Holly Miranda - The Magician's Private Library

The Magician’s Private Library by Holly Miranda is a seductively slow burning piece, imprinted with the multi-faceted production work of David Sitek, a member of TV on the Radio. With a wide roster of other artists under his belt including Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Foals plus knob twiddling duties on Anywhere I Lay My Head by Scarlett Johansson, on this album it seems very much that Sitek is in control. Rather like Johanssons’s debut, which critically took a bashing but was one of our albums of 2008, the songs on The Magician’s Private Library are smothered with washes of guitar, experimental beats and short blasts of horns. No One Just Is with its clipped echoing rhythms and menacing soundscapes has very much the take of a TV on the Radio song, with the addition of a feminine dreamy voice floating in the mix. Unlike the aforementioned Johansson though, Miranda’s vocal is stronger. One moment it is all ghostly and otherworldly the next it’s deeply sensuous - often it is almost romantically sleepy.

Sleepy is the right word here, because there are occasions when The Magicians Private Library is just a little too languid for its own good. Titles such as Sweet Dreams, Everytime I Go To Sleep and Sleep On Fire combined with lyrical content such as “Dreamt of you again last night,” from the slow burning trumpet laden Joints and “Wake up and you’re next to nothing,” from Slow Burn Treason give a pretty clear indication of the bed time imagery that this album conjures. Add to this a front cover of a girl asleep surrounded by arrows and music that occasionally drifts in an atmospheric haze and it just compounds the narcoleptic feel.

That is not to say that The Magicians Private Library is boring. It just requires the right atmosphere. Songs such as Waves with its soft layers of guitar and existential lyrics of “This intent is so much more, then just a means to end of this suffering,” are exquisitely beautiful, hypnotic and dustily subtle. They are certainly worth attention.

Back at the end of 2009 we named Holly Miranda as one of our Ones to Watch for 2010. In terms of output Miranda was always going to be one of our less obviously commercial choices, and certainly The Magicians Private Library is never going to set its foot in the album charts. However if it’s a rainy Sunday morning and you want something a little dreamy, a little smoke filled and a little moody to create the soundtrack to your day, The Magician’s Private Library could fit the bill.

Yeasayer @ Brighton Digital

When we reviewed Odd Blood, the album by Brooklyn trio Yeasayer last month we called it a “decent and often absorbing electronic progressive-pop record,” but criticised its lack of great melodies or catchy hooks. A month on and we suggest that our original opinion was a little hasty. Whilst Odd Blood is far from perfect, it has some of those old fashioned qualities of being a bit of a grower. Some of the songs that we felt lacked cranium drilling ability have slowly holed their way in. It would seem that Odd Blood is doing the business with others as well - this Yeasayer gig being upgraded to the bigger Digital after the originally booked Brighton Audio had an early sell out.

Digital itself is not the ideal place for live gigs. Although the PA system copes admirably, obscured vision lines from structural columns and the rooms oppressive nightclub darkness seem to influence the crowd. There’s a more muted reaction than may be expected. However, blame can not only be placed on the inhospitable architecture; the band are the central cog here and tonight Yeasayer are simply functional. The new songs should bring more - more emotion, more power, more excitement, more dancing. Every track is competently played and performed, with main singer Chris Keating throwing some jittery hand shapes for good measure but it still lacks. It’s like stepping in voyeuristically on a well-married couple having sex. They know how things work, what to do, but there’s no heightened state of orgasmic euphoria.

It’s only on the funky Italian-house piano tropicalisms of Love Me Girl that the band move beyond the average to the transcendental and Ambling Amp unsurprisingly gets the biggest cheer of the evening. Yet it speaks volumes when the band have to jokingly chastise a photographer for taking more pictures of somebody in the audience than the band themselves. Despite the ambitious range of ideas on display, or maybe because of it, the attention is not firmly held.

“You guys have been great,” Yeaysayer announce at the end. We wish we could shout the same back, but we would feel a little bit awkward admitting to the group that unfortunately it was only faultlessly average.

BBC 6 Music Closure

With the BBC likely to announce the closure of 6 Music we’d like to think a nation mourns. However it seems according to the Times (here) that only 20% of adults even know the station exists. Hardly surprising considering it is a more alternative music station broadcasting on digital and internet only with very little exposure compared with the likes of Radio 1, 2 or a TV show such as X Factor. Maybe Lauren Laverne needs to have a lesbian affair with Cheryl Cole / Tweedy in the 6 Music offices and then mistakenly send the photos to The Sun in a text message. That would raise its profile.

So whilst a nation may not be saddened at its closure (or that of Asian Network which is also being culled) there is no doubt that its loss is tantamount to cultural vandalism. BBC 6 Music may not have the highest listening figures, but let’s not forget biggest is not always best. Small can influence. Drop a small stone into a pond and watch the ripples grow. We’ve learnt a little bit about that ourselves in the last year through this blog. BBC 6 Music is one of those stones. Commercial stations can’t be as inventive or take risks the way 6 Music can and has.

Even a site like Popjustice, which readily admits that the 6 Music playlist does not fall into its view of things, has concerns about its ending and can see the cultural impact it may have (here).

We firmly believe that a licence funded BBC is one of the reasons why the UK music scene has always punched above its weight. The closure of 6 Music is likely to lessen the power of that punch. There will always be an argument on how much of the nations budget should be spent on culture. But in this case we believe the BBC are making a huge mistake.

Very sad indeed.

Ellie Goulding - Lights

To review a copy of Lights by Ellie Goulding and not mention the BBC Sound of 2010 list is almost an impossibility, particularly if the reviewer themselves voted for Ms Goulding on said list. We just did and we did, if we didn’t it would be a case of the elephant in the room. Now we’re done, so let’s continue.

We first wrote of the promise of Ellie Goulding (here) in February 2009 and have watched with interest the growing blog / media buzz. Having discussed the path she was following (here), we attempted to add a little caution to the buzz, fully aware that the expectation and hype could lead to a backlash. Some of this apparent backlash could be conceived as occurring right now. David Renshaw of the excellent It’s Getting Boring by the Sea blog writing for Drowned in Sound noted in his review of Lights the 'gentle, considered voice,' which Goulding has, but concluded that the album was a 'hollow listen.' Alexis Petridis of The Guardian called it 'quite normal' and gave it two stars out of five. Yet is this really a backlash or simply two writers who have been asked to write a review of Lights, who haven’t particularly expressed an opinion on Goulding before? Probably the later. In which case this isn’t a backlash by individuals changing their minds, but collectively if there are enough of such reviews it could give the impression of a backlash by the media.

Only those with the most steadfast of views would agree that they had never changed their mind on a piece of music before. At the beginning of 2009 there were a number negative reviews of Lady Ga Ga but by the end of the year the same reviewers were suggesting that Ga Ga was the best female pop star since Madonna in her heyday. There’s nothing wrong with contradictions now and then. It happens. Life’s not perfect. So if a blog or journalist who has up to this point celebrated Ellie Goulding changes their mind, it doesn’t make them a two-faced evil media hack, bitter that Goulding has achieved success. The overused expression and idea that blogs and the media ‘build them up to knock them down’ doesn’t always hold true. Sometimes people just change their mind, or see, hear and feel things in a different way. And so far we have celebrated Goulding, but with that hint of caution.

By now, you probably know where this review is heading. Time for us to shamefacedly admit we were very wrong and whilst we’re doing so, to go for the jugular and snarl that Lights is a stinker. Time to disparagingly dismiss Ellie Goulding and her so called album, as others have, as being rather bland and lacking soul.

Right stop right there.

Start again. Don't assume we're taking that route.

Lights may not be a futuristic or ground breaking vision. It won’t feature on any best of decade lists in 2019. After all it is quite simply a highly mainstream pop record. However it is an accomplished piece of work full of melodic tunes that brim with passionate lyrics and emotion. Goulding has a wonderful voice - her high tones fluttering, soothing and intimate one moment then softly rasping and fervent the next. If the songs on Lights had been laid over dense guitar work or dirty bass lines we suspect that many more critics would salivating like rapid dogs over it. But instead Ellie Goulding has combined highly effective sincere acoustic composition with the buffed up electronic production of Starsmith to create something modern and magical. Simply put, this is good pop music. From the pianos and twirling synths of The Writer, a beautiful populist ballad which started out as just a vocal and acoustic guitar demo, to the big eighties drums, brutish bass and pulsing sways of synths on Under The Sheets, every track is a polished gem.

Lights has and will divide critics, yet we suspect that the mainstream public will find much pleasure out of it. Grizzly Bear, Radiohead or even Joanna Newsom this is not, but if you’re receptive to a broader horizon of music than just what is seen to be serious, have supposed soul and of cool earnest intent, you will recognise that Goulding has produced a skilful and highly enjoyable contemporary pop album.

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