LaRM day 141 (catch up)

So back in action after a few days ill and it's the three hours plus of Can's trip down memory lane, The Lost Tapes: 1968-1975 (2012). Bearing in mind all of this previously unreleased material was recorded during Can's glory years it's not only a fascinating insight into the musical thought processes of the band, but it's also chock full of great tunes. It's sometimes a little esoteric, sometimes a little unlistenable, but that's Can for you. There's all sorts of stuff here, from extended freak-outs to low-key soundscaping, from jazz mess to funk shakedowns. Some of it is ghastly but the vast majority is Can at their best. The handful of live recordings are interesting and the sense that a lot of this is half worked out is barely noticeable, it's all so very smart. That said there's nothing here that's going to particularly sway a Can doubter or sell them to a Can novice, because when push really comes to shove you're still going to listen to Tago Mago rather than The Lost Tapes, but whatever, because it's rare that a band can put out hours of old scrapped material and it turn out to be first rate stuff.

The other band besides Everything Everything that everybody raved about for their jittery avant-rock are Django Django, whose self-titled debut was released at the beginning of the year, are a slightly less electronically driven outfit, but whose angular take on skittering rock music is not a million miles away from Everything Everything. It's a nice try at doing something a bit different, with some of those western movie soundtrack ideas drifting in amongst the post-XTC hyperactive pop. On the whole I don't find the album completely captivating and some of the ideas fall a bit flat, but it's a really good go and I suspect whatever comes next will be better yet.

You can trust Elbow to take the idea of the single B-side relatively seriously, and the recently released compilation, Dead in the Boot, proves it pretty admirably. Although the fact that it almost hangs together as an Elbow album proper does it a disfavour, making it sound like the worst (or least good I should say) album they've made, it does go to prove just what high quality the tunes they consign to the B-side bin actually are. There are one or two failed experiments but there's a high level of totally expected loveliness too, and it's interesting to note that in terms of production the band have always been sufficiently inventive to overcome any cash or expertise shortcomings.