Come On Live Long
Everything Fall [Live Long Records]
Previous to this release, anyone following Come On Live Long’s nascent career will have heard their self-titled EP along with their very well received EP, Mender. Two years on and in the midst of increasingly unanimous praise for their live performances, Come On Live Long have released Everything Fall. On a first listen it is apparent that this long format suits the band much better; musical and lyrical themes are given space to unfold and flourish in a way that their singles and past releases didn’t allow.
As the preceding singles had demonstrated, this record is the first where the reins will be held by the two protagonists of the album, Rob Ardiff and Louise Gaffney. On track after track the two vocalist prove the worth of years of live performance side by side in delivering disorientingly closely woven vocals. On tracks like “Tide” the vocalists are so closely knotted, that the result is a solitary androgynous vocal with more emotional weight than either singer could deliver alone.
It is easy to get lost in these vocals and lyrics and forget the musicianship that forms the bedrock to the album. On Everything Fall there is a blending of instrumentation that was not heard on previous releases; each instrument adds only what is needed and only on close listening can you isolate the rolling basslines, staggered piano chords, wandering trumpets and multifarious beats drawing on everything from My Bloody Valentine to The Police. The instrument that stands out most is the super clean lead guitar. These guitar lines on tracks like Wasteland, Little Ones and Go add layers of melancholy and triumph that single plucked notes on an unprocessed electric guitar should not be able to deliver.
Influences on this record are hugely disparate; acoustic inspiration drawn from Planxty era Christy Moore up to contemporary Irish folk artists like Conor O’Brien and Lisa Hannigan manifests itself on tracks like Old Apart and Say Your Prayers. Post-rock and noise-rock influences from Mars Volta, Refused and At The Drive-In burst through on the climactic choruses and outros throughout, while the electronic influences of Nouveaunoise’s Conor Gaffney (the album’s producer) is apparent from start to finish.
Such influences risk clashing and crashing into chaos, but each is distilled in such a way that the record manages to create a sound that is at the same time consistent and multifaceted. Throughout the album they have balanced pop accessibility with ground breaking musical experimentation in a style not dissimilar to The xx or Alt-J. While Come On Live Long are watching everything fall we can safely expect to watch them continue to rise. –Rob McComish
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2rd566LRWw
J Cole
Born Sinner [Roc Nation]
Pluckily released the same day as Yeezus, Born Sinner is a purposeful, confident, palatable selection of songs about Drake-like problems – nice-guy-who-should-know-better stuff – delivered artfully over self-produced beats that crib smoothly from sources like Cults and Cole’s own mind. It’s just unfortunate that he finds it so comfortable rapping from behind the skirts of his elders, from the myriad Jay-Z deifications to the song literally entitled Let Nas Down. -Karl McDonald
Action Bronson
Saaab Stories [Vice]
When you have a style as recognisable as Action Bronson’s, you can’t go too badly wrong, unless it gets old. With that in mind, Saaab Stories lines everything up nicely. Super-producer Harry Fraud takes charge of the whole EP, setting up the pins for the best Albanian chef rapper in history to knock down with lines about eating crab and comparisons to largely forgotten pop culture figures. Raekwon comes through too, which is a good fit for obvious reasons. -Karl McDonald
CFCF
Music For Objects [Dummy]
Strapping an overarching concept on your instrumental record is a pretty handy way of contextualising your collection of vaguely Reichy plink-plonkers. Montreal’s Michael Silver has been carving a particular niche in electronica and while this is an admirable attempt to enliven the mundane and everyday with use of sequences, patterns and processes, it is hard to look past this as a series of exercises to keep the mind fit rather than a particularly emotional work. -Ian Lamont
Jon Hopkins
Immunity [Domino]
Like John Talabot’s ƒin or Nicolas Jaar’s Space Is Only Noise, Immunity is an electronica record that manages to operate both on and off the dance floor, manipulating the imaginary space within which it operates with real finesse. As protégé of Brian Eno, it is no surprise that control of ambience are fundamental to the vibe, interlocking with Hopkins’ own background as a pianist to produce a record that is sure to simmer all summer. -Ian Lamont
