The fine tradition of ‘the side project’. The reasons can be many: music that doesn’t quite fit with your day job band’s style, the contractual problem forcing an artist into a new guise, or merely the fact you can’t stand another hour in a studio or tour van with those other arsehats.
Slightly odder is taking the tangent when your main combo isn’t yet sounding over it, or on the downward spiral. So, The Arcs. Essentially The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, but insisting it’s a collaborative affair as other members include various Amy Winehouse/Mark Ronson alumni - and perhaps slightly more perversely – appearances from an all-female mariachi band. Sure, why not. Stay In My Corner (Nonesuch) is certainly more restrained the Keys’ work, but titling the album to follow Yours Dreamily suggests things might get even more reflective.
Perhaps giving less of a shit what you or anyone else think about a new musical direction, the often happily curmudgeonly Kurt Wagner of the alt.country-esque (sometimes…) Lambchop. Less expected, a lurch into EDM. Kurt dismisses puzzlement with a curt “Suck it up, hippies”. The band – well, him and a couple of other ‘Chop chaps – are called HeCTA (possibly just to annoy case-sensitive computer spellchecks…) and the song is Till Someone Gets Hurts (Merge), which suggests that even when under the mirror-ball some of his main combo’s sadnesses and heartbreak may still be present.
Or you can even have a side-project to your side-project. Geoff Barrow of the towering Portishead has Beak> operational between the big band’s events, but in a spirit of doing things in a more spontaneous and less thought out fashion he now presents <Kaeb - which suggests he didn’t waste much time thinking about a new name either. When We Fall (Invada) has some space and tension to it and some of the trademark gentle unease, here filmed through an old camera lens gaffa-ed to an iPhone. Perhaps the Portishead you have when you haven’t got the budget to be Portishead.
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Bands, particularly local ones, don’t often get the chance to consider their position for any length of time in these short-attention span days. City Calm Down have taken three years to deliver their new thing with Rabbit Run (I Oh You) managing to fit in a couple of obvious – but quality – influences from around a thirty year period. There’s some of The National muffled conversations as it starts, before cranking up to some New Order syncopation as it goes. This all works toward it being rather suitable for playlists of those radio stations for which they’re pretty obviously aiming.
Another not feeling the need to ‘rock out’ although they may well be able to, The Walking Who are more of the psychedelic model, although that pigeonhole covers a multitude of sins these days. That said, the nursery-rhyme word association of My Future Wife (Independent) could have come from anytime from 1967 on, but does manage a certain modern feeling to it. Look, they’re a band who’ve blogged a tour diary from their time in Iceland – which seems just about right on a lot of levels.
And then it can all come down to a voice. And Kira Puru is well recognised as have a quality one. Having Paul Kelly select her as one of the vocalists centring his Merri Soul Sessions project hasn’t done any harm, and holding her own alongside the likes of Vika and Linda Bull may be one further encouragement that’s got her around to finally releasing material with her own name on the marquee, and All Dulled Out (Independent) suitably showcases that helluva voice, and should broaden the knowledge of just how good she is.
Conversely, there’s those things almost perfectly of the now. The electronic soul-ish tones of Basenji’s Petals (Future Classic), with Adam Tucker of Scenic providing the vocals could have almost been designed by committee if you wanted something that’ll probably end up in the middle-reaches of the Hottest 100, but listen closer and it does seem there’s some real inspiration and individual style to the elements brought together for this.
