News-O-Rama! Elvis Perkins, Neko Case, The Decemberists & Aidan Moffat
This is a Muppet News Flash. It isn’t, but there is certainly news afoot at the moment. The larger labels appear to have woken from their brandy-induced Christmas comas and managed to poke their spotty interns into action once more. And the result: we have inboxes with Important News once again. In order, not of how famous the band is and therefore how how highly the news scores on the Official Indie-Kid Excitement Scale, but in order of just how excited I personally am about the release of each track I bring you:
Elvis Perkins in Dearland:
Elvis Perkins’ last album was blindingly brilliant. Aching, sad, uplifting, and literate enough to be beautifully crafted, but never arch. To say that I am looking forward to this release is an understatement. Shampoo is brilliant, with enough stomping funeral blues and ghostly choirs of the underworld to give it massive presence, and fucking hell his voice is in g0od form. I love this, and I can’t wait. A couple more tracks can be streamed from his shiny new website.
Elvis Perkins in Dearland – Shampoo
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Neko Case:
Fox Confessor Brings the Flood was so beautiful that I hurriedly scampered through her back catalogue, only to be slightly disappointed. It was a bit too Lady-country-lite in places, and I find myself slightly fearing that Fox Confessor was an aberration of brilliance, surrounded by a sea of above-average music. Listening to this song doesn’t reassure me all that much, I have to confess, but I still have hope.
Neko Case – Maneater
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The Decemberists:
Their last album was hardly a classic, despite several great moments. Something, somehow, didn’t quite click with it, and there were a couple of really duff songs; Summersong and The Perfect Crime were gratingly bad. The Rake’s Song isn’t all that great, I have to say, and it sounds like it has been prematurely terminated to serve as a preview. The song doesn’t feel over when it fades out. But again, I have hope, albeit just a little less in this case.
The Decemberists – The Rake Song
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Aidan Moffat & the Best Ofs:
I think it’s safe to say that we can expect smart lyrics in this release, although what we can expect musically might be less predictable. After last year’s filthsterpiece he seems to have returned to a more textbook songwriting format, and the instrumentation of this seems pretty straightforward as well. Not sure what to expect – this is a pretty good song, and I would be very surprised if this wasn’t a really good, enjoyable album with plenty of wry internal laughs to be had.
Aidan Moffat & the Best Ofs – Big Blonde
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“The perfect, the perfect, the perfect, the perfect, the perfect, the perfect, the perfect, the perfect crime.”
SHUT UP! The Decemberists are one of my favourite bands, but I’m with the Toad-mister. What were they thinking with this one?
They describe the new album as a ‘rock opera’, I hear. Worries me a bit. I’ll try and stay optimistic.
Oh fucking hell that sounds dreadful. Rock fucking opera. Oh dear.
All that perfecty perfect nonsense (not a bad song apart from that) reminds me of Van Morrisson at his worst, actually. He had a nasty habit of dropping that sort of verbal turd into the middle of his songs.
Aiden Moffat is fucking great.
Wow. Elvis Perkins. Never heard of him before. Just grabbed his last album off emusic and… wow.
Looking forward to more from Neko: share your hopes for something a bit quirkier than straight country. I have a pretty high tolerance for her “lady-country-lite” stuff, but in small doses. A bit too clean and polished sometimes and just leaves me thinking I’d rather go listen to Lucinda Williams.
Elvis Perkins is a bit special. Listening to those three preview tracks on his website, I can’t wait for this album.
Neko Case’s Blacklisted is fruckin super, and I see Oor Aidan’s still reading his Dorothy Parker, which can only be a good thing…
See, I never quite fell for Blacklisted. I like lots of it, but as a whole album it never quite connected with me like I hoped it would.
Looking forward to Neko Case and the Decemberists. Re the Decemberists – The Crane Wife was a great album! COme on. Yes the Perfect Crime is filler, but Summersong is beautiful. Maybe the problem is that you have no summer up there! Maybe you need some sunshine to appreciate it.
Just yanking your chain.
The problem, as far as I see it, was that there was more than enough fantastic material, but it just wasn’t put together in the same kind of loose, confident style of an indie band at the top of their game.
Their major label status seemed to be weighing on them a little, if just in the sense that they were determined not to release a ‘major label’ album. It seemed to intrude, slightly.
If their new album is a little looser I will be much happier. But the Crane Wife wasn’t bad, it was just frustrating – so close to being great, and then no-one said ‘perhaps, Colin, you may have repeated the phrase ‘a-perfect’ often enough for one song.’