A good year for the roses? Well one or two albums have definitely earned a place (I’ll save these beauties for another post) but the majority have been cast aside. I should’ve been spoilt for choice with the 2012 releases of several artists I like, but fortunately online previewing and entire album streaming saved me parting with hard earned cash and ending up living with sounds that might have nagged or irritated like a hairy canary squatting in my musical psyche.
So, speaking of 2012’s big inescapable hairy things, why not kick off on the list with Robbie Williams and his modestly titled album Take The Crown, well, he would do just that wouldn’t he! I have to say this, but Robbie’s album title is almost as unashamedly modest as 2012’s Ultravox, but please all Midge era Vox’ers, I mean it in fun, at least I hope I do. “Greetings pop pickers”, and did you know that Robbie’s no doubt superb album is available in ‘delux’, and also in ‘roar’ edition (whatever the heck that is). Thank god that Robbie’s finally proved to the gossipers that he’s a real man by having a baby eh? But is his latest opus any good, do you care, do I care, no of course not, I’m joking, we should really be paying attention to another singing canary, tabloid drama queen and the nations sweetheart, it’s she with the distinctive lionesses mane, Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s ms Cheryl Cole. Still joking here of course, but just how many reality television popstars does it take to change a lightbulb? The answer is I dunno, and I don’t care, but our ‘Cheryl’ as she is now known has A Million Lights, and judging by that evocative album title I’m suspecting that the army that manufactures Cheryl has clearly got an illegal poetic infiltrator amongst its ranks, someone who’s been browsing the John Foxx lyric book.
Back to reality, starting with ghostly R&B artist Tom Krell otherwise known as ‘How To Dress Well’. Actually he doesn’t really know how to dress well, I’ve seen him, and he dresses quite badly. His album Total Loss is not a total loss for me by any degree but I felt I’d already been here with his debut album and this new one didn’t necessarily extend for me that interesting first time experience.
Delerium: Music Box Opera, oh boy I should be embarrassed here I know I should, mentioning Delerium, and with their somewhat dubious discography, it’s a bit like revealing I like to wear women’s underwear beneath my clothes, I don’t of course, joking again, at least I hope so Midge. But what, with this album having just one song I really love, ‘The Sky’, along with a couple of decent instrumentals, I know I'll surely crumble and buy the damn thing, but why? Back in 1997 I was once 100% delirious about Delerium when by random chance or predetermined fate I came across their albums Semantic Spaces and (the great and definitive) Karma, each both filled to the brim with a dark-ethereal-ambient-trance-tribal-gothrock and a Gregorian chanting ethno-worldbeat collage of sound, all of which was cunningly underscored by sensually exotic and powerful female vocals, phew!
Sadly ever since then with each new album and each frustratingly miscalculated increment Delerium have inexplicably undervalued the very elements established on those aforementioned albums, hurting their true beating heart for the majority of fans. Delerium today equals to Disappointment for me, and yet as they serve up more diluted essence in pop orientated fare with girly singing and MOR nuances I cling on in vain, hoping that a miracle will happen, yup, in a galaxy far far away a prophecy will be fulfilled, the shattered Dark Crystal will be repaired and the evil Skeksis bird-lizards will metamorphosis with the peace-loving wizard Mystics and finally there’ll be a glorious balance in the heavens once again.
Laptop/keyboard indietronica maestro Ulrich Schnauss collaborated with Mark Peters school of shoegaze/postrock guitar on Underrated Silence, and try as I did and I really tried hard, it just felt underrated to me regarding the particularly uplifting scope that I know and expect from Ulrich. This one was a really Big letdown and instead I spent the summer taking refuge in Far Away Trains Passing By, which up till that point had traditionally been my least played Ulrich work. Underrated Silence sounds like a Robin Guthrie clone not being deeply convincing in the emotional resonance department, which lets be honest does happen even to Guthrie himself.
Prins Thomas released Prins Thomas 2, I heard one track and quickly forgot it, and his sometime collaborator Lindstrom brought out Six Cups Of Rebel with energetic dance beats meeting jazz funk disco in an AOR guitar sampling manic mashup, I seriously toyed with this one, its big and bombastic, but ultimately its lack of subtlety made me consider it as merely novelty value lacking in depth, and one likely to get tired of .
Chromatics with Kill For Love are a band featured on the excellently fitting soundtrack to the film ‘Drive’, so I thought this would be a must have, but what a strangely dead sounding album, the singer’s about to fall asleep at the mike and somebody must have told the musicians that the record company canceled their contract, they cant get paid but they’re still obliged to complete the album, so ‘its go slow lads’, ‘work to rule’, stick it to the bosses and don’t show any enthusiasm for the project whatsoever.
Animal Collective: Centipede HZ, heard one track, good, but made no more effort on this one. Similar lack of effort for Iranian mystical dance/trance trio Niyaz with Sumund, and also for wife and hubby neo-hippies Windy and Carl, who are seemingly going backwards to earlier cosy new-agey Guardian newspaper-readers phase with We Will Always Be and not providing nearly enough of their mix of drone guitar pieces with ethereal songs that I’ve enjoyed previously.
Lotus Plaza (musician Lockett Pundt) had an album of year for me in the past, not this time around, Spooky Action At A Distance has some good songs in an old-school shoegazy vein, but its all too straight and familiar, nothing special, and finally, one of my last years fav’s John Maus has his Collected Rarities/Unreleased etc, oh come on Mr Maus, an album of brand New material please why dont’ya!
