Muse - The 2nd Law

Heights

Just listening to the Muse stream of their next release The 2nd Law which can be found here http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/sep/24/muse-2nd-law-album-stream Opener Supremacy signals immediately the bombast of its rock niche: pumping harsh rhythms followed by sweeping orchestral synths in support of Matt Bellamy’s sweetsided vocal until the two styles merge with an Ennio Morricone guitar break.  Second track and single Madness is as Queen as it can be without prompting litigation, though this proceeding is teased and tempted with the following track Panic Station with its Another One Bites The Dust intro ape and  then 90s bass and drum beat. There is a 50 or so seconds of orchestral lull in next Prelude before launching into the strident ‘Olympic’ song Survival, its ascending operatic and chugging rhythms assailing the heights of glorious pomposity.

Sixth Follow Me is a 90s grand pop homage with its electronic noise bubbling throughout and an anthemic repeat of its title. Seventh Animals allows Bellamy to let loose a little on his guitar as well as climb more vocal harmonies, and eighth Explorer packages beauty in a typical Muse ballad that is louder than most but identified by its use of strings, some echoes of Radiohead in the swooning. Ninth Big Freeze invokes U2 and one feels a peripheral tribute tone in the songwriting and performance on a number of these tracks. I’ll skip to the eleventh Liquid State because it is a welcome return to a heavier inclination with the thud of bass and drums. The album finishes on tracks twelve and thirteen, respectively The 2^nd Law: Unsustainable and The 2^nd Law: Isolated System. The former is an amalgam of opera, orchestra, looping electronic sounds and recorded voice commenting on the 2^nd law of thermodynamics which as we all know is a general principle which places constraints upon the direction of heat transfer and the attainable efficiencies of heat engines. This recorded dialogue is continued into the latter with more looped sounds undulating around it and a piano tune leading into an ambient close. But not before it rises to more heights of the grandiose in a way only Muse can attain, or fall from depending on your own inclinations.

For me this is a quick listen and I’ll want to hear more, obviously, before deciding whether to enthusiastically join the climb or escape quickly down the slippery aural slopes. My initial feeling is that this is a lot of fun.

The Beatles in Elk Horn

Two years on from news clips of Russian missiles

heading for Castro’s Cuba before getting to me,

the Beatles’ She Loves You invaded Elk Horn’s

homes like subversive messages from Khrushchev

on our deluxe black and white TVs.

It’s 1964 and our small-town school still drilled us in

air-raid practices under wooden desks with a terrified

face between the knees and time for alternative dreams:

nuclear death, or English haircuts to shake on

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah and drive all the girls to screams.

We watched them on Ed’s all-American Show

altered in the suggestions of such change.

In the moments beyond that need to listen

it was absorbing the same instant of shock that

hit when Clay stole the history of Liston.

How they still startled in clean-cut suits and ties –

harmonies as pure as Country and Western or a hymn.

It was an Iowa revolution from afar

and airwaves would whirl like a Midwestern tornado

to change our landscapes from there and within.

Skunk Anansie - Black Traffic

Dirty Pants

The NME review of this album is curt and petulant, spitting back like a teenager just chastised for leaving dirty pants on the bedroom floor: The people who made this album have an average age of 46. They need to retire. NOW.

It certainly isn’t contemporary indie crap, and Skin definitely doesn’t whisperdrawl in a fashionable affected slur. I always used to enjoy Skunk Anansie’s rowdy live shows and Skin’s authentic snarl at the inequities of life in Britain and in general, and I confess nostalgia makes me more accepting of an album that I confess isn’t doing anything new. But like the retrorock I have been celebrating here of late, this is a heavy rock sound that hasn’t altered but is reproduced now with power if not the creative range of those first few albums. How many one-off whippersnappers of today will be able to make similar claims? I know it’s cool and casual to dismiss any such aspirations, but wait until you’re a little older. Dirty pants just smell.

Opener I Will Break You is a classic pounder, second Sad Sad Sad is the radio-friendly rockpop stalwart, seventh Our Summer Kills The Sun is the gorgeous sweet song where Skin harmonises and takes her voice to its higher beautiful register, ninth This Is Not A Game is a little twee for me, but tenth Sticky Fingers In Your Honey is a reasonably rousing rant at greed. The album ends on Diving Down which is again all Skin with her rising harmonies and distinctive vocal. Yep, absolutely predictable and so 46ish. 

Michael Chapman and the Woodpiles - Free Music Download

I got put on to this reading the current issue of Uncut where this is on their Playlist. It's a jam session recorded in the States and featuring the great Michael Chapman with Steve Gunn, Marc Orleans, Jimy SeiTang and Nathan Bowles. There are two country-tinged and sung songs Deportee and Titanic, with the rest instrumentals, the last Goodwill Cowboys Ride Again the most engaging jam at just over 12 minutes. Laid back and enjoyed. Uncut refer you to www.natchmusic.tumblr.com and it is Natch 7, but I also found it at http://www.michaelchapman.co.uk/news.htm where there is some information about the recording to read.

Michael Chapman's wonderful albums have recently been re-released.

Stone Machine - Stone Machine

A Nuance

Stone Machine’s eponymous debut album has been re-released by Grooveyard Records – though I did get my copy as a digital download from Amazon [advertised on the label's website] – and it certainly reinforces the basic rock roots of their most recent release American Honey. There are no doilies on the hard arm rests of this fundamental sofa of sound. As Grooveyard Records themselves state, this is highly recommended to fans of Bad Company, Free, Humble Pie, Led Zeppelin, Montrose, James Gang, Foreigner, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Badlands & Cry Of Love and that just about hits all the bases in terms of defining the lineage as well as aural impact.

Stone Machine as a band would appear to nurture a cool anonymity. I haven’t been able to find any information or images online, other than album covers and the pronouncements from record label Grooveyard. And it’s fine to let the music speak for itself – there isn’t much that needs articulation when it is as effectively generic as this. You just need big speakers and plenty of volume. Perhaps this also avoids completely that other peripheral aspect of the industry where image is so important, but I am surprised not to find reviews of live gigs. It’s a sound you want to hear and feel pummelling your head.

Groveyard Records are themselves an interesting outfit, as their manifesto makes clear: For many years, the music industry has turned its back on heavy guitar rock music and Grooveyard Records wanted to do the "right thing" and step up to the musical plate to give bad-ass, killer "six string mojo" a new home with a solid foundation that includes a worldwide network of serious heavy guitar freaks who still dig & appreciate "old-school" blues-based guitar rock mojo. This style of music is unfortunately "niche" @ best these daze, however, we don't let that stop us from doing everything in our power to produce and release mega-awesome guitar rock. 

If you are going to begin your aural association with this band it is their most recent release American Honey that should be your starting point with its maturer sound, though that is quite a nuance when promoting it, as I am, as straightforward if excellently executed raw rock. I do think the latter release probably does kick ass with more spring in the 'ol retro settee. But their first studio pummelling is still very enjoyable.