Predictions for the New Young Knives Album

Here's something I posted on Twitter a couple of weeks ago:

Here's the reply I received shortly afterwards:

Running vs. Sprinting

A couple of weeks ago, I told you all about The Burning Hell and their unique knack for finding power in powerlessness. Shortly after that blog post went up, I realised that said knack wasn't unique at all - in fact, there's at least one other album in my current rotation that pulls the exact same trick.

Sprinter is the second album by Torres, a.k.a. Mackenzie Scott from Macon, Georgia. It was one of my Top 5 Albums of 2015 So Far, and it's another great example of that 'power from powerlessness' thing that I mentioned a fortnight ago.

Things Found in Liner Notes, Volume 2

More treasures that make it worth buying the CD. Volume 1 is here.

• The booklet that accompanies Low's Drums and Guns album is, appropriately enough, filled with pictures of drums and guns:

Top 10 Albums of 2013

Right, I've done the best songs of 2013 - now it's time for the albums. These are my ten favourite albums of the last 12 months, and each one is an outstanding testament to the album as a format. Some scale the highest of high concepts with subtlety and aplomb, while others simply succeed by filling a CD with corkers from one rim to the other.

One side note before we get started: The Crimea's Square Moon is noticeably absent from this list, but not because it's not good enough for the top ten. The band's double-length swansong was officially released this summer, but since I got a pre-order version way back in autumn 2011 (ner ner na-ner ner), I don't really count it as an album of 2013. If you like, you can read my tribute to Square Moon - and The Crimea generally - by clicking here.

Right, now that that's out of the way, let's crack on with that all-important list...

#10 - Reflektor by Arcade Fire
There are plenty of reasons to dislike it (not least its inescapable promotional campaign, which certainly ruffled the feathers of one Trent Reznor), but it's hard to deny that Reflektor is one of the best albums of 2013. It's easily been among the most talked-about, and that kind of hype will often lead to disappointment when things actually get released, but fortunately, the music on those two discs more than justified it. It was a more daring, more ambitious, and altogether more exciting album than The Suburbs, with songs like Afterlife and Here Comes the Night Time making up for the slight lack of truly brilliant tunes on the band's previous release. Oh, and even if it could quite easily have fit on one CD,  the second one makes it feel a lot bigger, and a lot more important.

Young Knives - In with the New!

Photo by @BethanDyer70

Well, I got it totally wrong in my Eddi Reader review - as it turns out, Henry Dartnall is quite the storyteller. His between-song yarn about getting locked out of his hotel room with only his pants on wasn't quite up to the heartwarming standards of last Saturday, but when he announced earlier in the night that the next song (Something Awful) had been written after his grandfather died of Alzheimer's...it still wasn't heartwarming, exactly, but this revelation was surprisingly stark and, well, sad, especially given the band's usual level of stage banter seriousness (Exhibit A: the Hilton hotel pants story).

My fear - expressed here - that the Young Knives would be shunning their back catalogue on this tour was largely unfounded as well. Okay, so the majority of the set was dedicated to playing the new album, Sick Octave, in its entirety, but they brought the goods out for the old guard before the end. We got Vision in Rags off Ornaments from the Silver Arcade*, Weekends and Bleak Days and The Decision** from Voices of Animals and Men, and Terra Firma and Turn Tail*** from Superabundance. A token offering, sure, but enough to reassure us that they haven't forgotten those oldies.

Besides, I quite like witnessing entire albums played live. The only other one I remember seeing is A Matter of Life and Death by Iron Maiden (imagine how many standards they must have cut from the setlist that night, given how big their back catalogue is) and while both that gig and this one did provoke a mild case of 'aah what are these new and unfamiliar songs why didn't I listen to the album more before tonight', both were entertaining and enjoyable experiences in spite of the hits they displaced. Besides, it will be nice to one day say: 'Oh, you like that album, yeah? Well I saw it live."

It shouldn't have taken me three paragraphs to say this, but yes, I like Sick Octave. It's challenging, it's experimental, and it's loads of fun, especially when performed live in front of a projection of a naked man. My only complaint about the gig concerns how closely they stuck to the studio tracks, using pre-recorded sounds to make every song as similar to the album version as possible. Since I'm still not particularly familiar with the album, this didn't dampen the experience too much for me, but it is nice when songs sound a little different in the live arena.

Incidentally, I still have absolutely no idea what any of it Sick Octave is about - the only clue I've got is Henry's story about his granddad and how he imagined him turning into an end-of-level boss instead of dying - but that's something I can work out over time.

In the meantime, I have glanced through the YK catalogue one more time and constructed my perfect Young Knives setlist. As much as I enjoyed last night, this is what I wish they'd played. Call it an exercise in Friday fanboyism. Have a good weekend!

JOEL'S ULTIMATE YOUNG KNIVES SETLIST

REPRODUCTION

OWLS OF ATHENS

WOMAN

UP ALL NIGHT

IN THE PINK

COUNTERS

HERE COMES THE RUMOUR MILL

EVERYTHING FALLS INTO PLACE

TERRA FIRMA

("We're gonna do a couple off our new album now...")
MAUREEN

ALL TIED UP

HUMAN AGAIN

JOHN

THE DECISION

SILVER TONGUE

LOUGHBOROUGH SUICIDE

(A curtain falls, revealing a 20-piece orchestra, who help out with...)

TURN TAIL

GLASSHOUSE

 (woo yeah more!)

Encore 1:

PART TIMER

BED WARMER

DIALING DARLING

SIGNS OF WEAKNESS

(more! more!)

Encore 2:

TREMBLINGS OF TRAILS

SHE'S ATTRACTED TO

CURRENT OF THE RIVER

(extended version, where the final chorus is repeated over and over again for about twenty minutes)

Maybe next tour.

*"It's off our third album, so you might have missed this one", quips House of Lords.

**I know it's one of their best-known songs anyway, but I'd like to think that the Young Knives feel obliged to play The Decision every time they're in Cardiff because of the 'I am the Prince of Wales! I'm your monarch!' bit.

***That bit in the middle of Turn Tail - stompy distortion tantrum into life-affirming eight-second guitar solo - never ceases to wow me.

Young Knives - Out with the Old?

Sick Octave - the forthcoming fourth Young Knives album - will be released in September, and as with quite a lot of things these days, it's all thanks to Kickstarter. If you haven't pledged any of your filthy lucre to the band by this point, well, you're too late, but take a look anyway. The pitch was penned by a band sick of the music biz and yearning for complete control:

"We...wanted to be free of record labels and producers making decisions about our music. For some reason when you are working with record labels it’s an assumption that you book into a £500 per day studio and a producer tells you what is wrong with your music and makes it better for you."

As exciting as the promise of a "completely undiluted Young Knives record" is, this does raise a concern or two in my mind. Assuming that the last three YK albums were label-funded,  are now we to infer that those recordings didn't really count? Are the Knives that we've come to know and love merely the dust that remained after this fun-loving young band had been stomped into the ground by the iron boots of The Man?!

Don't get me wrong, I'm super-excited for Sick Octave. I downloaded the Oh Happiness EP yesterday (I went for the 'SICK VINYL' tier, in case you were wondering) and those four tracks are very promising indeed. But they do represent a definite departure, which does nothing to soothe my fears that Henry, House of Lords and The Drummer consider their back catalogue to be little more than a long, snake-like poo.

So here's my little love letter to the first three Young Knives LPs, lest we all forget how good this shit sounds...

Voices of Animals and Men

Most of my friends thought the Young Knives were stupid when they first arrived on the scene. Everyone thought they were too gimmicky, wearing smart shirts onstage and singing with English accents and not being as good as The Kooks, apparently. She's Attracted To was shunned for being too repetitive; Weekends and Bleak Days for rhyming 'summer' with 'bummer'. But my friends were wrong, because those two songs are great and so is pretty much everything else on this CD. Coastguard, for example, sounds like Interpol wearing a stripey one-piece bathing suit, and the album's bookends are two of my favourites: Tremblings of Trails sounds thrillingly miserable, while Part Timer is nothing short of exhilarating.

Superabundance
When this record first came out, I liked it even more than Voices..., although I'd probably reverse that decision in retrospect. Where the first album had a dark, sinister underbelly, Superabundance has a dark, sinister overbelly; Counters even contains references to carbon monoxide inhalation, as pretty much every review of this album pointed out. Still, look behind the darker and edgier veneer and you'll find a brilliant balance of stellar indie singles (Terra Firma, Up All Night) and appealing oddities (Flies, I Can Hardly See Them).

Special mention goes to Turn Tail, a string-backed coward's anthem that's uplifting in spite of its own despair. One comment on the song's last.fm page points out that if Kings of Leon or Arcade Fire had released Turn Tail, everybody would have prostrated themselves before it. I'm inclined to agree.

Ornaments from the Silver Arcade

Okay, so this is the weakest of the trilogy, but Fellowship of the Ring is still a top-notch film and Ornaments from the Silver Arcade is still well worth picking up. It will always remind me of the strange little summer that I spent working in the Next stockroom and carving out a belated career on Total Club Manager 2003. This album is a bit less unified than the previous two, but that's kind of nice in a way - each song has a slightly different feel, and it keeps things interesting. Human Again is frantic and fast-paced, whereas Vision in Rags sounds more subdued. Then there's the menacingly funky Silver Tongue; the sweet bongo action and tasty climax of Woman; and the closing track, Glasshouse, which is insistent and catchy and glowing and golden.

So then, Young Knives. By all means ride off into the stripped-down, experimental, DIY sunset, but remember this: just because your new album is awesome doesn't mean that your old albums are crap. I'm certainly still listening to them, for whatever that's worth.

In the interest of balance, here's a sentence-long wank over the Oh Happiness EP:

Reproduction is really awesome and broody and dirty and Maureen kind of sounds like Heroes but more introverted so basically amazing and Signs of Weakness kind of sounds like a Grandaddy song towards the end which is fantastic and I haven't really gotten into the title track yet but maybe it will grow on me.

Here's Maureen, which really is really really good (video probably NSFW). Merry weekend everybody!

Things Found in Liner Notes, Volume 1

If, like me, you're an advocate of buying the CD or record instead of downloading, then you've almost certainly used liner notes as an argument for the physical artefact at some point. But is an inlay booklet really worth forking out for? 90% of the time, I'd say no. But occasionally, you leaf through the liner notes and find a hidden Easter egg that makes it all worth it.

Here are some cool things I've found in my CD cases recently. This is just a smattering of stuff - the result of an afternoon's browsing - so I'll most likely share another selection of interesting inlays before too long.

• The liner notes for Key Lime Pie by Camper Van Beethoven contain interesting snippets about the band members, including a lot of information about shoes. One anecdote tells the story of how lead guitarist Greg Lisher once "lost a shoe in the Mojave Desert". There then follows a description of this shoe (black, size nine) and an address that you can send it to should you happen upon it.


• Some of the people whom Bikini Atoll saw fit to thank in the liner notes for Liar's Exit: 'Lynchriderlulu', 'The Porn', and 'That fat kid who loves cakes'.
  
  
  
  
• Manowar, being Manowar, aren't satisfied with merely listing the people who were involved in an album's creation. The Kings of Metal booklet refers to the various producers and engineers as the 'Digital Death Squad'; instead of a management team, they have a 'Vanguard of the Elite'. Oh, and their live crew are credited as 'The Magnificent Soldiers of Death'. Sounds better than 'roadie', doesn't it?


• The Young Knives have often been described as a quintessentially English group, and their first album, Voices of Animals and Men, is lined with information on such quintessentially English activities as Morris Dancing, beekeeping (see below), and Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling.
  
  
  
  
  
• While scanning the 'This album couldn't have happened without...' acknowledgements inside Jarvis Cocker's first solo album, I noticed that he'd mentioned someone named Joel. Since Jarvis didn't bother to include a surname, I can only assume that he was referring to me.


•  Electro-Shock Blues gives us Eels lyrics, yes, but the booklet also contains a few black-and-white comic strips that seem faintly pertinent to some of the songs. Here, for example, is the Baby Genius comic:

Image taken from boards.ie. Thanks to Pacifico for uploading it.

• Sufjan Stevens opted to embellish his 'here are the people who played on/contributed to Illinois' list with little comments about their performances. Example: "James McAllister plays all the sophisticated drum parts. Man, he's good!"


• The lyrics booklet for Okkervil River's I Am Very Far includes the words to a song that isn't on the album. It's called Weave Room Blues, and it was the B-side to Wake and Be Fine.


• Anyone who sprung for the CD edition of Hello Land! by the Guillemots will find this nice little poster inside the case:

As I say, there are probably loads of other cool bits and pieces hidden away in my CD collection, so I'll report back if I find anything else of interest. That's it for now, though; it takes more than a couple of hours to scale The Album Wall.