So customers, it used to be that it’d take a few weeks of a new year for the recording industry to get over their Christmas parties and start setting the direction of where the music might be going. But although 2018 has just fallen in the door a bunch of comebacks, collaborations – some much awaited, some unexpected – and some big budget marketing plans are already up and running.
Some just have dreams of playing Coachella. Dreams have already put themselves on the programme, without having actually played a gig yet. But you’d reckon the couple of up-and-comers working under this name might have some confidence in what they’re doing. Daniel Johns and Luke Steele – yeah, that Silverchair kiddie and old mate from Sleepy Jackson if you didn’t know – have had this in the works since around 2013, and it’s supposedly been ‘coming soon’ for the last two years. But No One Defeats Us (EMI) is the pop music as serious business, and finally here. It’s more guitar heavy and syncopated than you’d expect compared to recent work from either of them, and it’ll be interesting to see how long their respective idiosyncrasies and renown short attention spans hold this fragile structure together.
Far more studied in the timing of reveal is Justin Timberlake offering up the old style excessive and CGI-driven clip for Filthy (RCA), though this might be a little down the pecking order in promotion for the new album than being the guy about to be doing the halftime show at the Superbowl. What might be a surprise is the lack of surprise in the style of this. Rumours of the funkiest white man alive going alt-country for his new record are a bit undermined by this, a classic bit of JT machine dance locomotion with a robot doing things that would likely get it sacked from a lead role in The Rocky Horror Show. List of credits for the new thing include names like NERD, Timbaland, and Alicia Keys – so you can only guess at what the end result might be.
Many readers will not even remember there was a time when Black Eyed Peas were credible - and even good. And it’s still hard to overlook the widescreen vacant stupidity of horrors like Let’s Get Retarded or My Humps. But, for the moment they’ve put aside remixing every beige dance act in the world, TV talent quest judging, and – perhaps most tellingly – Fergie (she’s just ‘taking a break from the band’ recording her own album if you feel the need to care…). They’ve apparently have got ‘Woke’, as the young folks say (…umm, do they?), or at least are trying to look like it. Thus Street Livin’ (Interscope) is a throwback to their early days of discussing race issues and social justice. Heavens kids, they even roll out the N-word. That’s gonna confuse some of The Voice audience, now ain’t it?
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Tangentially, speaking as a middle-aged white man, should middle-aged white men stick their nose into rap and/or hip-hop at all? But if you’re Jack White, nobody’s likely to tell you not to - now are they? Thus, Shirt becomes the first such artiste signed to Uncle Jack’s label. Jury’s probably still out on whether that’s a good career move for the fella’s career, so you try and take Flight Home (Third Man) on its merits. Beside doubling or maybe halving his chance at a sneaker endorsement, deploying the aforementioned N-word liberally, and yelling at various corporates and disruptors he also throws in some of the usual dick-swinging that’s almost too easy a default setting for the form. The overall effect is maybe a young bloke trying just a bit too hard to be hard.
Speaking of self-consciously middle-aged white men, David Byrne’s most recent collaboration seems to have revitalised him - as well as giving the spectacular St Vincent the springboard to make the towering Masseduction. But always looking for the next thing, the awkwardly angular Dave leaves the brass band record he made with her behind to put together his first record under his own name in 14 years, although there’s a good deal of Eno input in it as well. And that’s a handy fella to have alongside. In a world gone fucking mad and ugly, he’s announced he’s looking for ”Reasons to be cheerful”, although sometimes that can sound a bit like Professor Farnsworth trying to convince that it’s ”Good news, everyone!”. But Everybody’s Coming To My House (Todomundo/Nonesuch) is identifiably him, with just enough whoop and holler to it to even give old Talking Heads fans a reference point. There’s a touch of Latin horns coming via Africa in the undergrowth, making for a mostly joyous racket offset by moments of electronic discomfort which makes it all seem about right.
A decade back Hazey Jane were a bunch of blokes working out what sound they wanted to make, and were enjoying the journey before life got in the way as it so often does, and the members sorted drifted off in the way they so often do. Members have had various degrees of success with other bands and other musics from big-in-Europe power pop, to psychedelic and prog styles, and hey – didn’t I see that guy play in a wedding band at some point? But they reconvene, rename the unit The Hazeys and offer up Method (Independent) which brings various of their strains together, complete with the Philly Jays’ Berkfinger as producer. Result is a two-and-a-half minute glistening summery pop-to-Ozrock tune (in a good way) with a bit of grit to it, that is basically a bunch of blokes who know what they’re doing having a good time. How can that be a bad thing?
Another soft collision of styles that both compare and contrast has the return of BØRNS idiosyncratic emotionalism coming in tandem with slightly unexpected, and possibly troubled by legal issues, Lana Del Rey. I mean, “Sued by Radiohead…” sounds like the start of one of those really shit comedy sketches on Tonightly. Anyway, beyond a superbly pretentious title, God Save Our Young Blood (Interscope) has their distinctive voices waving at each other from a distance. It’s one moment arch and mannered, the next seemingly quietly real. I think it might be they’re trying to make art rather than pop music. Which can sometimes work, and sometimes not. Your call.
