Artrocker Magazine’s Album Reviews for the week commencing 8 February

Filed in Massive Attack,

Album Reviews | Released 09 February 10

Reprinted from Artrocker Magazine Issue 97

Massive Attack
Heligoland
(Virgin Records)

Massive Attack’s fifth album is to be released on the seventh anniversary of their last album. Who would’ve thought it? Seven years since the magnificent 100th Window and their triumphant live tour? How long since Mezzanine or Protection. Blue Lines anyone? Crumbs. That is a LOT of great music to live up to.
Well the good news is, this album does not disappoint. I had heard evil rumours that Heligoland was not as acclaimed as their other work, that Massive Attack had ‘lost it’. I mean fair enough – people are entitled to their own opinion, but in my experience, ‘people’ usually talk shit.
In truth, the first listen was a bit of a shock. It seemed more pop than usual. Less aggressive, less trip-hop. But the only way, and I mean the ONLY way that you could think this album was anything less than genius is if you listened to it just once.
Because on the second listen, it suddenly clicked. I heard the layers, the sinister organs, the laid back dread in the bass, the raspy vocals. You’re listening to the same music as before, but you’re hearing it properly for the first time. Like that magic eye game thing. And I am HOOKED now. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
‘Pray for Rain’ is an addictively catchy intro to the album with brushed percussion and vocals from TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe. Martina Topley Bird takes things up a notch with the drum n’ bassy ‘Babel’.
Fans looking for another ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ or ‘Tear Drop’ will be left feeling sad and depressed about their purchase. Having said that, most of us are not total buffoons. Anyone who’s matured since Blue Lines will look beneath the seemingly different surface, and uncover the goldmine it for all it’s worth.
Dave Depares
Out 8 February

Rough Trade Shops
Counter Culture 09
(Rough Trade)

‘Worst album of the year’ is not a likely pull-quote you’ll be seeing alongside a Rough Trade compilation, so let’s quit the games shall we? This is a predictable album only in that it’s predictably A*C*E.
Forest Fire kick things off with ‘Fortune Teller’ and its shotgun lyric “why can’t I kill someone I hate?” (thank god someone else has this thought from time to time). Cate Le Bon provides another highlight with the spook-folk of ‘Sad Sad Feet’ (what a voice), while Mariachi el Bronx bring the tropical summer vibes with ‘My Brother The Gun’. Other highlights include Emmy The Great, Super Furry Animals and Male Bonding. Need we go on? This is what they describe in cliche-land as an ‘essential collection’. Dig it.
Cindy Suzuki
Out 8 February

Built To Spill
There Is No Enemy
(ATP Recordings)

Hey you! Yeah you, the nervous looking suicide bomber. Got the butterflies? Not sure you can make it all the way? Last-minute doubts? Then try out the new record from Built To Spill – guaranteed to send you over the edge (TM)!
Yes, as you can tell from my extremely bad-taste intro, The Spill are one of those bands that not only express sadness, but do so with such heart-punching honesty that it’s hard not to sink in your chair and light up five cigarettes simultaneously when they come on.
Fronted by the eternally teenage sounding Doug Martsch and based in Idaho, the group peaked in the late 90s with the mesmerising albums Perfect From Now On (1997) and Keep It Like A Secret (1999). This first record for ATP Recordings doesn’t quite hit those peaks, but there’s no doubting the depth of feelings on display.
Especially noteworthy is ‘Planting Seeds’ which expresses solidarity with Bill Hicks over the evils of marketing, and the epic ‘Tomorrow’, which wrestles with that great catch 22, that the temporary nature of life leaves you holding onto it even tighter. What a beautiful bitch.
Ric Rawlins
Out 8 February

Ian Dury & the Blockheads
Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll: The Essential Collection
(Demon Digital)

Surely the release of another compilation is small fry compared to the honour of being played on the silver screen by Golem. This collection though, like the new biopic, provides a good excuse to re-acquaint yourself with characters like Billericay Dickie and lines like “a love affair with Nina/in the back of my Cortina/a seasoned-up hyena/ couldn’t get much keener”.
Ten years after Dury’s death and 30 after the height of his popularity the lyrics are still fresh, witty and surprisingly provocative. They can be defiantly un-rock-and-roll (“I wanna be straight/I’m sick and tired of taking drugs and staying up late”) cuttingly derisive, and sharply observational.
This album will certainly pull in some new fans with the classics but it is doubtful that hardcore followers will be tempted to shell out for the live version of ‘Spasticus Autisticus’ and the of 12” versions ‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick’ ‘Reasons To Be Cheerful’ offered. It does though give a welcome reminder of the quality of the songs and the influence of Dury’s work on bands over the last 30 years.
Jack Jones
Download Available Now

Puerto Muerto
Drumming For Pistols
(Fire Records)

Living together and being in a band seems to be working fine for Puerto Muerto’s married line-up of Tim Kelley and Christa Meyer.
Drumming For Pistols is the Chicago duo’s fifth or sixth studio album (depending on which ones you count!) and follows the more focused approach of last record I Was a Swallow rather than the mish-mash material of their early days.
The variety of styles showcased across the album’s three quarters of an hour and the confident way they are performed leaves you in no doubt of Puerto Muerto’s talent. An air of country and Americana often lingers in the background, meaning their duets can sound very similar to that other marriage-band Low.
The two sound-alike tracks fronted by Christa, ‘Arcadia’ and ‘Tamar’, are rooted firmly in the sixties, reminiscent to the Shocking Blue and with nods to gospel. Christa also possesses a haunting, older than her years croon, very similar to Nina Simone and this is put to good use on album opener ‘Song to the Moon’. My favourite track however is the Tim Kelley led ‘Hurting Now’, a simple but compellingly sad acoustic love song.
Drumming For Pistols is a well-crafted take on the highs and lows of the American Dream.
Steven Belfrage
Out 8 February

Hayseed Dixie
Killer Grass
(Cooking Vinyl)

Hayseed Dixie have been unholsetering their banjos and peddling their unique brand of Rockgrass music for some time now – long enough, you’d say, for it to no longer be a novelty.
This creates a very unique problem, in that the music naturally comes under much closer scrutiny when the ability to play the ‘one-off novelty’ card is removed. And there’s the rub. Try as it might, Killer Grass is a pick n’ mix bag of success in which the band’s original material struggles to compete with the accompanying six cover versions.
Now, this could be because the cover songs were excellent to begin with, setting a high bar that Hayseed Dixie’s original material would always struggle to surpass – although the banjo versions of Prodigy’s ‘Omen’ and Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ come close and ought to be applauded.
However, the more likely explanation is that when left to their own devices, the band resorts to writing songs about drinking beer, putting condoms in shoes and being rectally abused by an extra terrestrial. This cheapens the album, leaving Killer Grass feeling more like a hangover from a time when Beavis and Butthead were still considered funny, than an inventive country twist on old classics.
Rory Carroll
Out 8 February

Husky Rescue
Ship Of Light
(Catskills Records)

Husky Rescue’s third long player is primarily influenced, we are told, by a UFO sighting and the resulting re-infatuation with nature that stemmed from this event. It’s a story that could so easily come across as contrived, but when combined with the kind of sparsely gorgeous Scandi-pop on display here, it fits achingly perfectly.
From the delicate xylophones of ‘Sound of Love’, through the breathy, yearning ‘Man Of Stone’ to the enchanting swell of closer, ‘Beautiful My Monster’, Ship Of Light is truly gorgeous to an almost ridiculous level.
As if Lykke Li has hopped in a cloning machine and formed a band with all her doubles, Husky Rescue excel in the beautifully bare atmospherics that seems to naturally exude from the area; there’s a feeling of space, and tranquillity that dominates, lending an added layer of the ethereal to proceedings, whilst Reeta- Leena Korhola’s crystalline vocals lace over the soundscapes with delicate authority.
What truly sets the album apart however is it’s slow burning centre piece, ‘Wolf Motel’ – a six minute long, almost entirely instrumental epic that is transfixing in its assured majesty.
With Ship Of Light, Husky Rescue have created an album that not only seems to move at it’s own pace, but sits entirely outside of time. Magical stuff.
Lisa Wright
Out 8 February