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Album Reviews: Trailer Trash Tracys, Dear Reader, Laura Gibson and Plug
TRAILER TRASH TRACYS
ESTER
***
Though much lauded at the tail-end of last year, it’s a moot point whether this London quartet’s debut album really is greater than the sum of its parts.
There are certainly plenty of interesting things going on here – not least the twangy, reverberating basslines that give it an instantly retro feel, reminiscent of Angelo Badalamenti’s soundtracks for the films of David Lynch.
Then there’s the distinctly unwestern “solfeggio scale” to which the band tune their guitars, and which gives each song a woozy, off-kilter sound, not unlike that of 90s shoegazers My Bloody Valentine.
The twiddly, Van Halen-esque fret-shredding in Engelhardt’s Arizona has curiosity value; Turkish Heights ends the the album on a note of Cocteau Twins-like langour.
If only Ester had memorable songs to back up its pretty textures, Trailer Trash Tracys would be more than a cult concern.
DEAR READER
IDEALISTIC ANIMALS
****
“Cos life is dull as sin most of the time/Take your chances” urges Cheri MacNeil at the start of Idealistic Animals, her first record without musical partner Darryl Tour. Leaving her native South Africa, the 28-year-old also abandoned her religious faith on her journey to Berlin – and it’s a feeling of powerlessness in the face of life’s random cruelties that dominates these 11 tracks named after various mammals, birds, invetebrates and Man.
In Mole, two myopic animals collide underground; in Whale MacNeil imagines an environmental disaster covering New York “in icy, icy blue”; Camel appears to be addressed to a former lover, sighing fatalistically: “I always saw the end/Right from the beginning”.
The purity of MacNeil’s voice may make you think of Leslie Feist; her interest in percussion is similar to Kate Bush circa The Dreaming and Hounds of Love. The questing spirit in Idealistic Animals, however, is Cheri MacNeil’s alone.
LAURA GIBSON
LA GRANDE
***
American singer-songwriter Laura Gibson’s fifth longplayer is an album of folk-blues songs inspired by a town in north east Oregon that she describes as a place that “people usually pass through on their way to somewhere else, but which contains a certain gravity, curious energy”.
The transformational theme that runs through its 10 songs owes much to the fact that they were written in a 1962 Shasta trailer that Gibson was converting into a makeshift studio.
It’s not the most ground-breaking record you’ll hear this year but in its quiet, rustic, tuneful way, La Grande is a charming listen. Though there are better-known names here – notably Joey Burns of Calexico and two-fifths of The Decemberists – this is very much Gibson’s album; her gentle, multi-tracked warble providing a reassuring presence on her musical travels. For those that like a bit of musical ‘colour’, there’s also some nice use of pump organ, woodwind and marimba.
PLUG
Back On Time
****
Plug is the drum and bass nom de plume of maverick West Country electronica artist Luke Vibert, a prolific knob twiddler and mouse clicker who also puts out releases under the name Wagon Christ.
Vibert only released one album as Plug, 1996’s album Drum N Bass For Papa, and it saw him finding his own cheeky angle on the genre’s manic speeded-up drumbreaks and low frequency oscillations, adorning the frantic beats with melodic sparkle in the shape on assorted chiming, twinkling and ringing percussion instruments. It lent a frothy, twinkly, playful air to a sound previously either mad-eyed or po-faced, and was clearly destined for cult status.
Firteen years on, Vibert stumbled upon some digital audio tapes labelled ‘Plug 1995-98’, and the highlights of these recordings make up Back On Time.
The 12 tracks continue in the same irreverent tone as Drum N Bass For Papa, lobbing in kitsch musical flourishes and taking an almost juvenile glee in wacky scattershot vocal snippets.
In typical Vibert style, it’s very entertaining and listenable, injecting fun into a genre that’s still usually humourlessly aggressive. Plus, with old school breaks back in fashion, Back In Time’s long-lost tracks prove to have had the sort of distant Best Before date usually reserved for things that have been blasted with radiation.
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