Fink – Biscuits For Breakfast

The raw materials here and the fact he’s signed to Ninja Tunes give faith that Fink won’t be next year’s David Gray. It would be easy for him to go that route, and on paper (laid back, guitar-and-voice, little vocal sketches) that’s a worrying possibility.

There are problems with this sort of album. It’s the type of record you’d slip on for a cosy night getting tender with your love. It’s the type of record you’d want on a Sunday, winding down. It’s the type of album you’d want on for a nice relaxing bath and, even worse, it’s the type of score you’d give to a dinner party. A dinner party.

But it’s gorgeous, it’s intimate and it’s dense with layers. If you want parallels that won’t make you panic (yes, there is an element of Jack Johnson here), think Tricky and, particularly on duet ‘Hush Now’ with Nina Grace, Tricky’s one-time lover Martina Topley-Bird.

It’s jazzy without being Jazz FM fodder. It’s slow without being boring. Slow like making love, not slow like watching a casserole cook. Like deck shoes and a neckerchief: ideal for summer evenings.

http://www.finkworld.co.uk

Daft Punk – Human After All

Since Homework dropped on the scene like a mid-nineties cherry bomb, our Gaelic friends have managed to deftly sidestep cool. Cool, because they’re not cool, which makes them cool. Or does it make them anti-cool, which is cool, although anti-freeze isn’t, because that warms up frozen windscreens, or does it just annihilate the water content of the ice without altering the temperature of the H20/air pollution compound? Goodness, staying up late watching Open University science programming was little or no preparation for reviewing a Daft Punk LP.

Human After All is as tough as an adamantium cyborg and fun as an orangeade swimming pool. Never better displayed than on lead single ‘Robot Rock’ and title track, ‘Human After All’.

Unlike the Chemical Brothers, whose latest album bears a striking resemblance to all their previous albums – to its detriment; Daft Punk’s latest album bears a striking resemblance to all their previous albums – to its infinite aceness. They’ve always existed in their own timeframe, on their own plane, untouched by current trends and not really having a huge impact on them either (yes, around Homework, basslines went bigger and the French seemed to lose a bit of their ‘exchange-student-rucksack- discomfiture’ but it wasn’t revolutionary). This is their superhero weapon.

Processes seemingly thus: throw in as many nostalgic, fun and knowing sounds as possible, including, but not limited to: Gregorian chant melodies, metal riffs, Studio 54 basslines and pushpop dance tinkles. See what sticks. Whatever doesn’t stick can be overcome by cranking the vocoder up to, say, eleven. Then it’ll stick. Et voila, quelle surprise, un superhit de magique. Goodness, staying up late watching Open University foreign language programming was little or no preparation for reviewing a Daft Punk LP.

Un morceau brillant de bruit sec. Un album superbe. Encens bêtes. And relax.

The Modern – Album Sampler

Human League. There, I’ve said it. Opener ‘Industry’ is every bit as a paper-thin and 80s as anything from the Sheffield trio’s career. Disco chicks and haircuts. It gets better and better from hereonin.

You know from the name (well, if you’re owt like me) that ‘Discothéque Française’ is likely to be pretty cracking. “He took her to a disco/To dance the night away/He took her to a disco/A Discothéque Française” A gorgeous use of vocals, very much in the Air bent with a Mexican wave of a recurring sample that shimmies from ear to ear.

At this point I have to confess to a deep love of drum machines. I don’t know why, I can’t explain it, maybe it’s a reaction to my mum playing Phil Collins in my ear ad nauseam when I was just an innocent child.

‘Goodbye Means Forever’ is a perfect study in 80s production-orama ballads. Think Berlin, think Nena, think Martika and then think how ace it would be if they formed a team of ass-kicking, all singing, all discoing crime fighters. Just for fun.

So anyway, I love drum machines, I love twiddly little bits of electronica-glitter and I love 80s funky basslines. Which brings me on to ‘Tokyo Girls’. As blatant as ‘Turning Japanese’ and as sleek and sexy as ‘Girls On Film’. For a more obscure reference point look at ‘Hong Kong Garden’ by Siouxie and the Banshees.

And lastly the jewel in the crown – ‘Suburban Culture’. I never thought I would be writing this in 2004 and not meaning it as an insult but: the opening sounds like Jean Michel Jarre. And then it’s Kraftwerk all the way. Eurokitsch from South London – magic.

Warning: May cause you to try and do the Robot Dance.

Radiohead – OK Computer

I first heard Radiohead in the Pablo Honey days. ‘Anyone Can Play Guitar’ featured on a favourite compilation tape of my young teen self – Loaded was the name. I thought the ‘Head were a garage band (back in the days when garage was a practise space and not an urban revolution).

Fast forward to 1997, The Bends had long wowed us and Thom and Co were as regular on the NME and Select pages as bad puns and unabashed flashinthepanery. Anticipation was thick and it was irresistible… We bunked off college to hear Jo Wiley play ‘Paranoid Android’ and sat in stunned silence afterwards. This was our ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. Without the camp and with infinitely better lyrics. OK Computer was going to be life affirming.

I went halves on the CD and it became the soundtrack of every night, in our Exeter bedsits (bear with me, I’m just setting a scene, not complaining, I wouldn’t have swapped that time for the world).

‘Airbag’ opens with all the foreboding a guitar intro can create. Instantly there are hints that Thom had been hanging around with DJ Shadow’s gang. One listen and you can probably pinpoint the instant where another group of Exeter students were listening and formulating plans – Muse.

It’s hard now to listen and disengage personal memories from the album. It was a permanent fixture on my walkman. I was a devil for taking off in the night to go out walking on my own (down Tivvy Road, past Bang and Oulfsen, quick tobacco stop in All Days, up towards the prison…) and listening again now I can trace my exact steps.

Completely flu-ridden and miserable I made the trip (with comrades Damian, James and Simon) to the rival – hated – city of Plymouth to catch them live. Brassic, we walked miles through Basra-esque estates to find the venue. I’d made scones. We thought Thom looked thin. I can’t remember exactly what happened to the scones but I have a hunch they would have been eaten on the train.

That night Radiohead played – predominantly – OK Computer tracks. From the first note to the last I cried my eyes out. It wasn’t the flu – or the double drops of flu medicine – it was the sheer perfection of it all. It wasn’t even fun (Thom chastised the audience for dancing too wildly) and I was sitting down. It was just beautiful and all we talked about for weeks (fun indeed for our friends).

Listening again, it’s with ‘Paranoid Android’ that the hairs on the arm really are raised to maximum height. Everything is perfect, it’s synchronicity in song, it’s synchronicity within a band and it was absolutely perfect for the time and yet timeless. Superlatives just don’t come close. I feel like Murray Walker grappling for praise in a frenzy of hero worship, while still trying to do my job.

‘Subterranean Homesick Alien’, with its obvious Dylan reference, is the most “trad Radiohead” track on the album. Not out of place when slipped in amongst The Bends’ fare. Nearly two minutes in Yorke is able to flex his considerable vocal muscle a little, but for all the promise of the ace name, SHA (as all the hippest kids call it) isn’t lighting any fires by comparison with its album colleagues.

Of course ‘Exit Music (For A Film)’ inspired by the original star crossed lovers (Romeo and Juliet, not Liza and David, you fool) is a study in heart-pounding, romance-bleeding beauty. Pleading mounts with every note and every line sings to the heart of, well, pretty much anyone who isn’t dead. A spine shaking bassline kicks in three minutes into the track and Thom’s bottomless pit of breath forces its way through you, violating your senses in the most glorious meltdown of tears and hope.

What are you doing to me, Radiohead?!

‘Let Down’ follows from ‘Exit Music’… and takes you skiing straight back down the slope you’ve just surmounted. Orchestral and melancholy, one part Spiritualized, one part prog and a whole lotta indefinableness to boot.

And then of course ‘Karma Police’. I am so glad I wasn’t in the business of reviewing when this was released as a single. How do you describe such a deadpan yet blistering indictment of the human condition? I can’t. I can’t do it. Managing to use the word Karma in a title and yet not come across spoilt and bratty (á la Lennon) or kitsch and shit (á la Culture Club) is a fine skill indeed. Menacing and cute both with a soul-enriching surge for the finishing flag.

‘Fitter Happier’. Hmn. The first time I heard this of course I thought it was fantastic, and not just because it sounded like Stephen Hawkings was saying something I understood for the first time. Damning and yet now, a bit clunky. Yes, it has its place and it’s made its point but listening now I realise that for more or less seven years it has been skipped in order to get back to the good stuff, the songs proper.

The death rattle spaghetti western opening of ‘Electioneering’ sets out its stall with a gruff-voiced Thom spitting lyrics of genuine rocktastic enthusiasm. Enthusiasm? Radiohead? It’s okay, it’s a return to gloom and quagmire immediately with ‘Climbing The Walls’.

Then when you’re still reeling from the effects of your heart beating at 3bpm, the nursery mobile chimes of ’No Surprises’ kicks in. Disenchantment is set to a beautiful, sweet and climbing score and, I think I can speak quite confidently here, vocalises the fears of pretty much every one under 30. Will this be me?

Don’t let up on us eh? Nothing feels better than a swift kick to the emotions when you’re already flatlining on the floor of your own mood. ‘Lucky’ really is a timeless track. Imagine you need to soundtrack a synopsis of the newsworthy disasters of 2004, it would fit right? 2003? yep, 2002? yep, 2001? yep… you get the idea. Soaring and full of movement, not shying away from the essence of Radiohead as a Guitar Band still but pushing the boundaries of that definition.

But to finish things off we’re magnanimously pulled back to partay mode with ‘The Tourist’, a light hearted homage to Y Viva Espana. Yeah, right, not on Radiohead’s watch…

OK Computer still stands as the epitome of what a band could do, reinventing the rock wheel by refusing to stop that wheel turning, by taking on board the best of technology, the excitement of new sounds (without turning it into Bowie’s Earthling) and by absolutely refusing to be bloody happy in the wake of phenomenal success. A signature album, a career-defining work and as close to a masterpiece as my 17-year old brain could have hoped to chance upon.

Pulp – His ‘N’ Hers

Does anyone else remember a TV show called Naked City? I’m sure it’s not just something I dreamt (unlike the romantic tryst between myself and Eddie the Eagle Edwards that scarred me for a while but was definitely not real). Well it was on Naked City that I first saw Eddie (Izzard not The Eagle) AND Babies by Pulp. Life-affirming stuff indeed.

His ‘N’ Hers is bristling with confusion, teenage assignations, pervery, hopes, dreams, mistakes and tiny, tiny but overwhelming sadnesses. Catchy as a rash pop gems such as Babies, Lip Gloss, Do You Remember The First Time? rub up along danker sexual soirées from Acrylic Afternoons and She’s A Lady. Finger pointing and lofty superiority are executed deftly within that millimetre turning circle between arrogance and worthiness on Joyriders.

At times Jarvis is singing the sounds of sex, at times the sounds of brutal pity. Quotable and infinitely singalongable His ‘N’ Hers fills a whole in any lonesome night, reassures that while, yeah, your weirdest thoughts might not be strictly normal, they can at least be exciting.

Of course it was with the era-defining Different Class that Pulp cemented themselves in the intelligent, estate dwelling, commentating-and-shaping troubadour role, but like Bowie’s Hunky Dory sometimes the journey to the pinnacle is as exciting to watch as the main event itself.

Bee Gees – Number Ones

Okay, I’m in a confessional mood (look out). Sometimes I pretend I haven’t heard the phone when really (tee hee hee) I have. Not bad enough? Oh, okay. Once I kicked the stilt of a stiltwalker. No?! Okay, okay… Once, and I still don’t know what possessed me, I shaved all the hair off my arms. No?! I used to fancy Jools Holland. I bought some MC Hammer trousers and wanted to buy a shell suit. I don’t really like the taste of vodka but I do like snowballs. I smoke menthols like Dot Cotton… okay, okay – I like the Bee Gees!

Come on, you know the Bee Gees are where it’s at. They wrote at a furious rate, embracing so many new sounds, pioneering discopop, staying tight as a family unit and stropping like ladies on live TV. Their crimes? Teeth, hair and choirboy voices. Look beyond the funny, look beyond the Kenny Everett sketches and you’re looking at grand masters of pop.

‘I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You’, the pleading simplicity, yes, the voices are whiny but my god, surely this song sums up that one particular lovestruck-and-desperate feeling better than any? ‘Tragedy’: it’s no coincidence that the marketing machine churned out a Steps cover… it’s a perfect pop song. It transcends time and it scurries under ‘the cool’. It’s just a great song.

To my little goodtime gal mind, the best Bee Gees work came from the ‘Night Fever’/'Stayin’ Alive’ days. And here ‘Night Fever’, ‘Stayin’ Alive’, ‘More Than A Woman,’ ‘J J J Jive Talkin’’, ‘You Should Be Dancing’… are little nuggets of disco gold.

Twenty number ones here, each selling thousands and thousands of copies the world over. And if we just ignore the recent American election for a blissful moment: that many people surely can’t be wrong?