Ugly In The Morning
Ugly In The Morning
[self-released]

by airhole

A first look on the cover inspires one to buy the CD to open and hopefully catch a glimpse of the naked woman's front. Alas, one would be most disappointed with that.

The music is, on the other hand, not disappointing. A range of genres is covered in the songs, from funky rhythms to grunge rock grooves, with Beatlesque melodic hooks and rocking guitar solos. The album starts off with a funk rhythm pattern on ‘East Of Freedom’ with strong punctuating vocals which leads to an interesting grunge-type chorus.

Diamond opens with a Hendrix inspired riff going into a full blown rock thang. The whole album had a nice flow for relaxation. It goes from high octane rock and mellows down to a more pop-ish song and finally a soundscape song at the end.

The band did a great job on the whole. Most of the melodies were catchy. The drum work of Boon Gee was tight and groovy with the basslines laid by Clement Yang. Eric Lee and Neal Cooke contributed vocals full of funk and spunk. All the instruments were well mixed by the production crew from Myx Studios, such that each song stood out on its own and each instrument/vocal could be heard where it counted.

The idea that local music suck is easily debunked with this album. One will be pleasantly surprised with its quality and musicality. For SGD$12, it is well worth the dough. I would put this album in the must-get list.

Snow Patrol
Jeepster
[Jeepster]

by TenaciouG

Snow who? Final Straw may be Snow Patrol's third album, but feels distinctly like a debutant effort. One has the feeling that these 4 Irish boys from Belfast won't be out in the cold much longer though. Fourteen highly listenable tracks that sound distinct, which can't be a bad thing, plus some songs that will keep your feet tapping. The catchy hooks on the track ‘Spitting Games’ and the anthemic rising chorus of ‘Run’ are pretty much the standouts on this album.

Based in Glasgow now, lead singer and guitarist Gary Lightbody says the album explores themes of lost love and war horrors, most notably the debacle that is Iraq now (quagmire anybody?), but it thankfully refrains from self-righteous moralising or left-wing hand-holding. And if you weren't aware of the band's socially conscious roots, a piece of advice in the album's liner notes goes "mums and dads of the world be patient with your children." Well said, indeed.

Wilco
A Ghost Is Born
[Nonesuch]

by K. Vicious

Scary Monsters and Spiders from Chrome Hell

It’s good to be alone…

There is an undoubted rise in critical interest in Wilco these days following the artistic triumph of their album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot two years ago, which is all very nice and well deserved. A focal point in the Wilco canon, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot documented their great talent for transforming the comforting sound of pop records into something altogether more epic and ambitious. It’s quite remarkable then that the band and its principal songwriter Jeff Tweedy have elected to continue shaking things up on A Ghost Is Born, a sparse collection of shimmering tunes and more bold departures from the pop norm.

Right off from the start, Wilco’s refusal to repeat themselves is adamant when the soft heroic tone of At Least That’s What You Said kicks in with a soft bluster of Tweedy’s mumbled vocals, uncertain, flickering in and out of focus, only to become assertive when loud guitar solos are cranked, immediately pushing the band deep into Neil Young territory. And no song comes closer to defining the psychic terrain of the new album that the 15-minute centerpiece Less Than You Think, one of the more fragile and strikingly poetic songs Tweedy has ever written that dissolves inexplicably into twelve minutes of frightening (and frankly unlistenable) filtered static and feedback noises – a ghost is born, indeed.

A record that both transcends and dodges expectations, A Ghost Is Born is a work of hesitating beauty: soulful music that’s quiet and disquieting, always warm but sometimes eerie. And if you need further assurances, well let’s just say that Wilco now sound more like a band who has put a permanent stamp on their identity than the band that recorded Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. For one thing, A Ghost Is Born has subtly taken Wilco off in yet another direction, the band members plowing deeper into a scarier combustible gloam where the late greats are maladroit rock and roll ghosts and krautrock superheroes – re: Spiders (Kidsmoke), what, has Tweedy been digging those Neu reissues and feeling groovy? Fans of easy listening, point your finger at producer (and Sonic Youth bum) Jim O’Rourke and his contaminating influence if you will, but his participation does foster a new and exciting approach to the music that ejects easy formulas and embraces a barrier of noise.

That said, there is an air of spliffy tension to A Ghost Is Born that can only be coming from Wilco alone: so you kids remember Summerteeth (1999)? Tweedy elides dreamily into the delightful chamber pop of Hell Is Chrome only to interrupt the tune halfway through with flakes of dissonant guitars. Handshake Drugs, with its relaxed zombie vibes and raffish charm, is roughly in the ballpark of those dreggy pop songs Tweedy used to write with Jay Bennett, while an oblique composition like Wishful Thinking manages to evoke every flavor of workaday depression. And then there’s Hummingbird, a piece of Paul McCartney White-Album juvenilia complete with a Brian Wilson arrangements and violin choruses.

Tweedy has never been big on emotional truths – at least not since he declared hardship on Being There (1996) with “I was maimed by rock and roll” – and now he fancies himself as being more of a craftsman of free and unwashed verse. Never have Tweedy’s cramped surrealism and lyrical infelicities seem more at home than on A Ghost Is Born. Hence the lovely Company In My Back is basically what Wilco does best in a nutshell: easy melodies and pretty words that don’t say much of anything (“I move so slow, steady crushing hands/ Holy shit! There’s a company in my back”) and yet broods in the manner only Tweedy’s sullen art can. Like dusty sunbeams, these slanted pop confectionaries on A Ghost Is Born salt the skies and warm hearts on voyage through the noisy hurdles of sleep.

furniture
Baybeats Exclusive Album Preview
[self-released]

by B Boy

I had the immense pleasure of watching this Malaysian band’s performance at Baybeats 2004. I’d caught the tail end of an excellent, if slightly by numbers, The Observatory set, and a couple of songs from some technically proficient if overly enthusiastic church band. So when I settled in back at the chillout stage to watch the quiet, barefoot quartet (I believe someone was missing); I wasn’t really expecting to be pretty much blown away.

To be fair, furniture got off to a dodgy start with a tacky ‘Heroes’ guitar line (more reminiscent of the Wallflowers than Bowie) with their opener, ‘Chasing Tipperary’, but they eventually morphed into Mogwai meets Sigur Ros meets Mew, and I basically thanked the shoegazer gods for convincing me to attend Baybeats this year. This exclusive preview CD of their music includes the slightly marred ‘Chasing Tipperary’ which manages to transcend the unimaginative intro with layers and layers of toy piano, freeform jazz, white noise and end with a melodic progression that actually manages to wipe away the indignity of the early bits.

The second track is the slowburning, ‘I Am Ying’ which swings from quiet guitar noodlings, chiming piano and shimmery strings to general guitar maulage (complete with plenty of live knob-twiddling as evidenced at the gig), full-blown typhoon strings as well as a fair amount of cymbal abuse.

The penultimate ‘Please’ starts off with an obvious attempt at My Bloody Valentine wave of distortion and multi-tracked vocals. Sprinkled with subtle xylophone before what sounds like to be a guitar masquerading as an accordion, it brings us to the bridge. Launching into a circular melody, ‘Please’ eventually twirls us into a wash of strings and more knob-twiddling and feedback squalls to round out the song. While not groundbreaking in any sense, furniture manages to quite effortlessly pull out the stops and delivers a highly entertaining and even faintly heroic sounding album. Live however, furniture is quite the postrock gods. Let’s hope they come down from up north more often.