LISTENING TO - Trying Times by James Blake

James Blake's seventh album, marks a significant shift on many levels for him. Two years ago he took a major gamble, left his record label, dropped his agent, and launched himself as an independent artist with his own label. On a practical level he was taking full charge of the direction of his career and how its marketed. Enjoying having a much more direct connection with his fan base. He distrusted the widely used streaming model of record companies, that wasn't demonstrably lucrative for the artist, nor an effective way of promoting and selling your work, as it has often being made out to be. So, the last two years since Playing Robots Into Heaven have proved to be a steep learning curve. But out the other end of all this comes Trying Times, which is probably James Blake's most musically and thematically coherent album, he has made so far.

Trying Times, is on the surface a simple sequence of love songs, often distant and imaginary, fracturing or malformed by modern troubles in maintaining any sort of loving relationship. But, like the song The Death of Love, it is also a comment on this particular moment in our culture, where our tech mediated lives are funneled into increasingly divisive and hate filled dead ends. Where we find tolerating differences, any lack of convention, or merely an alternative opinion, increasingly tricky territory. 

The soundscape on Trying Times is recognisably James Blake's, but it is more organically sparse and sparing in its arrangements, with the keyboard and Blake's voice often clearly placed right up front and unfiltered, than previously. He is less inclined to throw everything bar the kitchen sink at a track, and if all else fails drown it in echo, of voice modulation. Quite often, he starts from a melodic line borrowed from another person's music, whether it's a choral line from Cohen or a 50's doo wop, it sets the scene for the song that is to follow. The idyllic opening of I Had A Dream She Took My Hand, demonstrates the fantasy world that this lilting waltz time song exists within. 

The album opens with Walk Out Music, with a vocal exchange between two voices chiming in with 'Your no good, to anyone...anyone...to anyone....dead, dead, dead ' Blake uses this device of two voices intertwining and sharing a sentence to manifest an internalised dialogue. Which here drops in other words as reminders, that also there's 'trust' and 'opportunity' present as you walk out into a new world. It's an immaculately simple song about reticence and embracing whatever is currently present. And in the songs which follow :- The Death of Love - I had a dream she took my hand  and Trying Times, we find him laying out some of the best songs of the album.

The song Trying Times is undoubtedly the pivotal heart of this album, arriving with 'You know I'm shredded by the time I'm home' and how though ' I'm an eyesore, your a sight for sore eyes'. How our close relationships with others constantly saves us from being swallowed up by our self preoccupations. Our lack of external loves and friendships being a danger to us all. The video has Blake sat beneath a triangle of spinning plates, that one after another fall down during the song. A cogent metaphor for modern life requiring us to do so many things at once, we cannot help but feel we fail to attend properly to all aspects of our life. 

Blake's career has been fortunate in that he has become the much sought after producer and collaborator with a wide range of top level artists, from Rosalia and Beyonce, to here on the track Doesn't Just Happen, with the distinctive authorial tones of Dave - 'If being a man was easy I'd still be me cah I do shit the hard way'  he declares. That he understands 'I know you want to make it to heaven, but it doesn't just happen'. There is a very catchy walking keyboard refrain that ambles cyclically across the background throughout this track, concerning the day to day travails of a man just trying to do good, in the face of adverse conditions. It's one of the many highlights of the album. Others well worth catching, are - The Rest of Your Life  - Through The High Wire. The album winds up with Just A Little Higher. Which concludes the album with one of its most telling lines of lyric- 'Adjust your sights, Cos they're playing us, From a great height'

Like many of Blake's albums, Trying Times has a longish running time of forty seven minutes. Whilst he does alway give you value for money, I do think a judicious cut of a couple of tracks might have been of benefit to the impact of the album, as a whole. A problem when you are your own boss is, who tells you when further editing is required? There is a danger that you are too close to the thing you are creating, and understandably love, to stand back far enough to perceive what it really needs.  

That said, I'd say Trying Times does sustain its length better than some of his previous albums. You are carried along by the all enveloping soundscape he has placed the songs within. There are no overly dramatic lurches away from its languid and often rhapsodic orchestrations. These minor reservations aside, Trying Times gets a big thumbs up from me, I absolutely love it.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

LISTENING TO - Lux by Rosalia

Boy oh, Boy oh, Boy, are we being treated to a beaut of a late late entry to album of the year here. After Anna Von Hausswolff's album Iconoclasts at the end of September, I thought that award had definitively been sewn up. But there we are, just a few days after Iconoclasts was released, came Lux by Rosalia, and the Catalan has stamped in her claim. Lux is shockingly good, on first hearing I was momentarily lost for appreciative words. Opening with the two minutes plus of Sexo, Violencia y Llantas, she lays out her first statement of intent, and it startles you into giving this album your full and present attention. As a career move, plus the quality of the songwriting, this is such a surprise your jaw can only drop.

This is adventurous,passionate, ravishingly beautiful, shocking and gut wrenching, frequently all within one song. And that one song is the lead track released in advance of the album - Berghain, featuring Bjork and Yves Tremor. It hits you strongly from its opening chorus sung in German - 'His fear is my fear, His rage is my rage, His love is my love, His blood is my blood', into which Rosalia's delicate soprano voice enters operatically 'I keep many things in my heart, That is why my heart is so heavy' and later 'I know very well what I am, Tenderness for coffee' Then comes an interlude and Bjork's  recognisable manner of phrasing intoning the line 'the only way to save us is through divine inter -vention'. 

It is clear throughout Berghain ( which means mountain grove in German, and is also a secretive underground Berlin Nightclub ) that this song is not always talking about mundane ordinary love. In fact the song contrasts the debasement of plain love in comparison to surrendering to the uplifting liberating quality of saintly love. Ending with a rare male voice on this album making a startling and unsettlingly repeated declaration - ' I'm going to fuck you til you love me'   I mean, this is simultaneously as invigorating as a cold shower and a deeply unnerving slap. And this song becomes an achoring talisman for the style and tone of the rest of the album. Beautifully written and sung songs about the testing steady nature of divine love set against the tawdry erratic and sometimes tragic nature of its terrestrial version. 

Rosalia took two years off in order to research female saints and sages, fine tune her songwriting, and learn how to write in a baroque musical style. Much has been made in the publicity of the thirteen different languages she sings in on this album. All this intense creative effort might end up feeling more than a tad pretentious for a modern popular songwriter, if it wasn't pulled off with such a committed and totally captivating flourish. She really does know what she is trying to convey here, and brings to it a heft and profundity you really do not find very often in music. It is hard to not resort to hyperbole over the quality of what you are hearing here. Repeated listens, do however, only reveal still more of its spiritual depths and emotional range, the bursting romanticism at its core. At some point words themselves fail you, they start to feel increasingly inadequate representatives for feeling.

Whatever Rosalia touches she does make entirely her own. Whether that is classical orchestration, the operatic control, flashbacks to her flamenco past, eruptions of contemporary electro beats, all of these things really shouldn't meld so well on a modern pop album, but they do here, because she is right, left and centre holding it together. One of the best examples is Reliquia. A ravishingly simple song about sacrifice and loss. It begins listing a litany of losses, but the music has a joyful feel as if its casting aside and letting go of the body shamed stigmata of modern life and love. 

I lost my hands in Jerez and my eyes in Rome
I grew up and learned audacity around there in Barcelona
I lost my tongue in Paris, my time in LA
My heels in Milan, my smile in the UK

But my heart has never been mine, I give it away
Take a piece of me, keep it for when I'm gone
I'll be your relic

But after ending with

Eternal, agitated sea, the eternal song
Has neither exit, nor my forgiveness

then, wow, it bursts into this concluding gloriously exstatic eruption of drums and sharply edited electro beats. 

There are far too many noteworthy songs on this album, to mention them all. My current most beloved one is Mio Christo Piange Diamanti ( My Christ Cries Diamonds ). Rosalia says this is the nearest thing she has written to an operatic aria, and it certainly has the suggestive feel of one. Sung in Italian, she shows off the complete expressive register of her voice, the end result is impressive. Her voice, though not trained in the manner of a professional opera singer, has a natural vocal dexterity and often an earthy expressive ease, an intimate quality in the smallest husky vocal inflection. Plus a firm directness and honesty with which she convinces you that whatever it is, this is a vocal performance worth listening to. Ending on one crystal clear top note. I can't recommend this album highly enough.

Bellissimo, Bellissimo, Bellissimo

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

LISTENING TO - Iconoclasts by Anna Von Hausswolff

 

'I came to take you back. To where you came from. But that's not what you want.'*

On 2018's album Dead Magic, Anna Von Hausswolff took one approach towards unhinging her vocal expression to quite an extreme degree, one where there was perhaps no point in pushing further at that particular doorway. Her response two years later, on All Thoughts Fly was to return to the simplicity of her own organ playing. Denuded of any need to vocalise, it was a series of dynamic instrumental pieces that conjured a sonically rich range of imaginative atmospheres. And so, after a five year hiatus, we now have, without much trumpeting fanfare, this new album Iconoclasts. Where has her music progressed to arrive at, in the meantime?

Well this sixth album is certainly bold as brass with confidence. Most of all this is truly BIG music. Its not lacking in extraordinary ambition. Iconoclasts is over an hour and a quarter in length, which might sound daunting or that someone's ego needed its feathers trimmed. But once you start listening time accommodates you and you become part of what feels like one huge musical piece with different intervals and tones touched upon. And it is full on right from the start. Once you are launched on Iconoclasts, its hard to put down and walk away, or cherry pick your way through your favourite tracks. Its just not that sort of album. sit down and listen to the whole thing in one sitting, and if you can't do that then go do something else for a while. This warrants your whole attention. This is not remotely suitable to be played in the background.

Whilst her earlier work was stuffed with sombre drone work and was certainly dramatically gothic in tone, it was never really conventionally goth. And Von Hausswolff never courts that association, nor presents herself as such. She has quite a quietly understated outward appearance, like a primary school supply teacher. Iconoclasts begins as it means to carry on. The Beast contains a distinctive motif from avant garde saxophonist Otis Sandsjo that resurfaces fully fleshed out later on, in Struggle with the Beast. Sandsjo's playing is splashed judiciously all over this album, providing all sorts of unusual colourations and angular tones. His free flowing style reminding me of the late Evan Parker. 

This album has been loosely framed as her 'pop' album, which I would say is only so in spirit. There are  magnificently ravishing tunes and pounding drumwork galore, but there is also an experimental edge, a willingness to go completely musically off piste if necessary.  And what pop album has twelve tracks, an hour and a quarter running time, only two tracks which are under three minutes fifty and they are instrumentals, five tracks are over seven minutes long, and the title track Iconoclasts luxuriating in its eleven minutes fifteen seconds? It possesses a pop sensibility for sure, with an accessibility most notably on the duet with Ethel Cain -Aging Young Woman. If one were looking for something evidently mainstream and radio friendly.

However, if you are looking for massive slabs of sound, and emotions to match, here it all is. It's interesting that Florence & the Machine has a new album out the same day as this. In many ways they share a similar trajectory and liking for the grand emotional statement. Whilst Florence tends towards shrill bombast when she over reaches, Anna can have a greater impact as a result of taking it down a peg or two. Its hard to pick out favourite tracks from Iconoclasts, so I've made a selection that I thought best represented its range. This album is a huge achievement, and it has assumed the top of my best of 2025 already. Nothing else is going to quite match this, because this is magnificent.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

MY MOST LOVED ALBUMS - In Search of Space by Hawkwind - 1971

By the time this album was released in 1971 I was already an avid Science Fiction fan. I'd begun reading the classic post war authors Asimov, Clarke, Delaney. I'd also read loads of Micheal Moorcock, an enthusiast for his fantasy novels like Stormbringer and the Eternal Champion series. I don't think Moorcock's involvement in the band drew me towards Hawkwind. There was a sort of happy synchronicity along the way. This became inevitable when Silver Machine became a huge hit in 1972. I officially joined the ranks of becoming a Hawkwind fan, and had an embroidered Hawkwind badge sewn onto my jean bomber jacket.

Hawkwind had been going since 1969 and had built up a substantial following on the hippy festival circuit. They literally performed anywhere to anyone who would have them. Initially a ramshackle and invariably spontaneous gathering of scruffy haired individuals, who would improvise together. They gradually turned into a regular tighter band, with its own specific vision for itself. Dave Brock and Nick Turner were the central driving force in that, even though they clashed and fell out an awful lot. Ever the hippy's, whether they should cash in on Silver Machine's success, became just one of many divisive issues, besides petty jealousies. 

In Search of Space was recorded by the quintessential lineup that included Lemmy, the poet Robert Calvert and dancer Stacia. It was to be followed later, fueled on music business optimism alone, by a two disc live album Space Ritual, where ideas that had only seemed a provisional sketch on In Search of Space, through misguided ambition became seriously over-puffed profundity. In the end their was a substantial rift in the band, members left, including Lemmy. but the band reformed itself. As it has continued to do so, reformulating itself countless times over the decades. almost as if Hawkwind as an entity can never be allowed to die.

The relative containment of its vision on In Search of Space makes it cohesively hold together better. Though it still has moments where it veers into 'clumsily handled profundity'. Its their reputation for being shambolic and rift prone, that leads to them being generally underestimated as musical innovators in their heyday, and since. They could fit quite neatly into the sort of improvised stream of consciousness collective jams of the late hippy era. But at that time what they were attempting felt distinctly new, they were powering up an endlessly pounding warp drive. 

In Germany, avant guard wave of bands, such as Neu, were developing the constant 'motorik' beat that was to almost become standard across the emerging genre. Amongst these pioneering experimental German bands was Amon Duul 2, who are perhaps Hawkwind's nearest musical continental cousin. Emerging out of an 'anyone who turns up can play' collective, with a similar penchant for long running trips of spacey improvisations. Its no big stretch of the imagination to see that what Hawkwind were doing here in the UK was not dissimilar. For sure they lacked the controlled purity of some of them. Being British, Hawkwind evolved, in the same way you untangle a muddle of yarn -in a chaotic frustrated manner. Nevertheless they honed their signature playing style into this formidable engine of endlessly forward moving propulsion. Albeit with spacey screeches, bleeps and vast ascending notes to the stars, exploding and echoing all around it.

To a young naive science fiction buff, into progressive rock, Hawkwind were a beautifully wrapped gift to my nascent imagination. Over puffed profundity is to a teenage boys ears high minded ideology. I listen to this music now with older, perhaps differently attuned ears. And what I hear today is a band experimenting with how making slight adjustments in emphasis changed the whole tone and effect, whilst the constantly pounding drums, the thrash 'n crash of groaning guitar riffs, went on and on, as though on eternal over drive. Phasing in chanting and moaning background voices, flutes and saxophones woven in then out of its musical fabric. The opening track of the album, You Shouldn't Do That, at fifteen minutes plus long, is an excellent demonstration of this technique. 

Hawkwind are often considered a bit of a one trick pony, in that once discovered and mastered, this propulsive rhythm is all they ever seemed to do. Their execution of it was undoubtedly well polished. Give them the time and space, they could fluidly take you anywhere in the cosmos on the back of their musical constellation. One long raw driving grunge infused riff at a time. I love it still, every clunky imperfection and poorly conceived ideas 'n' all.

LISTENING TO - Tarkus - Emerson Lake & Palmer

The mega groups of early seventies 'progressive rock' were a development within what was referred to at the time, with some level of self conceit, as 'serious' rock music. This pretense and delineation was to distinguish it from the supposedly 'un-serious' music that was everything else. 

This trend had its origins in the mid 1960's,when both The Beatles and Rolling Stones changed from being simply a pop band, and wanted to be taken seriously as artists. Giving birth to the first examples of the 'concept' album. But the main harbinger of rocks future direction towards 'progressive' music was Pink Floyd. Huge technical talent, with range and sophistication, plus lots of  flamboyant live shows and musicianship. Once we entered the seventies, a larger than life staging and dressing up directly borrowed from glam rock, became de rigueur. Soon to be followed by the extravagant theatrical staging of Yes, Genesis and Emerson Lake and Palmer.

Emerson Lake & Palmer were one of the first so called 'super groups' composed of already famous musicians from other bands - here it was The Nice, King Crimson and Atomic Rooster, respectively. They filled out huge stadiums with their epic, often portentous and vast conceptual music pieces, with equally ostentatious showmanship to match. The sort of thing punk would quite rightly put two fingers up to, and Spinal Tap would ridicule, for its self indulgence and puffed up self importance. After punk, these guys just kept their heads down, and quietly continued playing sold out concerts to their loyal die-hard fan base in Japan. However, so successfully were these 'progressive' bands lambasted for their cultural elitism and pompous musical conceits, there has not been any significant renewed interest in exhuming this era from its purdah, for nigh on fifty years.. 

One of the prime candidates of my late seventies punk inspired purge of progressive rock from my vinyl collection, was the album Tarkus, by Emerson Lake & Palmer. I was never at the time much of a devoted fan. But recently for some reason. lets put it down to curious nostalgia, I listened again to the opening twenty minute song suite of Tarkus. I was more than pleasantly taken aback by just how good it was.And its become a bit of an aural obsession in recent weeks, barely a day goes by without my playing it.

Lyrically, Tarkus might be not something you'd want to pay too much attention to, lest you find yourself assaulted by its pseudo-philosophy and the mythic nobility of its leaden sentiments. Musically, however, it still demonstrates huge ambition. An original and often funk-jazz inflected fusion with both classical and hard rock musical tropes. It possesses a really compulsive drive and undoubted feeling for magnificence and grandeur. Interspersed with quieter simple interludes of almost hymn like melody, beautifully rendered by Greg Lake's steady and well modulated vocals.

Progressive Rock will always be remembered as the natural home for the electronic organ, a home it has never found since. And it was  Keith Emerson, this handsome man in his mid thirties, often bare chested, testosterone fueled, striking the pose of a rock god, who made it sexy. His versatility on the keyboard, often on multiples of keyboards, dwarfed beneath the vast cliff wall of wires and jack plugs of a seventies synthesiser, was always unquestionably the real star of the show. And he was undoubtedly a technically astounding player, with daring adventurousness, but one who could also pack a substantial emotional punch. 

Now Emerson Lake and Palmer did become musically inflated to the point of obese excess, and certainly their importance was over rated, even by themselves, at the time. But I'd say Tarkus is still well worth twenty minutes of anyone's evening listening. 

LISTENING TO - Mad! by Sparks

Those regular readers of my blog will know I'm a lifelong fan of Sparks. Sparks over the last two decades have been on a pretty consistent run of excellent and innovative albums since Lil' Beethoven in 2002. One would expect that at least there'd be the occasional duffer. So I approached this their 28th album with a certain amount of trepidation. Well, some of Mad! feels a bit substandard, but not all of it,. For me it comes down to the variable quality of the song writing. With not enough of the ironic wit and pizzazz from Ron on show. The worst tracks on this album are strangely when they conform too closely to their own cliches. 

Their album before this The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte from 2023, was such a consistently good album, with hardly a bad track on it. So one wonders what creative shift they were aiming for here and slightly missed.

Some of Mad! demonstrates how one songwriters strengths can easily slip into being their most glaring faults. Ron Mael has always had the ability to turn the simplest line of lyric into an urgent musical exploration of a songs theme, by the often manic use of repetition. This goes back, at least as far as My Baby's Taking Me Home  off Lil Beethoven. He uses this minimalist technique to great effect on what turns out to be Mad!'s best and opening track - Do Things My Own Way - and later on on the delightful  A Long Red Light.. But then it is used to some degree on almost every track here. So you get Drowned In A Sea Of Tears, or Jan Sport Backpack which just end up being really irritating. A person wearing a Jan Sport Backpack keeps walking away, is lyrically and musically dull as ditch water. Bereft of any sense of irony or the tongue in cheek witticisms that might elevate this into something truly special. On previous albums, just listen to Lawnmower or Escalator to see at their best what they can do with an equally simple scenario. Jan Sport Backpack, is severely lacking in that sort of quality.

They appear to have, temporarily we hope, lost their usual firm grasp and astute ear for social and cultural phenomena to wittily lampoon. Its also the slim beer of its musical innovation too. This album feels, in comparison to their recent oeuvre, a tad complacent. So much of the art pop arena that they've single-handedly carved out for themselves, has thrived on the interplay between the gently acerbic nature of their lyrics and the musical risks that they've been prepared to take. They appear to have chosen to pare back the degree of adventurousness. At times it just ends up producing a blandly anodine song like - Lord Have Mercy. This has all the annoying 'wave your hands in the air' quality's of a Cliff Richard Christmas No 1. And no, this is not written ironically!

Running Up A Tab At The Hotel For The Fab is a great song title. I suspect Ron came up with that title first and then had to write around it. It ought to be a wonderful satirical send up of celebrity culture. Though undoubtedly a catchy song, it relies yet again on a lot of repetition of that title over a Dwayne Eddy style guitar riff.  Once upon a time this would have been a tighter, much more sharply written song lyrically. It gets by purely on the mood it conjures up, which is still great with a capital G. 

Having said all that, Mad! has a lot about it that is enjoyable. The song My Devotion does literally start off sounding like the most twee sentimental song possible, full of the fresh naivety of first love that you can imagine, its all -

My devotion to you is about all that I do
Got your name written on my shoe
And I'm thinkin' of gettin' a tattoo

But then halfway through Russell sings counter point over the main song with a vocal line that tells you how they feel now -

Through all the years  Rent in arrears
You never cared  Can't help but stare
You've never changed  Hair rearranged
That, though, is all  Time seemed to stall

Now that is the sort of unexpected twist in the tail you do expect of Sparks.

A Little Bit Of Light Banter is one great romp of a song. Given a musical style that Ron Mael is very fond of returning to- the vaudeville song. This is one of those routines with a long established relationship he easily settles into. Sparks have been coming up with this type of song since Reinforcements on the album Propaganda. Idiosyncratic certainly, but these days its hardly breaking new boundaries. Nonetheless this an infectious simple hearted show tune that I'm sure will be very popular live.

Just a little bit of light banter and then we say goodnight

Just a little bit of light banter and the we turn off the light

Each days a day of sorrow, we each bemoan our plight

But night is a different story and oh it feels oh so right

Its a really really deep connection, we do it every night

With a little bit of light banter, and then we turn off the light.

I find it significant that the songs they chose not to pre-release before the whole album was available, are in fact the more interesting tracks musically. 

In Daylight - is one beautifully sparse song, a highlight of the album

A Long Red Light - spookily discordant strings and all, l'm completely in love with this track.

Hit Me Baby - sung over a strongly propulsive opening stick rhythm, this is a terrifically well constructed track, that catches you off guard every time with yet another new development. 

I -405 Rules - all semi-operatic theatrically dramatic strings about to go completely off kilter any moment. Yeah, its fun. But its essentially Dick Around revisited. As if you needed to hear it twice, with less effect.. 

Don't Dog It - It's a crazy ride of a tune, couldn't tell you what its about really. 

So Mad! feels a tad disappointing, often infuriatingly inconsistent, some truly great stuff, alongside the really substandard. Let down occasionally by not just minimalist lyric writing, but poor song craft from Ron Mael. Its almost as though he exhumed these rejected songs from his bottom draw, accepting the challenge to make something of them despite their poor quality.

CARROT REVIEW - 4/8

PS. On further reflection I feel I am being quite unfair here, in overstating the problems with this album. I think I'm holding them to a standard that its actually quite hard for any band, let alone one on its 28th album, to meet. But, that is also a consequence of the cross they've made for themselves to bare.  So maybe I ought to be more forgiving.

LISTENING TO - Catch These Fists by Wet Leg

I, like many, listened with great glee to the addictive ironic mischief of Wet Leg's big hit Chaise Longue. It went internationally viral, though it bore all the hallmarks of the novelty one hit wonder. Follow that if you can. And the album which did follow was a fine offering, but little could match the magic trick of that one hit song.

Lyrically Chaise Longue was quietly subversive and pokey, and that appears to be one of Wet Leg's enduring and distinctive features. They have moved on considerably and are much more knowing about what their strengths and band identity are. A second album Moisturiser is due shortly. On the first track released Catch These Fists, they appear to be channeling the urban New York swagger of the Yeah Yeah Yeah's through the rustic vibes of the Isle of Wight. To great effect I must add. This hits hard and has got real ball breaking potential.

Once they ran along roads dressed in Laura Ashley dresses and straw hats. Now they run along roads dressed in flannel underwear embroidered with words like Holy Spirit on the crotch. And the tongue in cheek insouciance has got a whole deal more stroppy. Though they continue to have an idiosyncratic way with a catchy guitar lick. Catch These Fists has a beautifully off kilter riff that tumbles around behind the song propelling it unstably onward. Whilst Rhian Teasdale deadpan half talks the lyrics.

Can you catch a medicine ball?
Can you catch yourself when you fall?
You should be careful, do you catch my drift?
'Cause what I really want to know is can you catch these fists?

Man down
Level up!
I know all too well just what you're like
I don't want your love, I just wanna fight

We're on our way to the club
Stupid is, stupid does
Limousine, racking up
Ketamine, giddy up

Man down
Level up!
I know all too well just what you're like
I don't want your love, I just wanna fight

He don't get puss, he get the boot
I saw him sipping on dark fruit
This always happens late at night
Some guy comes up, says I'm his type
I just threw up in my mouth
When he just tried to ask me out
Yeah, don't approach me
I just wanna dance with my friends

Man down
Level up!
I know all too well just what you're like
I don't want your love, I just wanna fight
I know all too well just what you're like

I don't want your love, I just wanna fight

Fight, fight, fight, fight
Fight, fight
Man down

Written by Wet Leg

SCREEN SHOT - Queer

Queer the novella was William S.Burroughs second book, carrying the same frank realism that his debut Junkie had featured, but this time focusing on the expat American gay scene in New Mexico. Though written in 1952 his publisher at the time refused to publish it, because of the explicit homosexuality. It was finally published in 1985 when Burroughs had now reached literary legend status. Junkie and Queer are impossible to not see as semi-autobiographical in most of their scenarios. Written before Burrough's began his famous experimental cut up technique, Queer, the book, lays out the territory of his future trademark the laconic self lacerating mode of writing, sending up how lost an American exiled abroad can be. 

William Lee (Daniel Craig) is living in Mexico City, frequenting the many gay bars, and having casual unsatisfactory sex when he can get it. The city is full of draft dodgers, ex GI's and gay men escaping persecution or prosecution. For this one brief moment this district has established its own vibrant queer culture, that many men bath in and relax, .Lee is a gauchely awkward individual and lacks confidence in how to operate in this milieu. He views Eugene (Drew Starkey) from afar and fantasises about a relationship with him. Eugene himself is confusing to read, giving off mixed signals.. But slowly a relationship of sorts does evolve. Lee becomes totally besotted with Eugene, even though he remains unsure what Eugene's true feelings for him actually are.

The film is a desperately sad story of a man who wants a depth of human understanding and sharing of experience that he will never ever find. He hopes to discover it through a relationship with Eugene, and later through taking the hallucinogenic 'yage' brewed by Dr Cotter (a totally unrecognisable scene stealing Lesley Manville)  The first half of the film is bathed in the soft tones of yellow night lights. Becoming a fecund green as we enter the darkened jungle, the surreal nature of its drug induced dream scenes brilliantly realised. By Lee's return to Mexico City much later, the gay district has changed into cooler fresher blues, its literally cleaned up its act. 

This is Daniel Craig's film from start to finish, its the best performance I've ever seen him give, garnering award nominations along the way. Starkey is suitably enigmatic eye candy. There are cameo appearances by Jason Swartzman as Joe Guidry, an Alan Ginsberg type, and Drew Droege plays John Dume the classic arch eyebrowed aging gay man who you'll find in a gay bar anywhere, in any time period.

Luca Guadagnino's film of Queer, with a script by Justin Kuritzkes melds its rough edged narrative source with Guadagnino's altogether more polished and smoothly mannered film stylisation. Some reviewers have not liked this, and found its two and a quarter hour length an indulgence in which the characters lost all direction. I did not find that to be at all a true representation in my experience. The use of music often three decades later than its period setting, was actually utilised to beautifully counterpoint themes and moods. All adding to the overwhelming sense of loveless ennui inhabiting an unrequited life.   

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

LISTENING TO - Do Things My Own Way by Sparks

 

A new Sparks album Mad! is a few months away, with album cover and date of release not yet publicised. However, we will be teased by a slow dropping of tracks over those months, of which Do Things My Own Way is undoubtedly only the first. And what a treat it is. 

Its become a staple of recent Sparks albums that a simple lyric pattern through repetition and intervals of clever variation is delightfully strung out to the length of three minutes plus. Do Things My Own Way is something of a masterpiece in this respect. Great use of clangy guitar breaks, adding to the verbal staccato rhythm that drives this track along. The title Do Things My Own Way could easily be read as Sparks manifesto, because this is exactly what they always have done.  But I wouldn't rule out there being a satirical poke at individualism and maybe even the Trumpian era we are in. It bodes well for the album, whenever that finally reveals itself.  

Gotta run
Gotta fly
Gonna do things my own way

Fall behind
Bye bye bye
Gonna do things my own way

Feelin' right
Feelin' tight
Gonna do things my own way

Got the fuel
Broke the rules
Gonna do things my own way

Snooty twits
Havin' fits
Gonna do things my own way

They wanna lunch
Don't wanna lunch
Gonna do things my own way

Lookin' good
Understood
Gonna do things my own way

Out the way
Out the way
Gonna do things my own way

Feelin' cool
Feelin' schooled
Gonna do things my own way

I'm Howard Hughes
In Jordan twos
Gonna do things my own way

Do things my own way
Do things my own way
Do things my own way
Do things my own way

Not a faze
All my days
Gonna do things my own way

Not a fad
Is that so bad
Gonna do things my own way

Unabashed
Totin' cash
Gonna do things my own way

Unaligned
Simply fine
Gonna do things my own way

Do things, gotta run
Do things, gotta go
Do things, gotta stay
Do things, gotta play
Do things, gotta run
Do things, gotta go
Do things, gotta stay
Do things, gotta play

Saw the Pope
Told him, 'nope'
Gonna do things my own way

My guru
Told him too
Gonna do things my own way

My advice
No advice
Gonna do things my own way

Roll the dice
Roll the dice
Gonna do things my own way

Anywhere
Anytime
Gonna do things my own way

I don't care
I don't care
Gonna do things my own way

Gonna do things my own way
Gonna do things my own way
Gonna do things my own way
Gonna do things my own way

Lyrics by Ron & Russell Mael

RECORD REVIEW - Endless Rain by One True Pairing

Tom Fleming, was once a co-vocalist with Wild Beasts for several years. This is his second solo album under the moniker of One True Pairing. On this he has reconnected with the sonic adventurousness  and subject matter that made his former band such a captivating joy.

Post the demise of the Wild Beasts, Fleming has had to face a few personal demons. His very fine first album garnered a few critical plaudits, but didn't get much airplay nor wider attention. The crisis of confidence in himself as a musician that followed threatened to end his solo career before it had even begun. Thankfully he's stuck it out.

This experience has fed into songs on this album, which have a strong confessional edge to them. It was a good move on his record companies part to team him up with John 'Spud' Murphy. The music production auteur of the moment. Standout tracks of this album have a distinctive fizz in their soundscape as a result.  

As Fast As I Can Go, is hard to beat as an album opener. The kinetic movement powering this song along, is somewhere between a horse drawn carriage and a motorway. It's quickly turned into my favourite track of the year. Along with Doubt, Tunnelling, Endless Rain and Prince of Darkness it possess an expansive, cinematic quality of painting a mood or picture. Into which Fleming's rich resonant vocals flicker. On the other hand tracks like Landlords Death, Be Strong, Mid Life Crisis can somehow feel too heavily weighted down by the lumpen earnestness of their subject matter. Whilst Frozen Food Centre stands alone as one beaut of a song, about a mother trapped in straightened circumstances. The stronger semi-autobiographical nature of it making this all the more deeply affecting.

Fleming is not your typical singer songwriter, which must make his record label unsure how best to promote him. There are the soul bearing songs, but there's also the desire to musically push beyond the starkness of just his beautiful voice and a guitar standing alone. There are a broad range of production approaches on show here, of the many ways to embellish a song. Perhaps too many. If I were to have any criticism of the album, it's that it falls short of creating a completely cohesive overall soundscape. Instead it eclectically and energetically dashes all over the territory available, which does give it its own enervating, if slightly uneven, quality. As it stands three quarters of this album remains an absolute corker.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

LISTENING TO - No Title as of 13th February 2024 28,340 Dead by Godspeed You Black Emperor

Of the many bountiful things the Pandemic lockdown brought to my attention was the grandstanding opus of Godspeed You Black Emperor. A band that has become the epitome of 'post rock' whether they approved of that lazy catagorisation of them or not. 

What has emerged since their foundation in 1994 is a particularly trenchant artistic vision, given a distinct musical form. One that borrows from many genres, but rises above being affiliated to any of them. So it is minimalist- maximalist music, experimental music, avant-garde drone music, a dramatic chamber music of sorts played on rock instruments - guitars, drums and violin. All of these things and more. They eschew lyrics or vocals, just the occasional 'found voice' will surface from the orchestrated cacophony. Instrumental crescendos of repetitive refrains building to portray the zeitgeist of our time. 

That this new album depicts a scorched and dangerous landscape that gives expression to turbulent emotions, captures the conflicted feelings over not just Gaza, but pretty much everything. You can hear the desolation in the brief three minutes plus of Broken Spires at Dead Kapital. The siren like sound in amongst the distant plummeting explosions at the beginning of Babys in a Thundercloud. The suggestive note of hope and optimism in the concluding coda of Grey Rubble-Green Shoots.

The titles they chose for albums or tracks are often filled with expressive ellipsisms of their own creation - hash tags, exclamation marks, semi colons, hyphens and brackets abound. It's a type of concrete poetry reduced to the oblique matter of fact detail. No Title.... is coldly factual, a date and the number dead. A reference to those killed in Israel's war on Gaza at the time of this albums recording. 

You have to read between those words and imagery, examine the music and visuals they use, to elicit what political comment may be being being made.The track listing goes : - Son is a Hole, Son is Vapours - Babys in a Thundercloud - Raindrops Cast in Lead - Broken Spires at Dead Kapital - Pale Spectator Takes Photographs - Grey Rubble Green Shoots. Make of these what you will.

GSYBE compose music undoubtedly driven by a political impetus. Yet the manner in which they express it though lacking in specifics, always speaks to a more universal level of truth. This is not sharpened political polemic hitting you on the head with manifesto propaganda points. Though GSYBE may inform you chapter and verse of their intent via their press release. But press releases alone do not necessarily make your music political. In the end it's about creating a cogent feeling, not a finely expressed deconstruction or analysis.

The power of what they do is then in the strength of mood conjured. Sometimes it is vast and grand and defiant, yet shadowed by this world weary, plaintive lyrical melancholy. No Title.... is suffused with a drone that hovers in and out throughout it, like a malevolent missile constantly altering course in the pursuit of its target. This music charged with anger, pity and a remorseful sadness heavily woven through it.

Their two most recent albums seem to have become more angst laden, an action of remorse. Filled with frustrated ennui as the potential end of humanity looms ever larger in our collective psyche. Where the point at which we could've saved ourselves from disaster, has perhaps passed, and we will have to address whatever the direst consequences turn out to be. Fighting all the while genocidal wars to eradicate an enemy, as though there were nothing else on our mind that really should matter more.

It was after a third listen through that I finally felt able to state an opinion on No Title As of 13th February 2024. 28,340 Dead. This is a bleak, brilliant sequence of music. The more I listen to it the more impressive it becomes. But, Yeah, this is not a happy upbeat album. Hell No.

CARROT REVIEW  - 8/8

RECORD REVIEW - Wild God by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Increasingly, Nick Cave albums, are not music you can just let drift around half listened to in the background. From Skeletal Tree onwards you've had to give them the whole of your attention, or you really would not grasp their quality or mood properly.

So it is with Wild God. On a half attentive run through of the songs they felt to be quite frail things, hung tentatively on a grumbled vocal line and choral verses. But then I thought on reflection, that Ghosteen was rarely about the well written song. The odd melodic line sprang out at you, lyrics caught you as they emotionally hit home. It was an album that had resonance. Similarly Wild God's melodic fragility can be deceptive, these are not insubstantial songs, far from it. There is gravitas, there is a spiritual purpose here.

The themes of grief and loss though no longer placed front and centre, linger in the back of the horizon in the odd lyric reference to a darling son. It's no longer just the deaths of his sons, but also of his friends and peers Shane McGowan and Anita Lane, that he's had to say goodbye to in recent years. Whilst Cave may have found a renewed enthusiasm for life, this has emerged phoenix like out of the embers of grief.

A number of songs begin with Cave intoning expressively over meandering piano phrases that erupt into an uplifting lilting choral refrain over which he vocalises in impassioned and exalted style, reminiscent of evangelical pastors. There is an air of the charismatic preacher bequeathed to Cave, exuberantly uplifting his flock as the climax to a song is reached. Music's power to transcend boundaries clinches a new deal

On the track Conversion he bellows encouragingly over a cacophony of background vocals and rousing music - you're beautiful, you're beautiful, beautiful again stop, stop, stop, stop, your'e beautiful, you're beautiful, you're beautiful - I could imagine this track introducing a fever of healing into an audience. It could be a showstopper. Undoubtedly the finest track of many present here. 

The album opens and closes with tracks that utilise watery imagery - Song of the Lake - As the Waters Cover the Sea. The latter finally letting rip with the full-blooded gospel choir of cliche. As if this album could not reach any higher without them. And The Bad Seeds? Well undoubtedly they contribute, but this appears to be becoming more muted with every successive album. Or was the name all along referring to the ones once inhabiting Cave's imagination.

Nick Cave has never been shy of religious forms, references and imagery. On Wild God it is at its most explicit and undisguised as being faith driven, rather than the fond stylistic affectation of yore. In the past he's been adept at flirting with Bible Belt intonations and expressions and making them serve the narrative he's telling or seeming to be expressions of his love for the divinity of a girlfriend. I think here we are getting closer to what he actually feels and genuinely believes, unfiltered through artifice.

The cloak of the arche storyteller dropped away quite a while ago, and here the practiced poet of darkened souls and murderous shadows, has seemingly, through loss and grief, actually found a kind of transcendent joy. When you look back to that feral singer that was Nick Cave in the drug induced extremity of The Birthday Party, as a transformation, this is quite a startling one.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

LISTENING TO - Drop 7 - by Little Simz

Little Simz has apparently being doing these Drop sessions for a while, hence we have already reached No 7. They are similar to preparatory sketches. Presenting, in rough outline and brief notes of colour, what may or may not, be oracles of work to come in the future. These may feel like slight, even half formed things,  but they possess their own power nonetheless.

Little Simz has rightly had a lot of accolades showered upon her since the magnificence of Sometimes I Might be Introvert. Transcending the overambitious and portentous aspects of it, such as those empowering therapy 'interludes'.  No Thankyou, that followed, sounded very like outakes remaining from the previous albums sessions. Justified though that was by including some great stuff like Gorilla, it felt like she was just marking out in a time of transition.

Drop 7, is seven tracks varying in length from just under a minute in length, to a single worthy three minutes plus. These are all huge steps away from the dramatically orchestrated storytelling of the previous two albums. A central highlight of Introvert, was the track Point & Kill. This fusion of afro beat with her rap styling was an immensely visceral and invigorating listen. 

The best of Drop 7 taps into aspects of that vibe, but takes it somewhere else entirely, tapping into her own version of techo afro futurism. such as on Mood Swings. 

In comparison to the lushness of her recent work, these feel paired back cooled syntheses. Echoes of African drums and wind instruments pop up as rhythmic high hits and embellishments. Her raps, on ocassions, take on a playground skipping chant like quality dancing over the top, as on S.O.S.

What I'm enjoying about Drop 7 is seeing her further blossom as an artist. Success and praise came slowly to her. Now it has arrived, she is confident in herself and her own creative process. She is not ready to sit back and rest on her laurels, however well earned. Judging by Drop 7, there is much more to come. I for one can't wait to see where that takes us next.

CARROT REVIEW  - 7/8

LISTENING TO - Playing Robots Into Heaven by James Blake

Playing Robots Into Heaven is James Blake's sixth solo album. He tenaciously continues to explore a totally unique electronic style, both as a songwriter, composer and producer. Because his work is composed and ever so carefully constructed, it lulls you into a comforting sense of security, of thinking you know where you are. Then the beauty within it, suddenly erupts taking you completely by surprise.

Blake has achieved a reach and influence way beyond his top chart appearances, which are admittedly few. Whilst you could very easily accuse him of becoming his own cliche, he has also a remarkable facility for constant reinvention of his own musical form. Many pieces here start from such an unpromising points of departure, but sort of say 'bear with me' as they then develop a multi layered complexity and depth as they progress.

 

I've not fallen in love with absolutely everything he has released. There are, however, at least one or two tracks per album that have something fresh to communicate. If not on a musical level, then in his capacity to tap quite deeply into these veins of emotion. Because of this, I've never fully given up on him, or his music.

There was a time around his third album The Colour In Anything, where he gave the impression he could not edit or quality check his output anymore. It felt like he released everything. With seventeen sprawling tracks and a 76 plus minutes running time, I've never made it through the whole of The Colour in Anything. I tend to find myself desiring to pull the plug halfway. Which is not to say it hadn't stunning tracks on it liked, but there is a limit to how much gently voiced wallowing any person with better things to do, people to see, can safely digest.

This latest album Playing Robots Into Heaven marks a seemingly abrupt departure, a minor revolution in his approach. Perhaps its more of a rediscovery of rhythmic experimentation that propels the collisions of elements and themes. What distinguishes it is the bravery with which he is prepared to step beyond his comfort zone into the sonic unknown. You might find the results here a bit scatter gun at times, or wildly unfocused. I would say it greatly benefits from its adventurousness and a willingness not to reach for a convention or cliche in an attempt to resolve the dis-junctions he creates. He leaves them, at times, totally raw edged and unresolved if need be.

There are moments on a number of tracks where the sound of it literally seems to be breaking up, or veers off into atonality, dissolution or cacophony. The quality of Blake's voice is rarely given sufficient praise. It has a beautiful soulful cadence and melancholic turn of phrase. Here all sorts of treatments are applied to it to give it a wider tonal range - its altered in pitch, auto tuned, muffled, buried, echoed, double tracked, stretched and dragged out.

An immediate piece to highlight is Loading. Opening with a churchy organ. This track utilises a simple descending refrain -  Wherever I go, I'm only as good as my mind, which is only good if you're mine - conjuring up a feeling of transcendent wonder.- Where are my wings? They're loading. Then ending with a catastrophic descending wail of discordant synthetic, as though its the Icarus of love falling from the sky. Utterly brilliant stuff.

Tell Me has a madness, a hyped up druggy rush to it, driven forward by a bleepy game console type musical refrain. Those of you accustomed to Blake's more languid ballardry will have to reaccustom yourself to this inventive mastery of orchestrated rhythm. It flows on with seemless ingenuity from one track to the next.

 

Then comes He's Been Wonderful. Over a stridently repeated One, Two, Three, a soulful voice sings - He's really been, really, really been. An electro gospel vibe permeating through out. Big Hammer follows with its atonal rap over what sounds like an auto generated twitter of a game loop.

 

I Want You To Know, is an unusually crafted love song where a classic Blake vocal line clashes with a tumbling beat pattern and a delightfully oscillating backing vocal. It's almost as if he's wondered - what if I put this with this, what will come out of it? The album then let's you down gently with a final flourish of ambient like or mood orientated tracks.

This is far and away James Blakes most interesting release for many a year. Stretching the envelope of what he is capable of, without losing hold of his strengths as a songwriter/composer. It attempts -A lot. Goes all over the place, whilst remaining completely part of a cohesive creatively nuanced whole.

CARROT REVIEW  - 7/8

LISTENING TO - Live at Bush Hall by Black Country, New Road

 

When the video of the Bush Hall concerts first appeared on You Tube, I was not the only one wondering what the hell this was. Other than a live album of material written in the immediate aftermath of Issac Woods departure, that is. When he left the band so unexpectedly before their 2nd album and tour were even started, that could have been the end of BCNR. No one would have blamed them if they'd called it a day. What they chose to do was hurriedly write a completely new set of songs and toured those for the rest of the year. The Bush Hall concerts appear to be an end of year shin dig to celebrate simply making it through that mess of a year.

What you are presented with is a band still in the midst of a process of change, throwing up a lot of half integrated ideas to see which ones best resemble a fruitful new direction. Its easy to yearn for the cohesive wired grist that Woods brought which seems ,by comparison, both tighter in musicality and psychology. But the songs here are clearly themed as a breakup and mend album. I do want to be wary about passing judgement prematurely here. Three of the band have taken up the responsibility for songwriting and lead vocalist, Tyler Hyde, Lewis Evans and May Kershaw. Triumvirates generally don't have a good track record for longevity in any sphere, so we will see what transpires with this collectivity.

The songs are variable in quality and ambition. Hyde is by far the most interesting songwriter and vocalist, with a fragile vocal style and song writing structure - Wont Always Love You, Laughing Song, Dancers and Up Song provide the strongest backbone to this album.  Evans contribution, Across The Pond Friend & The Wrong Trousers, are lovely genial songs but they don't quite set the place on fire, yet. The two songs written by Kershaw both have a folky tinge - The Boy - more so. After many listens I'm not sure yet if I even like this as song. It seems too fussy with its chapter headings, and meanders to no effect. Turbines/Pigs, however, is substantially different, it has a gentle waltz like lilt to it that erupts into a typically BCNR thunderous cacophony by the end of its nine minutes plus. It's an extension of that painterly vein in BCNR,'s soundscape of offbeat romanticism  If any of these songs makes it onto any future studio album then Turbine/Pigs, Wont Always Live You and Up Song should.

Ants From Up There was a triumphant high, but it proved to be the end of a particularly distinct sound and era. Any follow up album would almost inevitably struggle in the comparison. Live At Bush Hall whets your expectations for what this new format of BCNR might end up becoming, once they get over the shock and settle into it. There are tracks here that make one hopeful for their continued health and vitality. But overall Live at Bush Hall feels often as insubstantial as a cucumber sandwich. It doesn't as yet fully convince me this is going to work, even though I really want it too.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8