the sort of thing you’d expect from a trio a respectable teenagers. One of them has even insist­ed on grow­ing a beard. That’s how young they are.

Basi­cal­ly, they’re Hot Chip lite. Which is fine, but it does mean that they are omi­nous­ly radio friend­ly. Hope­ful­ly I’m wrong, and they will still be around in five years’ time. But a cer­tain part of their anato­my needs to drop if they’re to inject any spunk into those tunes they so effort­less­ly pro­duce. There needs to be a bit more indie in their tron­i­ca and a lot less pop if they’re to avoid end­ing up as this year’s D:Ream.

The best album of those nom­i­nat­ed was com­fort­ably Cathy Davey’s The Name­less. It’s only her third album, but there’s a sense of sub­stance to it that only time can give you. Extra­or­di­nar­i­ly con­fi­dent melod­i­cal­ly, you nev­er­the­less have the occa­sion­al sus­pi­cion that any moment now, it’s about to slip into twee­ness, which isn’t helped by the knowl­edge that she’s cur­rent­ly see­ing Neil Han­non (if you know of a more grat­ing­ly fey album than The Duck­worth Lewis Method, kind­ly keep it to yourself.)

Hap­pi­ly though, it glides instead into the ter­rain orig­i­nal­ly fash­ioned by Jacques Brel and Scott Walk­er and cur­rent­ly occu­pied by Pink Mar­ti­ni, and what might have been mere­ly a col­lec­tion of bril­liant songs is giv­en a time­less sense of per­ma­nence. The Touch espe­cial­ly evokes the seedy deca­dence of an Ams­ter­dam broth­el in the 1970s, where Serge Gains­bourg is being ser­viced by a nymphette who looks like she might be at school with his daughter.

Made by and for grown-ups, and unlike any of the oth­er nom­i­nees, The Name­less will still be lis­tened to in at least five years’ time. And ulti­mate­ly, it’s time not prizes that we’re judged by.

MGMT explod­ed onto the scene in 2008 with the fire­works that was Orac­u­lar Spec­tac­u­lar. And the two lead sin­gles, Time To Pre­tend and Kids kept licens­ing lawyers busy for months. Their dif­fi­cult sec­ond album Con­grat­u­la­tions arrived in April 2010, and telling­ly, the first thing they did was to announce that there wouldn’t be any sin­gles released from it. Any­one hop­ing for more of the same was clear­ly in for a disappointment.

The truth of the mat­ter is though, that those famous sin­gles weren’t actu­al­ly ter­ri­bly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the album as a whole. So Con­grat­u­la­tions, despite the dearth of obvi­ous sin­gles, car­ries on where Orac­u­lar left off. MGMT are what Boland and Bowie might have sound­ed like if they’d tak­en what they were doing in the first half of the sev­en­ties, and devel­oped it fur­ther into the sec­ond half.

Like most of the best music com­ing out of north Amer­i­ca at the moment, it’s steeped in the sounds and feel of the UK in the late sev­en­ties and ear­ly eight­ies. And, as with a lot of these bands, you have the dis­tinct feel­ing that if you were only able to pick up on half of the musi­cal ref­er­ences sly­ly allud­ed to here, you might very well enjoy the album almost a much as the peo­ple mak­ing it.

What lifts this album from the mere­ly clever to the thor­ough­ly infec­tious are the duo’s impec­ca­ble gift for melody. It’s almost as if they can’t help them­selves. Try as they might to knuck­le down and pro­duce some­thing seri­ous, those damn tunes keep burst­ing forth. Hence the con­fu­sion that exists on where they stand on the indie/pop axis.

What­ev­er about their imme­di­a­cy, these songs have a sat­is­fy­ing sense of hav­ing been con­scious­ly con­struct­ed. Someone’s Miss­ing takes a minute and three quar­ters to build up at 33 rpm, before its melody final­ly bursts forth at a joy­ous 45. And then, as quick­ly as it began, it’s over. Bri­an Wilson’s lega­cy lives on. Sim­i­lar­ly, the mon­u­men­tal feel to Flash Delir­i­um gives it an expan­sive sense of per­ma­nence. While Lady Gaga’s Nigh­ta­mare nods respect­ful­ly at The Smiths’ Last Night I Dreamt Some­body Loved Me, with­out ever tread­ing on its toes. And don’t be put off by Siber­ian Breaks’ 12 min­utes. It’s real­ly just a med­ley of three of four songs sewn togeth­er, and all the bet­ter for it.

In short, if you missed it first time around and you’re look­ing for some son­ic adren­a­lin, enjoy.