LaRM day 44 (Bjork-Bloc Party)

The final bit of Bjork is last year's Biophilia, which is another fairly challenging but brilliant piece of work, chopping up and mixing some beautiful contemplative songs with industrial noise and post-grime breakbeats. Many of the songs kind of sabotage themselves from within, brutal jugged juddering rhythms ripping through the tunes, turning them from stunning pieces of music into vicious shards of noise. The songs on which this technique isn't employed are just beautiful throughout but on the whole it's another experimental album full of ideas and superb execution. The albums theme of the relationship between mankind, technology and the natural world is one which requires careful thought to avoid seeming cheap or juvenile. Cheap and juvenile have never had any relationship with Bjork's work though, and unsurprisingly Biophilia is a remarkably cerebral take on a concept fraught with moral complication. As is so often the way, it's not the easiest album in the world to love, but you can't help but deeply admire it.

Cilla Black and Dusty Springfield made a single in 1993 called 'Heart and Soul' about how great it was to be a successful pop singer in the heady days of the 1960's. I was given this by my great friends Karen and Alison-Jayne (man I wish I knew where they are now) when I was at college. It's not a joke worth going into now, but it was a good one. The record, of course, is shit.

When not giving it melancholy in the best slowcore band ever, Low, the decidedly peculiar Alan Sparhawk also has a couple of other bands, one of which is his grungy blues-rock outfit the Black-Eyed Snakes. Their debut, It's the Black-Eyed Snakes (2002) takes the template that the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion created and makes it feel more authentic yet. The record sounds like it was recorded live at a super-sleazy blues dive in which the kind of white trash that populate David Lynch films are hanging out. It's a great record, dirty, scuzzy and fuzzed up with some fantastically propulsive tunes.

Next up are a few records by Juliana Hatfield's Blake Babies. The first mini-LP, Nicely Nicely (1987) is a charming little bit of indie rock, with a delicate bit of a pop sensibility. Hatfield's jazzy, choppy chords and uncontrolled mid-register voice make for sprightly bits of invective fuelled rock music. Hatfield was never given any props for her songs (people were too interested in her ill-advised comments about feminism and her relationship with Evan Dando) and it's a shame I think because she wrote some great tunes. Nicely Nicely isn't the best thing the Blake Babies did by a long shot but it's a charming introduction. The first proper album, Earwig (1989) is more of the same, but it's better recorded and structed and the songs are more confidently arranged and performed. The angry lyrics are still hidden by the jaunty, choppy tunes and Hatfield's slightly "girly" delivery, but it's a lovely album, and one that always brings back great memories of the summer of 1990.

The best record that the band made came next. Sunburn (1990) is the point at which the heartfelt and often frustrated concerns of the lyrics are crystalised and the tunes are taken in hand properly and given a serious considerate structure. These are pop songs that have been crafted rather than enthusiastically bashed out and although the whole thing lacks the rush of energy that Nicely Nicely and Earwig have, it's a really good pop/rock album and Hatfield seems like she could be a really great songwriter at this time (opener 'I'm Not Your Mother' is ace). It wasn't to be for the band though, and disagreements about the direction the band were heading between guitarist John Strohm and Hatfield led to the band's split in 1992. A compilation album, Innocence and Experience (1993) came after containing songs from all the albums, but focussing mainly on Sunburn. There are a few previously unreleased gems (Hatfield's widely reported eating disorder is dissected in the guilelessly open 'Boiled Potato'), but it's not exactly essential stuff.

For some reason that I can't quite fathom they reunited in 2000 and released God Bless the Blake Babies in 2001. As an album it's fine, quite a mature version of the earlier records, still quite lively, still a bit angsty, the ingredients really all still the same. But it's got very little energy and it even sounds like it was probably quite a chore for the band to make and while it has a handful of great songs, it also has a fair share of duds, and the band split again. Hatfield has always been something of an indie fanboy crush for me throughout the years, so there will be plenty more of her records to come later...

Finally for today it's a record that I didn't like much, it's Bloc Party's Silent Alarm (2005). I think maybe I particularly didn't take to it because everybody was saying how great it was. Nothing puts me on guard like uniform praise - it just means something must be wrong. It sounds better to me now that the fuss is all in the distant past but it still isn't a particularly great album. It's OK, there are a few nicely 4AD rip-off sounding angstathons but for the most part it's pretty forgettable filler material. It's telling that every song that has anything really memorable about it was released as a single. Some of those songs are really strong in a kind of generically indie disco friendly kind of way, but there's really nothing here to have got everybody so wound up...

Tomorrow has lots of Blondie in store. Some terrible, most good, some great.