Diggin

Music: I’m really loving two new records this week. First is No Age’s Nouns, the follow-up to their much-hyped EP compliation Weirdo Rippers. It’s streamlined noise-pop mastery at its best and manages to rattle through its songs fast enough that any sense of pretension or posing never materialises. The other is the amazing Music Hole by a capella chanteuse Camille which expands on the rough-hewn fun of Le Fil and creates a tangible world for her to exist in.
I managed to get hold of two great Jim O’Rourke soundscaping albums (Bad Timing and I’m Happy, I’m Singing, And a 1,2,3,4) and they are proving fantastic for working. As a general rule of thumb, krautrock and motorik electronica are efficient soundtracks for writing. I’m still obsessed with Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago which might be my favourite album of the year so far.
I got to see Sebadoh play Bubble & Scrape live as part of the Don’t Look Back series from ATP and that was some experience. The crowd didn’t quite get the concept fully, constantly requesting during the album portion of the show, but the band were affable and in good spirits so they took it well. For the record, it’s a much better album live.
Elsewhere, the new Scarlett Johannson record has a couple of nice moments but is mostly a slightly misguided folly. Death Cab for Cutie’s follows the trajectory of Plans in being good enough but not really closing in on the brilliance of Photo Album, We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes and their masterpiece, Transatlanticism.
Portishead are reassuringly brilliant and Wolf Parade are spiky but not fully satisfying. I haven’t absorbed My Morning Jacket’s Evil Urges yet but first listen reveals an album falling somewhere between the church-hall grandiosity of the first two and the slinky brilliance of Z.