31. Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

31. Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (Mute UK 2008, Anti- US 2008)

This is a placeholder for an entry to come in my Top 125 Albums of the 2000s, which I selected at the end of 2009. This blog has been dormant since autumn 2010, and my intention is to finish the final 45 entries as originally selected despite the distant vantage point and my opinions having changed in the interim. 

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here. 

34. Lady's Bridge

34. Lady's Bridge, Richard Hawley (Mute, 2007)

This is a placeholder for an entry to come in my Top 125 Albums of the 2000s, which I selected at the end of 2009. This blog has been dormant since autumn 2010, and my intention is to finish the final 45 entries as originally selected despite the distant vantage point and my opinions having changed in the interim. 

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here. 

57. Truelove's Gutter

57. Truelove's Gutter, Richard Hawley (Mute, 2009)

Sheffield songwriter Richard Hawley—former Longpigs guitarist and Pulp sideman—is one of those trusty musicians whose excellence comes from finding a suitable niche and treading that same ground over a span of albums, each of which has its strengths yet may seem interchageable to the casual listener.  His solo material focuses on sentimental lyrics set to lush, old-fashioned pop arrangements that suggest a common ground between Buddy Holly’s orchestral work; the early rock material on Sun Records of the Elvis, Scotty & Bill trio; and jazz-pop singers like Nat “King” Cole and Johnny Hartman.  After a mini-album and four full-lengths, including the Mercury Prize nominee Coles Corner (’06; see #84), Hawley adjusted his formula to produce his most masterful work of the decade.

The follow-up to Hawley’s poppiest album to date, Lady’s Bridge (’07), Truelove’s Gutter is a departure from the post-war dance-band crooner material that made helped to make his previous two albums so enjoyable.  Here, Hawley does not abandon his proven form so much as he dials it down and stretches it out; this results in some of the most intimate, quiet material of his catalog as well as its most epic numbers.  Hawley had done quiet material before—the bulk of ’02’s Late Night Final and the final third of Coles Corner focus on hushed, sparse compositions—yet on Truelove’s Gutter the calmness takes the form of meditations.  Expanding on Hawley’s usual beat-combo instrumentation, the songs are accented by a bevy of unusual, sometimes arcane devices: a singing saw, the cristal bachet, a glass harmonica, the waterphone, Tibetan singing bowls, the Ondes martenot (the sole electric instrument of that lot, an early keyboard producing theremin-like vibrations).  This non-traditional accompaniment lends a unique sonic undercurrent to the record; when the opening cut As the Dawn Breaks slowly builds from a swelling ambient hum, to name one instance, the organic instruments can easily be mistaken for modern electronics.  Many songs on the album have extended run times, the average going over six minutes.  Two pieces, Remorse Code and Don’t You Cry, are ten minutes long.  Remorse Code is the album’s centerpiece; a ruminative, opaque depiction of drug addiction, it caresses a single, gentle riff for its duration.  “The ship is wrecked/With all hands/Look to the reef/False lights from the land,” Hawley sings; the capsizing metaphor ends bluntly with a haunting chorus of “Those white lines/made your eyes wide.”  No mere indictment of another person’s follies, its lyric concludes with “I was likewise/In those white lines.”  Don’t Get Hung Up in Your Soul is the most desolate number, Hawley accompanied by an almost inaudible guitar and bass with the singing saw adding a far-off and lonesome tone.  The album’s general quietude emphasizes the power of its occasional crescendo: the blazing orchestral swell that erupts in the fourth minute of the otherwise quiet Soldier On, for example, is the album’s most stunning moment in part because it happens only once.  The songs of Truelove’s Gutter strip the bulk of filigrees from Hawley’s proven approach to pop songwriting, leaving its compositions laid bare.  Sometimes almost painfully frank yet thoroughly compelling precisely because of its intimacy, this fifth full-length album of Hawley’s is a striking achievement that will long resonate as a peak of his career.

Highlights: Remorse Code, Open Up Your Door, Soldier On, For Your Lover Give Some Time

Sublime bit: Those knowing refrains of Remorse Code and the mournful guitar solos surrounding them, especially the one from 5:34 to 7:33.

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84. Coles Corner

84. Coles Corner, Richard Hawley (Mute, 2005)

The son of working-class Sheffield musicians, Richard Hawley grew up playing guitar and toured with bar bands by age fourteen.  In the mid-’80s he played with Treebound Story, an indie-pop quartet reminiscent of Echo and the Bunnymen who recorded a handful of EPs and a Peel Session yet never managed to complete their debut LP.  The bulk of the group, including Hawley, then spent a stint as the Lovebirds; shortly thereafter, he joined local outfit Longpigs, with whom he had his first pronounced success outside of the region.  A relatively undistinguished Britpop group, they nonetheless earned significant commercial success in the UK before disbanding in ’99 after two albums.  Hawley’s next gig was as touring guitarist for fellow Sheffield mainstays Pulp.  Upon hearing some Hawley solo demos, Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker and bassist Steve Mackey encouraged him to pursue them further; the result was Hawley’s ’01 eponymous debut EP.  Hawley would go on to release five full-lengths in the Aughts.  After over fifteen years of dutiful guitar work in other people’s groups, it seemed unlikely that Hawley would make a convincing frontman; more unexpected, though, was Hawley’s knack for writing lush, romantic ballads informed as much by post-war British popular music as by early rock and roll and country-and-western troubadours and delivered in a resonant croon that recalls not just Elvis Presley but pop vocal giants like Nat “King” Cole and Frank Sinatra.  Hawley’s music is also reminiscent of Nick Lowe’s Aughts work (see #103 and #117); Hawley’s luxuriant approach, though, transcends the tight, minimal techniques of Lowe’s romantic soul music.

For Hawley’s fourth solo release, Coles Corner, he gained his first appreciable distribution deal, with Mute Records, after the dissolution of his previous label, Setanta.  Like most of his Aughts works, the album is named for a real location in his beloved Sheffield; in this case, for a famed meeting place for blind dates.  The songs depict courtships truncated, interrupted, and unrequited.  The title track opens the album majestically with a lavish introduction by a seven-piece string section.  “I’m going downtown where there’s music/I’m going where voices fill the air/Maybe there’s someone waiting for me,” sings Hawley.  This loneliness continues on tracks like I Sleep Alone and Tonight; in the latter, he sings “Maybe I should call her/Ah, but then she’ll know.”  Hotel Room finds a couple acting as surrogate lovers, its narrator singing, “It’s time I met someone like you.”  The album’s finest piece is The Ocean, its orchestral swell accompanied by a towering, impassioned Hawley vocal.  Much of the album recalls ’50s-era vocal crooners; Hawley’s love for early British rock shows through, though, including the light skiffle beat of Just Like the Rain and I Sleep Alone.  Hotel Room features a swoon-inducing Hawaiian lap steel solo.  The album closes with a murmured take on the traditional number Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet? and the late-night instrumental Last Orders, a piano piece that bleeds slowly into layers of ambient hum as if to wash away the pain of heartache.  The sentimental snapshots of Coles Corner make for Hawley’s first great record.

Highlights: The Ocean, Coles Corner, Just Like the Rain, Hotel Room

Sublime bit: The last 2:45 of The Ocean, beginning with Hawley’s final chorus that kicks in at 2:51.

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100. Nocturama

100. Nocturama, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (Anti-/Mute, 2003)

After the ’96 throat-clearing of the grimly themed Murder Ballads, Nick Cave produced two successive albums of somber, mournful songs departing steeply from the frenetic rock arrangements enlivening his earlier work with the Bad Seeds and the sonic terrorism of his previous group the Birthday Party. Cave famously opens ’97’s The Boatman’s Call by intoning “I don’t believe in an interventionist God,” and its ’01 follow-up No More Shall We Part is only marginally more dynamic than Boatman’s melancholy explorations. The albums provide some of the most beautiful songs in Cave’s catalog; but, they are lengthy and proceed at a funereal pace and make for draining listening experiences.

On his twelfth studio LP with the Bad Seeds, Cave adjusted the formula. Nocturama retains the slow, earnest piano ballads but juxtaposes them with raucous, full-tilt rock numbers. This can be jarring, especially if not listening on vinyl; it is an unusual Aughts album in that its sequencing seems to have considered the side breaks of a phonograph record. Side one begins with three pieces reminiscent of No More Shall We Part. He Wants You is an aching account of a man who “is straight and he is true”; making it more aching is the benighted male certainty that his love alone is enough to sustain it for two. Right Out of Your Hand contains some of the album’s most vivid imagery (“airborne starlings circle/over the frozen fields”) and a protagonist as misguided as his predecessor; “Give a sucker an even break/he’ll lose it all every time,” Cave sings, before admitting that “you’ve got me eating/right out of your hand.” Bring It On follows, a duet with Chris Bailey of fellow Australian punk veterans the Saints that blossoms slowly into an impassioned arrangement unlike any that Cave attempted since the mid-’90s. Like much of Nocturama, it is emboldened by the fiery violin work of Warren Ellis. Even after flipping the record, side two’s opening cut Dead Man in My Bed is like a finger in a socket after the gentle evolution of side one. Its frantic, clattering sound sits awkwardly before the rest of side two, which is a mirror image of side one and whose highlight is another ballad of romantic loyalty, Rock of Gibraltar. The original double vinyl had a blank fourth side; side three is consumed by the 15-minute Babe, I’m on Fire, a breathless, demented rant echoing the fever pitch of Dead Man in My Bed yet three times as long. Boasting an outrageous 38 verses, it is a litany of bizarre characters from “the backyard abortionist” to “my mate Bill Gates,” all of whom exist only to concur with Cave’s crazed testimony of “babe, I’m on fire.” It is a novelty whose relegation to the vinyl’s side three makes it a de facto bonus track, but it is an exhilarating novelty that foreshadows the frenzied tone of Cave’s later Aughts work with the Bad Seeds and his side project Grinderman. Nocturama’s schizophrenic nature raised some hackles among Cave fans (perhaps including longtime Bad Seed guitarist Blixa Bargeld, who resigned after recording) and while it does scan less evenly than its two predecessors it is a more enjoyable listen.
 
Highlights: Right Out of Your Hand, He Wants You, Rock of Gibraltar, Bring It On
 
Sublime bit: 3:30-4:15 of Right Out of Your Hand, as Cave’s voice entwines with the Bad Seeds’ backing harmonies, his voice pitching up at 4:09.

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Bubbling Under #111. Before the Dawn Heals Us

111. Before the Dawn Heals Us, M83 (Mute, 2005)

French electro duo M83’s first two albums consisted primarily of cinematic, ambient instrumentals; ’03’s widely acclaimed Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts saw Anthony Gonzalez and Nicolas Fromageau sonically evolve leagues beyond the drifting mood pieces of their ’01 eponymous debut. Fromageau quit after touring Dead Cities; while Gonzalez did record four of that LP’s pieces by himself, it seemed unlikely that the next M83 work would be a stylistic leap making its precursors appear wan and primitive. Before the Dawn Heals Us, recorded primarily by Gonzalez (six songs tellingly co-written by his filmmaker brother Yann), bolsters the M83 sound with powerful, aggressive arrangements and a bold production style inspired by ’90s shoegaze. Guitar is used more than ever; Loic Maurin’s authoritative live drums are used on eight songs; and several songs have full-blown vocal tracks, a first for the band. This new approach aside, Gonzalez’s songs are still built as mood pieces; one can easily imagine any song here playing as a camera soars above a landscape like the album cover’s skyline. The quintessence of the form comes with instrumental “A Guitar and Heart,” with its layers of echoing, propulsive synths and guitars and Maurin’s booming drum fills marking each segment. Gonzalez is prone to earnest drama, including two spoken parts by actress Kate Moran that some will dismiss as histrionics. Most notorious is Car Chase Terror, whose lengthy dialogue will prove a dealbreaker for some listeners; one tolerates an uncomfortable sequence in a film, however, and Gonzalez challenges us to do the same with an album. Before the Dawn Heals Us documents one of the decade’s strongest evolutions in pop music.

Highlights: Don’t Save Us From the Flames, Teen Angst, Car Chase Terror

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Bubbling Under #120. Seventh Tree

120. Seventh Tree, Goldfrapp (Mute, 2008)

Alison Goldfrapp worked in the mid-’90s as a session vocalist, singing with such electro-centric UK acts as Orbital, Dreadzone, and Tricky. In ’99 she formed a duo of her own in London with another session musician, Will Gregory, and gave it her name. Their 2000 debut, Felt Mountain, is a melange of atmospheric, electronic cabaret. Seventh Tree, their fourth LP, replaces the electroclash of ’03’s Black Cherry and the cold glam-dance crunch of the ’06 Supernature with gentle, warm performances whose muted electronic frameworks are draped with acoustic guitars and strings. The drumless opener Clowns is carried by a softly plucked guitar, and is the most atypical piece here; but, its tone resonates even through the album’s poppiest moments. Alison Goldfrapp’s dynamic soprano covers more stylistic ground here than ever, from the ponderous murmuring of Clowns to the soaring choruses of Little Bird and the assertive pop of Caravan Girl. The lyrics often counterbalance the pastoral moods: Clowns addresses a childish, shallow figure (“What’d ya wanna look like Barbie for?”); the bubbly Happiness mocks a cult’s cynical promises; A&E (the UK equivalent of a US emergency room) concerns a person who waited in vain for a lover’s call only to wake up in hospital, possibly after a pill overdose. Yet the album is no gloomy affair; the songs retain a hopeful glow that matches the late-summer sunlight of the cover art. Goldfrapp’s shape-shifting Aughts output contains many fine moments, but none of the decade’s four albums is as fulfilling and cohesive as Seventh Tree.

Highlights: Caravan Girl, Little Bird, A&E

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