Sean Donnelly has just finished his sixth album as SJD, the electro-pop wallowings of Elastic Wasteland. He is playing out and about with laptop, synths, bits/pieces – in particular, at Q Theatre with Watercolours this Saturday night (15th December) and is looking forward to a long hot summer of music, trees, nature and stuff…..here are five albums he’s loving right now…
1 – Dirty Projectors, Swing Lo Magellan: I wasn’t really into their last album Bitte Orca…just didn’t like the songs all that much. Seems it was a lot more down with the kids than this one though – well you can’t second guess the indie crowd, as transparent as they might look. A strangely jittery pop album that revels in its rough edges, weird unfinished arrangements and overheated vocals. It’s like a brilliantly designed house that’s been deliberately left untidy to somehow further deconstruct its own brilliance and in doing so add some whole other level of brilliance. Those wonky but artfully constructed melodies and the beautiful drivel of the lyrics bashed out by great musicians celebrating and at times amplifying their flaws. Amazing guitar playing from auteur-lite David Longstreth too…
2 – Godspeed you! Black Emperor – Alleluia! Don’t Bend! Ascend!: Despite the plenitude of exclamation marks, this really gets here on the strength of the two longest tracks, Mladic and We Drift Like Worried Fire. Never having been any kind of fan of Prog or Metal or any of the other histrionic cross-pollinations around those genres, I find myself really enjoying the grandiosity and pomp on display here. Lots of this music seems to be couched in the mock horror moves of metal and lots of other bits sound like a slightly louder version of Coldplay minus Chris Martin’s bedwetting whine. Yet it flows and keeps piling on unexpected levels of intensity allowing itself a kind of seriousness that doesn’t care about looking ridiculous – and consequently it doesn’t….
3 – Connan Mockasin – Please Turn Me Into The Snat: This album has been a favourite of mine since it came out and never really waned. It’s audacious and original on so many levels that it kind of makes my head hurt to think about it. For a start, what’s with the party balloon vocalising? Why would you even think of doing a whole album like that? All I can say is, top marks for blowing off 50% of your potential audience in one fell swoop. What it does do though is make this into private music – I feel like it’s mine and nobody else’s. The crazy microtuning and unsettling outness only serve to emphasise the dazzling melodic and harmonic invention on display here. Rhythmically it totally nails it too – the band (of multitracked Connans?) just cooks….the bass playing makes me want to put my Rickenbacker away forever.
4 – Scott Walker – Bish Bosch: At the core of Scott Walker’s work is a refusal to not give vent to his weirdest darkest ideas. I don’t think this one is quite as strong as The Drift but you can tell he’s really worked on the lyrics here. Lots of musical and lyrical references to flatulence. It’s like he records his nightmares and includes his visceral reactions to them all for posterity. I like how it somehow still resides in the sphere (or at least consciousness) of pop music – it’s just right on the ripped edges….
5 – PJ Harvey, Let England Shake: I love how she’s had this singular idea – of writing a song cycle around WWI and allowed it to come out as something totally idiosyncratic and personal, that it never stops referencing her own ideas and musical tendencies. Bursting with anachronisms, you can tell it’s all come out in one big lump – the songs’ melodies frequently reference other songs and the words often sound like a transcribed rant. It feels like she’s honed and directed it but not given in to self-censorship – around her, the band sounds raw and spontaneous. Listen to all the great moments. Finally, a concept album that’s not built around limited-shelf-life irony or a triple gatefold sleeve.