Young The Giant - Young The Giant

Sameer Gadhia, vocalist for California's Young The Giant, sounds a lot like Chris Martin. Not that it's a bad thing. I thought those first two Coldplay albums were brilliant, and there's even moments on their later albums that aren't too bad. Where Coldplay went wrong was in believing their own hype. So many sold out stadiums told them they were the next U2 so Chris Martin decided he needed to be the next Bono. Personally I think one was more than enough.


Some things in music baffle me. I don't know why it's okay to like Ida Maria's I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked, but not to love Katy Perry's Hot n Cold (I vastly prefer the latter, for the record). I don't know why Gwen Stefani is a massive star, and Shirley Manson can't get the record label to put out her solo album. I expect to be baffled by the obscurity of Young The Giant.


I hope I'm wrong. I hope rather than their best hopes being getting a song into the bottom half of Triple J's Hottest 100 that they fill stadiums. Maybe playing Splendour In The Grass will be enough to get people switched on to their music. I hope this because this album is full of stadium sized songs.


Many bands write songs that can fill stadium songs, and then once they do they start writing songs for the stadiums, and not for the music. Kings Of Leon are guilty of this, but they're not the only transgressors. Young The Giant aren't writing for anything but the music, but these songs would sound so at home in those massive arenas.


There's a number of artists in the MOR adult contemporary bucket. Artists like Coldplay, Snow Patrol, Elbow. They write songs with great hooks, inoffensive lyrics, and powerful emotion. Young The Giant are as good as many and better than most. Even their quieter songs seem big.


I haven't really talked much about the songs, but they're good. Apartment is what drew me here in the first place, My Body is catchy as hell, God Made Man slow builds to a massive euphoric release, Cough Syrup is pretty but still maintains a driving rhythm, Garands can only be described as bombastic.


I really hope I'm wrong, and that these guys get the exposure and following they deserve, and if they ever do I can say I told you so. But if they never break and just continue working along at their current level I'll keep buying their albums, as long as they keep making them this good.

Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

There’s a scene in Cameron Crowe’s 2000 film Almost Famous that illustrates the unquestionable power of music. If you’ve seen the film you’ll know the scene I’m referring to. The fictional band Stillwater (complete with hangers on) are travelling on a tour bus, and they’re all angry with each other for reasons I won’t go into (please, if you haven’t seen the film do yourself a favour). Nobody is talking to anybody else, and then Elton John’s magnificent Tiny Dancer reunites them as a group. It’s uplifting, cathartic, and infectious.

The reason I mention this is that I experienced a similar display with Fleet Foxes self titled first album. I was around at a friends place and somebody lamented the lack of harmonies in modern music. To illustrate the weakness of their case I put on the album (I’m never too far from my portable music player) and was greeted by stunned silence. So powerful was the beauty of that album that people seemed almost afraid to move in case they broke the spell.

So Helplessness Blues has a lot to live up to. It’s not just me that thinks so. Fleet Foxes made a number of the important best of year lists, and generated a lot of buzz when they toured. A massively successful debut must be a terribly heavy mantle to bear when it comes time to write your follow up.

For the most part this is a very solid effort. There is a similar sense of timelessness to the songs. Folksy enough to predate electric instrumentation, harmonies from ‘70s FM radio, and lyrics that feel literary . For the most part this album makes me incredibly happy.

However ‘the most part’ by its very nature implies the presence of ‘the least part’ and there is a slight issue I have with the album. There is a touch of jazz that shows up in a couple of songs. It’s mostly subtle and underplayed, and it’s possible that I wouldn’t have minded it at all except for the end of  The Shrine / An Argument where we’re subjected to around a minute and a half of free jazz. A honking squawking squall of noise that I’m sure was making some kind of musical point, but just made me want to skip the song.

Ignoring the jazz  (or just skipping the end of that song) there’s a sense of how hard the album was to write. Most of the songs seem to have two or more distinct parts, and not interwoven. They’ll start out as one song, and finish as a completely different song. Sometimes, as on lead single and title track Helplessness Blues, it works. But largely it feels like incomplete ideas pressed together  to make an album. The thing is that they’re largely great ideas.

It’s a strong follow up, and a great album. I will continue to use Fleet Foxes as key evidence in the case that tremendous music is still being written. I’ll continue to happily listen to this album, and recommend it to others. I’m just not expecting it to stop a room of people flat in their tracks.

The Wombats - This Modern Glitch

There's been quite a long lead time on promotion of this album. The first single Tokyo (Vampires & Wolves) dropped in the second half of last year, and the song actually made it into last years Hottest 100 at number eight. It indicated a different, darker direction for the lads from Liverpool whose first album had been so much quirky fun.

Follow up single Jump Into The Fog (which was released much closer to the actual album release) cemented this new direction, and both songs really gave me hope for an album that had developed musically, and matured lyrically from a debut album which I had thoroughly enjoyed.

That those songs are placed at tracks two and three of the album (following the decent opener Our Perfect Disease) had me settled in and ready for another excellent musical journey. However the whole album came apart at the seams for me with track four.

Anti-D is a track so painfully earnest and simply worded that it's embarrassing to listen to. Pair that with a drop in tempo and the needless addition of a string arrangement and the whole album grinds to a creaking halt. It's possible that outside of the context of the album, and separated from that dreadful song, the latter half of the album could have songs I'd quite enjoy, but it's like my suspension of disbelief was broken, and I couldn't see the great and powerful Oz, just a little man pulling musical levers behind a curtain.

I've tried to listen to the album a number of times, and I've made it all the way through on more than one occasion, and I still quite like those first three songs, but everything that comes after is hard for me to listen to. 1996 is a mawkishly sentimental look back on the innocence of youth. Techno Fan (which is bafflingly getting some airplay) is curiously lacking in energy.

The closest the album comes to redeeming itself is Girls/Fast Cars. The closest they get to the winking self aware  fun of their debut.

Sorry Wombats, I really tried to like this album, but I just couldn't get there. I guess this can go on the 'disappointing sophomore effort' pile. I eagerly await your 'return to form'.

TV On The Radio - Nine Types Of Light

It was with no small amount of sadness that I heard the news that TV on the Radio bass player Gerard Smith passed away this week. He died on Wednesday morning following a courageous fight against lung cancer. The band have had to cancel five gigs, and I imagine when they do get back on the road those are going to be some pretty tough gigs to play.

This review isn't a reaction to Smith's death. I'd already bought the album on release, and was looking forward to spending the week with it. So out of respect I'll try to review it the same way I would if Smith were still with us.

It took me a while to warm to TV on the Radio. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but I certainly kept them at a distance for a number of years. Sure I liked Wolf Like Me (hell, who doesn't) but they always seemed to have a slight whiff of art and pretension. Two things I'm not always at ease with in a musical context. It wasn't until Kingsmill made their previous album Dear Science his album of the year for 2008, and spoke about it so enthusiastically that I gave them a proper chance.

What TV on the Radio do is very hard to define or pigeonhole, there's so many elements at play. There's a little funk, a little soul, a little rock, a hint of dance/electro. They're unlike any other group I've heard. You do get the impression that there is nothing accidental at play here. Not a bit of what has been committed to record here escaped the scrutiny of the band. For most bands that level of exacting detail would manage to squeeze any life out of the songs. Somehow here, like that crazy machine the kids in The Goonies use to open their gate, it works.

Somewhat anachronistically in our digital age the album seems to have been sequenced with the vinyl record in mind. There are clearly two distinct sides, the first closing so absolutely with Killer Crane that I feel like I should have to get up and turn the record over. They even launch side two with lead single Will Do, a wonderful trick from the days of vinyl to settle the listener in to making it past side one.

There are concessions to the digital age. 'Bonus' tracks (one new song, and two remixes of Will Do) tacked on to the end of the album. They don't really add anything to the album, but they don't exactly over egg the pudding either.

I think I'll try and pick this one up on vinyl. I like it, but I think I could really love it, I just need the context to fit the feel.

Foo Fighters - Wasting Light

I spend an inordinate amount of time conjuring up musical 'what if's in my head. What if The Beatles hadn't broken up, what if Marc Bolan hadn't died, what if The Flaming Lips recorded Nilsson's The Point in its entirety (admit it, it would be completely awesome). I could go on...

Sometimes life throws you a bone, and you get to find out exactly what would happen 'if'. What if Pat Smear hadn't left Foo Fighters after The Color and The Shape?

I've enjoyed most of what Dave Grohl has managed to do with Foo Fighters. They're one of the most consistent rock bands currently operating, and can always be relied upon for a decent tune, entertaining clip, and sold out tour (at least in Australia). The thing is that, with the occasional exception, they tended to rock a little more mildly after Smear left. Still great songs, just a little light on intensity.

Smear is back for Wasting Light, and so is the intensity. Grohl screams his way through much of the album like a man possessed. There's still a few milder tracks, but even they have the volume turned up to 11. To be fair, Smear's return isn't the only change. Grohl has had a busman's holiday drumming with Them Crooked Vultures, and he may have had his heavier urgings revitalised by playing with two giants of the genre.

The other factor which I can't ignore is the production. Grohl has enlisted Nevermind producer (and personal hero of mine) Butch Vig. He's also decided to record the whole thing in his garage, and on to tape. No digital trickery (well, not until the mastering stage obviously). An attempt to reconnect with making a rock record the way they used to be made.

The end result of all this revitalisation is a record that sounds absolutely amazing. I don't think there's anybody out there who can get a drum sound quite as crisp as Vig, and it anchors the whole album. The guitars are loud and shredding, the vocals resting neatly on a wall of rock sound (when they're not adding to it).

Grohl hasn't really matured as a songwriter, and these certainly aren't the best work of his career (that credit still going to Everlong) but they are a great set of rock songs, and hopefully they've put a few more years of life into this aging, but entertaining rock horse.

Noah & The Whale - Last Night On Earth

It's not been a long time between albums for Noah & The Whale. It was only the second half of 2009 when they released their fantastic album First Days Of Spring. It was one of my favourite albums of 2009, managing to document in sometimes excruciating detail the breakup of frontman Charlie Fink from folk songstress Laura Marling. It was intimate, and personal, and brilliant. Which makes it a hard act to follow.

Last Night On Earth is a very different album. For starters it's much less personal, rather than baring his own soul again these songs are stories about other people. But apart from jumping the fence from autobiography to fiction the album is also coming from a different place emotionally. This is an album almost overflowing with hope.

Fink has mentioned that he wanted to write different kinds of songs, and he name checked some pretty big names in terms of influences; Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed, Tom Petty. It's a pretty high bar to set yourself as a songwriter, but impressively you can see not only the influence, but Fink manages to still make these songs sound uniquely his.

Lead single L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N. is an upbeat, positive take on Walk On The Wild Side, with a similarly lovable collection of misfits. Waiting For My Chance To Come is so close to Tom Petty you keep expecting to see Tom Cruise singing along to it in the car. There's an easy cruising on the highway feel to the whole album.

Fink hasn't completely abandoned his musical autobiography though. Just Me Before We Met is a heart warming look at the hope that comes from a new relationship, and Give It All Back is a look back on the energy and excitement of being young, and in a rock band.

The greatest strength of these songs is their ability to put you in the moment. Whether it's fact or fiction you feel like you're right there in the story. It's a rare gift for any writer, and somewhat rarer in a songwriter. It worked to make the break up album one of the best of the form, and it works to make the hope that infuses this new album quite contagious.

Musically the band are trying new things too. With each album they move further from their folk roots. There's a lot of electronic instrumentation on Last Night On Earth, but despite that the album still manages to sound warm and natural. They even manage to make a marimba sound like a common rock instrument.

I would imagine Noah & The Whale will be out in Australia around Splendour time. Another band I'd love to see, given the opportunity. If I manage to see them I'll enjoy the songs from this album. I think they're good songs. But I'll still be hoping to hear the songs from First Days Of Spring more. I guess I'm not quite ready to move on.

The Vaccines - What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?

I tend to react in hype in one of two ways:

A) I get completely swept up in it. When Arctic Monkeys released their debut early in 2006 I made some pretty bold statements about how they were going to revolutionise the music industry. I may be somewhat embarrassed by the ferocity of my devotion, but I think that album still stands tall.

B) I get so sick of everyone going on about how great an artist is that I go out of my way not to listen to them. It took a long time for me to listen to Missy Higgins. I t actually took a long time for me to be able to hear her name without shaking my fist and saying 'Bloody Higgins!'. It was my loss though, her debut album is great.

The Vaccines are a band with a lot of hype and buzz behind them. They have that heady mix of celebrity fans, festival bookings, and placings on important industry polls. I imagine in the UK it's difficult to not be painfully aware of the band. I expect their media saturation to be less complete in Australia, but with the announcement that they'll be playing this years Splendour In The Grass festival I would expect to be hearing a lot more local buzz around the middle of the year.

So what's all the hype about? "What Did You Expect..." is a short sharp burst of very British sounding rock, with a clear influence from '50s rock and roll. Of the 11 songs on offer (12 with a hidden track) most are under three minutes, with two of the tracks clocking in at around the minute and a half mark. It's a punk rock pace, but the music is a little too clean to comfortably wear the punk mantle.

Opening song, and lead single, Wreckin' Bar (Ra Ra Ra) is 82 seconds of high energy bliss, but they still manage to squeeze in two and a half verses and a guitar solo. The blistering pace really sets the tone for the album. Even the slower tracks are pretty quick, and the whole thing is over in little more than half an hour.

Lyrically the album is a little shallow. Even the break up songs (and a lot of the album seem to concern that lyrical goldmine) are a little reserved. Thee are no hearts on sleeves, no examinations of the human spirit. There's even a very silly love song to a seventeen year old danish model.

It's a fun album. Catchy sing along songs, overflowing with youthful energy. A great album for the carefree summer days of sunshine, barbecues, and cool drinks. But with the southern hemisphere moving into the introspection of winter I honestly can't see that I'll be listening to the album too much. I'll certainly be bringing it out next summer though.