THIS WEEK’S NEW ALBUMS REVIEWED | FEATURE
The Human Condition (Mascot)
Black Stone Cherry’s seventh studio album is a self-produced offering, straight from bassist Jon Lawhon’s recording facility. The Kentucky rockers have gone from strength to strength in recent years, and are now a fully-fledged arena rock band. That iconic monster sound is here in droves throughout The Human Condition.
Completed just days before the COVID-19 lockdown came into play, this 13-song album features emotion from all directions. Happiness, struggles and living within adaptations, all prevalent feelings throughout the melee of what has been 2020. Ringin’ In My Head instantly introduces us to lead vocalist Chris Robertson’s raspy style, as well as that trademark guitar solo. How do you make it sound as if a guitar is actually singing?
Don’t Bring Me Down (an ELO cover) is familiar yet rocking, while The Chain (not a Fleetwood Mac cover) rings out loud. If My Heart Had Wings shows the flipside of this talented group: stripped back, full of feeling and emotion. No drop in quality here from Black Stone Cherry.
words OWEN SCOURFIELD
Visions Of Bodies Being Burned (Sub Pop)
Daveed Diggs, Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson, aka Clipping. [pictured], return with the sequel to last year’s horrorcore-inspired release There Existed An Addiction To Blood. Visions Of Bodies Being Burned is a record that, much like most horror sequels, expands on the violence and gore of the original but also encapsulates everything that has made Clipping. such an idiosyncratic entity to begin with.
Consisting of 16 tracks, the sound of the record is both in keeping with the trio’s avant-garde noise-rap style whilst featuring many unexpected twists and turns. For instance, track Pain Everyday features EVP recordings (for the uninitiated: the recorded voices of spirits) that lend a tangible eeriness to proceedings. Looking Like Meat, on the other hand, features the incredible hardcore punk-meets-hip-hop group Ho99o9, who bring a healthy dose of frenetic energy to the record. Whilst far from an easy or comfortable listen, Clipping. may have just released their most concise record to date.
words GARETH MITCHELL
Hey Clockface (Concord)
Recorded, initially, in Helsinki, Paris and New York before being completed in Elvis Costello’s adopted home of Vancouver during lockdown, this suite of 14 new tracks from this tireless icon of sophisticated pop opens with an Eastern feel and melancholy spoken word vocals, titled Revolution #49. A heavier sound, powered by an unique grainy rhythm, follows with No Flag, and Newspaper Pane switches to a storytelling style – upbeat in contrast with the jazzy saxophone and piano of I Do (Zula’s Song), Costello delivering his haunting vocals with a varied pitch.
The title track’s wilfully retro vibe conjures up visions of diners and jukeboxes, and is a legitimately feelgood tune – likewise I Can’t Say Her Name, whose slow intro precedes a lively, jazz-style arrangement. Yet many moments on Hey Clockface are more self-searching and imbued with a poetic sadness, no uncharted territory for this particular wordsmith. Costello sometimes appears to be looking back on his life, asking questions, and seeking self-affirmation; a sentimentalism hits the mark on something like Byline, beautiful piano intro and all.
Conversely, Hey Clockface is heavier, almost gritty in places, its reflective tone coupled with great, punchy tunes and intricate melodies. One of Elvis Costello’s more rocking turns of recent times, there’s nevertheless a lightness of touch, and a few cheerful retro twists to boot.
words EMILY EDWARDS
The Great Dismal (Relapse)
Let’s be frank: that band name/album name combination is the equivalent of painting a target on your forehead and handing the reviewer a loaded gun. As is churning out pedestrian, produced-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life tracks like Say Less, chucking in the odd bit of MBV-style pitch bending and thinking that this qualifies describing yourselves as a shoegaze band rather than Biffy Clyro with an effects pedal obsession.
That only tells half the story, though. Opener A Fabricated Life is a darkly swelling tide carrying Domenic Palermo’s whispered vocals, ultimately illuminated by a sudden break in the clouds. Meanwhile, April Ha Ha’s powerful undertow hints profitably at the Philadelphians’ hardcore pasts, while Famine Asylum and Ask The Rust boast the exquisite zooming guitar sound of Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream (if not the songs) – perfect for drowning out the prospect of the 33-track album Billy Corgan’s planning to inflict on us to mark Mellon Collie’s 25th birthday.
Neither great nor dismal, then, Nothing’s fourth LP falls in the grey area between.
words BEN WOOLHEAD
Magic Oneohtrix Point Never (Warp)
Fresh from soundtracking Uncut Gems, two hours of ducking, diving and thwarted diamond dreams, Daniel Lopatin puts his busy hands to work on this fidgety long player, which is just as evasive as Ratner in the movie. Frustratingly oblique, enigmatic and sublime in equal measure, this is the best and worst of synthetic composition, often in the space of two minutes.
Auto & Allo wafts and shimmers across a shifting radio dial, with the autotuned refrain “I know a place to go” floating across strings and synth arpeggios. Long Road Home is a tasteful Sufjan-esque symphony, with vocals (“doesn’t the sea look so empty?”) on the distant horizon, strings and a dusty Ennio Morricone homage emerging at one point, Daniel mining the past century of classical, kosmische, soundtracks, electronica and r’n’b. Six minutes are dedicated to the The Whether Channel, most of those being formless noodling before an off-kilter trap tune emerges; No Nightmares is as cheesy as Berlin’s Take My Breath Away and the Cross Talk radio snippets are like the non-sequitur interruptions of YouTube ads.
More coherent are Nothing’s Special and Wave Idea – slices of 90s new age calm, with cuckoos and oceanic waves – while Tales From The Trash Stratum is the album in microcosm, with fragments of eavesdropped sound, the plink-plonk of a wooden xylophone, tropical birdsong, buzzing dragonflies, synth chords and zither coalescing into a beatific Vangelis dystopia, before vanishing into the ether.
words CHRIS SEAL
