The wheels of the rock and/or roll sometimes move slower than you’d imagine. Local collective Immigrant Union have only just managed to get their album Anyway released here after a year-or-so, although already out overseas – possibly due to the presence of Dandy Warhol Brent DeBoer as mainstay of the band. Thus In Time (Musebox) is somewhat aptly named. Musically, it shows the band leaning more to their psychedelic folk side than the sometimes country tones of earlier. There’s the new clip to go with it, and although it reveals the questionable glamour of the men’s trough, you can do an interesting compare and contrast with an earlier version of the song (and the band) on the balcony of a venerable Melbourne music pub. On second look, you note a bright-eyed but seemingly shy girl playing left-hand up the back. Although these days you’re more likely to see Courtney Barnett (and the rhythm section that’s become her combo) on Conan or The Tonight Show.
And with added Courtney:
Oh, you want more cameos from buddies in other bands? Sure. Tim Commerford is/was part of Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave, but also has his own thing, Future User. Going a bit Michael Moore on us, Voodoo Juju (Middle Rig) actually features footage from his own spinal surgery. Nothing like a bit of suffering for your art. But easing the pain, that’s RATM cohort Tom Morello playing the bad guy doctor early on, showing his learnt a bit from Bruce Springsteen school of ham acting from his touring with that guy. Then there’s the venerable guys from the venerable Canadian hard-rock combo Rush also putting on the scrubs. All this is toward making a point about the sheer hell of the American medical system, delivered in a manner Rage fans will easily accept.
Meantime, Britain’s been looking for some politically angry working-class since the new wave crashed. Latest contenders, Sleaford Mods. Rattling two-piece, shouting a lot, saying ‘fook’ a lot as they throw things at the unexpectedly still there Conservative government. Face To Faces Markets (Harbinger Sound) is sincere, certainly. And pissed off, absolutely. But are the only people listening to middle-aged white men ranting, other middle-aged white men in Clash t-shirts who write for the NME?
Things can change, bands can change. Even revisit some things they’ve done before. Yo La Tengo are one of those enduring ‘90s-era bands all about meandering guitar textures and thoughtful stares into the middle distance. Deep Into Movies (Matador) is from an upcoming album of covers, and second thoughts. This reworking is more acoustic than electric, but still a bit shoe-gaze moody. Here on upright, bassist James McNew seems to have settled into his position, being the band’s 14th man in the job. As he’s been there since 1992, he may well consider that he’s passed the audition.
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Metric are stayers as well. Formed around the turn of this century, they’ve lasted through a number of synth-pop’s falls in and out of fashion. The Canadian group’s new thing is Cascades (MMI), which shifts between smooth mechanical melodies and a kind of awkward clockwork dance. Emily Haines has the wispy tones of one of those girls who’s fronted so many such machine-led noises since 1980, but this does sound more of now than then.
Taking their own idiosyncratic tangents which somehow can include electronica and Balkan folk overtones retaining a Lebanese name while coming from New Mexico – still with me? – Beirut remain a bit of a conundrum. Their music often seems to beckon you closer, but then remains sometimes frustratingly out of reach. But you also feel that Zach Condon might like it that way. No No No (4AD) kind of lurches, then falls into place. If Calexico are a view across a heat-hazed desert, Beirut are the night in the neon-lit cheap motel you’re forced to stop at when your 1994 Buick overheats later the same day.
And personally, I’d probably like to just wander to the Town Hall Hotel and watch a band, perhaps with some frayed edges, knocking out slightly scruffy, slightly wry guitar songs with a bit of sweat to it – likely with each member having a half-full schooner in front of them. Royal Chant do that sort of thing. I Am A Model (Dirty Mab), a good example of it. And you even get a short instructional on the working and use of the green screen technology so over-loved by so many bands who manage to get some cash together for a video budget that goes as far as ‘special effects’.
And somewhere a long that ‘world music’ line that means reggae and some other cheery foreign noises going on, Jinja Safari. Find My Way (Island) has the good-humoured feel of walking along beaches to where a white rum company has set up some umbrellas and beach chairs for a promotional event, complete with steel-drums for that added Caribbean flavour. Tune is bright and summery, making its release as winter falls perhaps a little contradictory.
