Music
CDs of the year
by Nick Bollinger and Jim Pinckney
Erykah Badu and TV on the Radio are so good they earn a double billing in our critics’ Top 10s.
Nick Bollinger:
DEAR SCIENCE, TV on the Radio (4AD). A breakthrough album for the four-fifths black band from Brooklyn, New York. As sonically spectacular and lyrically particular as ever, they pull their socially observant songs into sharper focus with beats drawn from funk and hooks that will send you off humming into the night.
DIG, LAZARUS, DIG!, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (Mute) . The man from Warracknabeal moves beyond the dull maturity of his early noughties work to rediscover himself as rock’s foremost comic. Cave rants more than croons on a set of black satires while his Bad Seeds rock and roll with vicious authority.
NEW AMERYKAH PART ONE: 4TH WORLD WAR, Erykah Badu (Motown) . It isn’t Barack Obama’s new America that Badu cites in the title of this tough bleak album, but the one glimpsed in HBO’s The Wire: a “fourth world” ghetto of drugs, guns and shattered families. Badu’s vision may be grim, yet, like the very best R&B, its urgency is irresistible, the inventive production and underlining funkiness uplifting, even as she sings of a system that “keeps us uneducated, sick and depressed”.
ANOTHERLAND, Dave Dobbyn (Sony) . New Zealand’s best-loved troubadour journeyed to another land – London, England – to record with dub reggae and blues deconstructionists Adrian Sherwood and Skip McDonald, and the results are sonically sumptuous. But what stands out is Dobbyn’s voice, with its equal traces of gospel and Gaelic, on a bunch of songs that chart a journey more spiritual than physical.
RENEE-LOUISE CARAFICE TELLS YOU TO FIGHT!, Renee-Louise Carafice (Monkey) . A bout of clinical depression and a spell of institutionalisation gave rise to the 11 powerful songs on this Aucklander’s debut. A trip to Steve Albini’s Chicago studio turned them into an album of dynamics, emotion and beauty.
ACID TONGUE, Jenny Lewis (Rough Trade) . This former child actor has grown up to be a songwriter of melodic cunning and worldly wit, with a special interest in the extreme end of parent-child relations (hear Jack Killed Mom). Rootsier than last year’s effort with her band Rilo Kiley, but with her pop instincts still strongly intact.
A LOVE EXTREME, Benji Hughes (New West) . Hughes has trouble with girls, and tells you all about it on his double-disc debut. Lust, longing and misunderstanding are the subjects of these droll songs, which range from ballads to booty-shakers yet are linked by their perfect pop melodies and common theme of obsession.
DREAMS OF BREATHING UNDERWATER, Eliza Carthy (Topic) . The daughter of British folk royalty finds her own voice in an original set that mixes vaudeville and plainsong with a wry personal storytelling style.
FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS, Flight of the Conchords (Sub Pop) . Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement say they can’t parody a style they don’t genuinely like and for once they aren’t kidding. On their full-length debut, the joke is the way their inept personas wrestle with such genres as French discotheque (“Camembert! Jacques Cousteau!”), socially conscious R&B or soul balladry (“you’re so beautiful you could be a part-time model”), while McKenzie and Clement’s real affection for and understanding of these styles is the reason you keep listening, even after you know all the jokes.
THE FELICE BROTHERS, The Felice Brothers (Loose) . On their earlier album, these Catskill-based siblings too consciously conjured the spirit of The Basement Tapes. On album two, the raggedy carnival instrumentation still recalls Bob Dylan and the Band, but the drunkards, gamblers and small-time gangsters the songs bring to life are their own creations.
Jim Pinckney:
THE HOLY PICTURES, David Holmes (Mercury) . Best known as a score composer for films like Ocean’s 11 and the upcoming Bobby Sands film Hunger, Holmes eschews soundtracky tendencies for his fourth album. Instead, he finds his singing voice, draws on his Belfast past and indulges his psych-rock and dream-pop tendencies to the fullest.
LOADED, Busy Signal (VP) . From Tivoli Gardens, an area considered rough even by Kingston’s standards, Jamaica’s finest young MC, Reanno Gordon, continues to show and prove with Loaded. It’s a heady mix of “gal and gangster tunes” for the dancehall faithful. Conscious messages of uplift, and even the preponderance of the dreaded autotune effect, can’t stop Busy’s call getting through.
DEAR SCIENCE, TV on the Radio (4AD) . In the past, the Brooklyn five-piece tended to hide their pop smarts under white noise and all manner of audio obstacles. There is no such subterfuge on Dear Science, which wears its going-out clothes with pride, and simultaneously embraces the potential of weird pop and genre annihilation, on all fronts.
DEATH BEFORE DISTEMPER VOL 2, Various (DC Recordings). In 13 years, this is only the second label compilation London’s DC Recordings has issued, so you’d best believe it’s something special. While the likes of DFA try to create a No Wave revival, DC has been unfussily getting on with it for years, and its blend of deviant dancefloor action with rocky overtones is sure to last beyond the moment.
THE RADICAL BAD ATTACK, Coco Solid (Coco Solid). Jessica Hansell’s claim that she is “More Iron Lady than Margaret Thatcher” rings scarily true on the very accomplished fifth Coco Solid album. While South Auckland’s Young Sid came up with best straight local hip-hop album, this bent-out-of-shape double-disc has humour, innovation and intelligence to burn.
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