Where There's Loneliness, There's Romance

Neil Jones on new releases from Ladybug Transistor, Yea Big + Kid Static, Radio Luxembourg and Frightened Rabbit

An impressive week for new releases this week, and the following four in particular have enabled me to take shelter in the geek’s lair and feel like I don’t really need to get outside till next week…

Yea Big + Kid Static – Yea Big + Kid Static (Jib Door)

Oh yes, first of all I’ve been trying to figure out why I keep coming back to the Yea Big + Kid Static sound with my tongue hanging out. My head says it’s because in the same way that our best indie bands are revolting back into Pop sounds, this crazy duo are doing the hip hop equivalent, dancing back a few years to the creative zenith of De La Soul and J. Saul Kane. But my heart tells me to just shut up and enjoy.

For this is a serious piece of music. Yea Big + Kid Static seem to have the whole package. Their artwork winks at me with a cartoon character that I adore, and every time I see them photographed they seem to be in the most outlandish pose I’ve ever seen, Static ebullient stage-front, serenading the crowd with huge waving hands, and Yea Big in the background in a shocking technicolour outfit of short shorts and vest looking like he’s engineering the downfall of the whole building.

Their sound in general falls somewhere between Static in mid-air heading for the ground, and Yea Big on the ground heading for the air, which is apt as Static in his spare time jumps off buildings, while Yea Big is a mandolin virtuoso Chicago street-performer and break-dancer.

Yea Big’s debut solo LP last year, The Wind That Blows the Robot’s Arms, was an avant-garde mix of enigmatic brilliance, but this one is simply brilliant, giving him chance to put his mixing and instrumental talent under the feet of a robust rapper and take hip hop back to its golden age, Static meanwhile balancing on his wilful platforms like a barefoot hot-coal walker, somehow managing to stay upright to help render a sound of teeming, rhythmic wonder.

It’s utter insanity, and they’re an utterly insane pair. 'Duck, Mother Fuckers!' comes out of staccato drumbeats and downright funky electronic spurts into a blinding song that rolls you in a big fluffy rug and bounces you down the stairs. 'Speak the Facts' has the kind of hip hop shimmer I’d never thought I’d hear again, hardcore beats popping away in the background like huge soft bubbles, and 'Joining Forces' taps itself out on bongo drums that subtly resound like beatific hallucinations.

The wit is subtle and the wonder is huge, there’s songs called 'Low-Budget Battle Scene', 'The Screaming Starts at Sundance', and 'We've Built A Time Machine That Runs On Beats (We Shall Only Use It For Good)', that are just as good as they sound, and through them all runs a parallel streak of sunny lyrical activism to match the music. It’s a hell of a mix, a Durga-juggle of golden hip hop sentiments, and if you’ve an insanity-shaped gap in your record collection, you should dive in now. If you’re like me, you’ll come out with a three-mile smile.

The Ladybug Transistor – Can’t Wait Another Day (Fortuna POP!)

While Yea Big + Kid Static tell me to shut up, The Ladybug Transistor kind of encourage the gentle, profoundly questioning approach. What do we want out of music? Simplicity? Complexity? Profound sentiments and melody? If you’re like me you never really ask for anything, and then when something like this pops up you’re free to appreciate it for what it is.

If that's the approach of a Pop geek then I can take it, I’m definitely one, and in an artistic world increasingly driven by market trends and hollow hedonism something like Can't Wait Another Day can blow me apart. Brooklyn’s The Ladybug Transistor have been knocking around since the mid 90s, and have grown into a retinue of musicians that have spouted around them on the Marlborough Farms/Elefant 6 scene in the finest Pop tradition.

Their seventh album features contributions from members of Aislers Set, The Clientele, Architecture in Helsinki, Great Lakes and Jens Lekman, yet essentially and maybe miraculously it retains a definite individual direction, Olson leading from the front with a dulcet baritone voice and quaint ear for the orchestral flourish, forever encouraging his friends to new heights.

Can’t Wait Another Day floats from optimistic melodic numbers like opener 'Always On the Telephone' to its downbeat and teary title track, the sounds sprouting off in all kinds of directions in between and teeming with disparate flavours, each one sitting with a perverse sense of ease. Inspired quirks come through the seams of songs to subtly push them to new heights, most memorably the country guitar that swishes through 'Always on the Telephone', making it sound like a dusty old Highwaymen classic, and the jazzy piano which drives 'Three Days From Now' on in a heavenly retro fashion.

If I’m not mistaken there’s a whiff of Lekman to 'Three Days From Now', wilfully, rebelliously stylish and etching new Pop constellations out of the apparently obsolete, and Jens’ unmistakeable touch can also be heard in 'I’m Not Mad Enough', his lunatic-brilliant use of long-forgotten keyboard sounds assimilated in a song that sways with a smattering of soothing orchestral nous.

A feminine touch also runs through Can’t Wait Another Day, the voice of violinist Julia Rydholm often joining Olson and adding another layer of empathetic allure, and it’s all heroically underplayed from start to finish, forty minutes of Pop in its most beguilingly classical, sparklingly emotional form. It won’t win any awards, just the hearts of anyone with a smattering of purity.

Frightened Rabbit – Be Less Rude (Fat Cat)

Two singles now, and two bursts of informed fire from bands that jump out of the modern indie chase with a shimmer of Pop glory…

There’s something about the modern, accepted way of playing indie that just gets me down. MTV-shagging bands are locked in a desolate embrace with the commerce devil, and rebellion increasingly resides lonely in the underground Pop obsession. But where there’s loneliness, there’s romance…

Frightened Rabbit have been quietly honing their sound in Glasgow’s legendary side-streets for the past year, feeling essentially left-out and immersing themselves in the new DiY aesthetic with eager intent, and ‘Be Less Rude’ emerges out of it all in rolling reams of light. Beatific guitar shards shoot multifarious, hopeful paths towards stars, singer Scott Hutchison’s vocals are involving and fantastically bashful, weaving between with a shy sense of rhythm, and as it all goes off in sweet impassioned tones flowers and dancing re-fill the air. Modern indie is resurgent only in its re-embrace of Pop, and Frightened Rabbit know how.

Radio Luxembourg – Where Is Dennis? (Peski)

Radio Luxembourg are more of the cartoon ilk. And thinking about it “Cartoon Pop” has all kinds of connotations doesn’t it, at first glance speaking of whimsy and artistic blasphemy. Yet Radio Luxembourg are a band that manage to pull it off with the profundity of modern seers. Maybe it’s singer Meilyr Jones, all skinny and fragile in a world of coarse knobheads who make up the modern indie scene; and maybe it’s also his songs, that stand alone in a corner and dance away like the house is on fire while others frown and posture. Whatever, Radio Luxembourg are a propulsive, outsider fascination, and if they make it big while sounding like they do on 'Where is Dennis?' and B-side 'Cartoon Cariad', we’ll all be saved.

Showing modern indie and hip hop resurgent in its re-embrace of their founding sentiments, these are four great excuses to shun the greater world.

© 2007 Neil Jones

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