Cheveu (Born Bad)

There's strangely pixelated Apple ][ album art, strangely pixellated guitars and drum programming, yet there's nothing digital about this record. Instead we're bathed in analogue ambience, a hiss to envelop us into this soundworld. Cheveu was my favourite album of 2008, which explains why I've been collecting their singles (found on the Ebullient Ventilation page). You can divide most of Cheveu's songs into two categories - furious, frantic verbal diarrhea overtop a relentless guitar/drum attack, or a groove-based, fun jam based around an infectious and vaguely familiar guitar lick. A few of the standouts, like 'Superhero' combine the two forms. 'Jacob's Fight', side 1 track 1, should be all you need to hear to decide if Cheveu is gonna be your bag. 'Clara Venus', the one song recorded in a real studio, sounds no more hi-fi but perhaps a bit more passionate, as the band blasts out around some of Rimbaud's fine words. 'Happiness' also uses a borrowed text, this time from the Todd Solondz film of the same name, and the creepy, perverse language is cast in a goofball aesthetic, but a damn fine one. 'Lola Langusta' opens up side B with a rehash of the version found on one of the singles, but adorned with some trumpets to make it a DJ favourite. Is it thinking man's punk rock, or a punk rocker's dance music, or does it even matter? When I listen I'm filled with images of dirty Paris basements, illegal squats, and what I imagine is a theatrical live show. And I want to jack into an old 4-track and start bashing out my own tunes. This is music of frustration but not without careful attention to detail. 'Hot' has some nicely bending guitar notes as it fades into a rut, and throughout this I'm impressed by textures, textures, textures! Cheveu know how to make a guitar sound great, and they are often layering them and changing the textures on song breaks to liven up what could otherwise sound monotonous. The record jams out on the long 'Unemployment Blues', clearly a live, improvised recording that recalls Alternative TV's 'Alternatives'. A tribute or homage, maybe? It's the most psychedelic, though the delay-pedal vocal manipulations and whirring feedback loops are aggressively amateur, and the rhythm section holds things steady. Though youth oozes from every note of this record, there's a definite awareness of musical precedents, most notably fellow Frenchmen Metal Urbain. I like intense visions to be fun too, and this pulls it off with flying colours. Seek it out!

Kevin Ayers - 'Odd Ditties' (Harvest)

These ditties aren't that odd, but they didn't make it to any previously released albums. Yeah, this is the singles and b-sides collection that you never wanted from Kevin Ayers, though the first side is good-to-great, being mostly singles and outtakes from the Joy of a Toy/Shooting at the Moon era. The French version of 'May I' is here, though I'm starting to get pretty sick of hearing that song. 'Gemini Child' and 'Butterfly Dance' are the highlights here, though the opening track 'Soon Soon Soon' (an abandoned single) makes a strong case with it's Nazz-like fuzz bass. Nowadays all these tracks would end up as CD bonus tracks so it's kind of weird hearing them together. Side two takes a dip in quality, beginning with a sappy faux-French duet with Bridget St. John and then presenting a slow, orchestrated version of 'Lady Rachel'. Then we dive into a shitty whirlwind of reggae-pop. There's a reason I don't own Bananamour; these songs, with Ayers singing in a fake Jamaican accent, are musical Kryptonite. The whimsical 'Don't Sing no more Sad Songs' picks things up slightly but then we get 'Take me to Tahiti' (which causes my response "and leave him there, please") and the closing single 'Caribbean Moon'. These things are always a bit hit-and-miss and here the hits are relatively clustered together, so I can just stick to side one if I ever actually listen to this again.

Kevin Ayers / John Cale / Eno / Nico - 'June 1, 1974' (Island)

I think this is actually one of the most overrated live albums ever, and I wouldn't own it except I found it for $2 somewhere and John Cale's 'Heartbreak Hotel' is pretty great. Actually the Eno songs are cool too, starting out with 'Driving Me Backwards' which is a wonderful and perverse choice to start an album with, though I would never reach for this when Here Come the Warm Jets is just a few shelves down. The four artists here don't really do a whole lot with each other and the record is dominated by Ayers whose renditions are somewhat lackluster. But as I mentioned, 'Heartbreak Hotel' is pretty killer-- and it was performed because the night before the show (May 31, 1974), Ayers banged Mrs. John Cale. Of course, the liner notes don't say anything about this, but it's sure in the performance. Some wasted dude named Rabbit plays organ on almost every track and I'd like to know what happened to him. Robert Wyatt also fails to liven things up. But maybe I'm just being a bit negative because I'm starting to get sick of Kevin Ayers by this point. Nico supposedly performed 'Janitor of Lunacy', but it was cut in favor of the Doors cover 'The End'. I used to think her studio version of this was super intense but now I'm not sure that I can ever bear to sit through it again. (Well, I'll have to when I get to the N's). Maybe this just isn't the night for me.