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Quilt
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
Cheatahs
Sophie Ellis Bextor
Cymbals
Cheatahs
Wanderlust
The Age of Fracture
(Wichita) By Chris Watkeys. In stores Feb 10
(EBGB’s) By Stuart Stubbs. In stores Jan 20
(Tough Love) By Reef Younis. In stores Jan 27
(Mexican Summer) By Austin Laike. In stores Feb 3
The opening few guitar-drenched bars of ‘Cheetahs’ hit you like a wave and leave you belly up on a stony beach, staring into the aged eyes of early nineties alternative guitar rock.This debut album from the London-based four-piece is an unsubtle but perfectly executed homage to the past. Even on first listen everything feels naggingly familiar, walking in the knackered shoes of shoegaze.‘Northern Exposure’ is a brutally loud guitar assault, with indistinct vocals and a slacker guitar trope on fast-forward, while bright melodies battle their way through the fuzz to emerge gasping for air at the surface. Much of this record bludgeons your senses like being stood in front of a wall of amps, buffeted by blasts of vibrating air, but while the epic ‘The Swan’ is melts into an indistinct, echoing kaleidoscope of sound, such highpoints merely mask how backwards looking this album is.
Last seen fox trotting around Bruce Forsyth’s dementia, Sophie Ellis-Bextor probably never intended for ‘Wanderlust’ to sound like a bid for West-end Theatre Land – the next logical step for any singer that defibrillates their career with the shock of Strictly Come Dancing – but much of this dramatic collaboration with Ed Hardcourt showcases Bextor’s ability to tell a story through song.The singer’s bird-like warble shares centre stage here with Hardcourt’s string arrangements that rise and fall throughout the Broadway plot twists, from the Arabic rush of the opening ‘Birth Of An Empire’ to the chipper ‘Runaway Dreamer’ that sees our protagonist pull herself out of squalor and onto a road of self discovery. Even at its most ‘pop’, a track like ‘13 Dolls’ conjures images of an ensemble cast stepping in time. Bextor should be on the stage; Hardcourt her wing(s)man.
Princeton academics and weighty literary ideals rarely make for a bright-eyed sense of feel-good, but it’s a trick Cymbals pull off extremely nimbly. Inspired by a book about the uncertainty of collective meaning, it’s a neat backdrop to the band’s everchanging amalgam of ragged punk-funk and sleek, disco-inspired pop.This time, the emphasis is firmly on the latter, lending ‘The Age of Fracture’ the familiarly gilded sounds of Foals and Everything Everything but still allows Cymbals’ ingenuity to shine through. It does so on the itchy-picked guitar lines of standout track ‘Like an Animal’, and whilst ‘Empty Space’ and ‘The Natural World’ hark back to the Talking Heads deference of ’Unlearn’, the echoing melodies of ‘Winter 98’ and the sweet J.Mascis-esque melancholy of ‘Erosion’ still make this a massively enjoyable listen.
When I think of the word ‘quilt’ – not that I do that often – I specifically think of America, the 1970s and, as a result, The Wonder Years. New York trio Quilt get it, even if you don’t – they make triple harmony, out-of-town, shamelessly vintage sounding, 60s-hangover, purist guitar music that could only have ever come from the United States.They make gently stoned, counter culture pop for brown paneled station wagons, which somehow will forever sound autumnal even when they planned for it to be summer music. Where Brooklyn campfire band Woods are the Pitchfork Generation’s answer to Neil Young, Quilt are its Byrds, viewed through the flicker of a Super 8.They are cool, which is why they’ve signed to Mexican Summer, but coyly so, seemingly only really concerned in keeping the sepia melodies going. They are very, very good.
Held in Splendor
Wig Out At Jagbags (Domino) By Daisy Jones. In stores Jan 20 “I would not jerryrig or candy-coat your Latin Kisses,” sings exPavement frontman Stephen Malkmus in ‘Lariet’, the third track off his fifth album with The Jicks. It’s a brilliant lyric, and is one that embodies the exhaustedly feted lyricist in a warbling portion of drunken poeticism.Whilst anything he releases will inevitably draw comparisons to the hugely influential Pavement, he’s actually been making music with the Jicks for a little longer than the former. It is therefore perhaps painful to say that ‘Wig out at the Jagbags’ is essentially a case of ’90s déjà vu that has been cleaned and tightened.The fitful energy combined with brilliantly askew melodies and quintessential Malkmus witticism remains, but the album emerges as a touch softer, and this adultification does affect ones enjoyment. Only ever so slightly, though.
Blank Realm Grassed Inn (Fire) By Josh Sunth. In stores 13 Jan
06/10
Whilst Hookworms have been over here leaving a visible trail of destruction in their wake, Australian family psych band Blank Realm were clearly busy with the details.They’ve always had a roughness about their lo-fi garage punk, but on ‘Grassed In’ it’s been curbed a little, concentrated, snapped into line. Album opener ‘Back To The Flood’ is a sort of loose, pleasing sketch of Blank Realm at their best, centring itself on a fidgety, hyperactive guitar riff and then proceeding to loiter brazenly on the verge of anthemic.‘Even The Score’, however, is more representative of the whole and, after a thumping first few seconds, sits back and settles for relative impotence. As a crop of fine-tuned (but still pleasingly raucous) tracks, there’s plenty to enjoy here, but gone are the expansive gestures and the messiness that often excited most about Blank Realm’s music. Instead, ‘Grassed In’ is another step down the path towards the tighter, more precise songwriting that 2012’s ‘Go Easy’ hinted at, and it feels a little too comfortable
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