Bunch of Shufflers

We're living in a time of cultural ADHD.

Everyone says it.

I said it a minute ago.

Just then.

We are aren't we? People haven't got the attention span for albums anymore so we must be. People aren't listening to albums anymore so we must be. People don't have any interest in albums anymore so we must be. We must be right? This is a shuffle culture isn't it? Yeah it is.

Isn't it?

I think the most important distinction is that people aren't PAYING for albums anymore. They haven't for ages. Napster scared the shit out of people & Lars Ulrich but I was passing round tapes of albums at school LONG before I had bandwidth big enough to steal music. Me & my friends would rifle through each others CDs, hand over a blank tape & right there you've multiplied Lars' listenership but slashed his profits. But that was then and this is a now where everyone has the capability to stream all of the world's music, new and old, into their minds for the cost of a connection. Great, isn't it?

I have bought loads of albums in the past where I liked the singles and one or two album tracks but overall have felt more than a little short-changed by the rest of the filler. Today I can sift through the previews on iTunes or Amazon and decide whether to buy the whole album....or not.

Usually not.

I can then compile playlists of tunes that I have scavenged, like a musical magpie, & create my own sonic universe with little or no regard for what the artist intended for their album as a whole piece of work.

Is that wrong? Does that matter?

Today's audience has an enormous amount of control over how it consumes entertainment. If you're a fan of reality TV then you will be used to being able to to take exception to someone or something and have it changed by texting or phoning or emailing or pressing a red button. Charlie Brooker remarked that alot of the recent 'scandals' involving huge numbers of logged complaints and so-called moral outrages (Russell Brand & Jonathan Ross prank calling Andrew Sachs, Rihanna & Christina Aguilera being too rude for families on the X Factor) are indicative of this culture we live in. We see or hear something we don't like and our first reaction is to send a text or an email or pick up the phone and complain rather than simply change the channel.

Why then should we passively accept a body of work by an artist that we don't like as a whole? It seems to me that some albums are being MADE with this 'shuffle culture' in mind. Late of the Pier's schizophrenic opus Fantasy Black Channel is an no-holds-barred exercise in genre hopping. It's all gutteral squalls and proggish widdling one minute and then glam-stomp pomposity the next. There is a clear thread running through each tune but they try to avoid sticking to one thing at all costs...with sexy results. On the flipside of this Kings of Leon made a clinical and cynical grab for the hearts and thumbs of 'shuffle culture' with their 4th offering Only By The Night. The brothers Leon very 'cleverly' front loaded the album with the singles they planned to release and left the second half to bloat and putrify. It's a very popular pop music trick. Pop fans are not known for their voracious appetite for album tracks so they get what they want up top and shuffle on to the next single.

It's a shame they jumped so high over the shark really because Because of the Times was ace! It's strange too that they should so definitively have run to the middle of the road considering that they seemed on the brink of doing something interesting. It must be frustrating, as an American band, to get to album number four and still have made no headway into the American marketplace but there's got to be some consideration for sleeping at night. It doesn't matter though really because KOL were never going to reinvent the musical wheel.

There WERE some solid albums released in the last few years (The Maccabbees, Jack Penate, Vampire Weekend, Mystery Jets, Friendly Fires, Foals....there are more please add to the list) and alot of those bands managed to turn their critical plaudits into actual popularity. It's saying something though when after releasing their second album, Twenty One, The Mystery Jets got dropped from their label (679 Recordings). I don't know if it was just me that heard tunes from that album EVERYWHERE I went but I'm sure the band's profile went through the roof after that album was released and STILL they get dropped!!! Obviously the Mystery Jets audience aren't about buying albums.

I don't think that there is any such thing as a traditional release structure for popular music anymore and I don't think that's a bad thing. There are more ways to get your music heard than ever before. Used to be that you couldn't get a gig without having a demo and you couldn't really afford one of them without backing and you couldn't get backing without someone coming down to see you at a gig....ahhh. Now you can just record in your bedroom a couple of tunes and start your own buzz by circulating around friends and friends of friends. You could get management off the back of the number of 'likes' you have on facebook. You could tour the world on the strength of something you knocked together on Garageband.

It's not really THAT easy, your tunes still have to be good.

You could always try what Robyn did and record your album then snap it in two only to stick it back together again. She staggered the release of Body Talk throughout 2010 by putting two halves out as mini-albums. Basically she was releasing two EPs then releasing them both on one CD but it grabbed people's attention and got her three times the amount of advertising space around town. I personally don't think the Shufflers should be pandered to but sometimes the state of the industry (ie: completely fucked) offers up unique ways of releasing music in small bursts that actually creates a bit of a stir.

What does this mean for the traditional album though? Will it die? Is it already dead?

Yeah it's dead.

But long live the EP!

With that in mind give this lot a listen (Pirate & Cobie).

It's only three tracks so you'll be able to get straight back to shuffling about all around town.

We'll post up a review as soon as the Ladybird flits back through the window but for now enjoy the moody electric trippiness.

Where's the new?

Can there REALLY be no new ideas? Has EVERYTHING been done already? There has got to be a way of expressing oneself that doesn't rely completely on something that someone has done before. There HAS to be!!!

I love CSNY & when I want to hear them I'll listen to them. I enjoy My Morning Jacket but I'm often acutely aware that I could really be listening to CSNY. Fleet Foxes are very nice, it must be fun to get in a practice room and practice those harmonies but they're not advancing the musical landscape one bit. Mumford & Sons and Noah & The Whale can join the queue thanks.

If I want to hear that kind of sound but with an added spark I'll listen to Midlake. The Trials of Van Occupanther (2006) takes that 70s sunshine sound and inverts it making it sound like the found musical recordings of the very first settlers to reach America. Banman & Silvercork (2004) is full of tales of balloon making and kingfisher pies which has the aura of a steam-punk musical adventure rather than a trawl through music history's dressing up box.

I like Joy Division but I'm not going to be fooled by White Lies. They don't seem like they've ever heard of Joy Division. In fact I'd wager that they wrote their first album having only ever heard Editors' 2005 offering The Back Room (Munich being a tune, the rest being nothing much to write home about). I have heard the singer from Editors say that he'd never had Joy Division on his radar before someone told him he sung like Ian Curtis. I imagine he just wanted to sound like Paul Banks from Interpol. All of this is fine enough but it's so inauthentic it makes me want to cry authentic tears.

If I get to jonesing for a bit of Joy Division but can't quite muster the energy for it I'll put on Post War Years' stunning debut album The Greats & the Happenings. It's a far more glitch riddled affair than Hooky and the boys and they don't wear their references so readily on their sleeves but the energy and the poetry flowing between every crafty bassline is worth a thousand fairgrounds.

Why are so many bands plundering music's past to create a drab musical present. Where's this generation's David Bowie? Where's our Madonna? Lady Gaga was ALMOST both of them but then she had half a good album & now she's recycling either her own songs or someone else's.

I also expect a little bit more from people who write about music too. It has to be the oldest and easiest trick in the book to say that this band sound like that band mixed with another band. That's just fucking bland. Where is the artistry? Where's the writing that attempts to provoke as much of a reaction as the music itself? It's on the internet somewhere & you can bet your balls they don't work for the NME. There are hundreds of quality music blogs online that speak authentically about music that they care about and they need to be supported and the 'this band + that band = th'other band' have to be shunned.

With this in mind here are two songs by two bands that I will not liken to any other bands:

Lights Of Paris - Airs & Dialogues.
Beautiful layers, summery shimmers and a melody that you could skim stones off.

Ornament Tournaments - Alas.
A summery delight of taught guitar and bass interplay with the most pleasingly soaring chorus melody I've heard in a long while & a guitar line that sounds like it's tumbling down flight after flight of harmonic stairs.