Mechanical Man - The Folk Implosion

Dinosaur Jr, Sebadoh, Lou Barlow's apparent lo-fi revolution. These things (and more) I don't give a fuck about. Barlow may be an influential figure in the musical worlds of many, but to me, looking back, 90s indie-rock is nothing but a bland ghetto of Kurt-damaged arseholes afraid of the future (obviously Barlow preceded Cobain, but "Kurt-damaged" is my current favourite accusation and I just needed to use it). For the most part Lou Barlow is complicit with this yawnfest, however there is one exception. Barlow's side-project, The Folk Implosion, released an album in 1999 titled One Part Lullaby and was significantly different from any of his previous musical projects. Gone was the reliance on the traditional guitar/bass/drums line-up as these songs were augmented by synths, samplers, glockenspiels and an assortment of other musical knick-knacks. Mechanical Man is the highlight of the record, a song about a robot's love for its owner. Beginning with an amateurish Casio beat, Barlow's melancholic tones evoke genuine sympathy for his robotic character - "I do everything he never would, I'm mechanical man. When I said I understood, I only knew where to stand. But I'll be there for you, if your world's on a wire. My mechanical moves fit the mood you desire". It soon becomes apparent that the robot's owner has a human lover as Barlow sings "But I'm not perfect after all, I still get jealous when he calls". It's heart-breaking stuff, especially when he continues "Something's wrong, pride was never in the plan, turn me in for a brand new mechanical man". I'd never thought of Barlow much a story-teller, but Mechanical Man is an affecting little piece. As the song begins to fade out, our robot hero concedes to his predicament as he solemnly states "I'll never try and change you, I'm programmed to forget".

Although I have a very limited knowledge of Barlow's back-catalogue, this is obviously the highlight of his career. With the subsequent Folk Implosion album being rubbish and Dinosaur Jr recently reforming it seemed that, unfortunately, someone has pressed Barlow's reset button.

Mechanical Man - The Folk Implosion

Kidnapping An Heiress - Black Box Recorder

In his tribute to Luke Haines - 63 Ways To Begin An Essay On Luke Haines - Paul Morely writes for his 25th introduction:

Luke Haines's Englishness is so desolte and inhospitable that even the English are scandalised by it.

Throughout his career with The Auteurs, his one-off Baader-Meinhof concept album and his increasingly absurd solo material ("a Vaudeville spook mentalist", in his own words), Luke Haines has relished expressing his wry nihilism in a variety of musical styles. However, it is his first album with Sarah Nixey and former Jesus and Mary Chain drummer, John Moore, as Black Box Recorder that would undoubtedly be his bleakest. Unlike subsequent BBR albums where the band fully embraced upbeat electro-pop, England Made Me is slow and minimalist. In Nixey, Haines had found the perfect oh-so-English voice for his dark wit-filled critiques of Britainnia, and it is her vocals that carry the weight of the album.
The title alone of Kidnapping An Heiress gives a substantial insight into Haines's outlook. Like most of British intellectual thought it is rooted deeply in the class divide, and the song has a direct lineage from early Auteurs tracks such as Valet Parking and The Upper Classes. The initial glaring attribute of the song is that semi-annoying musical saw which is looped throughout the its entirety, yet like the rest of the album, it is Nixey's deadpan delivery that is soon the focus - "Rescued from a shopping mall, heiress with a little girl's soul. Do you think we'll make the papers?". While the song may play out like a money-wrangling conspiracy with the chorus of "And we're searching for your daughter" changing into "And we think we've found your daughter" towards the end, as Morely points out in number 42 of his introductions to Haines - One of the reasons to write songs is to get your own back - and while the moneyed may be his targets, money itself isn't his primary concern. Like most of Haines's work the tone is one of absolute moral superiority. There's a game of spite to be played and Haines cannot help but indulge himself.

Kidnapping An Heiress - Black Box Recorder

Early Whitney - Why?

With its plucked guitar and opening three words - You're so sensitive - Why?'s Early Whitney could almost be mistaken for a Death Cab For Cutie power ballad. However, whereas DCFC beefcake Ben Gibbard would then, in his earnest whimsy, declare his devotion to his muse's emotional sensitivity, Joni Wolf continues ...you can feel a single hair curl while you're sleeping, and each fraction of a millimetre fingernails grow. Before Why? became a band, it was Joni's moniker in a variety of Oakland avant-hip hop ensembles, and it was also the name in which he released his first solo album, the lo-fi masterpiece, Oaklandazulasylum. Early Whitney is the centrepiece to this record and its most conventional moment. Which isn't to say it has any chance of appearing in an episode of The OC, but merely to suggest that the song is quite possibly the point where Joni made the leap from weird-arse renegade to the indie-pop songsmithery of subsequent Why? releases. Whilst the song may be less idiosyncratic than his previous work and the rest of the album surrounding it, it still contains a fairly schizoid structure and exhibits Joni's distinctive outlook in quite an extraordinary fashion. The way the song can jump from Joni's nasal whine of Coffee's turned my dark days into Woody Allen long-sigh anxiety into a genuinely affecting plaintive falsetto of "Hide in Denver, I remember Montreal, I swear I'll write soon" and then back out to his semi-shouted pseudo-rap chorus (backed by Beach Boys-esque coos) that culminates in his definitive statement That ain't no God it's just a burning bush!.
Being the unreconstructed Jewpie I am, I'm a sucker for any reference to the Old Testament. It gives me sense of cross-cultural affinity which my otherwise oh-so-gentile lifestyle is lacking. Joni's father is a Rabbi and the jealousy leaves me doubled over in pain.

Early Whitney - Why?

Captain Easychord - Stereolab

There are three musical instruments I have no tolerance for. They are the bongos, the harmonica and the lap-steel guitar. I can't stand hippies, I hate male singer/songwriters and all music made outside large cosmopolitan cities (that is, country music) is completely regressive.
In light of these three facts I have a very uneasy relationship with the first single from Stereolab's 2001 album Sound Dust, Captain Easychord. One could describe it as love/hate, and with most things attributed that designation, it is a little confusing. Stereolab are the most urbane of bands. They are Parisian chic, London's worldly curiosity and New York's melting pot. They are a band of true musicologists and progressive political intellects. So what the fuck are they doing using a lap-steel guitar as in Captain Easychord? I can still recall the utter revulsion I felt upon hearing its pathetic yokel whine when I first heard the track. I felt personally betrayed. The one band I thought I could always rely on to be on the right side of musical expression had turned on me. They'd moved their spiritual home from La Rive Gauche to fucking Nashville and I wasn't happy. The single version cuts off at 2.54 and not even it's bilingual lyrics can save it from being utter rubbish. However, the album version of the song contains two sections, the second of which restores the band to its sophisticated glory. Its ascending electronic squelches and Mary Hansen's coo'd ba-da-ba-ba-ba-da-ba-ba are just delectable, resurrecting my admiration for them. Luckily the lap-steel guitar made no further appearance on that album on any subsequent Stereolab releases.

Captain Easychord - Stereolab