glenatron | Stop start stop starting fires

Just back from watching Our Lost Infantry live. A Tuesday night in Bracknell doesn't make for a packed out house, but they conjured an energy into the room in a way I have very seldom seen bands do. The way they will drop everything out to just have three layered vocals and suddenly come crashing back in at precisely the right moment is nothing short of stunning. They are musically complex, lyrically smart, they have some great tunes and they put on a show. At some point during The Arsonist I actually found myself thinking "this is incendiary" and only later realised the appropriateness of the term. You may consider this a recommendation. Have a listen to the songs on that link and if they are playing nearby go see them.

It's been a good few months for music actually - I have been buying a few albums that have seemed pretty worthwhile to me so I'll share some thoughts:

The National - High Violet: My first album from The National. I know, I'm pretty late on this particular bandwagon, but oh, they really are as good as everyone says. There are so many great moments on this. It's nothing shockingly new musically but it really doesn't matter because the execution is spot on and the tunes are very memorable. Also the drummer is fantastic - he manages to totally flip out without interrupting the song in any way.
Everything Everything - Man Alive: I don't even really know what kind of music this is- some kind of crazy indie-funk with a whole bunch of seventies stuff thrown in, none of which really does it justice. I like the way the songs all craminasmanywordsaspossibleintoeveryline as I do like a good complicated wordy song but at the same time I am not so sure about the lyrics, which seem to have wandered a little beyond oblique and potentially into completely meaningless in places. Maybe the singer knows what he's on about, in which case he's probably a genius. It's so full of musical fun and invention that you can forgive them a lot. Also I like the song where Diana's phantom head is directing some kind of revolution.
I Like Trains - Elegies to Lessons Learnt: How did it take me so long to realise how good these guys are? If you imagine someone taking the post-rock stylings of Explosions In The Sky or someone along those lines and then adding a deep voiced singer whose songs are often about obscure moments from history ( in fact this album originally packed with a booklet of essays on each song's topic ) and you have a pretty good idea of what this record sounds like. It's pretty intense, dark, slow and epic. If those are things you enjoy in music you would probably enjoy this.
The Outcast Band - The Longest Mile: A bit of context here- The Outcast Band were the single best live act I have ever seen. Some of their performances when I saw them at university totally blew my mind with their power and intensity. They split up before they released the album that would have featured most of the songs they were playing at that time and then, fifteen years later, they got back together and recorded them, along with a few other newer tracks. This only arrived a few days ago and it hasn't really had the attention it deserves yet, but it has an instant familiarity because these are songs I loved when I heard them live and that I tried to hear live at every opportunity. They still have their solid, upbeat, folk-rock sound allied to emotional and downbeat lyrics, Tex's voice still has that combination of rough growl and vulnerable tremor and the whole thing takes me back a long way. I don't know if it would mean as much to anyone else, but I enjoy it although I wish it had come out back in the mid nineties when I really needed it.
I Like Trains - He Who Saw The Deep: Now this is something different. More song-oriented than Elegies ( which actually came out a few years back ) and only just out, so I have yet to give it the listening it needs, but so far this sounds like an important record. It is dark, rich, complex and deep, varied yet coherent and deeply serious. Rather than the historical vignettes of their earlier material, this is songs about the modern age and it's consequences. In moments it reminds me of other records I love - there are hints of Strangelove in a couple of places, certain moments recall Radiohead in their heyday - but this is absolutely and unquestionably it's own record. I don't think you can necessarily declare something a masterpiece until it has had years to settle into it's own context, but this sounds to me a lot the way a masterpiece sounds at the first few listens. I would not be at all surprised if this turned out to be my album of the year by a clear margin.

All in all, a good few months for music. Next up, I believe the very brilliant Dry The River are playing in Reading next Wednesday, so we're planning to get to that as they are another band whose music I love but I have yet to see live.