The Single Life: Art Vs Science, Seasick Steve And More

So, the plastic’s been maxed-out making the record and the three-colour screen print tea-towels that have sat untouched on the merch desk for the last six months. But you need a video so your friends can see you on Rage at 4am some Saturday morning. But the record company – should you be lucky enough to have one of them – and/or the bass-player’s rich parents won’t front the cash to hire Baz Luhrmann to direct your cinematic concept. So it’s down to Plan B: the friend with the high-end Mac Pro, or some ‘old-fashioned’ imagination.

Or that fine answer to so many questions: Puppets! Well technically, marionettes. This is the option selected by Seasick Steve, who has always looked rough-hewn and frayed enough that he might have actually been carved from a chunk of well-weathered wood himself. But his timber mini-me plays the part well through Roy’s Gang (Caroline). Song is typically frayed but joyful, and how can you argue with the one-string washboard as musical underpinning?

Django Django go for the other approach. We’re not just talking that wall of Apple products, but those mates who also have a full motion-capture system set up in a handy nearby warehouse. Reflections (Because Music) looks suitably dystopian - or an outtake from I Robot – but adds an odd 80s feel in the delivery of the sound and vision – though whether it’s homage or pisstake you’re really never quite sure. But the plastic sax solo – a fixture to almost too many pop songs back in the day - is either comforting or discomforting, perhaps depending on your age.  

Then again, if you’ve been doing this rock and roll thing for 50-odd years, you may have the resources and reputation to indulge your grandest visions. Few have ever conjured the sweeping musical vistas that Pete Townshend has just seemed to deliver as a matter of course. The Who’s resident genius is about to revisit his second best-known operatic conceit, Quadrophenia, complete with Philharmonic Orchestra, choirs, operatic singers, and a Royal Albert Hall. Grandiose? Yeah, sure – but few do it better. To preview the project his aching, melodramatic, but glorious Love Reign O’er Me (Deutsche Grammophon) as delivered by serious English tenor Alfie Boe. If you know the original album/concept/movie you might quibble about a rugged middle-aged man delivering the angst of a teenage mod, but the waves still crash in on Brighton Beach like they did in 1965, or 1985, or tomorrow.

Or you can attach yourself to one of English romantic comedies of a certain type – Hugh Grant optional – and deliver the bigger budget clip after the movie comes out. Until then, you’re a three-minute title slide. Simon Pegg’s new vehicle, Man Up, is the cinematic venture, and perhaps a little surprisingly it’s happy miserablists Elbow aiming to be the Wet Wet Wet of this century. What Time Do You Call This? (Fiction) tinkles wistfully in the melancholy manner of the doubts before she comes back in the final reel. Soundtrack apparently will also feature The National, Paloma Faith, Duran Duran, and umm, Whitesnake. Yup, it’s gonna be one of those. 

There are times you read down the list of credits to a movie, and are surprised by some of the names you find. It can happen on some songs as well. Among those on this: Panu’s Nick Littlemore, renown producer Nick Launay, Jimmy Moginie of yer Oilllllls and such, and the apparently unsleeping Kirin Callinan. And who provokes these people to end up in one room? It be Craig Nicholls. Yes, that The Vines’ Craig Nicholls. Yeah, him. Although here it’s in the band project guise of White Shadows. A puzzlingly beautiful mix of electronics and (is that a) xylophone(?) drift together as a love is observed to Slip Away (Mucho Bravado). This is likely nothing like you imagined, but it is quite something. 

Also providing a surprising warmth via their machines, Perth’s Flower Drums. They call End II End (Independent) a ‘synth-blue nocturne’, which makes it layered, subtle, and quite engrossingly structured. Already having achieved some WAMI nomination nods, this is a song that may well see broader recognition on the other coast of the country. Which given the worth of this, is probably well-deserved. 

Already with some of that level of recognition, Art Vs Science. In This Together (Magellanic/MGM) maybe revels more in its technological base (and bass…), but while it sometimes bounds along, it’s maybe not entirely of (or for) the dancefloor. This helps make it pop music with some heart and brain to it, which sadly remains as rare a thing as ever. The band name is actually a good description of what they do, although the adversarial nature of the name is maybe a little misleading. But ‘Art Complementing Science’ is perhaps a little clumsy to put up on a marquee. 

Becoming seemingly ever more soulful, the old Sega Dreamboat himself, Jeremy Neale. Hold On Together (Remote Control) that just covers a range of moods in three-and-a-bit minutes. He calls it ‘a one-track mixtape’. Let’s go with that. His voice collides and caresses with Phoebe Imhoff’s, before another of those abovementioned plastic saxes wanders through, holding hands with a sorta flamenco guitar. If this all sounds like there’s a bit too much going on, yeah maybe. But it’s put together so well that you just let it carry you along – not the least because it’s just really good.