LaRM day 102 (Death Cab for Cutie-Deep Purple)

It took me a while to come round to Death Cab for Cutie, because I always felt that it was all a bit too "revenge of the nerds". Although I like indie-dweebs records, I have a natural aversion to the actual indie-dweebs themselves. I think it's something to do with the time I lived in Brighton, which was the capital of the indie-dweeb kingdom then. Anyway, having decided to give up assuming that the weedy little records that Death Cab for Cutie put out weren't worth bothering about, I had a proper listen to a late album, Narrow Stairs (2008) and realised that despite half of the songs being pretty wet, there's some brutal stuff on it and really it's just Ben Gibbard's nasal whine of a voice that causes the problem - the actual songs are great. Narrow Stairs has an engaging bleakness to it and although it does have that indie-band-on-major-label type of feel, particularly to the production it's still a bold and pretty unashamed rock album. There are a few dud moments but overall it's pretty decent stuff. The following year's The Open Door EP is a mixed bag, but it does have a couple of really fine songs ('My Mirror Speaks' and 'I Was Once a Loyal Lover').

Death in Vegas' The Contino Sessions (1999) caused quite a stir when it came out. Listening to it now it's hard to see quite what all the fuss was about. It's certainly a decent record with a dramatically dark atmosphere but it's not a masterpiece and it sort of outstays its welcome. As far as gloomy, dank electronica goes it's really successful but it's really very much of its time and the passage of only 13 years has left it sounding stranded in the past. All the songs work indivually and Iggy Pop's turn on 'Aisha' is entertaining but you do find yourself questioning whether this stuff was really going anywhere. It's a surprisingly enjoyably nostalgic listen but it doesn't make me want to listen to any of their other records.

Another band it took me a while to admit to liking is the Decemberists. The arch theatricality of it all put me off and it all struck me as being a little bit too Danielson Familie like for my taste. I was surely wrong about that though, because the Decemberists albums are a much more intricate and involved proposition. There's a proggish determination to them which I really like. I guess Colin Meloy's affected vocals (and equally affected songwriting) can be tough to take on, but I think it's all great stuff. Third album, Picaresque (2005) demonstrates just how dear to Meloy's heart the British folk-rock movement of the late 1960's is. If anything, it's the faintly corny edge of Pentangle that really informs Meloy's songwriting, but he imbues it all with a kind of indie-rock credibility, which he simultaneously undermines with a prog-rock approach to song structure. It's a fascinating and unusual approach to being an indie rock band and it really works well. Picaresque is a collection of great songs written in that style, and although the extended indie-prog workouts are scarcely evident, you can hear what was coming.

The super-ambition starts to really make itself clear on 2006's The Crane Wife. It has the usual faintly supernatural medievalism to the lyrics (all clearer and clearer evidence of the completeness of the British folk foundations on which this stuff is all built), but it also has a massive dose of seriously prog inspired elements. The Keith Emerson style keyboard work on 12-minute workout 'The Island' is a total giveaway, it's a direct lift of Emerson's work. And there again is another key to the success of the Decemberists - they aren't afraid of appearing desperately naff, and it's the confidence with which they affect this carelessness that I think makes it all work so well. The Crane Wife is perhaps a lift heavy and a little overloaded, and possibly a bit disjointed, but it's a supremely good album which accepts its appeal will be limited and plays arrogantly to its crowd.

2009's The Hazards of Love finally goes to the dread place threatened by the Decemberists previous records - the concept album. Now, as has been clear throughout the last 102 days, I have no problem whatsoever with either a) the concept album, or (b) prog. Therefore, contrary to most of the outraged indie kids, I think that The Hazards of Love is a truly fantastic record. It's florid, excessive, overblown, pretentious, absurd, grandstanding, grotesque, self-important, whimsically enigmatic, and it's precisely for all those reasons that it's absolutely superb, and it's the ultimate demonstration that Meloy is creating this stuff entirely on his own terms, without reference to anyone but his influences. The rest of the world's opinion is their own and they're entitled to it, but it doesn't seem to have any relevance to his own view of what kind of records he could and should make, and it's this unshakeable confidence in the rightness of what he's doing that makes it all so successful. There's Deep Purple, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Pentangle, Emerson Lake & Palmer, King Crimson, Fairport Convention, even Meat Loaf and Steeleye Span in here but incredibly it's still a thoroughly modern indie rock album. It's a spectacular display of singularity of vision and it's enormously impressive.

Last up is the massive rock machine that is Deep Purple's Fireball (1971). What a great slab of 70's heaviosity Fireball is. It's a rollicking, bluesy roll of an album, packed with smoking riffs and stoned out rhythm. It's a really dumb album but good lord it's superb. In some ways it's the quintessential heavy rock album (more so than Machine Head I would say) because it encapsulates so perfectly just how broad the rock scope was in the 1970's, all based on those old blues riffs certainly, but reaching out all over the place. It's tight and it's humourless while being absurd, and it's little more than brilliant fun.