There's a strange sense of pointlessness about the remix and duet album, Open Season (2006) which collates a number of different peoples takes on tunes from Let It Die. Once again it's mostly perfectly pleasant but the fact that some people strip the songs down to their bare bones and others plaster them with beats and keyboards means it's another frustrating and faintly irritating listen. Four versions of the OK song 'Mushaboom' is too many for anyone no matter how differently they're remixed and the fact that they all made the cut gives a clue to the real problem with Open Season - it sounds like a bunch of mates being given free rein to do what they want, whether it's any good or not (why is there even a version of Peaches' 'Lovertits' on this, let alone the anodyne mess of this one?). There are high points: this time out the Bee Gees' 'Inside and Out' is rendered by Feist with just her voice and acoustic guitar and it's transformed from a camp joke into a truly lovely song (so true of so many Bee Gees tunes, if they'd let other people record them they wouldn't seem nearly so stupid), and the Postal Service's remix of 'Mushaboom' is great. The overall mood of Open Season for the most part is a gently low-key drift, but on the whole it's just not enough to get either excited about or to see a full justification for.
2007's The Reminder is a vast improvement and marks Feist's first serious attempt at making a record I think. Although too long, it has some beautifully stripped down songs which finally serve as a framework for her surprisingly supple voice ('The Water' is really fabulous). There is a consistency of tone, and the fuller sound, both in terms of the band and the production, makes the album seem like a much more serious proposition. The brisker, bigger songs can occasionally sound suspiciously like the Broken Social Scene (obviously unsurprising considering that both Feist and some of her band are part-time jobbers in BSS), but they really sweep the album along. Some of the bigger slow tunes don't quite work ('The Limit to Your Love' is too in thrall to a kind of post-70's singer-songwriter grandstanding which neither suits her voice nor the band, but it's a nice try I guess), and the whole thing works really wonderfully when it's kept more basic (the cheery singalong of '1234' is charming and is an object lesson in simplicity for instance, and the graceful 'How My Heart Behaves' is absolutely beautiful). The essential fact seems to be that Feist just doesn't really have either the vocal or the songwriting chops for ornate sophistication and when she strains for it, she falls short. Nevertheless, considering the singularly uninspiring material that preceded it The Reminder is a very pretty, fine record with some outstanding moments.
Next is one of the greatest concept albums of all time (although it's rarely recognised as such), mainly because it's of a genre for which the very idea of a concept album would usually be anathema. Felix da Housecat's Kittenz and thee Glitz (2001) is a blisteringly good bit of sleazy retro dance which is equal parts John Carpenter soundtrack, Giorgio Moroder tribute and scummy Stock, Aitken & Waterman cast-off and those things put together create one of the most inspiring "dance" albums ever made. Apart from anything else it's astonishingly smart, and not only musically; you can hear just how much thought and craft have gone into putting it together, and you can also hear that it's the work of a supremely clever cultural magpie putting all of his spoils together and arranging them so perfectly that the line between parody and innovation becomes almost invisible. For instance, he even has the brilliant sense to include a note perfect replication of Space's lost to most people's memories 70's electro smash 'Magic Fly'. Ostensibly a collection of highly disciplined late Detroit techno tunes, it's actually as much a bitingly satirical look back at a brutally desensitized cultural milieu of the late 80's, and musically it's equal parts bang-up-to-date electro and hilariously retro dance-pop, and the storyline, such as is it is, is a kind of version of Hogarth's Rake's Progress, with a female lead character trying whatever it takes to be famous and hang out with stars and be noticed, for whatever reason no matter how sleazy or abusive (the video for the Miss Kittin vocalled 'Silver Screen/Shower Scene' delivers a suitably unnerving demonstration). The whole album is opulent and sleazy, seductive and queasy, and although it is very much a product of the early 2000's, I can't see how it could be any better.
Something very, very different now, with Lawrence and his Felt. It took me a while to get to grips with Felt, not least because I found Lawrence's laconic speak-singing a bit hard to take. And he seemed like a bit of a dick to me too. Anyway, the music was never a problem because I'm quite happy with super-jangly indie rock and Felt were probably the last word in jangle-pop, with ringing twelve-string guitars and muted drums, jaunty basslines and a little bit of reverb on the lot. Many of the jangle-pop set that are around today (Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Grouplove, etc) took a lot from Felt. 1984's The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories is a great little half hour, as one shimmering guitar pop gem follows another, each of them over in the blink of an eye. It's a record that has little ambition outside of its own parameters and as such it takes a close listen to hear just how intricate much of the guitar really is and although it sounds like a simple bit of jaunty pop, there's some pretty tricky stuff going on. There are some really highlights on The Strange Idols Pattern, not least 'Sunlight Bathed the Golden Glow' and 'Crystal Ball' which almost serve as templates for all jangle-pop to follow.
Felt upped the ante a bit on 1986's Forever Breathes the Lonely Word, adding in swirling keyboards and a heightened production to bring out every delicate arpeggiated guitar string. It's a lush and enveloping sound, as jangly as ever, but even more engaging in its melodic structures and although Lawrence's vocal delivery remains as deadpan, even seemingly unengaged, as ever it's a wonderful album full of shining examples of how to write an indie-pop song, with two more superb highlights in 'Rain of Crystal Spires' and 'Gather Up Your Wings and Fly'. As an interesting aside, it's worth noting the striking similarities throughout their careers of the guitar and bass sounds and melodies of Felt and the Smiths.
Austrian experimentalist Fennesz has made a load of albums of differing quality but all with the same basic structure - a kind of fractured ambient electronica built out of jagged instrumental samples. Some are very serene and quite beautiful, others are viciously antagonistic, but they are all composed of the same essential elements. The compilation Field Recordings: 1995-2002 (released in 2002) is something of a curate's egg, containing good and bad examples of both sounds. Collecting a selection of tracks from EP's and various artist compilations, there are some wonderfully involving bits of drone sampling (most of the material from the 'Instrument' EP, all of which is included, is pretty hypnotic), but there are also some fairly pointless bits of spiky electronica. Taken as a whole it simply doesn't work as an album because the pieces are too obviously unrelated and many of them clearly either an opportunity to clear house or to try something new which often hasn't worked. There are some beauties, but it's hardly worth the effort when compared to Fennesz's studio albums.
Get your croon on, we've got a whole load of that stupid old Tory lady-botherer Bryan Ferry to kick us off tomorrow...
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