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Kurt Vile: Plenty High

Originally published in Notion 063.

Unruffled singer-songwriter KURT VILE describes the creation of his latest record, Wakin’ On A Pretty Daze, as a simple piece of cake. Ringing out a newly ambitious classic rock sound, Huw Oliver meets him just as he scores the winning goal.

Vile is more laid-back and more confident than ever before. ‘There are certain double records that people always regard, you know. There’s Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, there’s Bruce Springsteen’s The River, there’s the Stones’ Exile On Main Street, there’s Blonde On Blonde... there are all these records you can compare Wakin’ On A Pretty Daze to in one way or another. Sure, this is a fair amount different, but not really that different’.

Poised to win over even more fans with his fifth full-length, a 69-minute double album of unhurried, laissez-faire psych rock songs, Vile has clearly harboured a penchant for the grandiose since we last crossed paths.

Initially ‘lumped into that DIY, lo-fi, psychedelic kinda scene’, it was his last album, 2011’s Smoke Ring For My Halo, which broke him free of that tag and ushered him straight into the public eye. With a cleaner, more direct sound, these were songs of sun-kissed, lackadaisical excellence, and the critics had come screaming.

Building upon everything that came before it, his new record is just as loveable as the rest of his work, but ten times as ambitious.

‘It’s a proper epic’, he tells me over the phone from his Philadelphia home. ‘I now have more control with it, so it can get pretty trippy but it’s still like I had a classic rock control switch on it or something. You know, it’s more solid where in the past it would be more, like, freaky style, like psychedelic pop with a lot of echo on the vocals. Now it’s more about making this really solid, epic thing’.

Working once again with prolific producer John Agnello (Springsteen, Sonic Youth), a man who describes Kurt as ‘the son he never wanted’, he was certainly offered the right tutelage, and the result is eleven songs of gauzy, effortless perfection.

A case in point: meandering opener ‘Wakin On A Pretty Day’, the standout and tone-setter for the entire record. ‘I was really into familiar kind of chord progressions, putting my own stamp on them, by playing them all the time so every little guitar hammer-on is my own, but it’s still, like, very familiar. That came about from touring and just being at one with my guitar and music in general, just like I’ve always been. But it was more of slow process, and less urgent. I wasn’t like suffocatingly trying to get a song.’

In spite of having to juggle professional and family life (he now has two kids, a situation he describes as a ‘lucky kinda busy’), the song-writing still comes freely. ‘It’s not like I just sat there and did a prog thing, like King Crimson or Captain Beefheart, where I’d be forcing myself to rehearse these parts eight hours a day, or something. It’s more like the complete opposite, where you just come back to them whenever you want. It’s just crazy because all of a sudden you’ll just know. Months and months later I wrote the end part of ‘Wakin On A Pretty Day’ when I was on vacation in Puerto Rico and it’s not like I’m sitting there purposefully composing this master thing, it’s just like whenever it feels right, all these others riffs suddenly come out. And you just know they belong.’

As ever, his lyrics deal with the quotidian. ‘I write about living my life. I just write about walking down the street, or daydreaming about my family or about being in transport, in transit, in a sort of daydreaming state of flux, one way or another. Just kind of like, sitting here, looking out of the window’.

Sometimes, though, he also riffs on the metaphorical, and this happens most often when he’s feeling ‘kinda low’. There’s a song called ‘Shame Chamber’ whose chorus (another day in the shame chamber / living life to the  lowest power / feeling bad in the best way a man can) ‘applies to everyone in that psychological doghouse of complete shame. Everyone’s been there at one point or another’. And another one called ‘Goldtone’, which is ‘basically about concentrating your pain, whether it’s a lot or a little, whatever it is. Alone, late at night, or whatever, just concentrating it into something, making a sweet chord out of it’.

The artwork is an eye-catching commission by world-renowned Philly graffiti artist Steve Power, who got in touch with Vile. ‘He was just serendipitous and it was just synchronous to the work on the record I guess. It just totally fell into place. I told my manager, ‘you know this guy?’ He had sounded familiar to me already, and my manager had some of his art books, so I got really excited because I’ve always wanted to have a connection with artists of our time.’

‘He did an amazing job with the mural. He basically had total creative control. He was making drawings of the lyrics, interpreting the lyrics through drawing. Once in a while he’d misquote a lyric, but it didn’t matter, you know, it’s just his interpretation. I just let him do his thing, for sure. I suggested drawing some pink sunglasses on there, but that’s it.’

Wrapping up, I ask Vile whether the boastful quip which closes album track ‘Was All Talk’ (‘making music is easy / watch me’) was a sincere statement or not. ‘Oh, yeah, making music comes totally natural to me’, he confirms. ‘That was me in the moment, writing that line, feeling it really good, feeling it easy’.

Major Lazer review

Originally published in Notion 063.

The conceptual project of global trend-setter Diplo (real name Wesley Pentz) is finally back with a second album, and our favourite one-armed Jamaican commando has been switched onto wriggly/playful/restless mode. Of course, you’ll instantly recognise the off-beat strokes and dancehall riddims that pervade Free The Universe, but you’ll probably scratch your head at its wonky, gloopy blend of reggae, hip hop and dubstep. Not to mention its bizarre roll call of guest vocalists which straddles the line between the LOL-worthy (Shaggy), the hip (Danielle Haim) and the downright massive (Bruno Mars). One thing is clear, however: although Diplo’s partner-in-crime Switch dropped out of the venture due to “creative differences” a little over a year ago, Major Lazer is still pumping out the quintessential party music of our time, transcending different musical styles, underpinning everything with humour (naming a song ‘Bubble Butt’, for instance), with the basic aim to make the listener skank along like an overdosed, fist-pumping oddball. Take ‘Jah No Partial’, on which Dip and Flux Pavilion rework a reggae jam into a wubbing, thudding dubstep anthem: it’s completely bananas. And even more so when you juxtapose it with something rather more subdued like last year’s on-line smash ‘Get Free’, a lilting, soulful, politicised ode to emancipation with vocals from Dirty Projectors’ Amber Hoffman. This album so easily could have sounded heavy-handed and exhausting, but instead draws pleasure out of excess.

Rudimental interview

Originally published on The 405. 

Village Underground in Shoreditch feels like the perfect place to be catching up with the most talked about, of-the-moment urban music act in the country. Appropriately arty (there's a spray-painted tube train on the roof), hidden away somewhere down an otherwise deserted backstreet and overlooking a grim, wire-fenced car park, it really does put the empowering, realist mood of one of Rudimental's music videos in a nutshell.

The dressing room heaves with a nattering miscellany of friends, collaborators, label reps and the band themselves. Audibility is low, vibes are high. Sitting opposite me at a table in the corner are Amir Amor and Kesi Dryden, two quarters of the chart-topping Hackney four-piece. They seem exhausted, but cheerful nonetheless.

The band has just travelled up and down the country on a mammoth arena tour in support of Plan B, but two days ago they returned to London for the BRITs, nominated for Best Song, their second time at the O2 in the space of a fortnight.

"Really good, really surreal," replies Amir when asked about the touring experience. "You'd see camera flashes from what felt like a kilometre away".

Kesi quips, "It wasn't until 'Feel The Love' that I looked up and I just looked around and I was like 'W-ow. This is massive. What's going on right now?"'

What might have made the whole playing in front of 15,000 people a night thing feel even more surreal for Amir was his previous work with Plan B (alter-ego of fellow East Londoner Ben Drew), because they go back a long way: "We used to go to a youth club together and he actually taught me how to play guitar there. We used to make tracks together: garage, grime, hip-hop, even cheesy R&B stuff which we would sweep under the carpet."

"Before he got signed we did this mixtape called Paint It Blacker in his studio up in Archway and we sampled things like Leonard Cohen and Radiohead and the Rolling Stones, but we couldn't get any of it cleared. It was a bit of a nightmare. We once got a letter from Leonard Cohen's estate telling us how much they hated the song. Like, personally really hated it."

Some of those songs were reworked without the samples and even made it onto Plan B's debut record. But times have changed, drastically: "it was totally weird just seeing him again ten years on, and we were playing the O2 together. It was completely nuts."

Rudimental has been a thing for over six years now, but they've only just begun to kick off. Starting out a as an unserious, part-time collaboration between childhood friends Kesi, Piers (Aggett) and Leon 'DJ Locksmith' (Rolle), it's obvious the band has morphed into something completely different since the arrival of Amir a year and a half ago.

It appears they've discovered their identity, their uniqueness and their soul: an amalgam of the tastes of the individuals that make up the band. And the results are unprecedented.

They're all East London boys at heart, but their musical upbringings are opposing. Amir was into Marvin Gaye, the Family Stone and Funkadelic from a young age, but later - peculiarly - formed a post-hardcore band "like a cross between Glassjaw and Coheed & Cambria." The original trio, despite growing up on virtually the same street, also have differing inspirations. Kesi was surrounded by a number of contrasting cultures: "my next door neighbour was a Rasta who used play reggae, there was a teenager upstairs who was always playing garage and I had an Indian family next door." Leon was a bass-head, a devotee to garage all the way, whilst Piers was into the blues.

Diverse and febrile, it's this all-encompassing melting-pot of influences which has produced the multicoloured Rudimental sound you'll hear everywhere in 2013, mixing D&B beats, soulful vocals and powerful live brass, never confined to the limitations of one genre, all their songs imbued with an ebullient carnival atmosphere.

They've also got a knack for choosing the right guest vocalist, and they claim this is the one, constant trope of their sound, as Kesi states, "we're into unique vocals. John Newman's got a very unique sound, quite a vintage sound. You hear it and straightaway you know who it is. He's just got so much soul in his voice. He just transforms the record."

"Our music is so eclectic that it has to have that unifying thing, and it's soulfulness that unifies it all. The soulful vocals just glue it all together."

Newman is the collaborator on everyone's lips (he features on both their hit singles 'Feel The Love' and 'Not Giving In'), but soon everyone will be talking about Ella Eyre, one of their two live vocalists, yet another name presently unknown to most but one guaranteed to have her three, catchy syllables etched firmly into the public consciousness before she, or anyone else, can do anything about it. This is because latest single 'Waiting All Night', to which she lends her sultry, balmy tones, is by far their best yet.

"Ella's got an amazing voice," confirms Amir. "We only realised how big that song is when we were playing it live on the Plan B tour. We started off like, 'all right, cool, we'll play it' and then every night people were tweeting about it, asking 'what was that song?' and by the second verse people had already started singing it back. It's such a simple song as well."

Other features on the album will come from up-and-coming talents Syron and MNEK (who shares a studio with the band in Hoxton Square), who contribute to the vastly different 'Spoons', a down-tempo house number so named because Amir happened to eating his lunch at the time.

"I was eating my lunch and I had some spoons, because I eat with my fork and spoon... I'm Iranian [laughs]. Anyway, I started banging these spoons together and making this sort of percussion sound on it. That became the basis of the track."

"MNEK was coming round really just to say hello because he was next door. He came down and in about ten minutes, he'd written the lyrics."

Elsewhere you can expect verses, choruses and yelps from the likes of Angel Haze, Sinead Harnett, Foxes and even (omg) Emeli Sandé. The band repeatedly describe this sundry assortment of guest vocalists who surround them as their "extended family", valued not only as wrist-slashingly talented musicians but more importantly as dear, close friends.

But even (omg) Emeli Sandé? "That's someone who, to be really honest, I didn't think I'd like that much before," Amir lets on. "But as soon as she started writing with us, it was like, ‘wow', she's a proper amazing singer-songwriter. We write lyrics and stuff as well so to work with someone of her ilk, you know, was pretty amazing."

"We weren't even taking this that that seriously and now we're writing with someone like her. So, yeah, massive respect to her."

When asked who else they have respect for, Amir immediately declares that Plan B is "without a doubt the most hardworking guy in music." But it turns out they also have admiration for the other little known support act on B's recent tour, as Kesi explains, "respect to the musicianship of Labrinth. I went to school with him. He's just an amazing musician: he can play a bit of everything, he can sing, he can rap. Growing up with him, he'd spend like two weeks on guitar, master it and then move on to something else. It wasn't fair."

"This tour we just did was wicked actually because it was like an old school get together: Plan B, Labrinth and us. The East London reunion."

They used to hang out and play football on Hackney Mashes together, so I ask them what they think of the coverage their area has been getting over the past twelve months, starting with Radio 1's colossal party on the marshes.

"Hackney Weekender was the highlight of last year for me," says Kesi. "I can see Hackney Marshes from our kitchen window. I remember the day we came off stage, we missed Jay-Z because we had another show. But I got ready, getting dressed while watching Jay-Z from my window."

"People expect there to be trouble at these kinds of things because it's in Hackney, but it was safest thing you could ever imagine. Things like that bring out the good feeling in these kinds of areas. It's a great way to change people's perspective on where we live."

"I almost feel like it did more for the local area than the Olympics," continues Amir. "I loved the opening ceremony. The beginning of the Olympics was sick, but by the end it was a bit shite. I feel they could have done a lot more to involve the local community."

"It was all glitz, really. I look at it now and I'm like, 'well, what's really happening?' A lot of it's not being used now and everyone's forgotten about it."

But although our memories of London 2012 now start to fade, that all-important, passionate sense of community still blazes on in the shape of Rudimental's forthcoming Home, quite possibly the most uplifting, summer-oriented album you'll hear this side of festival season. Dealing in turn with family, society, happiness and above all, what 'home' actually means to people, it could potentially be the sound of the Olympic legacy that never was.

"Community just shapes your perspective on life, you know," Amir reiterates. "That's what we try to show in our videos as well. It's kind of positivity and hope for young people in dark times. Our album represents all that posivitity. It's got a warm, feel-good sound to it."

"I guess in the popular media or whatever, people look at youth and young people in a negative light, and that's the difference you know. It's not all gloom and doom; there's a lot of positivity to be found. And a lot of good music."

Of course, Rudimental may just be the prime example.

On stage this evening, they're an energetic delight: a real carnival, but a neat and tidy one at that. Kesi and Piers are the cheeky boys on synth at the back, Amir provides the guitar lines to their side, and a full-of-beans DJ Locksmith plays the in-house hype-man in front, inciting dance after dance for the full 45-minute set. What we hear is certainly warm, certainly feel-good, it may even be happiness incarnated in bassy, four-piece form.

Eyre (wearing dashing Mercedes hoop earrings), MNEK, Newman and trumpeter Mark Crown are all here to chip in and chirp when needed.

Yet perhaps most striking is how this collective, numerous and diverse, accomplish the seemingly impossible task of manipulating underground, laptop-based genres like house, garage, funky and D&B, pulling them all off with a live band. Most people couldn't tell these genres apart but when you see them visually dissected, arranged and brought to life like this, it really does help.

Toro Y Moi interview

I chatted with Toro Y Moi in the latest Notion Magazine. Out now in Smiths. 

Rhye / Autre Ne Veut

 

Review of Rhye 'Woman'. Originally published on DIY.

As improbable as it sounds, Rhye is in actual fact the collaboration between two separately smitten men: androgynous Toronto-based vocalist Mike Milosh and Danish multi-instrumentalist Robin Hannibal of the group Quadron. But who knew? Like many, you probably assumed Milosh’s soft, stirring coos on love and sensuality, laconic and poignant like Sade’s or Feist’s, could only have come from the female lips.

Emerging at the start of 2012, Rhye’s intense, morning-after love songs immediately stood out as phenomenal, fully-formed odes to late night infatuation. Thrust into the limelight with an anonymous aesthetic, no one had a clue as to their identities. When people wondered, people found out. And now they pop up with a near-faultless debut album. We know who they are but they’ve done nothing to dispel what we knew about their music already. ‘Woman’ is glorious, confident, subtle perfection.

Most arresting is the simplicity of it all: the pared-back arrangements, the understated grooves, that rousing croon, the everyday minutiae of being in love. Thinking about it, these really could be any old straightforward love songs, but there’s something about their placid simplicity which dwells on deep intimacy and passionate emotion. “I’m a fool for that shake in your thumb / I’m a fool for your belly,” Milosh utters over restrained strings and brass in ‘Open’, a gently oozing, terrifyingly personal song about spending the night with his wife. Meanwhile, the hypnotic title-track is a chamber-pop ode to physical love: the word ‘woman’ simply repeated over and over.

This is an album about sex, but not your bog standard ‘awks’-fest: instead something relatable, detailed and individual. Compelling from start to finish, every song also stands alone as an example of technical musical excellence. Already a classic, ‘The Fall’ is the consummate showpiece, equipped with that inimitable bass groove and off-beat Air-esque piano chords. Also notable are disco-friendly numbers ‘Last Dance’ and ‘Hunger’, along with ludicrously suave minimalist funk closer ‘Major Minor Love’.

When asked why they tried to preserve their anonymity, the duo plainly replied that they wanted the listener to have their own experience with the music: there should be no preconceived notions; the music should speak for itself. Inevitably, they failed in their tactics, but the outcome was ideal. In ‘Woman’, they’ve bypassed the hurdle of dangerous, immaterial preconceptions by creating the ultimate debut album: a future classic brimming with effortless, tangible love songs.

Review of Autre Ne Veut 'Anxiety'. Originally published on DIY.

'Anxiety' is an emotional pop album: by turns heartbreaking, overjoyed and horny, Brooklyn's Autre Ne Veut (real name Arthur Ashin) strains every single fraught or wild emotion from his body through a haunting, likeable merger of mainstream R&B and oddball 80s electro.

Two swigs Prince to one gulp Talk Talk, opener 'Play By Play' is the grandiose centrepiece. Ashin initially quips in a wavering falsetto, "And I said, baby / and I said, baby / and I said, baby / and I said, baby"; the song culminates with a female vocalist repeating, "Don't ever leave me alone / play by play, play by play". He sets the tone perfectly. This is an album about love, sex, ups and downs.

Drawing direct inspiration from Usher's last record, what comes out is always darn catchy but always in an awkward, inimitable way; Ashin has one of the most soul-crushing, unique falsettos, soaring clear above everything else in the mix. Lead single 'Counting' has incomprehensible lyrics, but his vocal range alone serves up more than enough emotion.

Much of the music on the record is awkward to listen to and hard to take seriously. But that's just part of the ANV rulebook. Massive-sounding pop synths, obfuscating sax squeals, glammy guitar flourishes, spacey swathes of ambience (perhaps the influence of former roommate Daniel Lopatin): this is pop meets the ironic, playful savant.

Standout 'Ego Free Sex Free' is a case in point: heavily manipulated samples, a grinding hip hop beat and arpeggiating synths in tow, anxiety is replaced with the ecstatic delirium of a party: "ego free sex free / I can't feel my body moving". You can't help but sing along.

This is an album of climaxes and cathartic streams of consciousness, but an album listenable from start to finish. If inc. and How To Dress Well are making smooth, chilled-out bedroom jams, Autre Ne Veut is doing something lifted from the other end of the R&B spectrum, something just as hypnotic, but ten times as uncomfortably thrilling.

Matthew E White interview

"This time last year, no one knew a thing about 29 year-old singer-songwriter Matthew E White. Now his debut album’s everywhere, and he’s genuinely surprised about it. Huw Oliver spoke to him from his home in Richmond, Virginia, about the conception of ‘Big Inner’, the notion of Southernness and his mission through the Spacebomb kaleidoscope."

Up on This Is Fake DIY now.

Pon De Replay: Editions 2 and 3

Here's my second column about pop for The 405. in which I blabber on about marvellous recorded artifacts by the likes of MAUSI, Kelly Rowland, Syron, Sevyn Streeter, Autre Ne Veut.

Oh, and this is my third. Expect big tunes from LIZ, Gorgon City, Ravaughn, TS7, YYZ and Usher.

inc. / Alt-J / the Walkmen

Review of INC. 'No World'. Originally published in DIY Mag (February). 7/10.

The duo formerly known as Teen Inc. may have shortened their name but they have expanded on their sound. Andrew Aged's delicate vocals have found a whole new galaxy of sensual whispers and cathartic outpourings, while his nuanced guitar lines have begun to veer towards chilled-out Ronny Jordan-style acid jazz. Hiding in the background, meanwhile, Daniel once again brings the animated funk bass, subtle yet inventive beats and closely stitched, voluminous production. This bare, sparse, calm set-up could easily have become cold and mechanical, but here it allows their songs to develop and build. It gives their lyrics a sense of poetry, and the whole album a creepy, angelic, almost extraterrestrial quality.

DIY albums of the year: Alt-J 'An Awesome Wave'. Originally published in DIY Mag (December).

The most talked about album of the year, and with good reason. Four years in the making, AAW sounded pretentious on paper (triangles, anonymity, mumbled lyrics), but the quartet had actually cooked us up ten delectable, perfectly formed pop songs, with delicate moments ('Matilda') as well as ear-splitting ones ('Fitzpleasure'). It was fantastic, and all of a sudden, teens, mums and grandparents had started scrutinising the lyrics for innuendos and worshipping triangles, and the band had become Radio 1 staples, Mercury Prize winners and Brixton Academy headliners. A consummate start.

DIY albums of the year: the Walkmen 'Heaven'. Originally published here. 

After twelve, long years spent at the crit-acclaimed tail-end of that doomed NY Garage Rock Revival, ‘Heaven’ was the sound of the Walkmen budding, blowing up and becoming the next big Obama-band. It was their most extraordinary album yet, and lead singer Hamilton Leitheiser’s stunning, heady croon had evidently found a world of its own. We wallowed amid the subdued restraint of ‘Southern Heart’, and punched the air to the glorious title-track. The versatility had shone through. ‘That band who did The Rat’ had just become one of the best bands on earth.

Pon De Replay: Edition No. 1

I've just started up as the Pop Columnist at the 405. My first features Chloe Howl, Jojo, Goldhouse, Mikky Ekko, Jessie Ware, Katy B and Ashanti.

The History Of Apple Pie interview

I interviewed lead singer Steph about their fab new record. Read it here.

Lord Huron review

Originally published on DIY. 

You either appreciate the loose ideas of Americana, or you don't. You either flaunt Neil Young as a demigod, or brand him a grumpy bastard. You either treasure your Fleet Foxes CDs, or let them fester on your coffee table. These are the primordial facts of life, but why are we talking about them? Lord Huron, the latest project from Ben Schneider, make out-and-out, unblushing, wistful Americana. Fantastic for amants of hair and harmonicas, but not so much everyone else.

It must be said that Lord Huron do sometimes have that incomparable kick, that intangible something which others neglect. They don't merely do the same-old, histrionic, balls-first ballads, and they don't just sing about whiling away summers in fields. There's no banjo. Instead, these fellas' art de vivre sometimes involves embedding the odd hint of subtlety and experimentation. Astonishing title track 'Lonesome Dreams' confirms that this isn't a record that only draws inspiration. It's swaying country-pop at its least smarmy, and its most charming. Making you jump up and kiss the ceiling, and clap along like a child during a game of Pass the Parcel, there's also something redolent of Bon Iver's last LP in its glorious, head-nodding percussive arrangement.

Similarly atmospheric moments can be found in the catchy, Sam Beam-esque number 'I Will Be Back One Day', along with the gentle, bruised delicacy of 'The Ghost On The Shore', which somehow makes use of an accordion in a non-vom-inducing way. But the good news ends there. The rest of the album comes across as rather lacklustre: dreadful opener 'Ends of the Earth' is incomplete, wearisome MOR taken straight from the Mumfords' sick bucket, while 'She Lit A Fire' sounds like an exhausted, downtrodden Cave Singers. And - darn - all the other tracks seem to coalesce in to one, mediocre whole. It seems they tried their hardest, and there were certainly some memorable moments, but these were ultimately outweighed by hackneyed banality and genre-bound cliches. A patchy debut effort.