2007 - A Year in Music (Part 2)

Feature by Sounds | 07 Dec 2007

5. Queens of the Stone Age – Era Vulgaris (Polydor)

It's never easy on the ego when the fruits of your labour take a kicking. That probably counts for double when your band happens to be Queens of the Stone Age, a group that delivered three of the most revered long players that late nineties and early noughties rock had to offer within the first five years of Josh Homme forming it. So when Lullabies to Paralyze arrived to a touch of fan frost, Homme went back to the drawing board and devised an industrial blow torch called Era Vulgaris to thaw those doubters out. "High and mighty, you say selling out is a shame. Is that the name of your book? Push a silver spoon in your ass. No more holding us down," he spat in the general direction of critics on I'm Designer. Ouch. When we asked about their new direct approach, Queens guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen shrugged: "We just figured the most concise statement, like: 'boom, boom, boom, I know you don't have time and neither do I, so here's what we have to say and we're gonna do it really fast, and to the point.' It's a quick message." And we're still eating the dust. [Dave Kerr]

4. Interpol – Our Love to Admire (Parlophone)

When Interpol arrived on the scene, the juxtaposition of exciting and unexcited worked a treat. Here were yet more inspired New Yorkers, hell bent on not batting an eyelid, and every bit as important as the Casablancas and Os of the music world. As The Strokes fucked it up on their follow up and YYYs changed tack, Interpol just continued to produce great tunes while their apathetic demeanour somehow escalated. This year saw the release of their third album, a more expansive and anthemic effort to its insular predecessors, and a very different animal. Initially a disappointment, six months acclimatisation has given Our Love To Admire the required space to prove itself a worthy addition to their back catalogue: the excellent Pioneer To The Falls is one of the finest tracks they've recorded since that debut. They'd probably still like us to think they don't give a fuck, and they certainly seemed casual when we met them at T in the Park but, with music as charged as this, they're fooling no-one. [Finbarr Bermingham]

3. LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver (DFA)

As renowned producer and DFA boss, it was inevitable that James Murphy would emerge from behind the mixing desk as his reputation grew, and so LCD Soundsystem began life with 2005's self-titled debut LP. But as much as that record sounded so infectiously hip, it lacked any emotional complexity – all party, no comedown. This year Sound of Silver remedied the deficiency with a new lyrical self-awareness and honesty planted squarely behind all the cowbells and throbbing synths. Of course it's hugely derivative, but that's perfectly forgivable when it's a measured reinvention, not imitation, of Murphy's New York-dwelling heroes, from the Steve Reich minimalism of All My Friends to the Talking Heads electro-pop of Someone Great. The pace only falters on the much-derided final track, but this doesn't lessen the plain fact that Murphy has now recorded a soundtrack to life, not just the dancefloor. [Nick Mitchell]

2. Battles – Mirrored (Warp)

SF: With 2007 being the year musical intellectualism superseded New Rave's luminous glow, Billy Hamilton catches up with Battles to uncover just how clever these pioneering New Yorkers really are.

Glitterbeat? Puzzle Pop? Math Rock? Choose whichever label irks least but there's no escaping it – this was the year music got clever again. All of a sudden, the idiotic glowsticks and fluorescent melodies that zigzagged across the breadth of the UK were slowly chipped away by an intelligent, spontaneous sonic intricacy bereft of a conventional structure.

At the turn of the year, this cranium bulging revival seemed highly unlikely; The Klaxons were emblazoned on the cover of every trend-ravenous rag in the land (good album that, Myths of the Near Future - Ed.) and High Street stores pumped out psychedelic outfits that could only have been designed by the bedraggled love-child of Johnny Thunders and George Clinton. In short, things were bad. But then, in April, as if out of nowhere, a bug-eyed, acid-freaking, mind-bending EP called Atlas landed. Known only for their three avant-garde EPs that preceded it, it seemed as though Battles had finally commenced.

One month later and the Brooklyn-based quartet unleashed the towering long player, Mirrored, a stunning, catalytic debut that propelled the band's aural intellectualism into the spotlight. Catching up with founding member Tyondai Braxton before a show at London's Koko recently, it seems they're still coming to terms with the events that have transpired since.

"This year has been a whirlwind – completely amazing and totally unexpected," exclaims the multi-instrumentalist. "On one hand, you have a crazy idea that if you like something then someone else will. But if you look at the track record of this type of music I guess it's surprising when something like this crops over into the mainstream and grabs people when you wouldn't expect it to. It's not like the attention has been over the top but we're all really excited by the reaction."

This reaction has been experienced globally, with Mirrored turning on everyone from sour-faced British indie kids to the "absolutely manic" Japanese pop-loving public. So, how does the band feel about this newly acquired fan-base? "It's incredible," says Braxton. "At first we had people at gigs who were a little more tuned into this kind of music and then, as the momentum of Mirrored has picked up, I've started to realise a whole cross section of people are interested and that's a really encouraging thing. It doesn't matter that there are so many people interested, the thing I'm really excited about is how different the audience is – that's a really great feeling."

Impossible to pin down, Battles is a band that works without constraints and it's this ethos of sheer malleability that Braxton attributes to the appeal of Mirrored: "Our strength is the players and the perspective of the band and the challenge is always to find room enough for everyone to be satisfied with what they are doing," he explains. "The open-endedness of the exploration [during the recording of the LP] led us down fresh paths which makes the record kind of opaque. But the process of creating the record was really fresh and whether people think it's original or not is irrelevant to us."

Yet, original is undoubtedly what Mirrored is. Stinging nerve-ends with gnarling laser-gun electro, inter-planetary android warbling and jitterbug percussion, it's a smorgasbord of Kraut-rock, Dance, Funk and - to a certain extent - Pop. But when prompted to give up the influences behind the record's sound, Braxton's answer is equally obtuse: "It's something we try not to answer – it kind of marginalises us," he smarts. "In a way, our influences are transparent – you can really hear them [on Mirrored] – and in another way they are quite obscured but, really, I would say the music itself has been pulled out of thin air."

Right, that's cleared that up, but with the obligatory 'Record of the Year' list frenzy rapidly encroaching, which discs earned Battles' seal of approval in 2007? "Oh…"sighs Braxton, "The Dirty Projectors new album (Rise Above) is great but honestly I really don't know." Perhaps this uncertainty means he considers Mirrored the best of 2007? Braxton laughs: "Only if you say so, only if you say so."

Battles - too clever by half. [Billy Hamilton]

1. The Twilight Sad – Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters (FatCat)

SF: In a year when titans came out to play with their new records, it took an unknown band from Kilsyth to blow them all out of the water.

Back in spring, one album took Scotland entirely by surprise. It began with a resonant guitar, timed to a staccato piano rhythm under a haze of feedback that forebode of things to come. Then a raw West coast voice glides in: "Another hotel, with woollen plans/romantic gesture, with woollen plans" - lyrics like shards of memory that withhold their full meaning. On cue, a scintillating rush of overdriven guitar blasts in, propelled by pounding drums, before the song ends like a fire fading to embers.

The remainder of Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters, the debut album by Kilsyth's The Twilight Sad, only heightened our curiosity in a local band who seemed to come from nowhere with an instant classic. We saw them play at SxSW back then, but by the time we caught up with them properly in June, the quartet were already on the road to conquering the indie quarters of America – or it's more cultured regions anyway. Fourteen Autumns received an 8.6/10 review rating from taste-making website Pitchfork and the band toured the Eastern Seaboard extensively, playing to full houses most nights.

With Skinny readers and writers alike voting Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters the album of 2007, we dropped in on singer-songwriter James Graham and guitarist/music-man Andy MacFarlane in their broom-cupboard-proportioned dressing room at the Queen's Hall in Edinburgh, shortly before their final support slot on tour with Idlewild. Luckily they're expecting us.

Looking back on this year's triumphs, Graham's still playing catch up while he takes it all in: "If somebody had said to us a year or two ago that we'd have supported all these bands and played all these places and had all this stuff said about us we'd have said 'shut up'. It's been a bit of a blur." MacFarlane agrees: "There's not really been any time to think about it 'cos you're away and you just keep going."

As much as he'd like to ignore the influence of the music media, Graham admits that the Pitchfork review made a huge difference. "We were on tour with Aereogramme at that point but they couldn't come across 'cos of Visa problems so we headlined the first half of the tour and it was alright, but the Pitchfork review came halfway through the tour and when that happened it was like..." [blows air out dramatically]. MacFarlane picks up the thread: "We'd turn up for gigs and it was rammed and we were like 'fuck, we need to tell them that Aereogramme aren't coming' and they always stayed anyway."

But the success they initially enjoyed in America didn't travel with them back to Scotland, at least not overnight. "Every Sunday night for three weeks we played in a place called Piano's in New York and every time we played it was packed," Graham recalls. "And then we came back to Glasgow and we played Sleazys or somewhere like that and it was empty. It's a bit of a comedown, you know. But the album came out later over here and every gig we play more and more people come and more and more people are talking about us."

Another highlight of 2007 arrived when Jimmy Chamberlin from the Smashing Pumpkins invited the Twilight Sad to support them at the Glasgow leg of the seminal alternative rockers' comeback tour in August. But what should have been a memorable occasion didn't turn out so. "What happened was we got told to be there for four o'clock outside the Academy," Graham says. "Soundchecks were closed for the Pumpkins and we weren't allowed in the building at all."

MacFarlane adds: "They soundchecked from two in the afternoon till half six and the doors opened at seven and we still hadn't soundchecked. Their egos were fucking ridiculous."

Graham: "We were standing outside with our drum kit and everything next to the queue of fans waiting to go in, waiting for someone to say, 'you can come in now'. But I actually really enjoyed the gig -not theirs, I enjoyed mine!"

When the band aren't taking the indie underground by storm or left hanging about on the streets of Glasgow by Billy Corgan, Graham is kept busy by fielding questions on Fourteen Autumns' dark and ethereal lyrical content.

"The songs are all about where I'm from, people I know, things that have happened to me, things that have happened to other people," Graham says. "I kinda look at them like folk songs 'cos I stay in a
small village and you hear stories. The album's completely personal but I never give out what it's about because I like people to make their own decisions."

And is there an undertone of adolescent anxiety, as many have suggested?

"I've read that a lot, like people saying it's about being young and I hadn't really thought about it to be honest," Graham says. "I've read things saying I must have a troubled background. And I've got nothing wrong at home or anything like that, it's just that sometimes I focus in on the bad things 'cos it's a way of getting something out."

The music is equally challenging. It generally flows between two levels - acoustically plaintive accordion-led folk and ear-splitting waves of guitar drone – but amounts to much more than its constituent elements. MacFarlane elaborates: "There was no plan to say 'oh we need to sound like that'. We just started doing it seriously and the sound came out the way it did. Obviously what you listen to influences it a bit but it's not like you think 'let's make this a wee bit shoegaze-y'. I don't like getting put into genres because it's like a category."

As for the future, Graham and MacFarlane stress – as they did to us back in June – the last thing they want to do is just rehash the triumphs of Fourteen Autumns on the follow-up album, which they plan to begin writing in the new year when the touring finally subsides.

MacFarlane: "We're never gonna stick with the same sound 'cos that would just get boring. We want to develop and develop and eventually just get completely our own sound. Folk that play the same stuff all the time are shit... Apart from The Ramones."

Graham: "He's backtracking!"

MacFarlane, laughing: "Wait a minute, I was just talking a big heap of shite there!"