LaRM day 72 (Cave-In-Kasey Chambers)

Back again after Bank Holiday weekend and illness and the day starts with Antenna (2003) by emo-metallers Cave-In. People were quite excited by Cave-In and this album in particular I seem to remember. It hasn't aged particularly brilliantly and the rather underwritten vocal parts and weedy voice make the album difficult to really engage with. Musically it's pretty solid, tricksy heavy emo and the contrast with the second rate vocal lines is marked and faintly irritating. On the whole it's a decent slab of well-meaning and occasionally enjoyably complex emo-rock, but you feel there's something missing and, as is so often the way with emo (especially of the more metal variety), you find yourself wishing that they had the gumption and the balls to stop pretending that they spend their days in the library reading Turgenev and just admit that they really want to be Mastodon.

I thought that I really didn't like Chairlift's debut album Does You Inspire You? (2008). Maybe it's because a song was used in an ad before anybody knew who they were, perhaps it's because it all felt a little forced, a little false; indie-schmindie by numbers for people who wanted to pretend that they like that sort of music but really don't. Listening to it now, with shit iPod TV spots in the rear-view mirror, I think I may have misjudged it. It's a woozy, ragged bit of indie, suitably fey, but unexpectedly twilit and discomfortingly moody. It's uneven certainly, but that's no crime for a debut indie record in an age where if you have a vocabulary of more than six words and a bank account that'll afford it, anyone can make a debut indie record. If anything the worst that can be said of Does You Inspire You? is that it isn't particularly inspiring, but as off-kilter, spooky little indie albums go, it's more than decent it turns out.

OK, I'll keep this one brief. Barricades and Brickwalls (2001) by Australian C&W singer Kasey Chambers is a fairly disastrous attempt at replicating the rougher end of Nashville country and despite a guest spot by the mighty Lucinda Williams, it's a pretty terrible parade of stock US country cliches that sit uncomfortably in the mouth of a young Australian from a folk background. The whole thing reeks of literally pathetic contrivance; it makes me sad to listen to such a fallow effort to emulate influences. It's a shame because despite Chambers' hard to like vocal inflections you can hear something that might be interesting if she had a go at not being somebody else. In the end it's basically rubbish.

I would have written a lot more but listening to Harry Chapin has broken my will. I'll talk about it tomorrow.