Album reviews: Empire Of The Sun - Two Vines, Madness - Can’t Touch Us Now, Courteeners, and more

Also Dr John, Midlake, The Pop Group, and Soft Hair

Empire Of The Sun, Two Vines

★★★☆☆

Download: Before; High And Low; Ride; First Crush

“It’s a new wave, crashing in the ocean,” sings Luke Steele in “Before”, the opening track of Two Vines – and it must be admitted that this new effort sounds like a reversion from the disappointing Ice On The Dune to the electro bliss-pop of Empire Of The Sun’s debut Walking On A Dream. “Come wash the clouds away,” he continues over the striding synth-pop groove, in a haze of airy vocals akin to the furry warmth of “I’m Not In Love”, only less insulated.

The tone, not to mention almost the exact same beat, continues with “High And Low”, a pulsing paean to summer, “when the late nights last forever”, and a girl who “sees stars and rocketships” in the night sky. If it had been released a few months ago, when the nights weren’t drawing in with quite the same crispness, it would have provided the perfect soundtrack to a thousand holiday romances. As too might “First Crush”, which does exactly what it says on the label, with the cutesy charm of the keyboards and soaring synth effects evoking that first awed flush of deep affection.

Elsewhere, “Two Vines” itself is another, albeit slower and more miasmic, invitation to nocturnal fun, “in the prime of our lives, and all because we trust two vines” (whatever that means); while “There’s No Need” likewise asserts how attuned are the two lovers’ souls. Stained with resonant electric piano, it features Steele’s most heavily autotuned vocals, an echoey android effect which would probably work well in one of those creepily dystopian AI sci-fi series like Humans.

It comes as no surprise to learn that the album was recorded in Hawaii and the antipodean duo’s current hometown Los Angeles, as Two Vines glows with a relaxed, beachside warmth that brings to mind “Standing On The Shore” from their debut. This time round, they have a gang of heavy friends lending a hand, including Lindsay Buckingham, Wendy Melvoin (from Prince’s greatest band) and a couple of players from Bowie’s Blackstar band; though as with Walking On A Dream, the key influences are as much Air and The Beloved as more recent electropop acts: there’s a restrained but effortless euphoria about tracks like “Ride” that’s positively loved-up.

Courteeners, Mapping The Rendezvous

★★☆☆☆

Download: No One Will Ever Replace Us; Lucifer’s Dreams

Despite a broadening of horizons to take in France on a few tracks, accommodating what appears to be a yearning for pastures new, the Courteeners are still pretty much mired in Mancunian mores on this latest album. Not so much in the lyrics – there are as many references to Stoke Newington and Paris as to Manchester – as the music, which cleaves to the meat-and-spuds basics that have dominated much of the city’s musical output in recent years. The scrubbed rhythm guitars, muscular basslines and brusque drums anchor tracks such as “Lucifer’s Dreams” and “Kitchen” in the lumpen everyday, as Liam Fray muses drably on routine matters like his romantic shortcomings and the adversities of over-indulgence. The standout track is “No One Will Ever Replace Us”, Fray’s account of getting separated in a festival crowd, after a promising start when “I had your hamstrings on my shoulders for LCD”.

Madness, Can’t Touch Us Now

★★★☆☆

Download: Don’t Leave The Past Behind You; Mumbo Jumbo

While Madness could be accused of the same kind of localised focus as the Courteeners, the more cosmopolitan nature of London’s musical texture ensures there’s more diversity in their work. Can’t Touch Us Now doesn’t have quite the exploratory breadth of Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da, but there’s enough variety to animate their tableaux of social portraits, from the alpha males evoked in the reggae groove of “Grandslam” to the prancing bar-room piano mocking the moral hypocrite “Mr Apples”. Serious issues are broached in the assertion of religious freedom “I Believe” and looming poverty of “Good Times”, and there’s a piquant glimpse of Amy Winehouse in “Blackbird”, a ship passing Suggs in the night; but the most enjoyable tracks are the blue-beat skank about political double-talk, “Mumbo Jumbo”, and “Don’t Leave The Past Behind You”, which has the hooky appeal of earlier Madness classics.

Various Artists, The Musical Mojo Of Dr John: Celebrating Mac And His Music

★★★★☆

Download: Right Place Wrong Time; Life; New Orleans; Such A Night

Featuring guests both local and from farther afield, this tribute concert to Dr John sounds like, to quote the man himself, such a night. Accompanied by a crack hometown band for whom the intricacies of New Orleans’ distinctive second-line rhythms are clearly second nature, it’s a parade of infectious funk and soul right from the moment Bruce Springsteen romps through “Right Place Wrong Time”, to the Doctor’s closing roll through “I Walk On Guilded Splinters” and “Such A Night”. In between these signature songs, there are scorching turns from soul queens Irma Thomas and Mavis Staples, lock-tight Crescent City grooves and croons from old chums like Allen Toussaint and sundry Nevilles and Meters, and confident negotiations of rumba-rock and R&B staples from Jason Isbell and John Fogerty, the latter indomitable as ever on Gary US Bonds’ “New Orleans”.

Midlake, The Trials Of Van Occupanther (10th Anniversary Edition)

★★★★★

Download: Roscoe; Head Home; Van Occupanther; Young Bride; Branches

Midlake’s breakthrough album The Trials Of Van Occupanther became an instant classic upon its 2006 release, swiftly acquiring an impressive cohort of admirers including members of the Manics, Radiohead, Flaming Lips and Chemical Brothers. Which might seem odd given its Walden-like hankering for reclusive antiquity, and the luxuriant 1970s AOR melodies and textures in which it’s realised: it’s rather like the time-shifting eco-narrative of “After The Goldrush” as realised by Fleetwood Mac or Steely Dan. But the throwback sound suits perfectly its whimsical tales of bandits and young brides, masons and outcasts; and nary an iota of its charm has since evaporated. This vinyl edition comes with an additional 7” of two hitherto unreleased songs, “The Fairest Way” and “Festival”, whose sombre psych-folk swirl presages the direction pursued on the equally brilliant follow-up The Courage Of Others. A true millennial musical landmark.

The Pop Group, Honeymoon On Mars

★★★★☆

Download: Instant Halo; City Of Eyes; Pure Ones; Zipperface

Following last year’s hook-up with producer Paul Epworth for Citizen Zombie, this follow-up finds The Pop Group reunited with dub maestro Dennis Bovelle (who produced their debut album almost four decades ago), with the added bonus of Public Enemy soundscaper Hank Shocklee bringing his singular vision to some tracks. It’s a natural fit in both cases: Bovelle’s dub skills ensure there’s depth and disturbance in the band’s angry bricolages of whines, whirrs and harsh, stabbing guitars dancing around Mark Stewart’s edgy, political caterwauling on tracks like “Instant Halo” and “Pure Ones”, while Shocklee cooks up a bulldozer funk maelstrom of splintering sounds for “Burn Your Flag” and “City Of Eyes”. Stewart’s missives from “the edge of the empire of signs” rail, as ever, against the “tyranny of beauty” and the “kingdom of lies”, a verbal powder-keg of accusatory rhetoric demanding, in the swaggering “Zipperface”, “Who bought your silence?”.

Soft Hair, Soft Hair

★★★☆☆

Download this: Relaxed Lizard; Jealous Lies; In Love

By some distance the strangest album (and cover) of the week, Soft Hair is the eponymous debut by the duo of Sam Dust (aka LA Priest) and multi-instrumentalist Connan Mockasin – an alliance of oddballs with no brake on their imaginations, nobody to prevent them doing something because, well, it sounds silly. Which is the case with much of Soft Hair: not only does “Relaxed Lizard” feature the most absurdly cartoonish falsetto, the ensuing “Jealous Lies” finds its stalking “Psycho Killer” intro undermined by some of the most ridiculous, playful synthesiser ever recorded, before a range of Residents-style tones and timbres begins mutating constantly – though always anchored by an irrepressibly catchy melody. At their most normal, “In Love” resembles Prince at his oddest; while the most likeable of a range of silly lyrics offers the promise, “I like to watch you run, but I’ll never touch your bum”.