Current obsessions
Marcus Berkmann
Ilove this time of year: the music industry has gone to sleep, and the rest of us can get going with the piles of CDs we were given for Christmas by obliging relatives. As I am writing a book at the moment I need a fairly constant supply of new music played at high volume to get me through the tricky bits, as well as old familiar music played at high volume to distract me when I have completely run out of ideas and want to stab the computer with knives. It works for me because, as far as I am aware. I have no intellectual response to music at all. It's purely visceral.
When I was at university a sagacious friend of mine, who had chosen to embrace middle-age at the earliest opportunity, used to tell me that one day, if I worked at it, I should be able to listen to classical music on an intellectual level — much as he did, with a Roger Moore-like raised eyebrow at interesting counterpoints, or whatever. It never happened. I'm always looking forward to the next song that will make the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and everyone else who lives here shouts 'Turn that bloody noise down!' And the January search has been more thorough than usual.
My current obsession is an album by some Australians called The Sleepy Jackson. Like so many bands now, this may or may not be a real working band, for on one level at least it seems to be one young bloke (Luke Steele) working in a studio recording songs that all sound a bit like something else. First track is a ringer for John Lennon's '#9 Dream' — not a bad start. Second track is a garage thrash, which is the one all the critics love because that's all they love these days. The rest are an intriguing mix, with country-rock as a basic template, but many variations on that, and an absolute profusion of tunes.
Eclecticism is a dirty word in rock circles these days (at least among those who can say it), and this has lent a monochrome tone to a lot of recent music. Apparently, it's much easier to market the homoge neous, because buyers want to know what they are getting. I find this hard to believe. After all, no band was more eclectic than The Beatles, which is one reason why we still listen to them. It's curious that Oasis are always accused of ripping off The Beatles, but no recent band has been more limited in its horizons. The Sleepy Jackson are far more Beatles-like in their approach
and their ambition, if not necessarily in their songwriting. The album is Lovers (Virgin) and it's highly recommended.
Next, two albums by talented young women, neither of them called Dido. (Just before Christmas I sat in a café for several hours with a friend I hadn't seen for ages, and they played the Dido album four times from beginning to end. The staff were all South African. Maybe they were trying to get rid of us. It worked, eventually.) Thea Gilmore is only 24 and Avalanche (Hungry Dog Records) is already her fifth album. She must be from a folk back ground, because there are too many words and verses in her songs and never quite enough choruses, But there is proper tal ent here. She has a lovely, expressive voice, a real lyrical gift and an unfashionable interest in texture. Again it's the variety of the songs that draws you in. Imagine a Dido whose lyrics actually said something, who could write more than two memorable tunes an album, and whose cutesiness had been forcibly removed with a giant syringe.
Well, Gilmore would be much better than that. I think this is the most enjoyable album I have heard by a British singer/songwriter in years.
Kathleen Edwards is an American, operating in that strange no man's land between country and rock also occupied by the likes of Ryan Adams. Faller (Zoe/Rounder) takes a little getting used to: her soft, almost wispy voice initially sounds underpowered, and her guitarist initially sounds like a maniac. Indeed, for what is filed in record shops under 'coun try', this can be a raucous album. For the first few listens you are aware only that there are noisy and quiet ones, and the subtleties of the songs take a while to emerge. And then, joyously, you find your self humming them on the way to the newsagent. It's not for everyone, but then what is?
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