DEPARTMENTS: WORDS by JON MONSOON (JM), JEZEBEL (JZ), LEONIE VAN HASE (LVH), TAMLYN GREY (TG), WORDY ROCK GUY (WRG)
CD REVIEWS Righard Kapp
Strung Like a Compound Eye www.righardkapp.co.za
Mastodon
Crack the Skye www.mastodonrocks.com
I bet the members of Mastodon used to spend hours playing Dungeons & Dragons when they were young(er). Their music inhabits a realm of orcs, magicians and all manner of netherworldly beings fit for a movie in multiple parts. But is it any good? You bet your eighthlevel light staff it is! The band’s hard-edged prog-rock attitude is as fierce as an enraged fire dragon and about as relentless as one. With songs about having an out-ofbody experience, meeting Rasputin and saving the world, Crack the Skye is a triumphant piece of epic rock worthy of repeated listenings when you have the crew over for World of Warcraft on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Do yourself a favour and check out their previous releases too. (WRG)
Strung Like a Compound Eye is hung like a horse when it comes to humble, instrumental soliloquies and sudden discords that break its gentle seduction into tiny pieces. Better posited as an experience in new listening, this quirky collection of acoustic and electronic tracks dips and dives and requires an open mind. If you’re not really a music lover, it’s perfect to slip into the section of your CD collection you secretly think of as ‘awkward’ or ‘weird’ and keep to impress overly intellectual dinner guests. If you’re listening wide, though, its aural ebb and flow will prove that avant-pop is not a new softdrink, and might even help you through some of those ‘awkward’ or ‘weird’ emotional processes. If you can’t appreciate the courage in its compositions and the honesty in its simplicity, you’ve possibly been lulled by too much Bon Iver this winter. (JZ)
Taxi Violence
The Turn
www.taxiviolence.com
The Petshop Boys Yes
www.petshopboys.co.uk
This is going to be a good review; I feel these patriots of ‘80s cheese deserve it. Not so much because their latest album, Yes, is a masterpiece, but because, believe it or not, the music is sincere. Instead of buying into the new synthetic sound of pop, this endurable duo has earned the Noddy badge of the month by sticking to the sound that made them famous two decades ago. The album has another thing going for it: the lyrics. The vulnerability of growing up and growing old, having experienced disappointment, despair and joy all in one breath, is spelt out without reading as pretentious. Nor is this honesty dressed up in metaphorical hoo-ha. Songs are simply titled, sometimes infused with nostalgia, and mostly instilled with subtle self-reflection that makes you want to listen on. (LvH) 100
one small seed
It’s easy to apply the terms ‘brilliant’ or ‘bad’ to a band; easier still to swap them. Dubbing it ‘good’ isn’t. Good has gaps, mystery and risk. From a band with a searing live act and a debut album already released twice, then, comes a second album set to change the way Taxi Violence presents itself to the world. Was it worth the wait? That’s like asking if it’s ‘lo-fi’. Its compositional intelligence and production have evolved from the singular, singalongable and solved melodies of their earlier rock ‘n pole dance album, Untie Yourself. The Turn introduces new vocal textures and compositional complexities. It’s darker, wiser and ironically more listenable; a mixed blessing for a band about to go big but still wondering if there‘s such a thing as radio-friendly rock. The Turn seems to swap it to whether there’s such a thing as rock-friendly radio. THAT is a good question. (JZ)