Album Of The Second: The National, Trouble Will Find Me

Yeah, yeah, Molly is reviewing the new National album, no surprises there.

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If High Violet was shot through with a fear of love, its reality versus its ideal, then Trouble Will Find Me is about the fear of losing that love, real, imagined, strong, fragile, destructive, healing. That's what the album feels like - the beginning of a recovery, complete with doubts and sneaking fears. Demons says it best: "I get the sudden sinking feeling / Of a man about to fly" There's simultaneously an ease to it and a fragility, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop but willing to see that you've got a good thing going. Even if it feels like the slightest slip could shatter it."I don't want you to grieve / But I want you to sympathise / I can't blame you for losing your mind for a little while / So did I,"  sings Matt, on Slipped. And a little later, in I Need My Girl; "I know I was a lot of things / But I am good, I am grounded." The music itself, as nuanced as ever, is gentler, this time around. It's cooler, calmer; more about the contrast between the clean open space and the shadows intrinsic to their sound. Where Boxer was shrouded, Trouble Will Find Me is exposed to the light, in spirit as well as sound. The metaphors aren't as oblique, and every line tastes of a confession. It makes the album accessible, relatable; but still the metaphors are there, still strange, still them.  It's still a warm record, though, for all that - but it feels more at ease with itself than any album before it. It's something to while away the afternoon with, not something to listen to in the middle of the night with nothing but the glow of your computer screen to keep you company. But the darkness of their previous albums is still there in songs like the glorious This Is The Last Time, and the rain-slicked Fireproof.  

It's different, this new, more open sound - but it's still unmistakably a National album. More cohesive, yes - the songs so interwoven that listening to it in pieces feels almost like blasphemy - and some will say more mature. But that's just one of those phrases, isn't it? The truth is that they've always had that maturity, hiding away in songs like 29 Years and Lucky You; it's just that with every song from Secret Meeting onward they've been shifting, through raucous Abel to majestic Mistaken For Strangers and from there to Anyone's Ghost - it's a progression, and as different as Trouble Will Find Me seems it's also nigh on inevitable. The band have become more and more comfortable with themselves as time has gone on  - and this is the result. An album made up of great song upon great song, confident and self-assured. Like every album of theirs it benefits from repeated listens, benefits from burying yourself in it and not surfacing for a week - but, that said, there's an immediacy hiding in Sea Of Love and Graceless that grabs you from the very first note. I don't know how they do it - how every album is better than all those that went before - but they've pulled it off. Again.

And the next one will be even better, you'll see.

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AOTS: Sharon Van Etten, Tramp

AOTS? On a Wednesday? Is the woman delirious? No. No, I'm not. Well, maybe, but not about this. I found out about this just two days ago, and I couldn't wait until Sunday to hear it. Besides, they might have taken down the stream by then, and if I didn't hear this for the sake of routine I don't know what I'd have done. Pretty standard reaction for someone addicted to music, you might think. But here is where it gets strange.

I never liked her that much.

I always thought she was good, certainly, I loved her voice, loved her guitar playing. But there was something missing. Maybe because I hadn't listened to enough of her music. Well, here I am, listening to Tramp and wondering where this album has been all my life. It starts slowly, sneakily, in clouds of electric and acoustic guitar, and the kind of voice an angel would have if it started gargling gravel. Give Out is normal enough, apart from the soft, powerful melody that takes it from unremarkable to the most beautiful song I've heard this year. It feels as if you're standing behind a locked door, listening to the songs of a woman who has no idea you're there, and is all the more glorious for it. Gentle and chilling, beautiful and tormented, both Kevin's and Leonard make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, make you shiver. How is it that something so simple, so common as the words "I loved you" can freeze the blood in your veins? And there's a tragedy in every "And it hurts too much to laugh about it" a tragedy that still holds on to its dignity, its hurt pride, instead of letting go and wallowing in self-pity. The feeling flows through the whole album, covering every quiet word with a strength that is hard to find within yourself, let alone make an album from it. It's been a long time since anything this bare has been so enchanting, and that's the surprising thing, the proof if proof were needed that music like this is more than the sum of its parts. From the all-consuming piano-guitar-drums-vocals of All I Can, to the understated We Are Fine, it seems wrong that there are people in this world, making music right now that is stronger and sharper than anything so many hundreds of bands and artists can dream of creating. It embodies so much, and yet Tramp is an album unaware of its own grace. My only hope is that the rest of the world can see it.

10/10

Moll x

AOTS: Clara Engel, Madagascar EP

She emailed me a few weeks ago with a link to her EP on Bandcamp, and I'm never sure what to think on the odd occasions that that happens. And no matter what I thought, this is better. The title track, for instance, is one of the few songs to have actually scared me. It's more wild than either of the other two tracks, howling, screeching, and crashing like thunder. Accompanied By Dreams is softer, more open, less like being chased through a storm and more like seeing moving shadows in an empty room. There's a strange spectral beauty to it, slight but still powerful. Watch out for her.

8/10

The EP on Bandcamp

Mollx

AOTS: The Mountain Goats, All Hail West Texas

From last week:

"When you punish a person for dreaming his dream, don't expect him to thank or forgive you!" sings John Darnielle on The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton. It's a killer of a title track, filled with, as it says in the liner notes, The sound of a long-broken machine, deciding, on its own and without the interference of repairmen or excessive prayer vigils, to function again. As well as a musing on the Panasonic RX-FT500, it seems that that's a stencil for the relationships he sings about with such bitter passion. His lyrics are frighteningly clever, beautifully witty, and forced to the forefront by simple strumming and then buried in the crackle of the cheap stereo condenser microphone. The songs are what one could call basic - but it takes a long time to squeeze everything out of this album, and that's the mark of a truly great songwriter.

West Texas! West Texas! West Texas!

8.8/10

Mollx

AOTS: Sunset Rubdown, Shut Up I Am Dreaming

Most of the time, an album focuses on one or two things. Lyrics, maybe, or the fact that you've got a great guitar player, even, perhaps, that you bought a new distortion pedal last week and are desperate to show it off. Shut Up I Am Dreaming focuses on none of these things. Or at least, not just those things. Like in Spencer Krug's day job Wolf Parade, everything is thrown at your ears all at once. And boy do I mean everything. In Wolf Parade, you get the feeling that at least one person in that band knew the meaning of the word restraint. No such word appears in the dictionary of Sunset Rubdown. Krug, however, has a fantastic ear for melody, for contrast, and for making songs that on paper sound shambolic and clumsy sound perfectly centered between what-the hell-am-I-doing-now and military precision. The band pulls back when they need to, like on The Empty Threats Of Little Lord, and goes full throttle on others - Snakes Got A Leg III, for instance. Krug's lyrics are pretty much genius: "And I'm sorry that your mother died / But that one wasn't my fault." from opener Stadiums And Shrines II, or  "I've heard of creatures who eat their babies / And I wonder if they stop to think about the taste." from the stand-out track Us Ones In Between. They're a band that transcends genre boundaries and throws conformity out of the window along with most of their sanity. It works for them though, this crazy, hard to swallow collage of sound. Of course it works. Maybe it's too much at first, maybe the best way to take it is to listen to the tracks separately. But listen to it, please. It's beautiful, fascinating, confusing, and very possibly one of the best albums of the last ten years.

10/10

(and here's the album on streaming site We7)

AOTS: Interpol - Turn On The Bright Lights

Put early Radiohead and Joy Division in a blender, whiz it up with some crushed velvet and an abandoned cityscape, and you've got Interpol. They're a band with a strangely massive sound - not stadium-expansive, but instead straining against the walls of a small club. They're a band with a sound suited to the dark, a dark filled with insomnia and expensive hi-fi. Listen to them through the best headphones you can find, and loose yourself in the moodiness, the gloom and weird freedom of asking where did it all go wrong? It's a beautiful sound. It's got all the warmth of the dim light at four in the morning, the loneliness of being the only one awake, the exhaustion of still getting on with life after a night lying awake. It's a comforting sound, interesting enough to hold your attention, but still has that kind of vague monotony you could fall asleep to if you wanted to. It's a simultaneously strong and delicate album, beautiful to listen to once, but endlessly rewarding if you have the time.

8.9/10


Mollx

AOTS: Various Artists, Newermind

Free with SPIN magazine, Newermind is a cover of Nirvana's Nevermind with contributions from various alternative bands/artists, from Meat Puppets to EMA. Smells Like Teen Spirit is Meat Puppets' chosen track, and keeps pretty close to the original, only with an acoustic guitar and a helluva lot more gravel. In Bloom is a lot more playful than the original, with a bit of a glam-rock shimmer lightening the heart of the song but still holding onto the ironic lyrics. The second most recognisable track from Nevermind, Come As You Are, is twisted into an electronic, auto-tuned, spooky monster by Midnight Juggarnauts. Again, Titus Andronicus have stayed faithful - it's not bad, just a little forgettable. The Vaselines' Lithium is more chilled, loosing the intensity but adding a slight haunting detachment. The vocal intertwining at the bridge lifts it a little, but even still it falls flat. Drain You, courtesy of Foxy Shazam, is, like Come As You Are, adventurous, but slightly more likeable since it keeps the dynamics of the song but shifts the genre several points closer to "Weird". Jessica Lea Mayfield's Lounge Act is as haunting as hell, filling every word with venom and feedback.

The main thing that strikes me when listening to this is how good the songs are. Not the new renditions, but the originals. Nevermind isn't my favourite Nirvana album, and it never will be, but it's only when you hear them in another context that you really appreciate them. And simarlarly it's when this collection loosens up and is as creative as they were that it really shines.

6/10


Mollx

AOTS: Matthew Sawyer And The Ghosts, How Snakes Eat

I bought this album for a pound in Manchester's Vinyl Exchange, just because of the artwork. I wasn't expecting much, which is a good thing I suppose, since I don't think I could have predicted just what this album contains. It's edgy, quirky, alternative rock that manages to sound exclusive, as if it was yours and yours only, while being strangely accessible. It might sound like a simple folk-rock record from the opening notes of Mynah Bird's Call, but it's a lot more than that. The rhythms are familiar yet strange, the creepy choir making it sound like some surreal, nightmarish Red Riding Hood. Strings lurk behind you, forcing you into the relative safety of acoustic guitar. The false applause in To Pour Like English Taps grates somewhat, but sarcastic self-congratulation aside, it's a lovely track. Caroline appears to have been recorded in the company of monks, and is all the better for it. To be honest, though, the arty construction and layered instrumentation make you long for something simpler, rawer. Chicory, in that sense, comes a few tracks too late, but now it's offered you're more than grateful. 

It's very ornate, very English, very enchanting. No, Sawyer's voice isn't the most polished of voices.

But neither is Dylan's, and look what happened there. 

AOTS: Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer

The first thing you notice is that their style of everything-but-the-kitchen-sink avaunt-garde electro-rock is still intact; only more so. Synths fade in and out in waves of glitter, bass and guitar lines bounce around and the drums just follow amiably - and that's only in the 4:37 minutes long first track Soldier's Grin. Boeckner's voice is the only grounding force - without him, you get the feeling that it would all spiral out of control. Call It A Ritual is the exact opposite, with slow, stately rhythms and howls of feedback backing Krug's layered threats ("I said, I'll make the decisions, you just drive"). We're back with Boeckner for Language City, who appears to have calmed down following his co-vocalist's ominous efforts, but not by much. It is more understated than the first track, but given how riotous that was, that doesn't say an awful lot. Bang Your Drum goes back to that original mass of twinkling sound, and Krug's leaning towards the weirder side hasn't grown out yet, it seems, and thank god for such small mercies. Following it, California Dreamer does little to lighten the atmosphere. Its energetic refrain, "I thought I might have heard you on the radio/But the radio waves were like stone" is somewhat at odds with the dark, clammy surroundings, but in doing so stands out as a fantastic track in an album of fantastic tracks. Even the albums "weaker" tracks, like Fine Young Cannibals or An Animal In Your Care, aren't even weak in the traditional sense. They're strong growers,rather than inferior songs. AMZ ends on a more immediate note, though, with Kissing The Beehive and its tight, charging rhythms, and the only Boeckner/Krug duet of the album. It sounds more united than the others, tying off the album with a typically anthemic Wolf Parade classic.

Mollx

Album Of The Second - Capgun Coup, Maudlin

It's not often you come across a band like Capgun Coup. Yes, there are fuzz-pop bands around. Yes, they're pretty good. But do they make albums that are as fun to listen to as they are rewarding? I haven't found one. Apart, that is, from Capgun Coup.


Maudlin is a lot more consistent than its predecessor, but don't take that to mean they've lost that ramshackle charm. Oh no. Instead, they've just sharpened the edges, added a little more feedback, a little more spunk, and kept the tongue firmly in cheek. Bad Bands is a case in point. Fuzzy, distorted, and remarkably catchy, it stands up easily against their previous Adorable Doorsteps. For Fish is the only ill-advised track, sliding into territory of the irritatingly discordant. Following track When I'm Gone thankfully leads us back into the usual jauntiness and we can sigh in relief, right before we're thrown again by the melancholic Breaks No Heart Of Mine, which sounds more like Lua-era Bright Eyes than it does the previous offering. But Now That I'm Home really shows them up as a great band. It's one of the best songs on the album, playing to the band's strengths in sharp lyricism and off-kilter rhythm. No, there isn't another band like Capgun Coup. And when they make albums as good as this, we don't really want one.

Mollx

Song Of The Week

Catchy punk-power-pop heaven this week. I first heard this on BBC 6 music, fell in love with it, and then found it on one of Mum's compilation albums which saved me some 79 pence. The Only Ones - Another Girl, Another Planet

AOTS this week is The Extra Glenns (or the Extra Lens as they now are), Martial Arts Weekend (from 2002, which I was surprised to learn. I thought it was from '97 ish for some reason). Very good so far. Check out 'All Rooms Cable A/C Free Coffee'. Free Coffee? I'm in.

Moll

Song Of The Week

I have two songs of the week today! Oh, I am spoiling you. Aren't I? Whaddya mean, no?

First. I felt sick when I first heard this, and it's the most immediate of the songs from the album, A Collection of Songs Written and Recorded 1995-1997. It's pretty good when you realise it was recorded on a 4-track in his basement when he was about 16. Bright Eyes, Falling Out Of Love At This Volume.

Second. I wasn't sure about this band at first, but the amazing bass lines pretty much sold it. Joy Division, Disorder.

Album of the Second: Basically a rarities collection released after his suicide. As such, it's pretty poignant - Elliott Smith, New Moon.

Mollx

Some Kind Of Roundup

Hey!

Another Song of the Week/Album of the Second for y'all:

Song of the Week...to be honest, I'm not totally over Something Vague yet, but I guess this weeks is Karen by The National, from their album Alligator.

And right now the Album of the Second is Boxer, again by the National

Mollxx