UPDATE October 5 2005
New On The Chart
King Creosote (Kenny Anderson to his mates) bounds into view with his second full album release in less than six months but is it, one has to ask, a case of prolificacy over quality? While similar ‘folk’ artists have previously issued LP's at mind-boggling speed which clearly fell a little flat compared to their previous material (
Devendra Banhart springs to mind here), happily no such fallibilities can be applied to
'KC Rules OK'. In fact, if anything, he’s getting better and better.
'KC Rules OK' is in many ways a very different beast from April’s quite excellent
‘Rocket D.I.Y’. While the latter was comprised mainly of home recorded demo's given a quick polish at the mixing stage,
'KC Rules OK' sees proper studio recordings with Anderson backed by musical buddies
The Earlies and even hosts an appearance on one track from
Kate Tunstall. The result is a multi-layered, fuller sounding
King Creosote.
Opener
'Not One Bit Ashamed' features tuba, electric piano and a whole host of percussion when previously it would just have been strummed into a tape recorder on the living room table. Likewise
'The Vice Like Gist Of It' is augmented by quartet like strings, while
'Bootprints' has Madness style ‘comedy’ saxophone, some xylophone and Hammond organ.
Of course
King Creosote's ace card is probably his ability to write fantastic ballads and in this regard he comes up trumps once again.
'Locked Together' is thoroughly lovely and would represent the pinnacle of most songwriters careers but this is the man that wrote
‘Circle My Demise’ and
‘The Someone Else’ and as the album comes to a close we get a song as good as either of them.
‘Fly By The Seat Of My Pants’ might not be a radical departure in music, essentially a guitar ballad with some accordion swell but when someone can project emotion through his voice like Kenny Anderson can, it matters not, and the result is one of the best tracks of the year.
King Creosote's ‘KC Rules OK’ scores 7.18 and enters Konstantiranks at no.8
RELATED LINKS
Find out more about
King Creosote here
>>>
http://www.fencerecords.com/folks/kingcreosote_intro.htm
UPDATE 29th September 2005
New On The Chart
With a membership that includes former
Williard Grant Conspiracy member Josh Hillman,
Viarosa come to the table with a debut that offers a brooding gothic folk music similar to that of
Nick Cave,
Gallon Drunk's later albums or, most evidently of all,
P. J. Harvey; indeed Richard Neuberg's lyrics, vocal phrasing and even guitar playing clearly owe much to the Yeovil songstress.
Although often replete with the ghostly influences of Appalachia or the Mississippi Delta,
Viarosa rarely sound anything less than British. True,
'All This Worry (Will Soon Be Over) is a straight ahead
Johnny Cash style stomper but it's a track that very much stands out amidst the dark dramatics that surrounds it. Opener
'Blindfold' sounds like the aforementioned Polly Jean crossed with the pharmaceutical madness of
Suede's
'Introducing The Bands' while
'Boy' could be a disgruntled, stripped down version
'A Day In The Life' performed by the less savoury inhabitants of a Constable painting.
If the album starts off strongly, and indeed it does, it loses no momentum in it's closing stages. Rather, if anything, it improves as it inexorably reaches it’s conclusion, with the final three tracks which bookend the album amongst the best on the disc.
'The Violet Hour', perhaps to throw a spanner in the works of anyone trying to pigeon-hole the group, could be straight off
Mogwai's
'Young Team' before the more indicative sounding
'Soul Light', a windswept, mandolin-and-steel guitar dramarama, marks the high water mark of the LP.
‘Wake’, a FM radio tune gone masonic and sinister completes the album and with it forty seven minutes of thoroughly engrossing music.
Viarosa’s
‘Where The Killers Roam’ scores 7.18 and enters Konstantiranks at no.7
RELATED LINKS
Find out more about
Viarosa here
>>>
http://www.viarosa.co.uk/
UPDATE 23rd September 2005
New On The Chart
What do you get when you cross a couple of Swedes, some Gallic sexpot and a
Smashing Pumpkin? No, it's not the set up to some joke, its
Vanessa & The O's, and they've just released their first album
'La Ballade D'O'.
The group, whose core includes James Iha and former Espiritu vocalist Vanessa Quinones, proffer a sort of potted history of Euro pop on a single disc, ranging from brooding tracks of a 1960's vintage through
Stereolab's jolly jangle to pure straight-in-at-no.-9-on-the-Belgian-charts style pop.
While the music provided by Iha is ultimately disappointing, being somewhere between generic and a kind of studied pastiche, the star of the show is Vanessa herself.
Quinones, let's be frank, looks like a million dollars (or should that be Euros?) and drones sexily into the microphone in a Bardotesque way that's positively arresting. The best of the bunch is
'Brouhaha' which sounds like a ominously sexy
Serge Gainsbourg /
Brigette Bardot outtake with Quinones breathy French vocals, over choppy acoustic guitar, likely to promote unpure thought in 90% of testicle owners. Elsewhere
'Charlie, Charlie', is a glorious summertime sing-a-long with a hook you could catch tuna with.
Front-loaded, the album is unable to keep the quality quotient up and the songs degenerate into a collection of poorly conceived imitations. Further criticism could be levelled at Quinones, who sounds more awkward than amorous on the songs with English lyrics, the majority of which pepper the latter half of the album.
Vanessa And The O's's
La Ballade D'O' scores 6.50 and enters Konstantiranks at no. 39
RELATED LINKS
Hear the track
Plus Rien by
Vanessa And The O's here
>>>
http://www.jamesiha.org/audio/plusrien.ram
UPDATE 12th September 2005
New On The Chart
Fresh from an extensive tour of the United States in support of indie darlings
Spoon, London based
The Clientele release only their second album in eight years.
For those unfamiliar with
The Clientele,
'Strange Geometry' is very much in the vein of classic mid 60's pop music. Think
The Beatles in '65 or
The Byrds around the same period and you have a pretty good idea of what's in store.
The best track is also the opener.
'Since K Got Over Me', all dreamy vocals and ringing guitars, could easily be a great lost b-side from
'Past Masters'. From then on
'Strange Geometry' fails to quite hit the heights attained by it's opening track, despite following a similar template throughout; a sort of late night retro melancholy where Alasdair McLean's vocals almost float out the speakers and Rickenbackers twinkle like stars.
The group does attempt to give each song it's on distinctive character by adding swirling organs, psychedelic backwards guitar solos and some orchestration here and there, but for the most part, it fails to disguise the fact that their sound is a narrow one and the songs, good as they are, tend to blend into one an other after a while.
For the love lorn or wistful,
'Strange Geometry' certainly creates a balming mood but whither the general listener will want to listen to 12 variations on
'Everyone's Been Burned' remains open to question.
The Clientele's
'Strange Geometry' scores 6.66 and enters Konstantiranks at no. 33
RELATED LINKS
Find out more about
The Clientele here
>>>
http://www.theclientele.co.uk/
UPDATE 31st August 2005
New On The Chart
It's a long way from Florida to Eisteddfod but
Holopaw sound so much like
Gorkys Zygotic Mynci it's initially quite startling. Is singer Michael Johnson, a resident of Tampa remember, really singing with some sort of soft, Brythonic lilt worthy of a valley boy?
On reflection it's actually quite endearing that the Subpop group should copy so exactly such a talented but relatively minor figure on the musical firmament as Euros Childs and as you would expect, they offer an airy, mildly psychedelic country & western, replete with electric piano and slide guitar backgrounds that very much conjure up a mood of indolent, indeed almost comatosed self satisfaction.
The closest they get to rocking out is
'3-Shy-Cubs' which has all the hard hitting impact of a downy feather gently floating down on to a fuzzy layer of velveteen dust. Elsewhere, the track
'Found' combines achingly lovely harmonies with the instrumental dynamism of a sleepy dormouse and by the time the final (and standout) track
'Shiver Me' ambles yawning and stretching into earshot the languorous state of contentment is thoroughly complete.
If you enjoy the bliss of the pleasantly soporific this may well be the album for you. If, on the other hand, you believe
Morbid Angel went soft after their debut album, the opposite will almost certainly apply. Me? I sensibly keep a foot in both camps.
Holopaw's
Quit +/Or Fight scores 6.81 and enters Konstantiranks at no. 25
RELATED LINKS
The track 'Curious' from 'Quit +/Or Fight' can be downloaded here
>>>
http://72.1.140.201/downloads/free/Curious327.mp3
UPDATE 23rd August 2005
New On The Chart
The Rakes may tread a well worn path of English rock influences (
Buzzcocks,
The Cure,
The Jam, even on occasion
'Grey Day' era
Madness) but unlike fellow travellers
Bloc Party, they do so with a rawness and infectious enthusiasm that breaths new life into what should, in this post
Libertines world of ours, be a rather tired genre.
Rather, this is an album that, for the most part, crackles with excitement. Initially it's the buzzsaw punk rockers like hail-of-German-in-an-Estuarine-accent opener
'Strasbourg' or the post casual sex panic of
'The Guilt' that garners most attention but with a little time it's the less frantic numbers that reveal
The Rakes true qualities.
Those highlights include the
Libertines-a-like
'22 Grand Job' which makes satisfyingly good use of James Hornsmith's consistently rumbly bass, while
'Binary Love' sounds like it could have come straight of a peak period
Blur album. Elsewhere something as simplistic as
'Work Work Work (Pub, Club, Sleep) has no right to sound just as good as it does, as it ticks by like some sort of metronomic, 21st century, urban folk tale.
On the down side a couple of tracks stray towards the generic (
'We Are All Animals' raise your paw) but overall
'Capture/Release', if not a classic, certainly lives up to the hype more than most NME endorsed rock.
The Rakes debut scores 7.00 and enters Konstantiranks at no. 15
RELATED LINKS
Find out more about The Rakes here
>>>
http://www.therakes.co.uk/
RE-EVALUATION ROUND UP
Drunken, Scottish, shouty-lady fronted
Sons and Daughters posted a revivial of sorts adding 0.10 to their previous total and as a result leap frog the likes of
LCD Soundsystem and
Eastern Lane on the chart. Following on from last years
Love The Cup, and impressive in parts, it's an album that suffers from mining the same seam a little too extensively. As a result the Glasgow based band have to content themselves with a Konstantirating of 6.70, disappointing, I'm sure, for all concerned.
UPDATE 16th August 2005
New On The Chart
Hailing from the same North-East England scene as
The Futureheads and, infact, featuring ex-members of the aforementioned group, it comes as no surprise that
Field Music have certain stylistic similarities to, yep, you guessed it,
The Futureheads.
However although there are resemblances between the local neighbours,
Field Music often reveal a more adventurous modus operandi than the adoption of mere post-punk styling. Whither this is a good thing, though, is debatable.
A love of 70's FM radio is readily apparent (
E.L.O in particular are to the fore) while quite complex shifts in direction and song structure give
Field Music a more cerebral air than their more straight ahead Tyneside compatriots.
More often than not the string section is the lead instrument, dominating while guitar is kept to the background. A good comparison would be the latter day skewed pop of
Super Furry Animals who clearly have a big influence on
Field Music, particularly on the second half of the record.
However it's the constant 'we're-really-clever' twist and turns in the songs that see most of the tracks unravel after a brief glimpse of an interesting idea and the relentless, odd diversions and pace changes sabotage rather than ingratiate.
By the end of the record, having squandered a careers worth of ideas,
Field Music start to repeat themselves, the ultimate musical crime, and consequently the eponymous album scores 6.41 and enters Konstantiranks at no. 40.
RELATED LINKS
Find out more about Field Music here
>>>
http://www.memphis-industries.com/field_music.html
RE-EVALUATION ROUND UP
Smog jumps almost ten places up the chart, by far the biggest leap of the year. Rapidly becoming a late night favourite at Konstantimansions,
'A River Ain't Too Much To Love' benefits greatly from the policy of re-evaluating records two months after they were initially ranked.
Smog's rootsy maudlin bounds up to no. 12 with a score of 7.00
Four Tet scores exactly the same mark as it did back in May. Despite
'Sun, Soil and Drums' revealing itself as one of the stand out tracks of the year, the album as a whole can do no better than it's previous score of 6.88 and stays ensconced at no. 20
Stephen Malkmus'
'Face The Truth' posts a minor revival and climbs a couple of positions but remains in the lower reaches of the chart. As noted first time round, although there are some fine tracks on the album (
Pencil Rot,
No More Shoes etc) roughly half the albums content is filler material. No doubting SM's filler material is a more enjoyable listen than most others, but filler is what it essentially is.
Stephen Malkmus moves up to no. 34 with a score of 6.58
UPDATE 8th August 2005
New On The Chart
Clor were, until now, best know as
Roots Manuva's live band. However this debut is about as far away from
Roots Manuva as you could possible get. Instead,
Clor give us a heady brew of early 80's music wrapped up in a defiantely New Pop package.
Unlike most bands of the moment,
Clor haven't made referencial selections form the hipster approved back catalogue. Rather, so it would seem, they have simply thrown the damn period into the pot and quaffed the high-in-E-numbers concotion in one swift gulp.
It's all here. The
Kraftwerk influence, heaps of chart friendly New Wave like
The Jags,
Martha & The Muffins and
The Cars, the occassional nod to
Talking Heads, early
Prince and, not surprisingly,
Gary Numan and other UK electro pop acts.
This album will most likely be anathema for those who take their music seriously but the hooks and tunes are usually good enough to stick to the inside of your head like a Post It note from
Howard Jones.
Clor scores 6.72 and enters Konstantiranks at no. 28 from 44.
In this age of hyperbole everything is apparently "super fantastische". But how often do you read a review that lays it on the line and says "
This is the album of the year"? Not often in my experience, but such was the claim I was confronted with when I read of
Two Gallants and their debut album the
'The Throes'. It's an album that lives up to such claims.
The album art features endless tracts of desolate, snow patched prairie amidst which lies the bloodied corpse of an eagle. It's an image which matches the music perfectlly, embracing, as it does, the depression era folk of
Woody Guthrie and the 'outlaw' music of country stalwarts like
Willie Nelson or
Waylon Jennings.
The most striking influence, however, is that of
Bob Dylan of which they share much of their sound but to mark them down as a copy cat act would be to do them a great disservice. The facts are much of the music on this album can comfortably stand comparison with that of their musical influences.
Pick of the bunch is the eight minute, Old West murder ballad
'Crow Jane' with vocalist Adam Stephens fugutive croak
"Somehow I ain't got no hope, cos I'm still running from the Sheriff's rope....All I know is I'll still run". You can virtually taste the dust, feel the bruises.
An extraordinary record,
Two Gallants score 7.66 and enter Konstantiranks at no. 1 from 44.
RELATED LINKS
Find out more about Clor here
>>>
http://www.clor.co.uk/
Video and Audio of Two Gallants can be found here
>>>
http://www.twogallants.com/audio.html
UPDATE 2nd August 2005
New On The Chart
First of all I’d like to thank all 8 people who viewed this page in the last 10 days or so. Where some might say ‘forgotten’ or ‘anonymous’ we say ‘exclusive’ or ‘elite’. Now, as I often write on this page, to business!
A couple of new albums made their entry on the chart.
Cagedbaby’s debut
‘Will See You Now’ received a score of 6.50, putting it in 33rd place. A not-bad-in-patches effort it none the less leaves the overall impression of being simply a generic electronica album some often sub standard vocals. The best of the bunch is
‘Disco Biscuit’, which aside it’s unbelievably cringe-worthy title, is actually quite an accomplished track with definite cross-over chart appeal. You could imagine
Madonna or even perhaps
Kylie Minogue having a hit with it’s metronomic beat and polished production. However elsewhere they stray to close to their influences. One track is virtually a note for note copy of
Pet Shop Boys‘I Want A Dog’ while others are to close to early
Prince to have any real identity of their own.
The second new album to enter the chart was
The Shortwave Set’s
‘The Debt Collection’. On first (and second) listen
The Shortwave Set’s self-styled ‘Victorian Funk’ seemed to me to be nothing short of contemptible piffle. However, with repeated listens, it revealed something of an eccentric spirit.
The Beatles at there most whimsical can definitely be detected amongst the muddle of sound, as can other sixties artists like
Fairport Convention or
Donovan. Add in
Abba and
George Formby style ukulele or even present day
Fiery Furnaces and you get some idea of the indefinable nature of their sound. However while I commend them for trying something different ultimately it just doesn’t quite come off. After the first three tracks the album fails to build on it’s initial promise and as a consequence I can only award it at the present time a 6.30 rating. It will be interesting though to see what this album will do two months from now on re-evaluation.
Finally, due to a near obsession with the PC strategy game Medieval Total War, only one existing chart entry was re-evaluated - that album being
Edgar ‘Jones’ Jones’
‘Soothing Music For Stray Cats’. Already basking in the considerable glory of leading the pack, the album further extended it’s lead to 7.62, making it not only this years finest but also, by my reckoning, one of the top five albums of the decade. It will, you imagine, take something extraordinary to dislodge it.
The next update will feature the debut album from
Clor, and possibly
Two Gallants, making their mark on the chart while
Smog and
Four Tet will undergo re-evaluation.
RELATED LINKS
Cagedbaby samples can be found here
>>>
http://www.cagedbaby.com/tunes.html
'Is It Any Wonder' by The Shortwave Set can be found here
>>>
http://www.peoplesound.com/artist/shortwave_set/
UPDATE 20th July 2005
New On The Chart
Due to forays into the mountains, a subsequently flattening cold and a number of other factors of lesser interest, this update has been a while in the making but here it is before you with all the coiled vitality of a spring lamb.
It's also something of a change this week as normally I re-evaluate a few albums and add only a single new LP to the chart, this time it's all the wrong-way-about as I add three new albums to chart and re-evaluate only one existing opus. To business.
Malcolm Middleton,
Sufjan Steven and
Brakes all received their initial Konstantiranking this week and it's with a profound sense of disappointment that I reveal that not one of the new releases even came close to going into the Top Twenty…never mind a Top Ten that has been static for far too long. In fact a definite lull in quality of record release has been observed over the last month or so and I can only hope this rather depressing trend is put to a halt soon but enough moaning, what of the recently Konstantiranked trio?
Well, best of the three was
Malcolm Middleton's
'Into The Woods' which made a semi-reasonable score of 6.75 but it was still some way distant of a Top Twenty berth. A fairly consistent album it may have been but there was little in the way of stand-out material and the constant bombardment of self-loathing lyricism proved rather irksome to someone who is more than capable of providing his own low self-esteem.
Next up was
'Give Blood' by
Brakes. A sort of super group in the most minor sense (
Electric Soft Parade, others of even lower standing) the LP sounds exactly like it is - a tossed off side project by a group of friends. Sure, who couldn't fail to be fairly amused at a 10 second songs about Dick Cheney, but unfortunately that's as good as the quality quotient gets here. A hum drum 6.50 for an unremarkable album.
However it gets even worse. A glance down to last years chart will show that I was a big fan of
'Seven Swans' but
Sufjan Steven's latest effort
'Illinois' is an unmitigated disaster. Dutifully long, full of 'familiar' tunes (i.e. lifted virtually chord for chord from his previous albums) tipped from an extremely limited set of moulds and, to cap it all, chock full of irritating whimsy, this really is a poor effort indeed from someone I had previously regarded as a fine talent. Deary me, a stern finger-wagging for the recalcitrant Stevens.
Finally
'Gimme Fiction' by
Spoon was re-evaluated and lost some ground with 0.05 being trimmed from it's score to bring it down to 20th. A small amendment but it saw the album drop three places in a keenly contested area of the chart.
Next week should see
Cagedbaby enter stage left. Until then it's sayonara baby rather than the caged variety.
RELATED LINKS
Malcolm Middleton's 'Best In Me' can be found here
>>>
http://www.chemikal.co.uk/media/downloads/1101141885_04bestinme.mp3
Brakes' videos for 'All Night Disco Party' and 'Pick Up The Phone' can be found here >>>
http://www.brakesbrakesbrakes.com/music.php
Find out more about Sufjan Stevens here
>>>
http://www.asthmatickitty.com/musicians.php?artistID=5
UPDATE 8th July 2005
New On The Chart
Time for an other update, me thinks.
This weeks new entry on the chart was
Mek Obaam's
'You And I'.
Having created something of a stir with a clutch of singles on the Ear Sugar label last year, the
Barbara Morgenstein and
Schneider TM collaborator releases his debut album. Sounding like a pleasant amalgam of 1960's acoustic like
Donovan,
Love or
Bob Dylan mixed with more contemporary bands like
The Shins or even
'Come On Pilgrim' era
Pixies, the album presents a thoroughly pleasing listen from start to finish. The track
'Knowledge I'll Keep' with it's out of place dub explosions is a particular highlight.
'You And I' debuts at number 13 on the Konstantiranks chart, below the similarly scored albums by
Laura Cantrell and
Mark Mulcahy by account of being the shortest of the three in total play time.
Albums re-evaluated this week included
Teenage Fanclub who's
'Man Made' gained five places on the chart leaping up to 16th with a score of 6.91, a substantial improvement on it's first score.
The other album re-evaluated,
Fog's
'10th Avenue Freakout', also proved to be something of a grower and it too made gains although not in the spectacular style of The Fannies.
'10th Avenue Freakout' added 0.04 to it's score and overtook Low to lay claim on to 24th position.
I have something of a backlog of albums building up for the first time in a while now, so I will concentrate on rating those four albums awaiting their first mark.
If I have time the albums scheduled to be re-evaluated include
Spoon and the current No.1
Edgar 'Jones' Jones.
RELATED LINKS
Find out more about Earsugar Records here
>>>
http://www.earsugar.com/
UPDATE 29th June 2005
New On The Chart
Since, as I so often remind anyone foolhardy enough to read this, Konstantiranks is pretty much up to date there has been minimal movement since the last update. I have now settled into a one-new-album-and-two-re-evaluated weekly schedule and, unsurprisingly, such are the way of things this week.
The new entry on the chart is
Laura Cantrell's
'Humming By The Flowered Vine'. A fan of hers since she put out her first album (the excellent
'Not The Tremblin' Kind) I was initially a little disappointed by her most recent effort. There was clearly no stand out track such as
'Wait' or
'Churches Off The Inter State'. But with a little time I tempered my disappointment and was pleasantly surprised as it dawned on me that the album is, infact, very solid. There might not be a stand out song but by the same token there is little sub-standard material present either and consequently the albums enters the chart in the reasonably high position of 12th.
The two albums on chart and up for review were
The Go-Betweens and
Jose Gonzalez.
The Go-Betweens dropped one place on the chart partly because of
Laura Cantrell’s new entry and partly because they dropped a crucial 0.05 on re-evaluation. Still,
'Oceans Apart' is an album that holds up just fine and I'd expect it to stay the course and secure a Top Twenty position come the years end.
Further down the chart
Jose Gonzalez made something of a rally. Clearly influenced by
Nick Drake, Gonzalez's fan boy replication of all things Pink Moon chaffed on the initial review but on second thoughts perhaps I was being a little harsh. Although there is little exciting or original on
'Veneer' the quality of the song writing is at least decent and I should have acknowledged that in my first rating – something I failed to do. I have done so this time and a gain of 0.13 is a strong one in Konstantiranks but it made little difference as the now 6.40 score only moves him up one place to 33rd.
This weeks purchase was, if Rough Trade ever get around to delivering it, is
Mak Obaam's
'You And I' and the forerunners for re-evaluation are
Fog,
Teenage Fanclub and
Spoon.
RELATED LINKS
Laura Cantrell's '14th Street' can be downloaded here
>>>
http://www.lauracantrell.com/mp3/14th%20Street.mp3
UPDATE 22th June 2005
New On The Chart
Once again, since Konstantiranks 2005 is more or less up to date, there's no massive changes to report. However I wouldn't be writing this if there wasn't something new so here is what's happened over the last week or so.
Only one 'new' album entered the chart, due to a limited CD buying budget, and it was not a high flying entry.
Minotaur Shock's second album
'Maritime' was awarded the measly score of 6.36 putting it thirty second out of thirty five. Having been compared to
Boards of Canada by reviewers, it had certainly aroused my interest but on listening to it this turned out to be a poor comparison. While it's true to say both evoke a sort of electronic nostalgia for childhood,
Minotaur Shock can only do so through a chirpy 80's muzak score which has nothing like the depth or complexity of BoC. That's not to say, of course, that the album doesn't have it's moments but over the course 50 minutes it simply doesn't work. Infact it begins to grate alittle over the halfway mark.
On top of this new entry two albums were 're-evaluated'.
Before I go on I should explain what I mean by this. Usually I give a 'new' album an initial score within a week to ten days and then leave it for about two months. I then go back and 're-evaluate' awarding a new mark which I then average out with the initial award. This way 'slow burning' albums aren't disadvantaged and albums I have had an initial flurry of enthusiasm for, but which die quickly, are also taken into account. It's not a perfect system but it works in all but the most extreme cases.
Anyway the two albums re-evaluated were
The National's
'Alligator' and
Caribou's
'The Milk Of Human Kindness'. Firstly
The National. I have heard poorer albums than this one but I can't remember an album that irritated me quite as much as
'Alligator'. I've vented my spleen elsewhere on Obner regarding this band and this album so I'll refrain from doing so here. As a twist thought the album 'improved' a little on revision but it was a paltry raise of 0.05 and the album remains firm ensconced in the dingy nether regions of the chart.
Second up for re-evaluation was
Caribou. Initially rated at 6.88, the album leap several places to take the current 13th spot with a 6.94 score and is now seemingly set for a Top Twenty position come the years end.
My record purchase this week was
Laura Cantrell and the forerunners for a second and final Konstantirank will be
The Go Betweens and
Fog.
RELATED LINKS
Find out more about Minotaur Shock here
>>>
http://www.minotaurshock.com/
UPDATE 14th June 2005
New On The Chart
Konstantiranks, you might say, is a pseudo science which, at the end of the day, is simply me allotting a numerical value which in some vague way matches the emotional response the music elicited at that particular moment.
The even more cynical might even go far as to say that the ratings merely rank the volume the CD was played at time of rating. And you might even be right. But a strange thing happened the other day...
This week I rated the new
Sons And Daughters album and the score I produced was a mere 6.60, a lowly score by any standard. And the anomaly was? Well, you see I rather like this album, certainly a lot more than many of the albums which are now piled atop of it on the list. And yet when it was broken down into it's component parts and rated by the strictly empirical terms that all Konstantiranked albums are processed under, it was unable to cut the mustard.
There have been previous occasions when I've felt albums were rated a little to low or a little to high but this was the first time such an extreme gap between my opinion and the ranking I produced, after the Konstantirank formula had been applied, had occured. I guess it just goes to show that rating any sort of artistic work by a mathematical process is fraught with difficulties and can never really be 100% reliable, but what can one do when compiling a list?
Two other albums have been reviewed since the last update.
Smog's
'A River Ain't Too Much To Love' scored a 6.80 putting it just outside the Top Twenty but it has been a constant 'grower' of a record and I'll wager it receives a higher score next time, perhaps enough for it to crawl up the chart abit.
Also rated was
The White Stripes 'Get Behind Me Satan'. A favourite of mine, the band are much like an other current favourite, namely
The Broken Family Band, in that although they are unlikely to produce a masterly LP that tops the chart they are incredibly consistent album after album. Something of a change in direction from Jack and Meg, the LP took a few listens to get to grips with but with over a week to familiarize myself with it, it has firmly established it's self as one of the better albums this year - indeed some tracks such as
'The Denial Twist' are amongst the best things they have ever done.
Next week with any luck I'll have added
Minotaur Shock to the list (this weeks purchase) and re-evaluated a couple of the current crop with
The National and
Caribou the first in the cue.
RELATED LINKS
Sons And Daughters audio and video can be found here
>>>
http://www.sonsanddaughtersloveyou.com/media.php
The White Stripes video for 'Blue Orchin' can be found here
>>>
http://www.xlrecordings.com/broadcast/~blueorchid/
Smog's video for 'Mother Of The World' can be found here
>>>
http://www.dominorecordco.com/site/?page=news&artistID=27
UPDATE 6th June 2005
New On The Chart
Like last week I've mainly been working on my 2003 list which is coming along nicely and we are now past the half way point - unless I unearth more 'forgotten' albums which is unfortunately entirely possible! The 2005 list is pretty much up to date at the moment so for the meantime I'll be continuing to concentrate on the older lists. However the 2005 rankings have seen some movement in the past seven days or so.
Four Tet was given it's initial rating gaining a score of 6.88 and a mid-league position. However since then I have listened to the album a few times and it has growing on me so we'll see if the album makes a charge up the chart in a couple of months when it gets it's final score. But what is certain is that
'Everythings Ecstatic' hasn't grabbed me, at least thus far, like
'Rounds' did.
There were no other 'new' albums reviewed but several albums were given their final etched-in-stone-for-all-eternity rating.
King Creosote and
Mark Mulcahy had been sitting on 7.00 since their entry on to the chart so it was interesting to see how they both faired - would they remain above that all important demarcation line?
Bucking the general trend
King Creosote's
'Rocket D.I.Y' jumped two places to 8th increasing it's rating to 7.12. An album heavily influenced by Caledonian folk music and traditional Scottish balledry and augmented by electronic flourishes, the album has been something of a grower over the past few months and throughly deserves it's top ten position.
Mark Mulcahy, meanwhile, moved down one place because of
King Creosotes spring up the table but infact held steady in terms of ranking with the gifted vocalists score remained static at 7.00 - not to shabby at all and still a strong contender for a Top Twenty finish.
This week is a very exciting one for new releases and
The White Stripes and
Sons & Daughters albums will both be poured over in a scholarly fashion in the coming seven days; although they are unlikely to be officially reviewed until the following week. However one group how definately will be reviewed will be
Smog and their album 'A River Ain't Too Much To Love'.
UPDATE 1st June 2005
New On The Chart
Mainly been working on my 2003 retrospectus this week but I did get some work down on my 2005 list too.
Beck's
'Guero', not a favourite on release, fell further down the list receiving a final score of 6.43 for an album that was simply a souless rehash of former glories. It's commonly acknowledge even the greatest talents have but a short time at the top and it looks like Mr Hanson's time has now come and gone. Still he leaves a better back catalogue than most.
Antony & the Johnsons were also allotted their final Konstantimark and although they were one of those rare creatures that got a higher score second time around it wasn't enough to change position in the chart. They go from 7.33 to 7.38 and remain in 4th position. Those extra points may make a bigger difference when Konstantiranks 2000 - 2005 is published.
Two of my latest purchases got their initial scores this week.
Spoon, much hyped by such Obnerian notables as Billy Radcliffe, went into the chart with a score of 6.90 putting them in 12th place. A solid, respectable effort with some individual tracks that border on great, I still can't help feel alittle cheated by the almost universal adulation this album had received. I have to say I was expecting just a little bit more. With such a score an all important place in the Top Twenty, annually submitted to the Shmoo poll, hangs in the balance. Last year 20th position had a score of.... 6.90. Tense times await for those
Spoon boys.
If I was a little disappointed by
Spoon, that sense of disappointment pales in comparison with the latest effort for
Stephen Malkmus. The initial flurry of enthusiasm for, let's be frank here, one of my all time indie hero's, lasted but two days before I was forced to accept the awful reality - or as you might say, face the truth. Sure, the likes of
'Pencil Rot' and
'No More Shoes' are worth the admission fee but at least 50% of this album is weak filler and subsequently
'Face The Truth' debuts at a very poor 25 from 30.
The immediate intinery will be to give
Four Tet's
'Everything Ecstatic' it's initial rating, while
Mark Mulcahy and
King Creosote will be informed of their final fates. However, one cannot help but be distracted to the week looming which brings with it the new
White Stripes album. Could we have a new Top Ten entry this time next week? Excitement, as always, beckons.
UPDATE 26th May 2005
New On The Chart
Well since I can't get my 'fancy' table to work properly I've decided to scrap it in favour of the boring old one which you can at least read. Of course this also means I'll be updating several times a week rather than just the once.
In the past couple of days I've given
Whitey his second and final ranking and it saw 0.15 shaved from his total. Quite a big fall in this logarithmic chart of mine where 0.1 is a big deal. This drop mean the electronica artist is unlikely to make the magic Top Twenty come the years end.
The big news however is that we have a new number one! Straight into the top positon goes
Edgar 'Jones' Jones. A few weeks ago I'd never even heard of the man but this record, which was recommended to me, has completely taken me by surprise.
Blending jazz and doo-wop with 70's soul and funk, it is a fantastic record and it actually upsets me quite a bit that someone with massive talent and who has clearly put an enormous effort into making this LP will ultimately be completely ignored by the mainstream and sell a few thousand records.
A damn shame.
