Gee muses

Who would have believed that out of the ruins of US indie psych popsters, Tripping Daisy, a band born of a different time and place and respirited in the ‘90s, would come the all singing, all dancing, quite remarkable entity that is the currently 23-strong The Polyphonic Spree?

And who would have thought a stage full of, initially, people in robes looking a bit like a mass breakout from some nearby cathedral or church, now dressed in black army fatigues and looking like they mean business, would be both viable in the economically challenged early 21st century and last longer than it took for the initial novelty to wear off?

Well, brothers and sisters, happily there have been us believers around the place since the beginning. Now, we could get all religious here but let’s not. There are no Tom Cruises in this story. Eight years after the Spree first formed and five since its first album, The Beginning Stages Of, it is now established as one of the world’s finest live acts and is buoyed by a cult following that is strong enough to keep this massive ark afloat.

Founder, lead singer, composer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, Tim DeLaughter, is baking in hometown Dallas, Texas, where the temperature is well over the old 100F (38C). “We’re frying, like little hot tomatoes. It’s a cliché but you really could fry an egg on the concrete out there,” he says.

DeLaughter is one of the smarter people I’ve come across in this business. A veteran of nearly two decades as a musician, he’s nudging into his mid-40s but his enthusiasm isn’t diminishing with age. With Tim, it’s matter of how much conversation you can fit in the time limit rather than trying to find enough conversation to get to the finishing line.
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Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust

EMI

**** (4 stars)

It’s perhaps fitting that Sigur Ros appear naked on the album cover because this, the great Icelandic band’s fifth album, is largely its most stripped back and bare. That’s not to say those epic signature atmospheres are entirely absent. Festival builds magnificently over its 9 minutes-plus to a huge ending while Ara Batur, which is only marginally shorter, is one of the most moving pieces the band has ever recorded. Opening on gentle, intimate, solo piano, it gradually swells until the London Oratory Boy’s Choir and the London Sinfonietta break over the last few minutes. Elsewhere Gobblediggok and Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur are pure upbeat three-minute pop gems that open the album with unexpected simplicity and lightness. Acoustic guitars and solo piano fill much of the rest record as it moves from those jaunty beginnings to that afore-mentioned vast middleground before easing to a gentle finish over the final three tracks. The last, All Alright, is set around simple piano notes and has lyrics sung in English for the first time in Sigur Ros’ recorded history, not that you would necessarily know it. It is utterly haunting and heart-rending. In a way you are left wanting more, but at the same time know that more would be less. The evolution of Sigur Ros continues unaffected by anything but the band’s own imagination. This time it has examined and reacted to its own grandiose beauty, sought to bare a little more soul and discover what would happen if it was to destructure and restructure. It is still Sigur Ros, it is still breathtakingly beautiful but it is another shade on a palette that seems to have unlimited colours.

Image via WikipediaJoan Wasser, aka Joan As Police Woman, is at home in her Brooklyn apartment. She says it’s a mild 21C outside and pleasant in the borough that claims to be “Home to Everyone From Everywhere!”. It’s then that it hits me: Joan sounds like Fran Drescher in The Nanny. Fran comes from Queens - the borough down the road (sort of). That accent. It’s frightening. It’s distracting but it shouldn’t be. Joan has more claims-to-fame than most people have undies. Apart from releasing two stunning solo albums, the latter of which - To Survive - has just been released, this nearly 38-year-old has worked with Lou Reed, Sheryl Cow, Sparklehorse, Dave Gahan (Depeche Mode), Elton John, the Scissor Sisters, Joseph Arthur and recorded an album with Tanya Donelly.

She also played in the Hot Trix with noted singer/songwriter Mary Timony (formerly of Helium), was a key member of the mid-1990s alt rock outfit, The Dam Builders, and at the same time played with the excellent Those Bastard Souls which featured Dave Shouse of The Grifters. “He’s a genius, absolutely incredible; I’m glad some people know how great he is,” she gushes. If you can find it, check out The Souls criminally overlooked Debt And Departure album. In 1999, she joined Antony And The Johnsons and contributed to his Mercury Award-winning album, I Am A Bird Now. She formed the trio, Joan As Police Woman (JAPW), in 2002, but its critically-acclaimed debut was still four years hence. In 2004 she got side-tracked again. In February, Rufus Wainwright asked her to join his band and open the shows with JAPW while in August, that year, she recorded with Donelly.

Finally, Joan Wasser was the girlfriend of the legendary late musical genius, Jeff Buckley, at the time of his death in May 1997. Hell, Jeff has been gone 11 years now. Time does fly.
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‘heima’ is icelandic for ‘at home’ or ‘homeland’ and this film follows the band as they embarked on a series of free concerts in Iceland.

Leslie Feist is remarkably down to earth for a woman who recently attended the 50th Grammy Awards as a four-time nominee, and in the past year has seen 1234, the song she co-wrote with Sally Seltmann of New Buffalo, become the soundtrack for Apple’s iPod Nano ad.

On paper, her world changed: When the ad was first screened, Feist - the name she goes under when playing solo, as distinct from the other part of her career as a member of the brilliant Canadian indie supergroup and musical collective, Broken Social Scene, had just released her fourth solo album, The Reminder - a lovely, eclectic, smart collection of songs that combines sheer simplicity with sublime atmospheres, rich melodies and, at times, unusual rhythms. Drawing on chamber pop, post-modern folk and classic 1960s singer/songwriters, her work is cool and refreshing. 1234 is a perfect example.

Prior to the advertisment screening, The Reminder was selling about 6000 copies a week and 1234 about 2000 downloads a week. Following the commercial’s debut, the album jumped from No. 36 to No. 28 on the Billboard 200. 1234 reached No. 7 on the Hot Digital Songs chart and No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. In the UK it originally charted at 102; post-ad it also soared to No. 8. Time magazine, as venerable a publication as you can get, slotted 1234 in at No. 2 on its The 10 Best Songs of 2007 list. More was to follow. Feist was photographed by the legendary Annie Liebowitz for the November 2007 issue of Vanity Fair for a photo essay on folk music that also included Joni Mitchell, The Guthrie Family and Peter, Paul and Mary. To cap things off she was then nominated in four Grammy Award categories: Best Female Pop Vocal, Best New Artist, Best Pop Vocal Album (for the reminder), and Best Short Form Music Video (for 1234). Feist also performed 1234 on the Awards’ show.
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For critically-acclaimed US cult band, Spoon, 2007 contained a big surprise. Spoon’s sixth album in its 14-year career debuted at No 10 on the Billboard 200. Not the indie or the alternative chart where the band are used to having strong chart positions, but the all-in, you-gotta-be-big-to-make-it-here, top 200.

Remarkably, on the barometer of critical acclaim, MetaCritic, each of Spoon’s albums has ended up with an average rating in the mid to high 80s. But still, top 10 was a shock.

“Oh yes, it was shock,” drummer and co-founder Jim Eno echoes. “We weren’t expecting it. After so many years and so many tours … There was a little bit of a buzz out there this time and our record was leaked two months before it was due out. In a way that worked out well for us because it was a good record, people got excited about getting an early copy and it certainly created some buzz about it.

“How it got out there is another thing. We were very conscious of making sure it was protected when we sent out things to the press, we did all the watermarks – but the copy that was leaked wasn’t a watermarked copy it was our final mastered version! We are still trying to work out what happened.”
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Örvar Þóreyjarson Smárason sounds like he either suffering from an extremely heavy night out or he has the worst cold in history. His voice is deep, fogged out, almost-but-not-quite-yet croaky as the co-founder of quirky Icelandic group, Mum, surveys Manchester’s somewhat bleak and cold streets from a tour bus. It is 9.40am - unnaturally early for many musicians but Örvar is seemingly in a good mood. The group played the hip London club for alternative events, Scala, the night before and the gig went well. “I’m a not a big fan of playing in London,” he says. “Sometimes it can be difficult. It was a very good audience which is quite unusual for that city.”

It’s 10 years since Mum gently prodded its genuinely appealing experimental muse into the marketplace. Gentle vocals, predominantly female, odd beats and effects, more electronic than traditional instrumentation, more digital than real sound. Yet in all that unpredictability, there was always a firm melody. Something of beauty. Until now, their excellent fourth album, Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy, and it’s wonderfully titled first single They Made Frogs Smoke ‘Til They Exploded. Things have changed in Mum, you see. Singer Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir left the band in 2006 following in the distant footsteps of her twin sister, Gyða, who left in 2002. The remaining duo, Örvar and Gunnar Örn Tynes, took the chance to break with tradition and bring in a bunch of new musicians including two singers, Mr Silla and Hildur Guðnadóttir.

The result is the first Mum album where instruments dominate over - or at least break even with - electronic sound, where the melodies play and even bigger part, where lyrics are written from a broader, less feminine perspective (although Örvar does disagree with this). It is a genuinely attractive and compelling album. “Very much so,” Örvar says. “It is probably one of the albums I am happiest with. I enjoyed the way it came out. When Kristín left we were joined by our friends in a much larger way [sic]. We worked very well together. We didn’t have alot of discussions. We just got on with it and saw what happened.
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Quan Yeomans is sitting in what could pass for a beige soft porn set in Hong Kong on the 21st floor of a lofty tower. “I seem to end up in Hong Kong,” he says. “I love it here. I’m relocating here. I have been for a while. It always feel like home.”

The multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter for Brisbane’s now near legendary Regurgitator seems in a happy place. The band, 13 years old – becoming more and more unheard of in these days of one album contracts – has gone past all those youthful highs and lows to reach what Yeomans describes as a great relationship. With original partner in crime bassist ben Ely, drummer Peter Kostic and new girl Seja Vogel, the latest incarnation of ‘the Gurge’ is looser, more melodic and almost whimsical on its sixth and latest album, Love And Paranoia.

Quan says he was nervous about it, particularly the sound. It’s not the Gurge some of the band’s harder core fans might expect. Yet it is the band you’d expect this far down the track. The band that sucked a lot of you-know-what to get where it is, hasn’t lost its sense of humour – try Blood & Spunk and Drinking Beer Is Awesome – but it ahs in Quan’s term produced its most romantic album.

“Seja has had a lot of effect on us, in terms of having a female in the band and a really good keyboard player. We really like keyboards but in the past we’ve approached them lightly in a naff 80s kind of way. She has more taste; she comes from a Kraftwerk background. She has a deeper understanding of keyboards – she plays synthesisers. In fact it has rubbed off on me and I have started a collection of analogue synths myself.

This bird has flown. Angie Hart, formerly of Frente! and Splendid, is one of the most enigmatic and lovely people to know.

She has spent half her life in the public eye since Frente! and it hasn’t been easy. Angela Ruth Hart, now 35, has faced a few demons along the way. Some of them live and breathe in the graceful airs of her new album, Grounded Bird. Although to be honest they probably started life much earlier. Uncomfortable with the spotlight that blazed on her original band in which she shared the limelight with former barman at Melbourne’s Punters Club, Simon Austin, Hart has grown up the hard way emotionally. EPs such as Clunk with the massively popular, Ordinary Angels, pre-empted the smash hit that was Marvin The Album. And from that November 1992 release came the ever popular Accidentally Kelly Street. A backlash of sorts followed after the media obsessed over Frente in the ensuing months and Angie stunned everybody by posing nude for the now defunct Australian music mag, Juice.

A version of New Order’s Bizarre Love Triangle gave the band a US hit, however constant touring from 1993-95 diminished Hart and Austin’s songwriting powers and left them exhausted. And while 1996’s Shape contained some good songs the writing was on the wall and it finally peeled off at Big Day Out in January 1997.

Angie eventually settled in LA where she began making jewellery and married and formed the band Splendid with Jesse Tobias whom she’d met when Frente supported Alanis Morissette in Canada in 1996. Tobias was the tall Canadian’s guitarist. An album, Have You Got A Name For It, was released in Australia-only in 1999 as their US record company collapsed. Five years later the marriage did as well and the couple have now divorced.

At the heart of Grounded Bird is that break-up and the ensuing changes in Angie’s life. It is a brave, honest and, at times, brilliant album. Musically, it is massive step forward - big atmospheres, huge dynamics, subtle contrasts, epic guitars and melodic keyboards and Angie’s unique voice. It is her finest work.

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BROAD has set a standard for, well, not just broads, but contemporary music as a whole. The idea of taking five women of oft disparate sound and skill - with the common thread that they are all profoundly talented singer-songwriters - and putting them all on a stage together and seeing what happens is not just exciting entertainment, it’s also quite mysterious. Stories are told, foibles and fabs are laid bare, love is released - the good and bad, and the audience and entertainers interact. Helmed by near legendary ‘rock chick’, Deborah Conway, whose own body of work is as impressive as it is, dare I say, broad, the festival enters its third year with yet another stellar line-up joining Conway: Jade Macrae, Anne McCue, Sally Seltman (new Buffalo) and Abbe May. As always with BROAD, Conway does her interviews by email so here’s the transcript of the electronic conversation.

1. The first BROADs have set a very high standard – what do you think this mix of women will bring to the table?
Deborah Conway (DC): I‘m really excited about this year, possibly the best year yet. The potential in the combinations is particularly delicious, the voices are all so different and so beautiful in their own spheres. Sally’s subtle and delicate songs that flower into glorious multi-layered pieces of contemporary pop; Jade’s urban R&B grooves and incredible vocals; Anne who writes songs like Tom Petty and plays guitar like Jimi Hendrix and Abbe who sounds like KD Lang just swallowed a pint of Jim Bean and picked up a ukelele with a fuzz box – who wouldn’t be excited!

2. How do you go about selecting the women to appear in BROAD? Do you have along shortlist? What are you looking for in the performers?
DC: I’m looking for the differences in the whole group, voices that contrast and complement each other. I start with one person and if they say yes, that suggests the next kind of voice I could find and so on. I do have a long and getting longer short list, so much great talent out there.

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