Album Review: Walking On A Dream - Empire of the Sun

As one of last year's biggest acts that BlackPlastic never even mentioned MGMT came to represent the founders of a new sub-genre of nu-rave rock. BlackPlastic has no idea what you would call this genre, but the combination of falsetto vocals, 80s melodies and the kind of filtered disco vibes that would make Daft Punk proud that feature on Empire of the Sun's début ensure it is in this pigeon-hole they will end up.

As a bit of background Empire of the Sun is The Sleepy Jackson's Luke Steele and Pnau's Nick Littlemoore and, somewhat predictably, they're Australian.

And, a bit like their contemporaries MGMT, as an album 'Walking On A Dream' is kind-of mixed. There are no bad tracks, it's just that the album feels uneven. The whole album has a appropriately dream-like feel, particularly the juxtaposition of the soaring melodies (if totally undecipherable lyrics) of Delta Bay's chorus with it's rambling verse, but just as Kids and Electric Feel towered over MGMT's debut, nothing bar the hip-hop influenced Swordfish Hotkiss Night and the 80s ballad Without You, comes close to this album's highlight. And chances are you've already heard it, because title track and first single Walking On A Dream has been all over the radio already.

Justified, without doubt, because it's totally beautifully wonderful. Taking the chord progression from Tracy Chapman's Fast Car and melding it to a ray of sunshine, Corona on the beach and ride on a golf buggy it is just a little glorious tight sexy holiday of a funk-soul record.  The rest of the album may retain this sexy and youthful manner but it simply doesn't scale the same heights.

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Available at Amazon on CDand in MP3.

Album Review: Polly Scattergood - Polly Scattergood

Coming on with all the effortless unforgiving intimacy of a friend that has seen you change more than you realize, Polly Scattergood does for female singer-song-writing what a shot of Jack Daniels does to Coke.  Sweet it may be, but there's darkness here.

If you want lazy comparisons then Scattergood's début has the strong uncompromising femininity of PJ Harvey, the creativity of Kate Bush and the unhinged beauty of mid-career Radiohead. Far more important is the delivery, which throughout the course of the album varies from the good to the sublime.

Fluctuating from fragile yet doused in misplaced aggression (I Hate The Way) to curious and hopeful (Unforgiving Arms) Scattergood is able to perform vocals with a greater breadth and depth than anyone BlackPlastic has heard in far too long. There is a certain a level of sophistication that ensures the angst on display never veers close to anything as crass and needing as a Alanis Morisette record, yet the songs nevertheless display an unashamed accessibility - just listen to the rubber ball bouncing guitar line and hand-claps of Please Don't Touch.

And here's the thing. What makes this album good is not just Scattergood's ambitious vocal delivery and experimental songwriting - it's the backing provided by a producer not content to take the backseat. When the combination really delivers the result is pretty astounding - album highlight Nitrogen Pink carries Scattergood's vocals on a runaway mine-train of fuzzy melodic distortion like My Bloody Valentine on Top Of The Pops. The glorious crescendo of the building rhythm track feels like you are being dragged along by an out of control horse and cart. If this is a taste of her future work it's a ride BlackPlastic is more than happy to take.

Released on Mute on 9 March 2009. To pre-order on Amazon.co.uk click here .

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Album Review: Choral - Mountains

Mountains is Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp and Choral is their third album and marks a watershed as it is the first not to be released on their own Apestaartje label, but on Thrill Jockey. Ambient in nature, Choral takes it's cues from Eno and post-rock in an effort to create a serene, emotive sounscape that could be the soundtrack to a Alejandro González Iñárritu movie - it has that same feeling of chaos in slow motion.

And the understated, slow-moving sounds are beautiful.  What is perhaps more surprising however is that they pack an emotional punch and a degree of technical brilliance too.  It might be easy to make music to visit the spa to - all new age imagery incorporating the sounds of nature - but to aliken Choral to that would be to cheapen it.  The sparse us of guitar and the melodic patterns give the album a level of emotional gravitas that can be all to easy to lose in ambient music and the technical brilliance is obvious - much of Chorals was done using no overdubs and when they were used it was to add a larger, choral sound.  Sounds of nature have been incorporated - Telescope for example features the sounds of a thunder storm - but these have been utilised in a way that makes them simply another musical instrument that Mountains have at their disposal, the origin of the sound disguised behind layers of sound.

Relaxing, considered and defined by space, yes but boring never - Choral is a beautiful piece of work.  You can download an MP3 of the opening (title) track here (right click - save as).

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Album Review: Merriweather Post Pavilion - Animal Collective

One of the best albums from recent years that has this far been totally overlooked by BlackPlastic.co.uk is Panda Bear's Person Pitch: a glorious Catalan summer daydream of an album. We were too late to consider a review with Person Pitch, but two wrongs a right does not make... now that Panda Bear is back doing his day job in Animal Collective we didn't want to let another great album pass without comment.

Merriweather Post Pavillion takes what Panda Bear learnt on his solo project - all afternoon sunshine, Beach Boys vocals and samples - and apply it to Animal Collective.

And the thick and fuzzy experimentation that ensues is glorious. From the psychedelic opener of In The Flowers through through to ridiculously joyful closer Brother Sport. Via the inspirational My Girls with its I Feel Love Your Love (you know what we meant) synth and anti-materialistic but big hearted and honest lyrics through the warbling bumblebee basslines, bursting bubbles and free falling in love sounds of Summertime Clothes.

Merriweather Post Pavillion sounds like days spent chasing beautiful girls in white dresses down sunbathed white-washed back alleys in southern Europe. It is the sound of a band simply having the bestest time, falling out of the melody tree and hitting every branch on the way down.

The soundtrack to the summer in January? It just might be.

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Album Review: Tonight - Franz Ferdinand

Franz Ferdinand are a band haunted by their own success. Following a period as everyone's favourite new band their début just sold too damn well. It left a band continuously searching for relevance. In hind site maybe they should have split up and done something else but instead they made their difficult second album and here we are again - on their difficult third.

Tonight's history is lengthy already. Various producers' names were bandied about (Girls Aloud producer Xenomania or Erol Alkan anyone?) as were concepts (a pop reinvention or African rhythms... Very 2008) but these were ultimately abandoned. Tonight is therefore a fairly straight forward pedestrian record, there are a few synthesizers but otherwise it is very much business as usual.

But there are flashes of excellence when the formula is abandoned. Ulysses' stripped-back-pop complete with a wonky synthesized bassline, for example, or the thrash-indie-grunge breakdown of What She Came For (hold on, was that a guitar solo...?). Best of all is Lucid Dreams - a seven minute descent into electro that is somewhat reminiscent the crass version of LCD Soundsystem's Yeah. Indeed, in their review of Tonight The Guardian argued that an album full of the kind of dubby, electronc experimentation that makes up the closing portion of Tonight would have been much better.

And they'd be right. Which makes the fact that such an album exists even more bizarre. Pick up the limited release of Tonight on CD and it comes with a second disc called Blood, featuring a selection of dub versions of tracks from the album proper.

Blood sees eight of Tonight's 12 tracks getting a dark, dubby treatment and, on the whole, it's a good enough effort to not only meet but surpass the originals... As an album Blood certainly would have made more of a splash.

What She Came For, as a slow rock-trip-hop workout, becomes Feel The Pressure and the jerky acidic bassline sets the pace of the set nicely. Imagine what DFA produced Franz would sound like an you are halfway to the tweaking death dance of Die On The Floor and, best of all, The Vaguest of Feeling sounds like classic Joy Division. Based on Live Alone its minimal sound not only renders the original worthless... It just might be the best thing Franz Ferdinand have ever committed to record.

Franz Ferdinand have also reacted well to remixes, just check out the Morgan Geist mix of Take Me Out or Erol's take on Do You Want To?, but Blood delivers in spades... Easily enough to warrant a seperate release and it is a shame that the full treatment wasn't given to Tonight (except Lucid Dreams which is close enough already) and this released in its stead.

BP x

To buy on Amazon.co.uk click here.