Hinds
Tortoise
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Leave Me ALone [Lucky Number, 8 Jan]
PAUW
The Catastrophist [Thrill Jockey, 22 Jan]
Macrocosm Microcosm [Caroline International, 22 Jan]
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2015 saw the Madrid garage-rockers explode onto the international scene, scooping up fancy festival slots with tracks like Bamboo, and proving themselves so ridiculously likeable that they baggsied spots on all the ‘ones to watch for next year’ listicles. The New Year’s bells herald the arrival of their first LP, Leave Me Alone – and it’s the peppiest, jauntiest, most charismatic debut you’ll likely find in the next 12 months. If you need an anthem for sassily chucking flowers in the bin, necking some wine or getting your A-game flirt on, then Hinds have all the answers. An infectious gang mentality, all overlapping vocals and silly voices, makes you feel like you’re in on the in-jokes, but there’s nothing funny about the skill involved in creating a record this perfectly, precisely laid-back. Leave Me Alone is crunchy, sticky and massively moreish; [Katie Hawthorne]
Listening from record to record, you’d barely notice most changes in Tortoise’s oeuvre – there’s nothing here quite so forcefully different as the sonic reshuffle that came with 2001’s Standards. Instead, they’ve become beautifully adept at mapping out their own world, whether draping soft chords over gurgling, biomechanical electronics or traversing the landscapes of kosmische and dub with stuttering breakbeats as their only vehicle (Gesceap). With vocalists on board for the first time (Yo La Tengo’s Georgia Hubley on the hymnal Yonder Blue; US Maple’s Todd Rittman on a suitably tense cover of David Essex’s Rock On), purists might question whether The Catastrophist signifies a watering down of Tortoise’s idiosyncratic vision. Rest assured, although still more cerebral pleasure than triumphalist pop breakthrough, this uniquely accessible record is a subtle delight. [Will Fitzpatrick]
Accomplished and playful, the Dutch quartet’s debut is a likeable slice of psychedelia. But that’s only half the story. While scene leaders Tame Impala and The Black Angels put riffs and muscle before whimsy, and draw a much clearer line back to the source, PAUW reference little from the late 60s, favouring instead the later side roads. Aided by arrangements that are flighty, free and coloured with keys and woodwind – PAUW toy with both prog and folk influences. There are shades of Focus, a hint of Kevin Ayres. Keep up as they traverse the back and forth of Today Never Ends, dexterously changing tempo and tone. Not, as is often the case when mysticism and feel are key drivers, entirely compelling throughout, but brimming with melody and genuinely characterful. [Gary Kaill]
Playing Glasgow Stereo on 21 Feb | hindsband.com
thrilljockey.com/artists/tortoise
pauwband.com
Guadalupe Plata
Songs For Walter
Saul Williams
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Guadalupe Plata [Everlasting, 8 Jan]
Songs For Walter [aA Recordings, 15 Jan]
The kind of record that leaves you feeling you need a bath, Guadalupe Plata is beyond dirty. A scuzzed-up, howlaround, frenzied fusing of blues forms and punk attitude, the Andalucian trio’s fourth album was recorded live to eight track tape and you can tell: the arrangements are raw, the production barely there, the sound an abrasive, all-consuming clatter. It’s an elementary mix but there’s a blackened spirituality within its shadows. Take Serpientes Negras (‘black snakes’), where the rickety backing, surf guitar and Pedro de Dios Barceló’s wailing vocals stir up a bubbling, hellfire brew. In fact, it’s Barceló who deepens the band’s character. A genuinely gifted singer, he is, at times, a dead ringer for a young Black Francis. Which might, at first glance, not be the most obvious reference point but see how many times here you find yourself muttering under your breath, ‘You are the son of a motherfucker.’ [Gary Kaill]
After years of gracing the various backstreet and basement stages of his hometown, Manchester’s Laurie Hulme finally releases his debut album. A hotch-potch of homespun folk and ramshackle acoustic pop, Songs For Walter is the eponymous tribute to the singer’s late grandfather. That particular Walter, a key and influential figure for Hulme, is the inspiration for a sidelong look at a life well lived. From the tenderly picked Stamping on Snails (‘I was 99% sure you were dead…’) to the electric stomp of Useless, Songs For Walter, much like its faded holiday polaroid packaging, works as a warm and candid recollection of family life and the complexities of friendship. Plaudits to Hulme for his selflessness and for having the generosity to write from someone else’s perspective, and a thumbs up for doing so so tenderly and with such clear-sighted love for his subject. In an age of dead-eyed cynicism, Songs For Walter is, commendably, all heart. [Gary Kaill]
guadalupeplata.bandcamp.com
facebook.com/songsforwalter
MartyrLoserKing [Fader, 29 Jan] Ever since 2001’s Amethyst Rock Star, Saul Williams has been a long standing political activist, poet and musician, and part of the lineage of Afrofuturists. MartyrLoser King is a cybernetic update of the struggle for civil liberties which has reared its head in America, across the world and online, once more. The lyrical themes are ambitious, attempting to tie together Trayvon Martin to Edward Snowden to the Arab Spring with lead track Burundi. Williams also tackles mass data breach and the watchful eye of surveillance through the constant repetitions of ‘five million followers’ on Roach Eggs; exacerbated by choice of framing, his point is made as if grappling with a zeitgeist he doesn’t fully understand. Nevertheless, 14 years into his recorded career and still sounding this eloquently pissed off with the world, Saul Williams is not short on spark. MartyLoserKing is the ‘annotated middle finger’, wise and strong enough to reinvigorate those who thought rap had lost its conscience. [Jon Davies] saulwilliams.com
Pete Astor
MONEY
Eleanor Friedberger
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Spilt Milk [Fortuna POP!, 8 Jan]
Suicide Songs [Bella Union, 29 Jan]
Following last year’s dabblings in kraut-out dubtronica with Ellis Island Sound, Pete Astor returns to what he does best: serenading us with simple, well-crafted janglepop. Recent single Mr. Music finds him (self-effacingly?) mocking more venerable performers with its ‘when will he let it go?’ refrain, but elsewhere he’s on a charm offensive, thanks to the doe-eyed delivery of Sleeping Tiger and The Getting There. At times this feels like a celebration of what can be achieved with three chords and an earnest tale, intelligently told. Far and away the indiest-sounding record Astor has produced since the mid-80s, Spilt Milk was recorded with the help of James Hoare from Ultimate Painting, who themselves are somewhat indebted to The Loft and The Weather Prophets. This, however, proves central to the album’s gentle appeal: it’s the product of an artist who’s comfortable in his own skin, and the ensuing warmth of the comfort zone is quietly addictive. [Will Fitzpatrick]
2013's The Shadow of Heaven saw MONEY become a worthy addition to Manchester’s rich bloodline of musical mavericks. Bewitching melodies, lyrical dexterity and a sense of meticulous craftsmanship earned the band a wealth of critical praise and seemed to capture something of the gloomy beauty of their own city. Suicide Songs sees the trio perfect what they started to build on their debut. The murky allure of the Northwest is still a prominent aesthetic, yet second time round they have the confidence to shed more light on what was previously kept quietly in the shadows. As the album’s title might suggest, the sum is a result of the significant mental strife the band have encountered in the last couple of years, though Hopeless World and Night Came conversely appear to signal their breaking through this wall of depression. They have arrived on the other sounding bigger, brighter and possibly even more beautiful than before. [Dan Pilkington]
twitter.com/PeteAstor
moneybandofficial.com
Emma Pollock
In Search of Harperfield [Chemikal Underground, 29 Jan]
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Emma Pollock’s third solo album refers to the first house bought by Pollock’s parents after they married, and the pervading theme is a woman trying to make sense of the world she came from, a rural idyll of half remembered childhood memories, now returned to at a time of deep reflection on life, love and family. Musically, Pollock retains the melodic chamber-pop elegance of her earlier songwriting, while stretching percussive chops and building an expansive darkness on songs like Old Ghosts. But despite the haunting ruminations on people and places, this is still an album replete with surging moments, from the teenage swagger of Parks and Recreation to the driving guitars of Vacant Stare and the honeyed cruel-to-be-kind advice of In The Company of The Damned. A poignant but punchy triumph then, perfectly timed for mid-winter maladies. [Dan Pillkington] Playing Glasgow’s Òran Mór on 29 Jan as part of Celtic Connections emmapollock.com
January 2016
Then Thickens
Colic [Hatch, 15 Jan]
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There’s plenty of drugs and death on Then Thickens’ second album, and it’s soaked in the damage done by both. My Sunday finds Jon-Lee Martin’s mournful narrator getting fucked up on dope to avoid dealing with the aftermath of tragedy: ‘I saw the smack and the leather / I lost a lot of you that I never knew,’ he sings over pristine chords, and it all feels darkly poignant. If only it didn’t follow Cum Summer’s gnarly sexual metaphors, because there’s nothing to make you go ‘eurgh’ quite like hearing an adult male singing porny juvenilia like, ‘Sip my juice until I’m dry, please.’ Musically, they veer from the near-sublime grandiosity of opener Heaven Alive to the less engaging bluster of My Amsterdam, where hand-me-down Smashing Pumpkins riffs collide with a plodding melody. Colic shoots for the majestically macabre and often comes heroically close, but it’s hard to give yourself to an album that contains the phrase ‘wizard’s sleeve.’ [Will Fitzpatrick]
New View [French Kiss, 22 Jan] Recorded in a converted barn studio near her new home in upstate New York, former Fiery Furnaces frontwoman Eleanor Friedburger’s third solo record is her first following a move from Brooklyn, combining timeless indie pop melodies with her signature lyrical sneakiness. From the gliding guitar progression of He Didn’t Mention His Mother and the swelling Open Season, New View is a warm and rustic listen, Friedberger dressing sharply drawn narratives in a classic folk sound that makes the album as cosy as an old jumper. Because her songs are so immediately inviting it’s easy to miss Friedberger’s crafty shifts: Because I Asked You is deceptively simple with its jaunty Wurlitzer and doo-wop guitar before the chorus flips the song’s repeated questioning to reveal an earnest appreciation of intimacy. Like Friedberger’s last two records, one appreciates New View as one does a steady relationship. [Chris Ogden] Playing Glasgow Broadcast on 7 Feb | eleanorfriedberger.com
The Top Five 1
Savages
3
De Rosa
4
Shearwater Jet Plane and Oxbow
5
Hinds Leave Me Alone
Adore Life 2 Daughter How to Disappear Weem
thenthickens.bandcamp.com
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