Last week/last night, depending on when I get round to posting this, I saw the movie Drive. It was the best film I’ve ever seen (this year), though hotly contested by Richard Ayoade’s Submarine. In short, Ryan Gosling (who I didn’t previously have much time for) is brilliant as the nameless protagonist in this black, Tarrantinesque (ish), noir (ish), crime thriller. Events suddenly spiral out of control mid way through the film and the ensuing graphic violence polarises the tense peacefulness of the film’s first half. I haven’t seen a similar treatment of dialogue in any film I’ve seen to date. I strongly, strongly recommend you see this movie.
I’m not here to review movies though, I’m here to get paid share tunes. There’s an overarching 80s sensibility to Drive that’s evident in costume, car, cinematography but to point, in soundtrack. I’ve chosen a few of the most poignant tracks but even without their cinematic significance, these songs would be stand-alone awesome. Throw your hands up if you feel me.
This year was the year that we all got a hold of Smoke Ring For My Halo, the most recent album from Kurt Vile, and then smugly pretended we’d been tracking his career since 2008. “Yeah, Smoke Ring is cool”, we’d say, “but have you heard Childish Prodigy? No? Oh dude, you’ve gotta hear it, it’s waaaaaaay better, you can’t even imagine.”
Kurt Vile – ‘Blackberry Song’
Well, I haven’t even given Smoke Ring For My Halo a proper listen since I’m such a reactionary cat, but what I have listened to is his 2009 album Childish Prodigy, which they say is way better – you can’t even begin to understand. The album administers a healthy dose of 70s DIY psychadelia that would lend itself to a week long roadtrip. Sometimes inaudibly mumbled, other times yelped through stoner drawl, Vile’s lyrics are simple and picturesque, concrete enough to speak of real experience, broad enough that they’re not alienating. The record has such a strong sense of coherency that you really should listen to it through, start to finish. I’ve picked the most accessible song from the record, the beautiful ‘Blackberry Song’ for you to partake of in a quiet place at a quiet moment. Please buy this album. Do it for me but do it for you.
Sures were guaranteed a write up, mostly because Matt Hogan sings in a little band called Sleepyhands (and he’s a swell dude) but also because this track Poseidon draws a straight line from the Beachboys to the present via The Explorer’s Club. Big ol’ harmonies deepen up the effect heavy guitar line, which itself cuts free at the tail end of the track. Good things with a promise of better things from Sydney’s Sures.
Sures – ‘Poseidon’ [FREE MP3]
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I hadn’t heard of Apparat before he released his most recent album The Devil’s Walk about a month ago. He’s a German with a penchant for focusing on the minute sounds that make up the rich knitwork of the bigger audio and the attention to detail yields heavy dividends on the newest record (and maybe on the earlier records, I haven’t heard them, get off my back about it).
Apparat is a structural disciple of the slowbuild, layering vocal atop choral atop orchestral atop instrumental atop ambient noise, finally underpinned by underplayed beats. It won’t give you that immediate nothing to everything moment that dubstep is famous for [over]providing but it’ll give you a more gratifying experience of listening to an artist that is rewarding for more than the very short term.
The album is across-the-board solid but here are two highlights from The Devil’s Walk.
Apparat – ‘Ash/Black Veil’
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Apparat – ‘Escape’
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Such is my confidence in Tim Fitz that I won’t even listen to this thing before I post it. Some would say that this is indicative of a writer who lacks integrity but I say it demonstrates my brilliant foresight, because undoubtedly, this will be amazing. Earlier this year the guy casually threw down six tracks of smart, sharp technicality that, as an added bonus, sounded superb.
In the time since the release of that first EP, Tim Fitz has been studiously putting tracks to press and recently informed me that he has over 100 recordings in the bank. If these eight tracks are the finest fruits of those 100 then we’ve a real treat on our hands. If you build a graph, plotting the number of tracks Tim Fitz has recorded against the height of Sydney based musicians, an interesting thing happens: Tim Fitz’s head appears right in the middle of the graph. You can’t argue with evidence based science.
Here in it’s full glory, is the new EP.
