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| Lightspeed Champion - Falling Off The Lavender Bridge | | "not every band that NME champions has to be shite" (More) |
| | Los Campesinos! - Hold On Now, Youngster... | | "It can’t be denied that Hold On Now, Youngster is fun" (More) |
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| | The Aliens - Astronomy For Dogs | | "Instead of listing all the influences just go to wikipedia and search for popular musical styles" (More) |
| | Idlewild - Make Another World | | "A band at the crossroads" (More) |
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| Radiohead, Bat For Lashes, MGMT | | "29th June 2008 - LCCC, Manchester" (More) |
| | Half Man Half Biscuit | | "17th April 2008 - Coronation Hall, Ulverston, Cumbria" (More) |
| | Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark | | "13th May 2007 - Olympia Theater, Dublin" (More) |
| | Black Rebel Motorcycle Club | | "17th April 2007 - Wolverhampton Wulfrun Hall" (More) |
| | Paul Weller, The Charlatans, Ian Brown, Echo and the Bunnyman, Noel Gallagher | | "30th March 2007 - MEN Arena Manchester" (More) | |
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| Lightspeed Champion - Falling Off The Lavender Bridge |
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| (Domino - 2008) |
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| Just as every teenager isn’t an antisocial scallywag, every tramp doesn’t automatically own a harmonica, and every BMW driver isn’t necessarily a cock, then not every band that NME champions has to be shite.
Things didn’t admittedly look promising for Dev Hynes though, as he was a member of Test Icicles, a band whose unfunny and teeth grindingly bad name ensured I wouldn’t like them even if the music they produced was the greatest ever recorded. It wasn’t though, it was terrible.
So far, so The Enemy (this month’s number 1 hated band) but this might actually be the greatest transformation since Doctor Jekyll developed the whisky madness.
Dev Hynes has morphed into Lightspeed Champion, a man who has swapped skinny jeans and Global Hypercolor t-shirts for cardigans, hats and big glasses, and who has traded in art punk-metal toss for alt-country pop songs. I can see why Test Icicles ended in a “I don’t want to do this shit anymore” bag of squabbles.
2008 sees the whole idea of the album fighting a battle it is inevitably going to lose with the mp3 player and the internet. Thanks to i-tunes (and mass piracy) anyone can make a compilation of their favourite songs of the moment; the single market may all but be dead in its physical form yet in the cheap and readily available market of the cyberweb, the individual song lives on. The success of small capacity mp3 players like the i-pod shuffle shows the market for people who want their favourite songs now is huge – the shuffle is designed with the personal singles compilation in mind.
But for some of us the album will always be the best way to listen to music. Over 10/12 songs a skilled artiste can affect a listener far more, the flow and nuances of a long playing record can produce a finished article of greater quality, feeling and emotional content than the sum of its individual parts (however good they may be). It’s why bands such as Radiohead resisted i-tunes for so long, their albums are crafted so certain songs sat next to each other, almost feeding off their neighbour to produce an often beautiful result.
It’s a hard thing to actually achieve in practice and on many an album the singles stand out amongst the dross, sometimes almost wilfully as the act is marketed as a singles outfit. But an album that fits together and feels almost like a single piece of work is a wonderful thing. The two albums here and here are good examples of this and to that list can now be added Falling Off The Lavender Bridge.
The most striking thing about Lightspeed Champion’s debut is that even though it is not instrumentally overly ambitious (acoustic guitars, strings, occasional bit of woodwind), it is structurally more varied. Very few songs follow the verse – chorus – verse – chorus route, Midnight Surprise takes several detours throughout its 10 minutes, yet shows Hynes knows what he’s doing. Most bands put lengthy tracks at the end of an album in the hope that a listener will just turn it off and forgive them this pointless indulgence, here the song sits smack in the middle of the album because it doesn’t sound like an over extended demo track or the single piece of misjudged experimentation on the whole album.
The fact that the album fits together so well means that you often spend time looking at your MP3/CD player to determine if you’re listening to a new song or just a change in direction of the last one. Songs such as Devil Tricks For A Bitch or Dry Lips reveal themselves slowly, quiet beginnings ending in a flurry of strings or – in the latter’s case – a big chorus.
Even though it feels at times like a single performance piece, there are singles here. I Could Have Done This Myself rattles along nicely and Tell Me What It's Worth may be the most formulaic thing here but it’s of a different standard to your usual chart Indie janglespanners.
The ability to pick several songs (or parts of songs) out as potential singles is one of the impressive things about Falling Off The Lavender Bridge but it’s as a single listen that the album really excels. It’s hard to find a British indie band prepared to exercise restraint in what they do nowadays, to let the music and lyrics speak for themselves without resorting to bombast or ‘more volume is the answer’ production.
On Everyone I know Is Listening To Crunk Hynes seems to be wondering why he is different, and maybe if there is indeed a place in the world of music for someone like him.
And whereas I certainly hope there is, you’ll have to ask The Shuffle Generation what they think. The decision probably lies in their hands sadly.
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Glenn 1st July 2008 00:00:00 |
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