The Cribs - "For All My Sisters"

For All My Sisters, the sixth album from The Cribs, represents a beginning of sorts for Wakefield’s finest sons. It’s their first album since releasing the career spanning ‘best of’ comp Payola in 2013, and their first since leaving the relatively cosy confines of indie label Wichita.

Just look at the cover. A fresh start. The last time we saw the three Jarman brothers together on the front of a Cribs record was a whole decade ago, acting out under the banner of The New Fellas. In retrospect, it was probably that album (‘Martell’ in particular) which saw them unfairly lumped in with all those awful mid-2000s landfill indie bands. The Cribs were always better than that, fusing a hardcore ethic with serious songwriting chops, the punk and pop aspects of their dichotomy becoming increasingly evident with each release.

Now, all the signs seem to point towards a second act for one of Britain’s most underrated bands. They might not even be saddled with that tiresome tagline for much longer – For All My Sisters is billed as their ‘pop’ album, an ambition seemingly in line with their new major label status. To this end, Cars frontman Ric Ocasek was enlisted as producer, and his influence can be felt all over the record, from the Weezer-cribbing ‘An Ivory Hand’ to the shimmering guitars of ‘Summer of Chances’. Really though, Ocasek’s changes aren’t all that drastic. For all the sparkle and polish he brings, there’s still rawness here. Sometimes these sides collide to great effect, as the sludgy basement chorus of ‘Mr. Wrong’ is brightened up with fairground synths.

Lyrically it’s still firmly a Cribs album, concerned with love, loss and introspection. The band has spoken about wanting to make something “unabashed, without all that baggage and self-critique”. Indeed, the main way that it scans as a ‘pop’ album is in its confidence and enthusiasm, and a willingness to fully commit to ideas. Well, that, and a handful of absolute top-drawer singles. ‘Different Angle’ is classic Cribs, with an insistent riff that sounds like a throwback to their Johnny Marr era. The chorus promises greatness but falls just short through repetition. ‘Burning for No One’ is more of a departure, a taut, danceable song with spiky new-wave guitars and the emotional honesty that we’ve come to expect from the band.

It’s not just the singles that do the heavy lifting – ‘Finally Free’ is a theatrical opener that Gary wrote in hospital, desperate to get out in time to meet a recording date. ‘Summer of Chances’ has the album’s best chorus, with Ryan pushing his vocal range more than ever before, and glossy production reminiscent of Ocasek’s work with Guided By Voices.

As with the previous album, the main problem is the filler material. ‘Pacific Time’ is the only real misstep, dialling down the tempo and aiming to build gradually but not doing anything interesting with it. The largely acoustic ‘Simple Story’ falls after an amazing opening run and almost kills the momentum stone dead. It’s pretty good in its own right though, with a palpable sadness and desperation communicated through distant drum thuds and weird spaghetti western synths. It speaks volumes to the album’s strength that this is one of its weakest songs.

Closing track ‘Pink Snow’ eradicates any remaining notions of For All My Sisters as a pop album. It’s a slow burning seven-minute monolith in the vein of ‘City of Bugs’, and possibly the finest song this band has ever released. Apparently some early versions stretched to fifteen minutes, but this recording is perfectly structured. It opens with delicate guitar figures before shifting to full-on Sonic Youth noise assault. Ryan’s lyrics, which also give us the album’s title, are about bravery and connection, and the importance of the female relationships in his life. It’s honestly a real joy to hear the band reaching like this and succeeding so absolutely.

A bunch of the songs here should quickly cement themselves as setlist staples. For a band on their sixth album, that’s usually more than can be reasonably expected. But For All My Sisters is a real achievement, one that easily stands with their best work. Cribs Mk. II are off to a flying start.

Highlights: Burning for No One; An Ivory Hand; Summer of Chances; Pink Snow

Pearson Sound - "Pearson Sound"

David Kennedy has been around for some time now. Since first emerging as Ramadanman in 2006, he’s co-founded the meticulously curated Hessle Audio label along with Ben UFO and Pangaea, and built a reputation as one of the best DJs on the circuit. The last few years have seen him releasing a series of club-ready EPs under the Pearson Sound banner, which brings us to his self-titled debut album, almost ten years into his career. Pearson Sound fits into Kennedy’s usual percussion-heavy manner, but otherwise is difficult to pigeonhole in terms of genre. It’s difficult to tell where these tracks are destined for, but overall it feels like a self-conscious move towards more of a home-listening environment.

Kennedy has spoken about wanting to keep things concise, but even with shorter track lengths, many of these pieces fail to remain interesting throughout their duration. The album’s main failing is really a lack of momentum or any urgency. ‘Russet’ is the worst offender, an anonymous track with little to recommend itself. Even Kennedy’s immense talent for rhythmic invention seems worryingly absent. This isn’t the case elsewhere – see the jackhammer drums of ‘Asphalt Sparkle’ that sound like splitting open a vat of ball bearings – but for an album that relies so heavily on percussion, there’s not a whole lot of interest going on. It rarely feels like top drawer Pearson Sound.

In terms of pure sound design, the album is more of a success. We get tracks like ‘Glass Eye’, with its deep bass pulses surrounded by spitting percussion, and later on a section that sounds like monastic chanting. ‘Gristle’ begins with coarse, rasping textures, and wouldn’t sound out of place soundtracking a John Carpenter movie. Ultimately though, there’s no real direction to either of these pieces, and this sense of missed opportunities is a recurring theme throughout the album.

Thankfully, there is a clutch of redeeming gems to be found here, and on the whole it’s the more up-tempo tracks that fare the best. ‘Swill’ provides the album’s first genuine shock, much needed after a tepid opening run. It’s restless, constantly shifting, never content to rest on one idea for too long. It opens aggressively, with clanging junkyard drums, before pulling back for a while and then lurching into the thicket again. ‘Rubber Tree’ is a very welcome closer, harnessing and directing the energy levels of ‘Swill’ and turning it into something resembling Four Tet’s club focused Pyramid album.

Both of these tracks manage to wring some melody out of the percussion battery, but nothing on the level of, say, the Starburst EP. ‘Headless’ is the exception to this. Coming at the end of a dense, humid mid-section, its main motif – a startling processed vocal in the vein of Holly Herndon or Oneohtrix Point Never – has a really visceral impact that’s largely absent from the rest of the album, and has you wishing for more.

Taken together, these three tracks show much more purpose and invention than any of the other offerings, and make this album a worthwhile listen. Ultimately though, there’s too few ideas on show to sustain a full LP, and most of those which do engage are leant on too heavily. A minor disappointment.



Highlights: Swill; Headless; Rubber Tree

The Best Tracks of 2014: 10-1

10. Röyksopp & Robyn - Monument

The album mix of 'Monument' is almost ten minutes long, and it takes its damn time getting anywhere. Robyn marshals the first section with her robotic delivery, before the track then becomes more abstract, slowly weaving its way towards the end. This is late night soundtrack music in much the same vein as Twin Peaks or Blade Runner. The latter comparison becomes particularly apparent with the arrival of a saxophone cutting through the mist - like a warped form of lounge music set to a motorik pulse. It's not hard to picture Ryan Gosling's Driver character tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

9. Skepta - That's Not Me (feat. JME)

Skepta took it back to basics on this anthem which reached #21 in the charts, won a MOBO on the back of an £80 video, and became the basis of a hundred think pieces on the so-called grime revival. Grime never really went away, but 'That's Not Me' made the media sit up and start paying attention again. Skepta knocked up the throwback beat on Jammer's old Korg synthesiser, but it was his assured performance on the mic that took this one to the next level and gave real heft to a seriously strong year for the genre.




8. Beyoncé - XO

One of the most purely romantic pop songs of recent years. A declaration of love in and out of darkness, an urge to living in the moment. Assisted by an IMAX-sized beat courtesy of The-Dream (one of the decade's premier romantics), Queen Bey not only bested their previous collaboration 'Halo', but delivered perhaps her finest single to date. Surprise album releases have rarely felt this generous.

7. GFOTY - Bobby

Ok, ok - not strictly released in 2014 (see also: most of the PC Music tracks on this list), but we slept so hard on A. G. Cook's gang of post-Internet pranksters that we had to give them some props at the end of their breakout year. If we're being traditionalists, 'Bobby' is one of the most fully realised songs to come out of this camp, but it's still a singularly odd listen. The squeaky noises sound like a dial-up connection breaking into giggles, while the whole thing is underpinned by these ominous bass pulses. GFOTY (short for 'Girlfriend of the Year') has these wonderfully detached vocals, inviting us to look behind the words to find meaning, when actually it's all there for us on the surface.


6. Big Sean - I Don't Fuck With You (feat. E-40)

One of the year's best rap songs came from an unlikely source. Big Sean's cornball tendencies are still firmly in place, but he really stepped up his game on this one, perhaps remembering how he got so firmly upstaged by Kendrick Lamar on 'Control'. In 'IDFWU', Sean lets an ex know in some detail how he's doing just fine actually, he's got new girls and new cars and a new crib and he's doing JUST FINE. Methinks he doth protest too much, but still, there are some great lines here ("Fuck your two cents if it ain't going towards the bill"), and a brilliant E-40 verse and a soulful beat switch seal the deal. The beat, a DJ Mustard and Kanye West collaboration, sounds exactly how you'd imagine - a wonderful collision of Mustard's ratchet style and Kanye circa College Dropout. Between this and Rick Ross' 'Sanctified', I'm seriously hoping the pair have more in the vaults.



5. Mumdance & Novelist - Take Time

Wisely deciding to collaborate with Novelist after an NTS session, Mumdance used the TR-909 to construct this deceptively simple instrumental from scratch, razing the grime template to the ground and building it up again from the ashes. There's a lot of dead space in this beat and Novelist navigates it like a boxer, choosing his moment before delivering a killer punch. His flow is supremely confident, but casually so - a difficult task over such an unusual riddim. Mumdance's prolific output shows no signs of letting up this year, and Nov is perfectly placed to capitalise on his position as the hottest new MC. All hail the Lewisham Don.




4. Schoolboy Q - Los Awesome (feat. Jay Rock)

Following up the one-two strike of 'Get Lucky' and 'Blurred Lines', 2014 saw Pharrell continuing his chart dominance. From his own 'Happy' to Ed Sheeran's 'Sing', the guy's been pretty ubiquitous recently. Thankfully, 'Los Awesome' sounds like nothing else he made this year, or indeed anything since his Neptunes years. It's a nasty, snarling beat, fit for the gutter. Schoolboy Q proves up to the challenge, delivering a uncompromising gangster rap barrage. Unfortunately for him, Jay Rock's verse is nothing less than a triumph, continuing his impeccable track record of upstaging TDE artists on their own songs.




3. Future Islands - Seasons (Waiting on You)

Probably the consensus song of the year, and one of the best underdog stories as well. The (relative) success of Future Islands' massive synth-pop hit after an electrifying late night performance on Letterman was proof that, for some bands at least, years of hard graft and endless touring can pay off in spades. Lead singer Samuel T Herring performs like he's had the DNA of all the great frontmen - Bruce Springsteen, Ian Curtis, Iggy Pop - spliced into his body. But this was no cynical ploy for viral domination - Herring has been shaking his hips and unleashing death metal growls in dive bars for years - and thankfully, the song itself has had staying power far beyond the crazy dancing GIF. Herring's vocal range is incredible - not technically, but in terms of how many different emotions it can elicit. This is the key to Future Islands' success - a desire to really connect with people, a directness and a refreshing lack of irony. This is pop without the facade.




2. Hannah Diamond - Pink and Blue

 




1. Todd Terje & Bryan Ferry - Johnny and Mary

The best song of 2014 wasn't actually from 2014 at all, but from 1980. Robert Palmer's 'Johnny and Mary', once used in a series of Renault adverts, became the centrepiece of Norwegian space disco wizard Todd Terje's debut album. What's more, he got the one and only Bryan Ferry to do the vocal. Ferry's delivery is fragile, quavering - perfect for this tragic tale about a seemingly paralysed couple. For Terje's part, he transforms what was once a peppy pop track into something more graceful and delicate. The synths sounds both yearning and exhausted, just as they did on Roxy Music's masterpiece Avalon.

Terje's decision to interrupt what is essentially a party record with this bummer of a song is a bold one, but somehow it works. When people talk about the heart of a record, too often they mean nothing more than simply the mid-section. Here, 'Johnny and Mary' is the throbbing, aching heart at the centre of Terje's Club Tropicana lounge bar schtick. It's Bill Murray at the hotel bar in 'Lost In Translation', Harry Dean Stanton framed by neon in 'Paris, Texas'.

This collaboration wasn't without precedent. Terje had previously done a remix of Roxy Music's 1975 single 'Love is the Drug', along with remixes of Ferry's own 'Alphaville' and 'Don't Stop the Dance'. And it may yet have more life in it. At the tail end of 2014, Ferry released a new solo record, Avonmore. Down to the Celtic font used for the cover art, it sounded and felt like a carbon copy of Avalon, the end of the party for Roxy Music and a glorious ride into the sunset. Avonmore ended with 'Johnny and Mary', extending the fadeout. Rarely has a track felt so well placed.

The Best Tracks of 2014: 25-11

25. Taylor Swift - Shake It Off

Taylor sheds the last remnants of her country roots and ends up with one of her best singles to date in the form of a gleeful shrug towards her detractors. What's that, you're not a fan of that spoken word breakdown? Haters gonna hate.

24. Black Portland - 4 Eva Bloody

Breakout star Young Thug teams up with fellow Atlanta rapper Bloody Jay, and the pair just spend the whole time shouting each other out! Thugger handles the ecstatic hook, while the theme-park beat, courtesy of Tripp Da Hit Major, shoots for the charts rather than the streets.

23. Danny L Harle - In My Dreams

Heartbreak with a candy coating. 'In My Dreams' skews towards the pop side of the fast-growing PC Music canon, but never seems content to rest on a single idea for more than a few seconds. It's a buoyant mess, all tethered together by that incredible hook. Even better than 'Broken Flowers'.

22. Future - Move That Dope (feat. Pusha T, Pharrell & Casino)

This is the sort of thing that Future and Mike Will should be making all the time. Casino's verse, cruelly excised from the video edit, is easily the best one here. The beat, one of Mike Will's finest to date, is the real reason to keep coming back.

21. Run the Jewels - Oh My Darling Don't Cry

The ATLien and the NY felon deliver the year's most quotable rap song? Well, surely home to the highest number of different flows. Maybe the funniest? Certainly the only one to have a guest spot from Michael Winslow of Police Academy. One thing's for sure - I want to get a business card like El-P's.

20. Iggy Azalea - Fancy (feat. Charli XCX)

Let's be honest - the real star here is Charli XCX, whose world-conquering hook made 'Fancy' the official song of the summer. The beat is such a titanic rip-off that it's a genuine shock every time I fail to hear it open with "Mustard on the beat, ho!" But hell, it's a good rip-off, even doing enough to earn its own 'Weird Al' parody. Well, that and a seven-week uninterrupted spot at the top of the Billboard 100.

19. Young Thug - Stoner

One of many tracks where Young Thug sounds like he might genuinely have just crash-landed from another planet. The elastic snap of his cadence gives way to a codeine-addled slur at a moment's notice. His ad-libs sound more demented than ever. Yet it all adds up to an alluring smoker's anthem, helped in no small part by a numbingly simple hook.

18. Ab-Soul - Tree of Life

Ab-Soul's These Days... was a poor follow-up to Control System, and probably the worst TDE album since their profile first soared in 2011. 'Tree of Life' is a real keeper though. It'll take you a few spins just to spot all the instances of tree wordplay ("I got most of you muthafuckers stumped / Rap like I go to church but works in the trunk"), and there's plenty of other great Ab lines to savour over a shuffling, restless beat. An uncredited Joey Bada$$ on the bridge precedes the wonderful last verse. 

17. Ringo Deathstarr - Chainsaw Morning

With a little tinkering, this could be Ringo Deathstarr's pitch for the big leagues. The chorus hook is definitely stadium-sized, with drum fills and full-neck guitar slides to match. The little electronic stutter and cooing vocals that begin the track are a wonderful feint - after that it just soars. Skygaze might be a more appropriate term.

16. Sun Kil Moon - Ben's My Friend

Sun Kil Moon's Benji was critically adored in most corners, but some of those longer pieces just didn't click with me. More often than not I found myself skipping ahead to the final track, a breezy number that could easily pass for an outtake from the last Destroyer album, sax solo intact. Mark Kozelek nails the stream of consciousness style, his lyrics tripping over themselves in the final verse as his mid-life crisis unspools. Not a lot happens in this story - Kozelek gets writer's block, lunches with his girlfriend, worries about his mother, has an existential crisis following a Postal Service concert - but it's beautifully evocative, the twilight at the end of a record consumed with death.

15. Isaiah Rashad - Shot You Down (feat. Jay Rock & Schoolboy Q)

A seven-minute monster of a track. The beat lopes along, accomplished without ever getting in the way. Rashad has rarely sounded so animated, really selling the chorus where he threatens to end sensitive flavour of the month MCs. The best bit though is Jay Rock's career-high verse, further cementing his status as TDE's most slept-on rapper.

14. Real Estate - Talking Backwards

Real Estate's third album Atlas dealt in cleaner textures, lifting the gauze filter and letting us focus on the construction of the songs. 'Talking Backwards' always reminds me of Television's 'Marquee Moon' - not for the sound, but the way in which all the parts interlock perfectly. There's a crisp, autumnal feel to proceedings, which goes some way towards disguising the frustration of the lyrics, a familiar study of communication breakdown in a relationship.

13. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib - Shitsville

"Motherfuck euthanasia, I'll lace your food up with razors / make you gargle with saltwater, excuse yourself from my table". Freddie Gibbs is one of the toughest rappers going, and on first sight his hard-edged street bars might seem an uneasy fit with Madlib's dusty soul productions. No worry - the two veterans have been working together for longer than you might expect, and here their styles complement each other perfectly. Madlib layers seasick strings over ominous bass pulses, and Gibbs' message is a threatening reality check - nobody is invincible, so you'd better watch yourself.

12. Cloud Nothings - Giving Into Seeing

Some of the best songs have moments - 0:44 in Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah, 2:52 in Arcade Fire's Wake Up - those precious few seconds that are worth entire catalogues from lesser bands. Giving Into Seeing isn't operating at quite the same magnitude as those examples, but it's close. It's a taut, driving indie rock song that barrels its way through the opening two minutes before the texture suddenly shifts and the guitar falls to the back of the mix. The song builds again, surging upwards and culminating in a thundering rush of drums at 2:54, followed by a frantic sprint to the finish line.

11. Vince Staples - Blue Suede

Before this year, Vince Staples was probably best known as an Odd Future affiliate, in particular for his storming guest verses on Earl Sweatshirt's album Doris. In 2014 he released a bunch of songs over two excellent EPs, and 'Blue Suede' is the pick of the lot. The siren noises hark back to Dr. Dre's sinuous G-funk, and the tectonic bass reimagines it through a contemporary trap filter. Staples is one of the most exciting young voices in hip-hop, and this is his benchmark.