THIS WEEK’S NEW ALBUMS REVIEWED | FEATURE
Better Way (City Slang)
Better Way is the debut solo album from Casper Clausen, perhaps best known as the lead singer in Danish indie-rock act Efterklang. Here, stripped of his bandmates, Clausen is free to explore more sonic textures and topics with producer Peter Kember – aka Sonic Boom, formerly of Spacemen 3. So the rock side of his Efterklang days expands to take in Krautrock and driving heartland rock influences, while there’s also folk, alt-pop and twitchy electronics thrown in.
While this could get messy, and Better Way is a dense, busy album, what ties it together is Clausen’s strong vocals. The looping, loping melancholia of Dark Heart and Snow White plus the motorik Neu!-ness of Used To Think are the highlights of a warped, woozy, yet ultimately warm album that explores alienation, separation and love from afar.
words SAM EASTERBROOK
Puritan (12XU)
Chris Brokaw is like the sensible brother to Mark Kozelek. Instead of going off the rails and losing his spark, he has been prolific in his work as a session musician, solo artist and soundtrack composer for over 30 years. Puritan sees him taking on soaring alternative rock with a sense of urgency and a rich and warm production, and this collection of expansive instrumentation and masterful songwriting is a welcome change to the gloom of 2020.
After decades of producing guitar-based music, Brokaw isn’t reinventing the wheel but is adding spinning rims and sparkling chrome. He’s also teaching guitar and drums on video call during the pandemic, if you want some top tips. If the world was at risk of complete annihilation from an indomitable destructive force, playing this album would prevent this from happening. Music isn’t about competition or captivity. If you love music, you love freedom. Let this world be free.
words GARETH MOULE
The Helm Of Sorrow (Sacred Bones)
Kentuckian Emma Ruth Rundle’s gothic reading of folk-rock has found fandom in metal circles, while Thou, from Louisiana, are a politically left-leaning doom metal band who’ve tried out many musical styles and performed even more cover versions. Four-song, 21-minute EP The Helm Of Sorrow was previously included as bonus material on the ‘diehard edition’ of their recent full-length album, May Our Chambers Be Full; it’s exemplary stuff in its ability to blend gauzy melancholy and oppressive tonal weight.
Orphan Limbs, which opens the EP, finds Rundle trilling witchily over a pensive postrock-y bassline and, eventually, cold metallic riffing ideally performed in front of a wind machine. Crone Dance could technically be described as a duet between Rundle and Thou vocalist Bryan Funck, though in practise her clean vocals are placed at the front of the mix while his demonic pipes rumble in the background. Recurrence tilts towards the melodic, its guitar exhibiting shades of Alice In Chains’ Jerry Cantrell – not the first instance of a grungy vibe on a Thou release, or the last on The Helm…, with Cranberries cover Hollywood closing proceedings impressively. Presumably the song in mind when Sacred Bones reference MTV video show of yore Alternative Nation, Rundle takes on the Dolores O’Riordan vocal style with aplomb while Thou move from stripped-back verse to crashing chorus to bombastic solo in textbook 90s fashion.
words NOEL GARDNER
Every Mover (Bella Union)
Ed Rimon, a 50/50 Welsh-Indonesian singer and soundscaper, has crafted a work of beautiful positivity on his second long player: Hilang Child – the missing child – has truly found himself in a huge-sounding album draped in pristine production.
Good To Be Young is a revelatory opener, with the weightlessness of Blue Nile before fiery LCD Soundsystem synths kick in; elements of Animal Collective’s electronic shoegaze resound, too, in the multi-layered vocals and comforting burbles. There’s some of the ambient abstraction of Laraaji on Shenley, a lovely dim sum piece revealing Rimon’s Eurasian influences, while Seen The Boreal finds Ed singing “Are you crippled by hindsight / Wishing you’d done things so different the first time around?” Introspection allowing you to heal your wounds and see the world anew, like emerging from hibernation, blinking at the vast natural world.
The Neu!-meets-Jónsi of King Quail could have done with stretching its legs beyond its three minutes, but The Next Hold is awash with an Eno-esque fractal soundscape and the wide-eyed innocence of Fleet Foxes’ winter hymnals, like venturing into a cavern and bathing in an undiscovered fountain of youth within. Play Til The Evening is an infectiously joyful celebration of living in the moment; Anthropic blushes with the naivety of M83, Earthborne is a nice piano ballad and Steppe blends elements of throat singing and subtle sax with the splendour of Sigur Rós. An inspiring listen.
words CHRIS SEAL
Cheater (Bella Union)
For those of us chafing against continued confinement within the same four walls on a narrow, grey little island seemingly determined to cut itself off from the world, Pom Poko’s [pictured] second LP couldn’t have arrived at a much more apposite time. Cheater is an album that throws off the shackles of genre and expectation and throws open the door and windows to let the light in – a joyous, playful ode to imaginative freedom.
Recent single Like A Lady is probably the most conventional song here, an exuberant child’s felt-tip drawing of The Breeders. The Norwegians’ pocket punk glitterbombs don’t so much abruptly change gears as completely off-road. Perpetually pelted with curveballs, you soon learn to give up trying to second-guess them and just succumb to their weird whims: tickling, needling and shredding guitars; jolting rhythms; Ragnhild Fangel’s sweet sing-song vocals. Dizzyingly uninhibited, delightfully odd, Cheater celebrates a world of complexity and vibrant colour.
words BEN WOOLHEAD
