Jonathan Deamer

A version of this originally published at Orange.co.uk, for whom I’m now writing.

Necessity is the mother of invention, according to some ancient Greek bloke. So does the complete lack of invention shown on Silent Cry mean that the last thing the world really needs is another album from the band who bought us ‘Buck Rogers’?

It’d be churlish to suggest that we’ve never needed the Welsh trio. Their early records helped fill a gaping Britrock void in the late 90s, and since 2001’s Echo Park they’ve unleashed a handful of mini pop-classics that sit beautifully alongside ‘Bohemian Like You’ and ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s on local radio stations across the land (admittedly, a back-handed compliment if ever there were one).

But the band’s sixth record abandons that joyous melodic sensibility in favour of a faux-anthemic Snow Patrol approach. Opening track and lead single ‘We Are The People’ is a directionless dirge, produced, dubbed and layered to within an inch of its life to hide a chronic lack of what those in the music biz call ‘bollocks’. And while ‘Miss You’ hints at Feeder’s previous scratchy punk-pop brilliance, it’s one of only a few moments of light relief in an album full of humourless attempts at mature radio ballads.

Silent Cry’s 45 minutes are an overlong and tiring listen. At 13 tracks, it’s like having to explain the same thing over and over to a stupid co-worker. And as the sort of intellectual giant who reads Plato-quoting record reviews in their spare time, surely you don’t need music that reminds you of that feeling?

I loved iLiKETRAiNS’ debut EP. So much so that I’ve lazily recycled some of my thoughts on it for this piece on their debut album proper. But you won’t tell, right?

Leeds five-piece iLiKETRAiNS are such fans of all things historical that they’ve probably got posters of Oliver Cromwell on their bedroom walls. Not only does this album deal with assassinated 19th century politicians and long-forgotten wars, but it’s practically a one-band shoegazing revival – talk about living in the past. And could there be any nerdier prospect than that of a history lesson from a bunch of FX pedal obsessives?

The answer’s yes: a maths lesson from Stephen Hawking would probably fit the bill. In his absence though, iLiKETRAiNS do a good job of bringing a bit of intellect to the sort of darkly beautiful epics previously peddled by Godspeed! You Black Emperor. Foreboding vocals give way to walls of shimmering reverb on Twenty Five Sins, while Death of an Idealist is the best funeral march you’ll hear this year.

On repeated spins however, Lessons Learnt’s eleven tracks ultimately succumb to the same problem as many nerds (and, indeed, post-rock bands): droning on too long, and generally being a bit dull.

They showed great promise. But in the end, they failed. Just like Napoleon’s army in the Battle of Leipzig, the band would probably want me to add.

Poor !!! – things never really happened for them, did they?  Everyone was mildly amused for a couple of minutes by their interesting moniker – pronounced as any three repetitive sounds, most commonly “chk chk chk” – but beyond that, no one could so much as hum, let alone name, one of their tunes.  The eight-piece came out of the Great Punk-Funk Boom Of 2002 (as the history books shall no doubt remember it) as runners up to their New York partners-in-dance Radio 4, with little more to show for it than a small cult following and epic psych-house ‘n’ bass cuts like the eight minute ‘Me and Giuliani Down By The School Yard’.

So they’ll be hoping, justifiably, that third album Myth Takes will finally see them receiving the success they deserve, especially given that indie-press darlings CSS are doing so well with a sanitised version of what they started.  The only trouble is, that’s probably why CSS are doing so well: they’ve crammed a hell of a load of cowbells, chant-along-choruses and psychedelia into little 3-minute packages, while !!! spend this whole album sculpting fantastic grooves and moods, but never actually hit with the killer single you want them to.

Fans of the band will argue that they’re not about the destination, they’re about the journey.  But by the last of this record’s 10 tracks you can’t help but feel you’ve meandered a fair bit around the houses, but not actually heard much of note.  A bunch of flabby jams does not an album make - there’s some great ideas, but each one is stretched way beyond its useful life, resulting in a hotchpotch of wonderfully danceable (but instantly forgettable) soundscapes - not songs.

Even album highlight and potential party anthem ‘Must Be The Moon’ comes nowhere near the heights of energy and passion they’ve reached previously.  It is to this album what the classic ‘Hello? Is This Thing On?’ was to last disc Louden Up Now – the centrepiece lyrical rant over a pulsating bassline.  But while ‘Hello?…’ was a political stormer about the voice of reason being lost in a world of madness, ‘Must Be The Moon’ is about being out on the pull.  Says it all really.

Before pop-punk became a dirty word, and before the use of “teen” as a prefix made it even dirtier, there was Symposium.  Stage-diving, hard-touring, music press darlings for a brief period in 1996, they didn’t get around to releasing their debut album until a couple of years later, and then fizzled out at the dawn of the new Millennium citing the usual “musical and personal differences”.

Two of the band’s members went on to recycle Symposium demos into hits as Hell Is For Heroes, while singer and lead songwriter Wojtek Godzisz went into “self imposed exile” (read: sat around drinking tea and watching repeats of Cash In The Attic) for a few years.  And before you ask, that is actually his name, not this writer fainting on the keyboard.

But now he’s back with the Burning Ideals EP, and a maturity that can only be the result of those years of exile.  How many former teen-punk stars can start a song with an accordion (‘Sun Is Up’) without sounding like they’re making a half-hearted stab at “grown-up” world/folk music?  Wilful nods to eclecticism aside, he’s still punk as anything, but songcraft-and-melody punk, rather than phlegm-and-hair-gel punk.

The achingly beautiful ‘Jealous Heart’ is a prime example – artfully feeble vocals that struggling to hit the notes, but sound gorgeous anyway, along with chiming piano and a sax solo that doesn’t come close to ska-punk predictability.  But you can still imagine sweating like a goodun to it in front of Godzisz leaping around onstage like in his late-90s heydey. 

You needn’t imagine though – Godzisz’ current shows are still said to be a phenomenal experience.  Every song on this small (but perfectly formed) six-track EP has become a live favourite during his regular London appearances over the last few months, as well as all of them being completely performed by the man himself in their recorded forms.

Okay, so maybe he’s been doing something over than watching daytime TV over the past few years…

Kristin Hersh’s band Throwing Muses are one of those strange beasts that everyone who’s spent any amount of time immersed in the world of American alternative rock has heard of, but very few have actually heard.  Cult figures of 90s anti-grunge eclecticism and shimmering multi-layered alternafolk, they’ve pretty much been on hiatus since 1997, allowing the Muses’ two lead singers, Tanya Donelly and Hersh herself, to concentrate on work with The Breeders and solo projects respectively.

Unfortunately, Learn To Sing Like A Star is exactly the sort of record you’d expect from an artist with such a back story.  All very muso and earnest, it’s a lushly orchestrated vanity project, and inherently unlovable.  Thirty second filler track ‘Christian Herse’ is a prime example: self-punning delusions of grandeur that make a bit of twangy noise and then disappear.  But even worse is Ice, the song it leads into - a strings, plucking and whispering combo that forever sounds like its got important places to go and people to see, but sits down after three minutes looking pleased with itself having achieved precisely sod all.

Strangely enough, things start to pick up by the final quarter of the disc.  Drumming from Muses member Dave Narcizo makes ‘Winter’ sound like a fully formed song rather than a studio doodle, with church bells adding that much needed move away from singer-songwriter territory.  Hersh’s me-complex shows up again with ‘Wild Vanilla’s lyrical references to her own bi-polar disorder, but this is easily forgiven when you hear its psych-guitar solo, the fact that it steps up a gear from the rest of the album’s walking pace, and that it even has a memorable melody line.

There’s no doubt that this is a well crafted and, at times, beautiful album.  But with a few more songs and a few less aural tapestries it could have been much more than background music for indie record store clerks to play at their dinner parties.