'Ames Room' - Silje Nes

[Originally published on Twisted Ear]

Less really is more for a unique talent

Long before Sigur Rós became the obligatory soundtrack for sweeping vistas on wildlife documentaries, Nordic musicians have turned to the dramatic natural wilderness around them for creative inspiration. So it is with Norwegian multi-instrumentalist Silje Nes, who spent her formative years in the tiny town of Leikanger in Norway’s largest fjord of Sognefjord, before moving to Bergen in 2000 to begin making music. Her otherworldly and largely improvised recordings are collected on this endearing, understated debut.

From the off, the lyrics suggest an artist immersed in the environment around her. Over All is a glockenspiel-flavoured nursery rhyme teeming with both natural and supernatural imagery: buzzing bees, swamps, frogs and monsters. This child-like awe of the natural world is complimented by a poetic flair and bold musical invention: similar qualities which saw Joanna Newsom installed as indie folk darling last year. With its crisp arpeggios and lilting melody, Drown is disarming in its delicate simplicity, a shimmering, ethereal flight of fancy. Shapes, Electic is the first of several near-instrumentals, with Silje cooing wordlessly over a backdrop of scratchy ambience and woodwind. It's a perfect mood-setter before the gorgeous title track, an implausibly sweet lullaby with echoes of Stina Nordenstam's Little Star (a compliment of the highest order). A counterpoint to such gossamer pop delights comes with Giant Disguise, a hypnotic, slow-building rootsy mantra which evokes a similar druggy inertia to much-missed Domino acolytes Woodbine.

The second half of the album sees a slight dip in quality, with several wilfully unfocussed mood pieces so minimalist as to barely register. Many of these songs were actually written as recorded, lending them a necessarily unfinished air. Even so, there are a couple of hidden gems: Bright Night Morning is a rustic torch ballad possessed of a nagging, frazzled melancholy, like a stripped-down Mazzy Star. Melt, with its wispy refrain “the summer sun will make this melt” repeated softly over a spare guitar riff, is dewy-eyed and mesmerising.

At its best, Silje’s music conjures up a world of fragile beauty and kaleidoscopic intrigue. Like Four Tet and Boards of Canada, there’s a warm-blooded nostalgic core to this organic electro-folk which underpins the spirit of experimentalism. Ames Room is the sound of an artist alive with possibility, guileless in outlook and boundless in imagination.

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'Milkmaid Grand Army EP' - Midlake

[Originally published on Twisted Ear]

Before the Gold Rush: timely re-issue from Texan luminaries

Or “how I learned to quit worrying and embrace my wonky art rock past” as it perhaps should have been subtitled. To clarify: Milkmaid Grand Army is not Midlake’s eagerly-anticipated follow-up to 2006’s sophomore LP The Trials of Van Occupanther. It’s not even new material, but a re-issue of the Texans’ long-since deleted debut EP from 2001, pre-dating their Damascus-style conversion to pastoral, harmony-drenched Americana.

First impressions: hmm, this doesn’t sound much like Midlake at all, at least not in their latter-day incarnation. What it does sound like, (unnervingly so in places) is Radiohead circa 1997. Not surprisingly, as it turns out: the release of OK Computer represented something of a musical epiphany for singer/songwriter Tim Smith, who played the album every day for a year.

The result is seven tracks steeped in turn-of-the-century progressive rock stylings: multi-layered guitar parts, sparse piano motifs, distorted vocals. All it’s missing is the Nigel Godrich production credit.

Opener She Removes Her Spiral Hair gives an early indication of what to expect: a menacing guitar riff and insistent percussion leading into a sneering growl of a vocal which veers off in desultory directions. Paper Gown continues in a similarly downbeat vein, all brooding, woozy psychedelia, sounding to these ears like a lost outtake from Grandaddy’s stately lo-fi opus The Sophtware Slump. Excited but Not Enough and Roller Skate (Farewell June) see a welcome change of tempo, the former an adrenaline shot of dissonant bombast, the latter the sort of falsetto-driven drone rock patented by Clinic. Closer Golden Hour hints at the classicist sensibilities which were to follow, a mournful, minor key lament which owes an obvious debt to (yep) Radiohead's Exit Music (Theme From a Film).

Recent Midlake converts may find this EP hard-going and a little too self-consciously obtuse in flavour for their palates, lacking the obvious musical cohesion and songwriting élan which marks out Van Occupanther as one of last year’s most enchanting releases. While there's much to admire, it’s the sound of a songwriter too obviously in thrall to his influences to yet dare to transcend them. As a stop-gap release it represents an interesting insight into the band’s musical evolution, but one destined to remain a non-essential curiosity for all but the completist fan.