The Telephone Numbers is first and foremost a great name for a group. And this is a very lovely song that makes me want to hear more from this particular band. They're from San Francisco, which is apt, because I'm still delighting in hearing the new album from Cool Ghouls, another band from that part of the world, last Friday. But while The Ghouls seem more intent on stirring happy memories of Haight Ashbury and The Byrds, The Telephone Numbers appear to have their feet set firmly in the mid-Eighties and the C-86 sound, although that scene too was one that was immersed in revivalism and memories of ... yup The Byrds, as well of course as Buzzcocks.
Anyhow, The Telephone Numbers do what they do very well. They 'ring' if you'll excuse, or even if you won't excuse, the pun. They can also play, in a way that many of those first C-86 bands couldn't. You're Nowhere comes on initially like a song from one of the first couple of Julian Cope albums, then goes on to remind me of Grant and Amanda harmonising with The Go Between. It's Right Here. Another wonderful song that looked back, to be in the here and now, while looking forward to future's promise.
The lyrics here may talk of sadness but the tune only reminds me of happiness. It's heavenly. It's sunny. It's lovely. It's love. It's one of the best songs I've heard in a year where there has already been so much to love music wise. Let's hope The Telephone Numbers have anything in their saddle bag or in the works that is anything like as good as this. Why shouldn't they on this evidence. In their own words, 'What's life without some kindness...' Yes indeed.
I can tell you nothing about Todd Briefley. This is the only thing he has on Spotify and I can't find a biography of him anywhere. This though is one of the best things I've heard this year. Musically, lyrically and in every other way. Also its title. Its guitars remind me of the Gang of Four's full on assault. Pretty much everything else is its own. I look forward to hearing more from Todd Briefly.
It's clear, listening to it through properly for the first time, that I've really neglected the second Goat Girl album, the rather unfortunately named, On All Fours. Must get round to writing about it on here. In the meantime, just heard this on the radio.
1973 seems to be some kind of gap within my own personal record collection. I don't care for much of the Top Ten here and didn't have a huge number of great albums of my own to fill in the gaps. Anyhow, here's the list from the Best Ever Album chart.
1. Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
2. Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy
3. Stevie Wonder - Innervisions
4. Genesis - Selling England by the Pund
5. The Who - Quadrophenia
6. Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
7. Paul McCartney and Wings - Band on the Run
8. Iggy & The Stooges - Raw Power
9. David Bowie - Aladdin Sane
10. Can - Future Days
Here is mine. Just records I own on vinyl. Still a pretty good list I'd say. A year of transition:
1. Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
2. New York Dolls - New York Dolls
3. David Bowie - Aladdin Sane
4, Marvin Gaye - Let's Get It On
5. Tom Waits - Closing Time
6. Iggy & The Stooges - Raw Power
7. Al Green - Call Me
8.Bruce Springsteen - Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.
9. Stevie Wonder - Innervisions
10. Toots & The Maytals - Funky Kingston
Other things not on here. John Cale, Faust, Neu, Sly & the Family Stone, Gram Parsons and more.
A group with a sound and ambience that you would probably need to make up if it didn't actually exist. The Fallen Angels, (and what a name that is) an American Psychedelic band from Washington D.C and the late Sixties. They had a sound to match their name. Very much of their time and perhaps not having enough about them to mark them out as true cult geniuses, they're still worth investigating.
Their eponymous, debut album from '67 is where you want to start. Baroque, in the way that Left Banke and Zombies were, reflective but not indulgent. At least not generally. They do have some moments which are and mark it very much as a record of its time that falls just short of being essential.
But it's still a record that has much to recommend it.. The sounds of Pop from these years is at such a remove from the concerns of our times that it seems like almost a lost garden and a highly attractive one at that.
The Fallen Angels is a really rather lovely record in many ways. Change of mood, carefree innocence, a reminder of times long gone and ones highly unlikely ever to be repeated. Alongside those mentioned above I'd also throw in Lovin' Spoonful, Kinks, Cryan' Shames, Manfred Mann and Turtles. That all adds up to a small feast to me. The kind of record Anton Newcombe should hear if he hasn't already though I imagine as an arch completist in this respect that he already has. Many times.
Finland's New Silver Girl have an innate sense and gift for Rock and Roll. This is evidently obvious just through listening to the first three minutes of Love is Like a Goldmine, the first song on their eponymous debut album which came out a few weeks back. It's immediately clear that you are in very safe hands indeed.
This is mythic stuff. New Silver Girl is an album first and foremost that's obviously rooted in the Seventies. Think, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, America, Waters and Gilmour era Floyd, Hawkwind, Grateful Dead, Steppenwolf, New Riders of the Purple Sage. Long haired stoners. Heading out on the highway.
Then fast forward to the Nineties and a new breed of dull-eyed dreamers take on this vision and scuff it up a bit. Swervedriver, Dinosaur Jr, The Verve, Primal Scream, Spiritualised, Black Rebel Motorcycle Gang, Teenage Fanclub, (of Everything Flows), Oasis (of Columbia). These two lists should give you an idea of the medicine being mixed up in New Silver Girl's basement twenty years further on down the line.
The guitar lines are crystalline. The vocals elegant wasted. The road is wide, open and seems as if it might go on for ever. The band don't miss a beat. Every song sets a slightly different tone from the template impression they lay down with Love is Like a Goldmine. Just as every sunrise and sunset is the same yet subtly different.Lyrically, they get it just right too. 'I know you're one of the immortals and we're on the road to glory' they sing on Tennessee. The line could stand as a mission statement.
As I suggested, this is a dream very much born in Seventies music, literature and cinema. You could imagine a New Silver Girl song popping up on the soundtrack of Almost Famous, Dazed & Confused or The Virgin Suicides. They almost seem to share musical genes with Stillwater, the fictional band from the first of these movies. Over the course of the record they capture perfectly the loping, loose feel of late teens and early twenties. Joints are surely being passed and it seems likely that we'll all need to chip in to get us a bottle of JD.
It's an altogether wonderful record and I'm delighted to have caught onto it and be able to slot it into my end of year list. Perhaps it's fitting to let the band have their own say. Here's singer Olli Happonen, (a man with a distinct Tom Petty look about him), of the band talking about how this all came to pass.
'My first contact with rock'n'roll was in Rauma, somewhere in the 1990's. Youth discos were playing europop. The streets were dead. The local ice hockey club offered a pastime for some. An old city hydroelectric plant gave shelter and a way to salvation. Dick Dale, Hellacopters, Hypnomen, Laika and the Cosmonauts and Lou Reed were the music of the older boys and girls. I followed along.
With the dawn of the new Millennium arriving the town of Raumen was left behind, but rock stayed. I moved to Helsinki, bought a guitar and after years of wandering through the rock clubs of the city I found myself sharing the stage with 4 other guys with same passion for music and life. New Silver Girl was born...'
After listening to New Silver Girl the morning I wrote this review, I listened to The End by The Doors the song from the Sixties that most obviously heralds the sensibility that New Silver Girl draws on. The segue between the two was seamless.
One of the most gratifying albums about writing a blog like this is getting appreciative responses from artists whose music you've liked. Olli Happonen, nominal leader of Finnish band New Silver Girl, is a case in point in this respect. I very much liked their album of eponymous 2018 debut is a case in point. Yesterday he posted me a copy of their latest song, I assume ahead of a forthcoming new album. Delighted to post it here. Just follow the link.Thanks Olli.
Is it possible to fall in love with two completely different albums in the same morning? It seems so. Having fallen under the spell of Wild Firth's magnificent Lawn Memory early yesterday morning I made my way to work. Once there, while preparing, (I assure you I was working), I took the opportunity to listen to Aldous Harding's third album Designer and was slain again.
Harding is something of a divisive artist. Holding absolutely nothing back in terms of performance and visual presentation, she comes across of either quite bereft of her senses or ludicrously mannered. If the music wasn't so damned accomplished she might easily be dismissed as a preening wannabe.
But the music is serene, assured and often quite breathtaking. Basically built around Harding's own guitar figures, she weaves exquisite Gothic Folk patterns that have drawn me in utterly after just a couple of listens to Designer.
On top of that she layers found, apparently nonsensical poetic lyrics that make perfect sense in the contexts she sets them in. Stripped of the colourfully odd videos that Harding has put out in advance of the album's release the songs stand alone; seductive, warm and incredibly alluring.
Harding makes the case for extreme idiosyncratic eccentricity remarkably powerfully on Designer. It's a delight from start to finish, an indulgence, like eating a whole bowl of cherries at one sitting. I'm fortunate enough to have a ticket to see Harding play in a small venue in my hometown in a few weeks time. Frankly, I can't wait. In the meantime this record will more than tide me over. It makes the case for cryptic, elusive beauty.
A couple of years ago New Zealand singer songwriter Aldous Harding used to do a cover of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights while touring. It made perfect sense really. If anybody should be playing Kate Bush songs apart from the woman herself it's Harding. She did a great job of it. She has the range and the emotive artillery required and an understanding of the essential silliness but the equally essential poetry that's going on in the original. At the end of the song in the link I posted she makes a face of childish embarrassment to her audience. An 'I'm not worthy' look. There was no need. She's more than worthy. If Kevin Morby is the modern equivalent of Bob and Bill Callahan plays Leonard, then Aldous is just right for Kate. The comparisons are not a diminishment of any of the three. In fact a compliment. We're very lucky to have them.
I watched the clip this Sunday morning before going to see Harding play The Cluny 2 in the Ouseburn Valley in Newcastle in the evening. A prize ticket in a tiny, intimate venue to see a very special artist. I'd snapped it up a few months ago as soon as I'd heard she was playing and waited in great anticipation ever since. Watching her do Kate I wondered whether she'd play the song again that evening. Perhaps it was too much to hope for.
All in all it was a very special day. Nice weather in Newcastle as Spring becomes Summer. I had my lunch and wandered to my local, Rosie's, where James, the perennial barman nowadays, was manning the fort. It was quiet, midday and an empty pub. I put on a few songs, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Love, Cornershop, Mahalia Jackson, things that seemed to fit the early afternoon mood.
Then I wandered down the road to the Tyneside Cinema to watch the documentary about Aretha Franklin Amazing Grace which has just opened. That was an extraordinary thing in itself which will have to wait for a later post but it set me up for the evening. Called Mum and Dad who are both OK. Then after a couple more calls and some texts and another pint at Rosie's took a taxi down to the Ouseburn Valley to The Cluny.
When I got out at the other end there was a definite haze of dope hanging around the place. Lots of, mainly fairly early to late middle aged folk hanging round the venue, several of them dressed in Tie-Dye. The reason soon became clear. Gong, or what is left of them by this point were playing the main venue. Not for me. At least not tonight. I made my way into Cluny 2, just before the support act was due to start.
It was immediately evident that the mood of the evening was polite. Wonderfully so. Not a young crowd but not an old one either. Ranging from twenty to fifty. Stage set up by the venue door, which isn't where it always is. Not where I saw Courtney Barnett for the first time over five years back. Or for Bill Ryder Jones a couple of years later.
Courtney's Dead Fox was playing as support Laura Jean hit the stage. Apt really, as she's been supporting Courtney the last time I'd seen her late last year at Northumbria University. On that occasion Laura Jean had been rather lost on the big stage. Playing alone with guitar, keyboards, sax and effects she's made little sense. Here by contrast, she was in her element.
She played a short half our set of intimate, clever and honest songs and chatted between them to the crowd. Partly about Harding who she called Hannah and said she had looked after years back when she'd been living in Melbourne above a pub of derelict old men. It was great but I went up the winding stairs to catch the last of Newcastle's sunlight. Stood outside the venue for a few minutes and and realised that Aldous Harding was coming straight towards me to turn inside the venue door.
Our eyes met and I got the sense that you do when you see someone in the public eye that they're thinking 'Is he going to bother me?' I'm not like that so I said, 'You're wonderful. Have a good evening.' She thanked me, not once but twice and went downstairs. I went down shortly afterwards to catch the rest of the supporting slot.
After Laura Jean finished with a neat sax solo I followed her out of the doors, (seriously I'm no stalker), and thanked her for her set, telling her I'd seen her supporting Courtney and playing a wonderful version of the Go-Betweens Streets of Your Town with her and her band . She seemed surprised that I knew of them. I said I'd seen Courtney here a few years back, 'We play the circuit' she replied then said 'I'm Laura' and I told her my name and we shook hands.
Half an hour seemed too long to wait for Harding to hit the stage. I stood in a thin queue for the bar although I noticed a sneaky type avoiding this most English of laws and getting his beer before me. I got in conversation with the bloke in front of me. I asked him if he knew Harding and he said no, he was here at his girlfriend's behest. 'Sometimes you have to listen to your girlfriend' I said. 'Only about music', he replied. 'I have to manage everything else.'
And then, shortly after nine, Harding and her band were onstage. For a while it looked as if it was going to be a wonderful gig where I barely saw the artist concerned. Harding was almost unrecognisable from the person I'd seen just outside the venue shortly earlier. She'd pulled her long hair on both sides right across her face and crouched deep onstage. I caught only momentary glimpses of her for the first few numbers, all from her latest album Designer. She's an intense and mannered performer. She positively gurns at stages, baring her teeth, rolling her eyes, leering. You'll never have seen anything quite like it. Not for everyone, although the crowd seemed to me to be absolutely in the palm of her hand. After the first song, the title track of Designer a middle aged Geordie voice was heard to say 'You're great' which she acknowledged politely and eventually moved onto the next song.
But I still couldn't really see her. A too tall man a few rows ahead was blocking my view. I shuffled horizontally trying not to break the polite, pervasive mood. Still couldn't really see her. The music was magnificent but I seemed destined to be denied a proper view.
Harding began to talk to the audience in between numbers. 'Usually I'm really funny, but it seems not tonight.' was her first rejoinder and from then on she opened up. I'd almost given up being able to see things properly so skirted round the back of the standing area past the bar and towards the exit. Just before it at the side of the stage I finally found the perfect view of Harding and her band. So there I stayed.
So what exactly does Harding do which make her so special? She has precedents and Kate Bush is definitely one of them but by now, moving onto her third album and beyond, she defines her own space. It's definitely intense, the long gap between songs ensures that, but it's a light intensity somehow, and a humorous one. Something quite special anyway.
The band left the stage but were brought back for an encore. A new song, 'Nowhere yet...' called No Peel where she accompanied proceedings by tapping a drumstick on a mug of coffee. Then they were gone. Harding rested her head on the doorway just outside the venue. Then I made my way out. Pausing first for a pee.
I said to the guy in the urinal next to me, 'Well that was something...' He replied, 'I didn't like it.' Each to their own. Outside the venue I saw the bloke I'd chatted to in the queue for the bar, this time with his girlfriend. I asked them if they'd enjoyed it and they both had although she said Harding hadn't played several of the songs she liked best. I told them that previously she'd been known to do Wuthering Heights and we agreed that would have been something. Then my taxi arrived and took me home.
It was one of the best things I've seen...
P.S. No she didn't play Wuthering Heights tonight. She didn't need to.
There's a very interesting 4AD compilation album coming at the beginning of April. I'm sure I'll be posting plenty of it here. Here's a first. Aldous does Deerhunter in very much her own way.
The singer's voice is often the marmite factor with certain artists and bands. What do you think of the voice of Robert Plant? Michael Stipe? Kate Bush? Stuart Staples? Nina Simone? Captain Beefheart? Tom Waits? These will impact on us all differently and decide if we want to keep on going in terms of our listening experience.
The marmite vocal factor has definitely been key to me in deciding what I think of the new Valerie June album, the marvellously named The Moon & Stars : Prescriptions for Dreamers over the last couple of days since it came out on Friday. I love its textures, I love its melodies, I love its mood, I just can't quite make out what I feel about June's voice. At least I couldn't at first.
I've liked previous records of hers. She's certainly a talent and this particular album seems to be getting more attention than anything she's ever done. It's a bigger and more ambitious record at any rate. June is Tennessee born and it sounds it. This definitely sounds like Southern Soul but not in the way Soul sounded in '67, even though there is a delightful and quite special moment on the record where Carla Thomas guests.
This is more of a Space Age Soul record. Sun Ra seems to be every much of an influence on what goes on here as Otis. There's lots of space on the record for June to inhabit and she does so masterfully. But the voice?
I, not unlike Henry Higgins, grew accustomed to the voice. It's certain not a conventional instrument, reedy and raspy rather than smooth and silky, perhaps Eartha Kitt is a better pointer than Aretha or Gladys. But after a few plays, the voice slips into the mix and becomes just one more ingredient in a rather heady and intoxicating mix. This is a very good record and one I strongly suspect that will become better with every listen.
These songs kernels are those of classic soul ones. But June is a smart enough operator to keep it contemporary and relevant. The Moon & Stars : Prescriptions for Dreamers feels very much like a 2021 record in wake of recent events. It's also a proud and defiant one which lays down its ground rules and sticks to them admirably.
I said I'd get back to Kathy Kirby, and here I am. Her debut album, Cool Dry Place is a sweet and rather affecting record. Modest in its ambitions. Tender and impressive in terms of its affections.
A bit of background. Kirby is from Texas though you wouldn't really know it. She writes and performs melodic songs of what I imagine you'd call an indie disposition. None of these attempt to blow the house. But they work rather well anyhow. This is a really nice record.
According to her Spotify bio she touches on a number of themes on here; motherhood, late capitalism, disintegrating relationships. You wouldn't particularly know that from listening to them either. The songs are good, the delivery is great. The effect is highly pleasant.
It starts with...a bell. The new album by Cool Ghouls, San Fransciscan psychedelic melodicists who have been on my radar for a while now. Back in 2017, I was deeply taken with their last full album Animal Races and particularly the title track, which was probably my favourite song of that particular year.
Since then I've followed their progress and appreciated the mini-album and live one that they've put out in the meantime. I was delighted to discover their new record, At George's Zoo this morning land in my lap unexpectedly and have been playing it more or less continually during the course of the day before writing this.
Cool Ghouls can be loosely banded with any number of current similarly oriented San Francisco and West Coast guitar bands with common, mostly Sixties influenced predilictions. Allah-Las, Mystic Braves and Holy Wave immediately come to mind. In terms of references, The Byrds definitely immediately top the list in this respect, particularly the mop-topped Byrds of Younger Than Yesterday. But the band also tap into that whole glorious dawn of wonder of '66 and '67. Moby Grape, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Beach Boys, Country Joe & The Fish, Buffalo Springfield and other starry eyed suspects.
I'm always a sucker for anything that jangles, and Cool Ghouls can certainly jangle with the very best of them. But I'm delighted to report that on At George's Zoo, they've cast their net wider than previously to delicious effect. This is the best thing they've ever done I'd say. Still very much Sixties oriented, but broader in scope than what has come before, encomapassing blue eyed Soul, Jazz and Country as it takes their fancy. It's a delighfully dappled and varied listen.
Their are fourteen songs on here, plus a live track, appended I imagine to indicate what the band feel to be their natural environment. There's nothing on here I don't care for and though I generally prefer albums to be slightly more concise, in At George's Zoo's case, I'm happy to make an exception. The album glows with positive energy, which let's face it, is very welcome at this moment in history.
Picking out highlights is quite unnecessary as here is a band that are well schooled in the art of pacing and scheduling albums as a journey for the listener. It's a thrill to hear their full on momentum on the pacier songs and how they can slow the mood down too to allow us to take a breather and reflect as required. They way they've supplemented songs with brass and soul touches and the way it all works so beautifully.
Anybody who has a passing acquantance with Notorious Byrds Brothers, Surrealistic Pillow, Buffalo Springfield Again, Moby Grape or Gilded Palace of Sin, or even, (on its more soulful moments), Dusty in Memphis, will readily recognise what's going on here. But we're fifty five years on from those records and Cool Ghouls certainly know their Television and their Paisley Underground too. This is a sound where reference points are inevitable and appropriate but retro though this is, it's never a mere retread.
I love this record pretty much unconditionally already and I've only known it for a few hours. I look forward to developing and deepening my relationship with it in the coming weeks and months. All creamy harmonies, ringing, freewheeling adventuring and reflective, starstruck wonder, At George's Zoo's punches the sky from starting gun to finishing tape. I very much doubt whether I'll here a finer record of its type this year. Cool Ghouls are positively in excelsis here and I have to say, it's incredibly infectious.
One of the songs to make me really prick up my ears thus far this far. Orange Peels are doughty indie campaigners. They've been pitting top stuff out for twenty years now. They have a double album coming out at some point in 2021 called Celebrate the Moments of Your Life. If this anything to go by I might need to come back to them then.
Young finishes this quite masterful book by making quite valid connections between Talk Talk, Julian Cope and Folk. The former get the nod here. He brilliantly scrutinises their deeply special contribution to the musical discussion. A full discussion of this masterpiece will follow. It's a must read for anybody with more than a passing interest in music.
Singer of Yardbirds goes solo and releases Bob Lind penned single. Really curious this strain of mid-Sixties Pop. Deeply literary and brow furrowed. They was plenty of it around, Beatles, Stones, Who, Scott Walker, Donovan. Not all of it worked. I'd say this does.
Should really get round to reviewing the debut album from Katy Kirby from earlier on this year. From all I've heard, it's rather special. In the meantime, this:
Coming across as drunk, or stoned, or both in song is a particular gift. Jeffrey Lee Pierce could do it. So can Nick Cave. Beck,Shane McGowan, Dan Stuart of Green on Red, Tom Waits, Kurt Vile, Stuart Staples, Paul Westerberg. Masters of the art. It seems we can add young Canadian Whitney K to their ranks.
His latest album Two Years is a proper treat. Life viewed through the raised glass of the grizzled and dissolute regular at the end of the bar who's showing no desire to leave at this point of the evening even though he's already told the barmaid his life story three times tonight.
Konner Whitney, for he is Whitney K, hails from Whitehorse, in Northern Yukon and has recently moved back there. Two Years is a wonderful record, scarred and wizened but also sage and nuanced. There's much wisdom to be found in bars, as well as pain, fellowship, release and the bitter dregs of experience.
There are traces of The Velvet Underground here, both Reed and Cale, but it's both at their most Country and at a point where neither of them could care less anymore. Beck certainly raises his head at several points of the record too, the frayed trenchancy of Odelay.
But most of all this is Whitney, and he's consistently good company. The kind of person that you chance upon a bar once in a while. A fascinating raconteur who tells you the deepest secrets of those at the other end of the room, buys a round of shots that makes your head spin and tells some of the best and tallest tales you've ever heard.
There's plenty of wit here too but it's of the wry and mordant kind. Gallows humour essentially. Also plenty of variety. Two Years is a pleasant reminder that reports the death of this kind of songwriting has been greatly exagerrated, In fact judging by this, it's in rude health indeed. I'll drink to that!
This is a very, very good album. If I hear a better record in the whole of 2021 I'll be deeply content. I'm getting the sense from the things I've heard thus far that this is going to be a very good one for music but it's going to need something very special to top this particular record in terms of my affections as so many things on Flock align in almost perfect symmetry to my personal radar.
I knew I was going to like this before I started listening to it but I have to say on the second run through it that I'm surprised how much I'm deeply taken by it already. It reminds me of one of my first, true music loves, Simple Minds' wonderful peak of creative activity New Gold Dream 81, 82, 83, 84. The records seem to share DNA to me. There's something so assured and intuitive about both records. A sense of arrival to a place where both artists were heading towards almost inevitably with the records they put out previously.
Jane Weaver has been a fixture on this particular blog for several years. Ever since the release of The Silver Globe in 2015 she seems to have moved forward with a clear and particular vision that has led her to Flock, to my mind her best record and certainly her most commercial sounding one. She's always had an appreciable Pop knack but The Silver Globe and the records that succeeded it were definitely more outre in terms of their trappings. She was on the Finders Keepers record label after all. The spiritual home of those who treasure the obscure and esoteric.
Flock is something else and it reminds me most of all of two particularly glorious British Pop eras. Two years really. 1972, when Roxy, T.Rex, Sparks and Bowie first strutted into the pop sunlight, shaking away the residual dust of the sixties as they made their way into the charts and onto Top of the Pops. Then ten years onward to 1982 when the equally outlandish and extraordinary likes of Associates, Simple Minds, Japan, Visage and ABC miraculously did a similarly wonderful thing, I can hear all of this in Flock ,but at the same time it never feels like a mere retread, more like a new dawn. All on one record. It's that good.
Of course what came between 1972 and 1982 among other things were Bowie's Berlin albums, Krautrock and most particulary Kraftwerk, and Neu! and I'd say that these are the bands that form the bedrock of the sound that Weaver has martialled so successfully on previous records and which now comes to full pop fruition on Flock. This sounds almost like a collection of hit singles to me. They probably won't be, though I would expect the album to make some kind of commercial splash. It certainly deserves to.
Add Funk to the mix, and Flock is seriously funky at times, (Jane channels Prince, I promise you), and a couple of tracks that are more Stereolab than Stereolab, but in a great way, and you have this record. A musician who has always done exactly what she wants has arrived at her 11th album to make a record she 'has always wanted to make'. To see an artist coming to this peak of achievement so far into their career is a joy, pure and simple.
This is a model lesson in sticking to your guns and guiding principles and striding down a path of your own making. Flock is a record that surpises constantly, while remaining constant to the core values established by Weaver's previous work. Hear it. It's a wonder. A dream you never want to end.
