Various Artists - Strong Love: Songs of Gay Liberation 1972-1981 (2012)

1) Everyone Involved - A Gay Song; 2) Charlie Murphy - Gay Spirit; 3) Blackberri - It's Okay; 4) Smokey - Strong Love; 5) Robert Campbell - Dreamboy; 6) Mike Cohen - Evil & Lusty; 7) Lavender Country - Cryin' These Cocksucking Tears; 8) Chris Robison - Big Strong Man in My Life; 9) Steven Grossmann - Out; 10) Tom Robinson - Good to Be Gay; 11) Buena Vista - Hot Magazine; 12) International Gay Society - Stand Up for Your Rights; 13) Scrumby & Martin - Hots for a Hustler; 14) Paul Wagner - The One; 14) Conan - Tell Ol' Anita

Songs of love, empowerement and defiance - hidden hits with a big rainbow heart.

Key tracks: "A Gay Song", "Big Strong Man in My Life", "Tell Ol' Anita"

I'm going a little personal here to start with - sorry - but I think personal is an appropriate place to begin simply because a compilation of old songs of queer defiance like this hits a little a different when you are flying the rainbow flag yourself. Now, that's sentiment I wouldn't have related so strongly with if I had been writing this review earlier in my life - for many years I didn't consider my sexuality to ever be a point worth raising. I'm writing this during Pride month and that used to be a concept I felt almost alien towards: I've always accepted being gay and never felt I wanted to be anything different, but I also felt no relation to the wider LGBT+ community and if anything I found myself rather estranged by it, being so out of sync with what was considered the general "gay culture", and as a result who I am attracted to became a completely blasé topic for me in the wider sense of things. But people change, positions in your life change, your relationships change, and governments change and so do the people in power who no longer care about making life comfortable for everyone. I still don't perhaps fully relate to everything that Pride is all about but these days I do carry a little rainbow emblem on my shoulder bag and the importance of that representation has grown more meaningful on a personal level. And with that softly cultivated personal connection in mind, hearing music that was written and performed by people who were genuinely gambling around with their wellbeing by being so open about who they loved now strikes a somewhat deeper personal importance (and it certainly brings your own issues into perspective). This compilation came somewhat out of nowhere for me (I can't even remember how I stumbled across it in Bandcamp) but it took me by surprise during a period of self-analysis when it became something strangely comforting - proud - to listen to.

Strong Love gives the spotlight to a group of voices who felt empowered in the aftermath of the Stonewall riots to be who they are and sing it out and loud; the songs here are specifically and intentionally from the perspective of gay men, without downplaying the importance of any other groups (which the liner notes acknowledge too). Much of the material here was distributed through limited circulation at most, some from acts who never amounted to more than some random songs. Only a few artists featured only ever made it to a major label, with their efforts receiving little promotion partly thanks to their open sexuality and their albums now have a status of little below cult records that have yet to be rediscovered by modern audiences. The succinct but tight fifteen-song selection runs a whole gamut of styles, from celebratory and by default rebellious anthems openly celebrating queerness and demanding equal justice, to pop songs of a various degrees of horniness and a handful of forlorn acoustic laments with writers bearing their souls on the injustices they're living through. Some are joyous, others heartbreaking; some are political and others are more personal, though by default given the subject and the times the personal is also political.

From a more "objective" perspective - judging the music and presentation alone - it's a ragtag selection of competent and often fun songs that bear no shame should they be stood next to any more esteemed peers of theirs from this decade. Robert Campbell's "Dreamboy" is vintage 70s dreaminess that bears the hallmarks of classic studio-focused crossroads where art and pop meet, "Stand Up for Your Rights" (International Gay Society) and "It's Okay" (Blackberri) have that post-flower power funk groove going on with sufficient charisma to have become highlights on any more genre-specific selection, "Big Strong Man in My Life" (Chris Robison) is only a rough demo but would've had the clear potential to be a huge bubblegum smash with some lyrical tweaks, or a non-male singer given the times. The collection throws a few curveballs along the way too, even extending to country (Lavender Country's hilariously sassy "Cryin' These Cocksucking Tears") and cabaret (Scrumby & Martin's "Hots for a Hustler", a drag queen stage show in sound alone) - it paints a vivid picture of a vibrant community of varied musicians who can't be pigeonholed and who refuse to compromise on their individuality. The tones and production values flicker wildly back and forth across the fifteen songs which is kind of fun (and kudos for the compilers for making it work as well as it does), and on surface level it's a chaotic representation of a handful grassroots 70s musicians who never made it big but who could have. That alone makes Strong Love a decently good and interesting listen.

But for a "scene" compilation such as this, the context and concept are vitally important - especially for a collection of this type of theme - and it's the shared spirit throughout that makes Strong Love not just cohesive but also meaningful. Throughout the entire album the connecting thread between the songs is a combination of boldness, bravery and earnestness - everything comes from the heart and the musicians are living the truth they preach in the fullest. Lyrics like "gay is natural / gay is good / gay people should / all come together and fight for our rights" are so blunt that they're from a modern perspective cheesy or even cringy, but put it in the context of a random collective of political youths (Everyone Involved) singing out a statement that few others would with zero desire to hide the message for the masses, and it flips into a genuinely inspiring passage of words. Even the more straightforward love songs sound practically subversive because of a few little choice pronouns here and there, with an impact that countless more contemporary attention-baiting songs wish they had a fraction of. All the songs have such a wide big heart that it strikes a very personal chord, and it makes these generally good obscure 70s pop songs into a whole more resonant bunch. The intimate confessionals obviously benefit from the meaning the most: the genuine heartbreak running through every line of Steven Grossmann listing every in-closet person's nightmares in "Out", the warmth that radiates across Paul Wagner's devoted love song "The One" and the quiet but confident defiance in Conan's "Tell Ol' Anita" and Mike Cohen's "Evil & Lusty" are the most emotional songs of the entire compilation simply because of their unique combination of performance, wider context and intimacy.

 (I have to raise "Tell Ol' Anita" here out specifically for being particularly striking. Aimed at Anita Bryant, a former pageant model who became one of the big faces of the anti-gay rights movement, the final gentle kiss-off which also closes the record is a such a stunning combination of sweetness and rebellion. "Tell ol' Anita / There's nothing sweeter / Than the sound of my lover's name" never fails to give me the chills)

Strong Love is really rather powerful at places, but in an affirming and empowering way. While occasionally melancholy, it's ultimately a joyous album that revels in the self-determined freedom of its songs, and while many of the songs are rough around the edges to some degree there's a beautiful warmth glowing throughout. The relatively small size of the compilation - fifteen songs, fifty minutes - keeps things neatly consistent too and while there's always going to be the odd weaker song in any compilation the pace never gets too disturbed. And in case you're wondering - for me personally it's the somewhat musically heavy-handed titular "Strong Love" itself and the admittedly funky "Hot Magazine" that just don't quite measure up to the rest though it's not too far away either. This compilation seems to have generally flown over many people's radars and it's a shame - not only because it would make some kind of poetic justice to have these messages of love to play out more openly now that they can, but because there's plenty of genuinely great songs here that are treasures waiting to be found whether you're an enthusiast of the decade or not. And if you do find yourself falling in a category that makes this all the more personal to you, then consider this a history lesson; one lead by infectious melodies and a freewheeling spirit of togetherness no matter what.

Rating: 8/10

The Shins - Port of Morrow (2012)

1) The Rifle's Spiral; 2) Simple Song; 3) It's Only Life; 4) Bait and Switch; 5) September; 6) No Way Down; 7) For a Fool; 8) Fall of '82; 9) 40 Mark Strasse; 10) Port of Morrow

The Shins reborn as a studio project for Mercer, and hints of something spicier get muddled by an awkwardly safe professionalism elsewhere.

Key tracks: "The Rifle's Spiral", "No Way Down", "Port of Morrow"

The Shins started out as James Mercer's solo project: it only became a band when he convinced his bandmates from Flake Music to be his back-up musicians for the solo songs he had written and which were gaining considerable traction. While their debut had a largely acoustic sound, The Shins never particularly sounded like they weren’t a 'proper' band either to my ears - which means that I was one of the people who got caught by surprise when Mercer embraced the idea that The Shins was his project and he unceremoniously (and a little sheepishly) fired the rest of the band a few years after Wincing the Night Away. Port of Morrow is a turning point for The Shins as an entity, as Mercer teaming up with Danger Mouse in Broken Bells and the Sparklehorse collaboration record Dark Night of the Soul in the interim years inspired him to treat his main project the same way: hiring guns as the songs saw fit, collaborating without fixing people in place and tweaking the material in studio as long as his whims demanded.

Port of Morrow is still clearly in lineage with the first three albums given how unmistakable Mercer's voice and personality is, but it is undoubtedly a major change. The expanded instrumentation of Wincing the Night Away hinted at Mercer’s growing ambitions and now on his own he’s turned towards a full-blown studio experience, with a hi-fi and high-detail sound dominating the album and a star-studded cast list supporting him. Besider Mercer himself and the supervising superstar producer Greg Kurstin who play most of the parts on the album, Port of Morrow's credits roll is a list of names familiar to anyone who’s paid attention to indie rock liner notes in the 2000s: Sleater Kinney member and session drummer favourite Janet Weiss, Modest Mouse drummer Joe Plummer and Conor Oberst collaborators Nik Freitas and Nate Walcott feature among others, and even the ex-Shins members Dave Hernandez and Martin Crandall appear across the album. Mercer's changed attitude of utilising the right talent he wants in the exact section he needs it in is reflected in the credits list, and everything about Port of Morrow is equally pitch perfectly executed and micromanaged. The homegrown, grassroots sound of the first three albums is long gone, and in their place is a distinctly, and slightly disjointedly, professional approach.

I'm normally not one to criticise this kind of sound - I typically obsess over these studio-as-instrument records - but sometimes things go a little overboard even for my tastes. When even the stripped down acoustic palate cleanser "September" sounds so busy with everything that's happening in the background that it's just as loaded with elements as anything else on the record, you know the sound might be a little too engineered. The magic with albums like these - when they work - is that each detail matters and is clearly audible, even if you need headphones for it. Port of Morrow, in comparison, sounds stuffed and overproduced, which is a word I don't wave around lightly. There's a lot of clean and quite honestly sterile sheen all over the place either hiding countless instrumental details that turn out to contribute to surprisingly little or loading up elements that only serve to clutter the sound, such as the thoroughly unnecessary synth squelches all over the chorus of "Fall of '82". I’m not entirely sure Greg Kurstin - most famous for Adele, Sia, Kelly Clarkson et al - has really been the right fit for Mercer’s tone or songwriting, and his touch often feels at odds at wanting something punchier out of Mercer’s gentle indie pop hand.

That strange kind of professional po-faced attitude is present across the album including the actual songs: everything’s very grown up and even when some of the whimsy of yesteryear does appear, like in the bubbly platformer game jungle level music of "Bait and Switch", it doesn't sound natural - but that could just be the heavy-handed production talking. They're still Shins songs but in fitted business suits and cosy office jobs, fit for big budget coming of age film soundtracks and smooth radios: listen to "It's Only Life" and "For a Fool" to hear what I mean, both middle-of-the-road ballads that lend the impression of Mercer and Kurstin's song selection process resembling a curated audience test for maximum easy likability (though, granted, I have a small genuine soft spot for "For a Fool" because I've played it so much on Rocksmith after picking up bass again). It’d be easy to blame Kurstin here but I think at least half the blame is on Mercer himself, who’s still adept at delightful and catchy melodies but he rarely bats for anything exciting across the record and rather seems to play it safe. “Simple Song” is a good example, because it’s such a rush with its big booming drums and a lush chorus to die for with an instant-hook vocal melody to boot; it’s impossible not to love it at least a little. But at some point you start wondering whether you enjoy “Simple Song” in itself, or if you enjoy it because it’s so eerily close to a more top 40 ready version of “Phantom Limb” off the last album. “Simple Song” is Mercer repeating the incredible lead single of his last record but cutting together a flashier edit of it, and it works because of course it does. But it's a bit clinical.

But I'm still a sucker for Mercer's melodies and for the most part, that's enough to keep me enjoying Port of Morrow to the extent that every once in a blue moon it gets a spin in the player. It’s not a particularly thrilling record, but there aren't really that many real flubs in the tracklist either and mostly it's a pleasant romp through some overproduced pop jingles, where some parts captivate as much as others are on autopilot. Fortunately the former outweigh the latter to some extent and occasionally there's genuine delight, such as the sunny and warm "No Way Down" that's a momentary freedom from the album's heavyhandedness. There’s also two absolute knockouts with "The Rifle's Spiral" and "Port of Morrow", both of which take advantage of the laborious studio environment and make a strong positive showcase for Mercer’s new approach. "The Rifle's Spiral" is a real journey despite its three and half minute length, with Weiss conjuring a hypnotic drum shuffle that propels the song's disjointed guitars and hectic synth noise into dramatic ebbs and flows - and yet it still functions like an indie pop singalong, just something more surreal and unhinged. The title track meanwhile drowns itself in atmospheric keyboards, letting Mercer's falsetto swim beside the genuinely lovely arrangement and evocative melody. Neither song sounds like anything ever done under The Shins moniker and yet they work perfectly as part of that continuum, and they do their job selling the new concept. They sound like the kind of brave new start that Mercer was seemingly aiming for by relaunching his project; it's a shame then that outside those songs he often plays things curiously safe.

Rating: 6/10

Kent - Jag är inte rädd för mörkret (2012)

1) 999; 2) Petroleum; 3) Isis & Bast: 4) Jag ser dig; 5) Tänd på; 6) Beredd på allt; 7) Ruta 1; 8) Färger på natten; 9) Låt dom komma; 10) Hänsyn

Kent fully embrace radio-friendly hit songs after years of avoiding them. Big songs for stadium audiences, though all cut from the same cloth.

Key tracks: "999", "Petroleum", "Jag ser dig"

As referenced in my other Kent reviews, and for the benefit of the non-Nordic audience out there, Kent were a big thing. They had the much-quoted reputation of being Sweden’s biggest band during their prime and their impact around the rest of the Nordic region wasn't too shabby either, and that success had come in completely organic terms. The band simply had the luck to make songs which resonated with people, that success provided them with the autonomy to take their career wherever they wanted, and people’s tastes just happened to follow along no matter the style or sound changes, even when Kent themselves liked to act hesitant about embracing their public status (minimal interviews, no traditional compilations, etc). They were a stadium band with stadium hits but it was completely accidental and prior to 2012, the band had been pushing themselves in directions that could have easily seen them get thrown back in the shadows. Jag är inte rädd för mörkret, then, is practically an acknowledgment of their status. It's an honest arena album with an accessibly melodic and hook-driven sound, it's outwardly positive and it dials down the murky electronic aesthetics of the preceding albums in favour of a booming, once again more band-centric sound. It's something you would normally imagine a band of Kent's stature sound like by this point in their career.

Joakim Berg might still be covering familiarly anxiety-driven Kent ground lyrically but the songs on Jag är inte rädd för mörkret hide their meanings behind their upbeat summer radio hit direction. 2010's En plats i solen was already hinting at this and in a lot of ways Jag är inte rädd för mörkret is a decided extension of those initial steps, with the same producer Stefan Boman in tow as well: everything sounds clear as crystal and bright like a holiday afternoon. As a fan of all those dark and insular records before this, my natural instinct should probably be to balk at this - but my simple brain is wont to find pleasure in big anthemic choruses just as much as anyone else's, and the fact is that Kent is simply really good at those. The songs on Jag är inte rädd för mörkret do not showcase anything new or unique, and they tiptoe in a kind of Absolute Radio territory to a perhaps dangerous degree, but songs such as "Jag ser dig", "Tänd på", Färger på natten" and "Låt dom komma" are a positive rush, precisely because they aim straight for the jugular. There is strength to a hecking good chorus and Kent are so proud of the ones on Jag är inte rädd för mörkret that many of the songs conclude with an extended repetition of their big central hook, simple and short enough to sing along even if you're not native to the language. They're the type of choruses that you get a little obsessed about as they continue playing in your head: in particular the uninhibited U2-stadium bombast of "Jag ser dig" (the best of this lot in its shameless fist-pump/sing-along theatrics) and the nearly camp and endlessly crowd-pleasing "Låt dom komma" are tracks that shine in this department, quickly pushing away everything that isn’t their chorus. But they are, absolutely, really great choruses.

 

Really, my complaint here isn't the direction itself because there's so many good and positively instant cuts across Jag är inte rädd för mörkret, but rather that it sticks so strongly to its one chosen element that after a while it all gets rather one note: by halfway point you know exactly where each song is going, because outside minor variation they all share the same structure and flow. It isn't until all the way to the very end that you get something a little different, when the somewhat abruptly moody, loop-driven closer "Hänsyn" ironically sticks out a bit too much, as a washed out rendition of the style the prior albums rode on. As good as the songs are, much of the album's material feels interchangeable with one another, and only a few songs really make a stand on their own merits. That notion is heightened further by how Jag är inte rädd för mörkret sticks its best - and most diverse - songs right in the beginning. "999" is a radio-friendly version of Du & jag döden's landmark finale "Mannen i den vita hatten": across its seven minutes of epic rock bombast and Berg's stream-of-consciousness style introspective ranting, it flips the usual Kent formula of ending an album with a slowly unfolding giant by starting with one and kicking straight into full speed. It's by and far the most "traditional" Kent has sounded in ages, but by way of an old master showing off why he became a legend in the first place. "Petroleum" leans towards the other extreme and more heavily against Kent's more contemporary electronic sound, but it twists it to sound brighter than before, like a dangerously sharp synth pop club hit. It's the most alluring song across the entire record, sinking deeper into its swirl of a chorus and enchantingly detached delivery, somewhat challenging the album's openly warm nature by taking its aesthetics and still moving inwards.

Perhaps the surprise here is that my reaction to the album isn't stronger. Jag är inte rädd för mörkret has such a strong personality and it's such a 180 degree turn from where Kent had been trawling since the mid-2000s that, like similar more audience-friendly endeavours in other artists' catalogues, it would be an obvious candidate for being an album you'd either love or leave behind. That it ends up somewhere in the middle - as a good album that’s neither too exciting or disappointing - can be attributed to its small flaws: how most of it is effectively multiple variations on the same song, and how in a tight 10-song run a few substandard songs ("Hänsyn", the indifferent slog of "Isis & Bast") stand out more than the consistently enjoyable bulk of the record. Part an olive branch to the wider audiences and part letting one’s hair down after a string of heavily conceptual, tightly-knit records, Jag är inte rädd för mörkret is a more interesting album by its nature than perhaps by its songs - my review for this album is shorter than my average Kent review simply because there’s less in these songs to talk about due to their very design. But its charm is in simple pleasures: the beauty of big pop songs delivered by a band who confidently know their way around them.

Rating: 7/10

Manic Street Preachers - Generation Terrorists (20th Anniversary Legacy Edition) (2012)

 

CD1: 1) Slash 'n' Burn; 2) Nat West - Barclays - Midlands - Lloyds; 3) Born to End; 4) Motorcycle Emptiness; 5) You Love Us; 6) Love's Sweet Exile; 7) Little Baby Nothing; 8) Repeat (Stars and Stripes); 9) Tennessee; 10) Another Invented Disease; 11) Stay Beautiful; 12) So Dead; 13) Repeat (UK); 14) Spectators of Suicide; 15) Damn Dog; 16) Crucifix Kiss; 17) Methadone Pretty; 18) Condemned to Rock 'n' Roll Bonus tracks: 19) Theme from M.A.S.H. (Suicide Is Painless)
CD2: 1) Slash 'n' Burn (House in the Woods Demo); 2) Nat West - Barclays - Midlands - Lloyds (Marcus Demo); 3) Born to End (Marcus Demo); 4) Motorcycle Emptiness (House in the Woods Demo); 5) You Love Us (Heavenly Version); 6) Love's Sweet Exile (House in the Woods Demo); 7) Little Baby Nothing (House in the Woods Demo); 8) Repeat (Marcus Demo); 9) Tennessee (House in the Woods Demo); 10) Another Invented Disease (House in the Woods Demo); 11) Stay Beautiful (Marcus Demo); 12) So Dead (House in the Woods Demo); 13) Repeat (House in the Woods Demo); 14) Spectators of Suicide (House in the Woods Demo); 15) Damn Dog (Live); 16) Crucifix Kiss (Marcus Demo); 17) Methadone Pretty (House in the Woods Demo); 18) Suicide Alley (South Wales Demo); 19) New Art Riot (South Wales Demo); 20) Motown Junk (London Studio Demo); 21) Motown Junk

An alternative glimpse into the debut album without its infamous drum machine.

Key tracks: They're demos!

(This is review for the 20th anniversary reissue specifically, for a review of Generation Terrorists itself please click here).

If all the deluxe versions and anniversary re-releases have proven anything, it’s that the Manics are 1) hell-bent on recording every song draft they every write and 2) that they are obsessive archivists. The standard version of the 20th anniversary reissue of the debut Generation Terrorists comes with fully-fledged demos of nearly all the songs on the album, and more - which, like the parent album itself, is bordering on excessive.

This is where I’d normally complain about the lack of everything else that I’d personally deem more important, like all the b-sides (if you want those, you’ll have to had fork out for the super deluxe box set which I as a university student at the time was too poor to do) or even the US remixes of the six-odd songs that got redone for the stateside release of the album. And I do complain, but for a band who will one day very likely have released the original demo for nearly every song in their discography, the bonus disc here is arguably the best set of demos the band have ever released. Lest we forget, Generation Terrorists is a victim of its own production: slick yet somehow incredibly cheap, with a drum machine replacing Sean Moore’s own drumming in an ill-fated attempt to make everything sound bigger. The demos, then, give a chance to hear these songs as actually played by the band, more organically tying together the pre-album singles and EPs and the material that ended up on their debut. Most of the demos have been remastered pretty well to the point that they could just be slightly scruffy studio recordings from an indie act, and that means you nearly have the entire record presented in an alternative way. There’s only a few gaps and exceptions: “Condemned to Rock ‘n’ Roll” was entirely a studio creation so no demo exists, “Damn Dog” was literal studio filler so there’s a completely pointless live version instead, and a few of the demos rely on the same drum machine approach as the album, most predictably “Motorcycle Emptiness”. There’s also no demo for “You Love Us”, and instead you get the original single version released via Heavenly Recordings. I’ve actually grown to prefer the Heavenly version over the years: it’s a lot more whimsical and ridiculous, with some hilarious backing whoops and the singalong outro is far better than the shredding finale of the Generation Terrorists version. 

Besides, some of the demos are also intriguing in other ways than just from the production perspective. Many have changes in their lyrics or structure (missing second half of the chorus on “Born to End”, various changes across “Love’s Sweet Exile”, etc) and others almost feel like alternative versions. “Spectators of Suicide” is closer to the original Heavenly Recordings version than the radically different album version, so already quite different in that respect, but it’s also a much peppier and almost pop-like take that’s fascinating on its own. “Little Baby Nothing” is brilliant even in its demo form where the more acoustic-lead approach shifts it away from the glam rock power ballad it would eventually become - and it’s not only got the guest vocals in already, but the take is so different I’m not even sure if it’s Traci Lords or someone else (the credits are glaringly absent with any info). There’s also demos of some peripheral material, which neatly ties the entire early years of the band together. The band’s real debut single “Suicide Alley” never gets acknowledged anymore so its appearance here is a good inclusion (and given the original’s sound quality, it’s not like it was much more than a demo to begin with), and the demos of the title track of the New Art Riot EP and the non-album single and Manics classic Motown Junk pave the path towards the actual album. They are a really good bunch of demos that actually feel like they’re worth the price of admission, much more so than the clear majority of the early takes on the other anniversary reissues.

Elsewhere, the other audio bonuses include the actual “Motown Junk” and the non-album single “Suicidal Is Painless”, both great songs and an integral part of this period of the band so their inclusion is a solid choice. The remastering across the main album can’t fully save its production woes given how baked in they are, but it still lifts the sound up and gives some well-needed care to the original - it still sounds very artificial, but at least it has a little bit of life to it now and out of all the Manics remasters, this is the album that needed it the most and benefits the most from it. The liner notes have a bunch of artwork, photos and article clippings from the era, and the DVD has the token ‘making of’ interview, music videos and live performances - all a decent watch (and I have a soft spot for the mixture of bravado and silliness of the music videos for this album cycle). 

Would I, as a completionist, have wanted something more than just demos? Well, yes, but let’s put it this way: this is the only collection of demos from the Manics that I enjoy listening to beyond just the initial geekish exploration. It’s a genuinely interesting set of early takes that do what a good set of such things should do when released out in the public, and provide an alternative view of the songs you're already familiar with. In other words, it's something you can put on just to enjoy it - and that's a feat no other Manics demo set has achieved.

Rating: 8/10

Lambchop - Mr. M (2012)

1) If Not I'll Just Die; 2) 2B2; 3) Gone Tomorrow; 4) Mr. Met; 5) Gar; 6) Nice Without Mercy; 7) Buttons; 8) The Good Life (Is Wasted); 9) Kind Of; 10) Betty's Overture; 11) Never My Love

Suave and richly orchestrated; it's the Lambchop you know and love, but with more strings.

Key tracks: "If Not I'll Just Die", "2B2", "Gone Tomorrow"

To this day I think the perfect incapsulation of Lambchop is the opening of "If Not I'll Just Die", with a lush string serenade straight out of vintage Hollywood opening way to Kurt Wagner's gentle grunt, bluntly uttering "don't know what the fuck they're talking about" like he's in the completely wrong song. My theory with Lambchop is that out of the pre-synth works, your favourite is always going to be the one that you hear first. Lambchop have a very specific sound, dry humour and bored-still Sundays mingling with suave americana, and they've kept it going from album to album with little variation (before the synthesizer ones starting from 2016's FLOTUS but this disclaimer is going to get really clunky really quickly so that's the last time I'll raise it). That doesn't mean no variation, but that it's all rather subtle, with particular aspects highlighted and de-emphasised in turn in a way that it takes a fan who has heard all those albums to hear the differences. It makes Lambchop consistent enough that whoever hears one of their albums and likes its sound is bound to like a lot of the others too - but the particular balance of elements of that first experience will be the most familiar balance you'll come to always favour. Mr. M was my first Lambchop album, and it's also my favourite.

Mr. M's particular take on the Lambchop sound revolves around its string sections. String ensembles aren't new territory for the oft-expanded lineup of Lambchop and they appear throughout the band's discography, but not quite like this. The strings on Mr. M are like a duet partner for Kurt Wagner, trading their own lines with his lyrics, moving about without established rotas or rigid structures they'd need to follow. The songs on Mr. M started out as sparsely arranged vessels with a lot of space for other instruments to claim their spot in, before it was agreed for the strings to become the lead actor intentionally. The idea was to replicate old school Hollywood crooner ballad strings ("psycho-Sinatra" as they called it), inspired by how they took the lead from other band instruments and often played around in little movements of their own - and despite the heavily layered production work that generally devotes attention to all the elements no matter how small, it's the strings in particular you'll notice throughout the album. Lambchop have always proudly scruffed their shirt collars and added a little intentional ugliness over their beautiful songs, but Mr. M is elegant and polite throughout and by nature, floating on its string ensembles.

Beyond that, Mr. M keeps to the faithful formula: Wagner's half-abstract slice-of-life stories, muttered calmly over a series of low-to-mid tempo plodders, in the best possible way you can use 'plodder' as a descriptor. They are uniformly lovely, cosy as a hot cup of coffee on a cold autumn day and lush to listen to thanks to the sweet production. Part and parcel with Lambchop albums is that the songs tend to slightly bleed into one another at some point or another, but the eleven tracks of Mr. M are all quite independently strong; this includes the two instrumentals which let the orchestrations and production blossom as the unrestricted leads (particularly on the lovely lounge-orchestral "Gar"). The album regularly gives itself a little shake to avoid repeating the same tricks the same way and there’s regular strong points across the tracklist, but the opening trio in particular is quite possibly the best sequence of tracks in Lambchop history. The sweet and pastoral "If Not I'll Just Die", the dream-like melancholy of "2B2" and the gently urgent "Gone Tomorrow", which moves from one of Wagner's best chorus melodies to a long outro where the song dismantles and reconstructs itself back into place with gorgeous studio wizardry - all not just album highlights, but career highlights. The plaintive and pretty title track and the aforementioned "Gar" pick up well from there too, and lead onto the more restful (apart from the breezy "The Good Life") latter half. Pretty much everything stands out - a rarity for a Lambchop album, even as a fan.

One thing that struck me when going through interviews around the album is that Wagner seemed to be close to giving up on music altogether before this album. Mr. M follows a brief hiatus period where Wagner began to focus on his painting (the album artwork is all by him), and by all accounts it took him a great deal and coaxing from his friends to return to music. The album is dedicated to his close friend Vic Chesnutt, whose death shook Wagner quite a lot, and Wagner has quoted himself stating that the writing process for Mr. M began with him stating that there’s still at least one album left in the band, that even if it wasn’t going to be the last Lambchop album they were going to treat it as if it were. If Mr. M sounds like it's pushing the band's formula forward and its song selection is stronger than the average album by them, the context around it seems to explain why: that if Wagner were to break his silence and break from music, it needed to be with something that felt like it had something to say. I still go by my theory of first pickings, and maybe another Lambchop album would be my personal favourite had I heard it first, but to my ears Mr. M sounds like the most fully-rounded version of the standard Lambchop sound, something that could be a magnum opus swansong without it actually being one. In the frighteningly consistent Lambchop discography there’s the enjoyable albums and then there’s the albums where the band threaten to jump into classic territory; and this is one of the latter.

Rating: 8/10

Peter Buck - Peter Buck (2012)

1) 10 Million BC; 2) It's Alright; 3) Some Kind of Velvet Sunday Morning; 4) Travel Without Arriving; 5) Migraine; 6) Give Me Back My Wig; 7) Nothing Matters; 8) So Long Johnny; 9) L.V.M.F.; 10) Nothing Means Nothing; 11) Hard Old World; 12) Nowhere No Way; 13) Vaso Loco; 14) I'm Alive

Peter Buck is bored after the R.E.M. retirement, records an album for funsies. No more, no less. Leave all expectations behind and you might find something to raise a smile.

Key tracks: "10 Million BC", "Nothing Matters", "Vaso Loco"

Despite his public persona being Mr Grumpypants, Peter Buck's solo debut is actually a fun, lighthearted effort - and it's not too surprising that's the case. Buck's attitude to music has always been very grounded - rather than go on about artistic merits and deep concepts behind each note, he's the kind of guy who plays music because he finds it fun. He's never been one to take the lead or complain that he didn't get enough creative spotlight in his former day R.E.M. day job. He's also expressed his dislike of the typically lengthy and detail-focused album recording process several times in the past, preferring to record things quickly and by the gut. Thus, Peter Buck turning out to be a lighthearted, quickly recorded set of songs written and recorded purely because he found it fun to play some new tunes with his friends, with the spark of inspiration being Buck's battle against boredom rather than anything more auteur-like, makes perfect sense.

Because of his cooperative role in R.E.M., the question of what a Peter Buck solo album would sound like has never had even hint of an answer. As it turns out, it contains a lot of things. Rough garage rockers, The Velvet Underground-pastiches, hip-hop loops, keyboard ambiance, novelty covers and sweet singer/songwriter pop all all appear in semi-random fashion, peppered throughout by random banter ("if that ain't art, I don't know what is"). The plethora of guest vocalists contribute to the patch quilt feel and the album comes closer to a ragtag compilation of obscure songs from the 60s and 70s than to something largely helmed by one artist and his vision. The occasional lead vocal from Buck himself, gruffing and huffing his way through a distorted microphone, is there mainly just to give the occasional reminder on whose name the album is released under. 

Take it only by its songwriting and it's hardly an impressive album, even less so if you expected Buck to bring over anything even reminiscent of the R.E.M. catalogue here. There's a few songs where it feels like some time was actually spent the writing of the song, such as the upbeat shout-along "So Long Johnny" and the psychedelic rock offshoot "Nothing Matters", though even they feel a little like pastiches rather than something to judge on their own merit. But taking the album at that face value almost feels like missing the actual point. Peter Buck - the album - wasn't created out of artistic expression and it's not going to offer it. It's silly and it's fun, and it never tries to be anything beyond that. Its best parts are the ones that represent that side of it the most: the ridiculous hip-hop loop "LVMF", the punk rock freakout "Vaso Loco" and the infectious hard rock of "10 Million BC" are the most memorable takeaways from the album, none of them anything to write into a review about as songs but all surprisingly infectious stupid fun nonetheless.

The album's random nature, the incredibly limited release and Buck's own motivations for doing it all speak for it being a deliberately low-key release made purely for personal kicks and laughs. But it has its simple charisma I can't deny, even if it'll likely take me the same five years between now and the next time I play it as it did between now and the last time I listened to this. It's the kind of album you completely forget about but which will one day turn up in a shuffle and get you smiling for a moment, because it's goofy enough to charm you for a while even if it's a complete throwaway otherwise. I wouldn't be surprised if Buck himself thinks the same way, either.

Rating: 5/10

John Frusciante - Letur-Lefr EP (2012)

1) In Your Eyes; 2) 909 Day; 3) Glowe; 4) FM; 5) In My Light

Round one for Frusciante's re-invention. An EP of one-offs before the actual album, but somehow this pulls the trick far better than its big brother.

Key tracks: "909 Day", "In My Light"

John Frusciante officially confirmed his departure from the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the end of 2009, though he'd been unofficially out of the picture for a little bit longer than that. One of the reasons cited was getting tired of the rock star life and the music he was playing; so, after moving away from the Peppers, he pushed his guitar to the side and started focusing on electronic music. 2012 would also see the debut release of Frusciante's new chapter, PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone, but it was first preceded by Letur-Lefr EP: described as the pathway to Frusciante realising his new vision, it was meant to consist of random songs that Frusciante created while still developing the sound he was aiming for. Now, you can easily make the argument that it probably benefits from its shorter length, but for a set of trial runs Letur-Lefr is actually a far tighter body of work than the main album.

Much like PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone, Letur-Lefr's theme is Frusciante exploring new territories, but unlike the subsequent album, Letur-Lefr is much more playful about it. Perhaps chalk that down to it effectively being a collection of things done just for fun, but where PBX has the sound of an ambitious project being let down by its creator's choice of production, Letur-Lefr is giddy with new ideas. There's a fair few ideas new to Frusciante's solo records scattered across even only these five songs, and particularly from a production standpoint the new era seems to be as much about Frusciante fitting himself into that role above being the sole frontman. There's a great hip-hop influence throughout and a handful of rappers, most prominently RZA and Kinetic9, feature throughout and on "FM" Frusciante takes the backseat completely from the way of the guests, which acts like a surprisingly successful try-out for a new job as a hip-hop producer (Frusciante would in fact go on to produce a full album for Black Knights later on, though I've not heard how well this turned out).

Synthesizers and drum machines aren't a new thing for Frusciante but the heavy emphasis on drum loops in particular really characterises both the sound of the EP as well as its playfulness. The brief instrumental "Glowe" is effectively just a series of different sampled loops glued onto each other by a simple guitar line, but even at barely a minute long with little in the way of a grand idea, it sounds like a ton of fun was had piecing the jigsaw together and it manages to create a hectic groove for itself. "909 Day" is a similar sort of near-instrumental musical quilt collection, and has a similar infectious joy to its wild abandon of throwing everything into the mix - but then halfway flicks into a drastically different gear, its synth stabs moving towards something more epic and atmospheric as the vocals return.

The biggest difference between the EP and the subsequent album are how those abrupt musical changes and beat switches, which would become the signature elements for this electronic period, sound far more more natural and in control here - which, once again, is the opposite of what you'd expect from a series of supposed experiment takes. Perhaps because these were written and recorded during a transitional period of sorts, the songs still take influence from the songwriting and arrangement ideas of Frusciante's prior decade of music, but they're now fearlessly mashed together with all the new ideas he's hatching. If the big center of the EP is the wild west of those ideas, then it's the bookends that really shine the strengths of the new course. Frusciante dubbed his new style as "progressive synth-pop" and "In Your Eyes" and "In My Light" exemplify this the best: both are almost hook-driven and sound both familiar as well as unique to Frusciante's back catalogue, and while they twist and turn and change shape, there's always a red line running throughout them. "In My Light" is particularly brilliant -  it's probably the best thing to come out of this entire period for Frusciante, primarily because of its first half that for an all-too-brief moment becomes a stunningly glorious ascent of swirling synths and falsetto. The song then quickly leaves that section behind and takes the flight following that ascent, racing around briefly like it's already doing victory laps, before settling down again. It goes from aching to awestruck and back again in an impressive instant.

At little over ten minutes Letur-Lefr is over annoyingly quickly, but the more I listen to this chapter of Frusciante's 2012 release couplet, the more it feels like this is the more important piece purely in terms of its quality and the enjoyment derived from it. PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone, while enjoyable to a degree, is a direct continuation of the themes explored here but the wrong lessons have been learned, leading to an ultimatly disjointed album. Letur-Lefr is chaotic as well, but the actual songs sound positively empowered by it while still holding together within their own confinements. You can tell it's a practice round by how it sounds like a sketch page of ideas dotted around, but Frusciante clearly had a really good time trying out each of those ideas and that results in a set of short but really good songs, the likes of which I would happily listen for another ten minutes or more.

Rating: 8/10

Jason Lytle - Dept. of Disappearance (2012)

1) Dept. of Disappearance; 2) Matterhorn; 2) Young Saints; 4) Hangtown; 5) Get Up and Go; 6) Last Problem of the Alps; 7) Willow Wand Willow Wand; 8) Somewhere There’s Someone; 9) Chopin Drives Truck to the Dump; 10) Your Final Setting Sun; 11) Gimme Click Gimme Grid

More pleasantly familiar if completely predictable Lytle territory, with a few obvious standouts.

Key tracks: "Dept. of Disappearance", "Matterhorn", "Your Final Setting Sun"

 Jason Lytle’s first post-Grandaddy solo album - Yours Truly, the Commuter - came with a comforting sense of familiarity. It may not have been thoroughly excellent but it was very undeniably Lytle, proving that even if Grandaddy were gone he was still releasing music with the same magic intact, which is obviously a great thing. Dept. of Disappearance, his second solo release, also comes with a sense of familiarity. This time there’s no alarms, no surprises - just a feeling we’ve actually heard this all before. Just one album ago, actually.

Dept. of Disappearance could just as well be titled Yours Truly, the Commuter 2. The differences between the two albums are largely superficial: Lytle still plays all the instruments but he’s produced them to sound more like a live band this time rather than the decidedly homespun, one-man-show feel of his solo debut. The overall musical gist, however, has remained the same. Lytle plays his wistful indie rock as he longs for something vaguely nostalgic and scatters melancholy melodies all over his pretty little ditties. It’s Grandaddy with the edges off, with any fuzzier guitars and rougher moments replaced by more synth strings and piano-lead navel-gazing. Dept. of Disappearance even has a simple borderline-novelty sing-along moment in form of “Get Up and Go”, just like Commuter had “It’s the Weekend”. Dept of Disappearance comes across a lot like a neat copy/paste job that’s been brushed up a little.

The good thing about finding your angle and sticking with it is that if you’re good, you’re always going to produce pleasing results and that’s what Lytle has done here too. Dept. of Disappearance is in every way an enjoyable, competent album that’s going to please anyone who’s ever enjoyed Lytle’s works before and which is a good album to dig out a few times a year and lose yourself a little into. But it’s also the first time Lytle hasn’t had anything new to say that would make it stand out from the rest of his releases, and while enjoyable the songs generally aren’t doing anything special either. Few are stronger than others, like the sunset ballad “Matterhorn” and the anxious, hurried “Your Final Setting Sun”, but most of the album’s contents were already found on the last album and it was much more exciting and interesting the first time around. The title track that opens the album is by and far its best offering, starting out with a strong hook and self-assured tone that’s miles away from the general wistfulness of the album, and getting even better once it switches to its extended instrumental outro that’s restrainedly epic.

It’s only at the very end and the closer “Gimme Click Gimme Grid” where Dept. of Disappearance snaps out of its own comfort zone: the skipping rhythm of its drum machine, the dissonantly different verses and choruses and the extended length of the song all shaking things around. It’s hardly anything new or experimental but it’s a nice inspirational spark, sadly at the very of the album though. While on one hand I’m glad there’s another album’s worth of more Lytle material out there, mostly it feels like Lytle’s cruising on a comfortably pleasant autopilot for a good length of the album. That the Grandaddy reunion announcement happened shortly after the album’s release speaks for itself. There’s a great EP hiding between the covers here but for the most part Dept. of Disappearance is Lytle writing music while his heart has already been set on bringing together the old band.  

Rating: 6/10

John Frusciante - PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone (2012)

1) Intro/Sabam; 2) Hear Say; 3) Bike; 4) Ratiug; 5) Guitar; 6) Mistakes; 7) Uprane; 8) Sam; 9) Sum

Frusciante restarts from scratch with an electronic reinvention, and somewhat appropriately sounds like a newcomer again rather than a seasoned veteran. In a somewhat awkward way.

Key tracks: "Ratiug", "Mistakes"

John Frusciante may be a master of his art when it comes to his guitar but that does not automatically translate to being adept at everything. After leaving the Red Hot Chili Peppers for the second time and burning out from being a rock star, he found a new passion in samplers and music programmers. Frusciante had dabbled with electronic elements before - the programmed loops around the To Record Only Water for Ten Days era, A Sphere in the Heart of Silence – but now it was about a full re-invention of himself as a musician and carving a completely new path onwards. Not a bad thing on its own and PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone (jesus) was released relatively shortly after Frusciante’s retirement and subsequent electronic obsession, a sign that he was still an active creator and had no interest in retiring. Trouble is, the album is also worrisomely close to someone’s first attempts at sampling, looping and programming. Something’s gone awry when parts of an album from a world-famous, seasoned music veteran sounds eerily close to the hapless things I used to make with Fruity Loops and CuBase back when I was trying to make sense of them.

PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone’s big downside is how it actively sabotages itself in the name of Frusciante’s ambitious rebirth. It’s not actually a bad album when you listen to the core of the songs and the actual writing itself, as Frusciante’s still got the know-how of writing a great, evocative musical segment. Unfortunately here they’ve been pushed through a cheap, disjointed electronic production where songs transition from one part to another abruptly like a haphazard cut/paste job and where everything is drowned by (what sounds like) pre-set drum sample loops. The drums are pretty easily the main offender, in fact: they sound cheap, the loops have a habit of changing disjointedly and hyperactively in a way that throws the song off the rails and Frusciante’s apparent keenness on chaotic fills is a constant disruption throughout the album. It’s all very Fisher Price My First Electronic Album, or at the very least like archive material from the very first messing about you do when you get a new plaything. Yet, not only is this a fully-fledged release but also the supposedly more structured and planned album after the directly preceding Letur-Lefr EP collected together some of the initial experimental material. Not that you’d be able to tell.

Endure through the haphazard production and you get some good stuff, mostly in the form of scattershot segments throughout the album that manage to shine through the awkward surface and disjointedness of the tracks they’re attached to. Only the appropriately guitar-centric “Ratiug” and bouncy “Mistakes” feel like fully-formed songs on their own right, with a structure that feels natural and consistency across all the elements. The former even finishes off with a rap verse from Kinetic 9, which is somewhat out of nowhere given Frusciante’s back catalogue and yet feels more integrated to the song than some of the drum fills elsewhere on the album. The good parts elsewhere take a lot more work to unearth and understand, requiring patience and a concentrated listen, but there’s enough there to keep the album afloat and occasionally even pretty good: the most notable examples are “Hear Say” and “Bike” which are theoretical album highlights screaming for some coherency. Had these been produced more professionally, we might even be talking about a really good album.

The thing is, I’m all for Frusciante growing his repertoire and have no qualms about him relegating the guitar to a side role (it’s still heavily present here but used for background textures more than anything), but it does come with the expectation that he would still reach his previous standards. Instead, it fails to realise the “progressive synth-pop” concept Frusciante described the album as, and that’s all to do with how the album sounds like he’s still in the middle of learning his new tools. For an artist’s ninth album PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone is almost embarrassingly amateurish. The first album of Frusciante’s artistic rebirth is, rather appropriately, like an awkward debut.

Rating: 5/10

Bloc Party - Four (2012)

1) So He Begins to Lie; 2) 3x3; 3) Octopus; 4) Real Talk; 5) Kettling; 6) Day Four; 7) Coliseum; 8) V.A.L.I.S.; 9) Team A; 10) Truth; 11) The Healing; 12) We Are Not Good People

Rating: 5/10

It's a rocking and roaring comeback album, but it sounds like the people who least wanted the comeback were the musicians themselves.

Key tracks: "Octopus", "Day Four", "V.A.L.I.S."

That Four exists in the first place is a small miracle. Its gestation was heavily extended due to a hiatus, which largely consisted of near endless confusion on whether Bloc Party had split or not, as Matt Tong definitely left at least once due to creative disagreements and Kele Okereke kept dodging the question while reaping the success of his solo album. But Bloc Party did reunite and Four really, really wants you to believe that they are back together as a band. The album title and the circles on the cover are meant to represent the four band members, the songs are connected by pouts of random studio chatter almost to make a point about the band being in the same room together, and most noticeably there's the sound. Four is a back-to-basics rock-out album, with all the extra elements out of sight and the focus having been placed on the core four instruments. The only thing is, you put this much effort into convincing people of something and it just comes across like you're trying your hardest to convince yourself instead.

It'd be easy to call Four a retread of the band's sound before they started building it up, a return to roots after the complicated Intimacy, but that's not quite true. Compared to the finesse of Silent Alarm where the muscular music was lead by very precise arrangements, Four is a rampaging animal: it plows through with strength and strength alone. It sticks to succinct, strongly punctuated songs that often sacrifice subtlety for power and while that could be really good given the band's strength as instrumentalists (especially if you felt that they had taken some wrong turns on the albums before Four), in reality it ends up hiding their actual strengths. The rhythm section lacks the feel of the past albums, packing a lot of power but not very interestingly. A couple of songs like "Octopus" and "Team A" are built around a more rhythmic skeleton and you can hear how the band feels more alive in them, striding with a bit of groove in a way that suits them instead of just running forward. But then, even in them Okereke ends up falling short - his presence feels phoned in and his lyrics have little of his distinct personality from the previous albums. Lissack is the only who actually sounds interested (and interesting), and on Four he proves that he can crunch a mean riff in a way he hasn’t had a chance to before.



Thus, despite all its attempted push of energy Four is disappointingly muted: a lot more effort has been placed on the concept of the songs than the actual writing, which doesn't work out. Songs like "So He Begins to Lie" and "3x3" have a lot of volume but their aggression doesn't sound natural nor do they really have much of an impact despite the attempted intensity. Four makes a ruckus but fades into the background despite of it, and rarely registers afterwards. On the other hand even in its weakest points it’s never outright bad, but rather just clumsy. The closest it gets "Coliseum" that ill-fittingly moves from a blues twang to borderline hardcore, but it’s just largely really awkward about it. A lot of Four is simply unmemorable, and the reason why is that for all its big bravado about the band as a unit, it's clear that everyone's checked out. This isn’t Kele's best song material, the rest of the crew barely put the effort in to play through it and never are you convinced that this is the musical direction any of them wanted to actually go for.

There is a slight silver lining to be found here and Four isn't without its merits, but it's another damning notch that the best songs it features feel coincidentally so. "Octopus" so obviously rests entirely on its gimmick guitar riff, but it also helps it stand out (and it's admittedly a really fun gimmick riff). "Day Four" and "Truth" are standard issue Bloc Party torchlight moments which likely wouldn't have raised many heads on any other album, but here their more melodic touch and softer pace sounds fresh compared to their surroundings, and they're the few moments where Okereke sounds engaged for a while. "V.A.L.I.S.", too, sounds like Bloc Party on autopilot, but it's the old kind of Bloc Party and in places reminds of when the band's chemistry was actually there to be found. None of them reach any canonical heights but they're the handful of songs that leave you with some impression they were there after the album has finished - which isn’t a faint praise you can hand out to most of the album.

Those songs breathe a little life into the album but once the brutish but boring "We're Not Good People" vacuously thrashes into its ending, Four leaves with little to remember it for. It's not what you'd expect (or want) because for better or worse, Bloc Party have always been memorable. But it’s what you get when no one cares. The four members got together either through some misguided obligation or misjudged interest and released an album that sounds like an awkward compromise made while figuring out if they still had any shared chemistry left. Tong left (again) more or less right after the immediate album cycle had finished and Moakes quietly quit during the break afterwards to focus on his own project started during the hiatus, which makes sense because Four sounds like a contractual obligation before calling it a day. Everyone was already busy making plans for the future that didn't involve the others, and the great comeback turned out to be a stop gap that feels forced even if it wasn’t. For a supposed raw and loud album, Four fizzles out.

Bat for Lashes - The Haunted Man (2012)

 

1) Lilies; 2) All Your Gold; 3) Horses of the Sun; 4) Oh Yeah; 5) Laura; 6) Winter Fields; 7) The Haunted Man; 8) Marilyn; 9) A Wall; 10) Rest Your Head; 11) Deep Sea Diver

It's still recognisably Bat for Lashes but it's all... full of light and joy?

Key tracks: "Lilies", "All Your Gold", "Oh Yeah"

On the covers of her first two albums Natasha Khan dressed up in feathers, elaborate headwear and gothic garments of various kinds, stood in mystic settings and was surrounded by props. She evoked magic and fantasy, emphasised the imagery to bring her concept-heavy songs to life. On the front of The Haunted Man she’s stark naked against a plain gray backdrop, only accompanied by her titular haunted man who is just as bare as she is. It’s an intentional contrast - a sign of dropping any pretense, toning down the make-belief and coming forward as just herself.

The long and short of The Haunted Man is that it offers a more naked sound than the first two Bat for Lashes albums as well as a similarly more direct lyrical style instead of the former flowery prose. The idea seems to have been to show off Natasha Khan rather than the stylistically exaggerated character of the original albums, to do away with the bat lightning hearts and split personality concepts and to bring out Khan’s own voice. She's also returned to the more sparsely arranged sound of the debut over the maximalist pop production of Two Suns, though sparse is perhaps the wrong word. There’s a clear emphasis on few distinct elements per song over a busy sonic soundscape - with a steady minimalistic drum machine as one of the frequent main contributors - but the sound has been given space to breathe, resulting in the arrangements sounding very lush. The production is both lightweight and grand, with the gothic halls of yore switched to vast natural plains; soundwise alone, The Haunted Man is wonderful to listen to. Khan herself sounds not just free-spirited but more confident, like this is the first time that she is performing as herself rather than as a stylistically exaggerated character and she’s relishing every moment of it. When she joyously shouts “thank god I’m alive” as the music bursts into a rich orchestral bliss in the opener “Lilies”, it’s such a genuine expression of emotion that it hits the listener just as strongly as it does her. Whether it was the goal or not, The Haunted Man sounds like an album of personal liberation.

The flipside with the new approach is that it’s made Khan’s songwriting less consistent. A number of tracks have length issues as the more atmospheric approach accidentally allows them to either meander a little too long for their own good or to mistake a lush production for something more tangible. There is a noticeable gap between the key tracks and the rest of the album, and in fact “Horses of the Sun” is the first Bat for Lashes album track you could call downright weak, making a lot of clatter without going anywhere for five minutes. It’s a shame, because when The Haunted Man hits the point it successfully combines the eccentricity of the debut with the otherworldly pop songs of the second album. “All Your Gold”, “Oh Yeah”, the before-mentioned “Lilies” and the transforming title track are all excellent, but it’s the airy synthpop piece “A Wall” that has sneakily managed to become the album’s moment of purest musical delight, marrying the directly inviting tone that made “Daniel” from Two Suns such a prior standout with the new open, floating sound to a most hooking effect.

There is, in addition, also the somber piano ballad “Laura”, the oft-cited highlight that seems to have become The Haunted Man’s standout moment, but to me it’s always felt a little strange. It’s a really good song in all honesty, but it was co-written with the Lana Del Rey collaborator Justin Parker and you can hear it. Khan and piano are normally a winning combination but this time it comes off more like a Del Rey track than a Bat for Lashes one - not a bad thing in itself, but it comes off clunky in the context of the album and sounds like a standalone bonus track thrown in the middle of Khan’s personal collection.

A mixed bag, then. The Haunted Man sounds exactly the right step for Khan to have taken - it expands her sound, keeps the familiar elements but twists them into a new form and sees her stepping out of one guise into another, showing she has the range for it. And, yet, it does so with slightly uneven results - mostly interesting, sometimes great, occasionally rather meandering and a couple of times about to derail. The Haunted Man does give you a better idea of her chops and it’s a captivating enough listen, but it’d be hard to argue against her previous albums being more compelling as a whole.

Rating: 7/10