Industrialists and Other People

Industrialists is the ninth and final track on People, an album by The Burning Hell (you may remember that I wrote some words about Flux Capacitor, another LP of theirs, a couple of months ago). The song, which clocks in at precisely 7 minutes, takes the form of a eulogy, posthumously telling the story of a young man who...well, did a lot things. Over the course of the track's 420 seconds, he tames a wild horse, starts his own company at the age of ten, buys a property in Mexico, duels a man for his wife, and brings her back to America along with 400 immigrant labourers, whom he then instructs to build a golden pyramid. Oh, and then he's found dead, presumably - although it's not explicitly stated - murdered by a disgruntled employee who was sick of neglecting his family to slave away on some guy's pyramid.

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It's quite a tale.

The central character of Industrialists is never named, but we do know that, prior to his gruesome death (he was coated, Goldfinger-style, in the molten gold that the labourers were using to construct his office building), he was fond of reciting this mantra, which also gives the song its chorus and the album its title:

"It takes all kinds of people to make a world,

It takes all kinds of people to make a world,

From the farmer in the field to the spaceman in space,

Everybody has a reason, a purpose and place."

These words are effectively a mission statement for People as a whole: each of the record's nine songs has a title that refers to a specific group of people (e.g. Travel Writers, Barbarians, Amateur Rappers), and by singing about all these different kinds of people, Mathias Kom and his musical mates do indeed "make a world" - or, at the very least, a pretty great album, populated with keenly-developed characters and fun vignettes from their lives.

Tindersticks I vs. Tindersticks II

Most bands only release one self-titled album, but Tindersticks - narcissists that they are - released two: one in 1993, and another in 1995. The first one was adorned with a painting of a woman in a red dress, the second with a black-and-white photo of the band's guitarist, but both covers bore the same eleven letters, and the band wouldn't release a non-eponymous studio album until 1997's Curtains.

When Tindersticks afficionados talk about these two albums, they eliminate any potential confusion by referring to the red dress album as Tindersticks I and to the black and white album as Tindersticks II. What nobody can quite agree on, however, is which of the two albums is superior; I've seen arguments for both sides, and today, I'm going to throw my 2p in as well.

EP Corner: Quarters

Matthew Pastkewicz was one of the many talented musicians heard on MEN, the record-breaking, quadruple-disc, 111-track debut album from Cardiff's favourite bedlamites Quiet Marauder.

Quarters, an EP that Pastkewicz released under his own name earlier this year, is absolutely nothing like MEN. For one thing, it has 109 fewer tracks, making it pretty short even by EP standards. For a second thing, its two songs have more in common with Mogwai and their Rock Action roster than with the lo-fi, melodica-heavy unfolk in which Quiet Marauder specialise. Pastkewicz's own press release thingy describes his sound as "drone based post-rock", but speaking as someone who briefly heard drone daddies Sunn O))) boring the Primavera crowd to death back in June, I will say that Quarters is far more exciting than that description might suggest.

Walking with Music

Yesterday, I caught the train to work for the first time in months. I've missed catching the train since I got a car - it's a nice opportunity to read a book and rest my head on a window for twenty minutes or so - but what I've missed even more is the part where I have to walk between the train station and the office.

For years, a large chunk of my music listening was done whilst walking, but it's a habit that I more or less dropped entirely when Darth, my handsome black Volkswagen, entered my life just over a year ago. In many ways, he's made my life a lot easier, but as I dance-trotted my way towards Cadoxton station yesterday evening, I found myself wondering if the benefits of having a car were worth the sacrifice of my daily music walk.

I've been struggling lately to make strong connections with new music the way I used to, and I think there are two reasons for this:

1) I'm old and jaded and nothing sounds as amazing to my ears now as practically everything did when I was a 13-year-old newbie.

2) Where I used to listen to music in parks, on streets, and as I ran to catch my train or the start of a uni lecture. Now I pretty much only listen to music in the car and at my desk.

The Traitor Shore

The Traitor Shore is the new LP from Reichenbach Falls, and it's all about being left behind. More specifically, it seems to deal with being left behind by a lover who has travelled abroad, away from the album's narrator, but it will probably hit home for anyone who's ever been left behind by anyone: boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, friends, family members, whatever.

The album's title refers, essentially, to anywhere you're not; it's the city or country or continent for which the object of your pining has abandoned you (closing track Canada suggests that this particular story's 'traitor shore' is the Canadian coastline).

'Pining' is actually the perfect word to describe this record as a whole; it's pining Americana with pining melodies and pining lyrics about pining for someone who'll shortly be half a world away.

Mind you, that's not to say it's all miserable weedy whinging, because it's not - pining isn't the same thing as whining, and tracks like The Departure Lounge and Hey Migrator are among the most invigorating 'baby please don't go' songs you're ever likely to hear:

Even so, this is the sort of album that will sound best if you miss somebody, and if you can picture the somebody you miss as you're listening to the lyrics. It's very en vogue nowadays to leave one's life behind and go travelling, and I'm sure there are plenty of records that are tailor-made for the folks who choose to do that, but The Traitor Shore isn't one of them. It's not an album for people to listen to as they shoestring from one far-flung destination to the next; it's an album for the people back home to listen to as they think about their globetrotting pals and wonder if they're thinking about them, too.

The Traitor Shore is out today, and can be purchased from reichenbachfalls.bandcamp.com.