Musique Non Stop | eMusic Electronica

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John Grant, Pale Green Ghosts Posted: 09 Jul 2013 09:23 AM PDT Dark clouds are looming, but this underdog triumph In “GMF” (“greatest motherfucker”) John Grant sings, “Half the time I think I’m in some movie/ I play the underdog, of course.” It’s a fitting description of the Reykjavik-based (by way of Denver) singer/songwriter: He’s a gay man who’s had his heart shattered, fought cocaine and alcohol addiction, and a couple years ago learned he was HIV positive. Needless to say, there are dark clouds looming over Pale Green Ghosts, his second solo record. But in case you haven’t figured it out by the name of the aforementioned song: Grant refuses to dwell on what’s gone wrong. Tracklisting 1. Pale Green Ghosts 2. Blackbelt 3. GMF 4. Vietnam 5. It Doesn't Matter To Him  6. Why Don't You Love Me Anymore 7. You Don't Have To  8. Sensitive New Age Guy 9. Ernest Borgnine  10. I Hate This Town  11. Glacier In “Ernest Borgnine,” about his HIV diagnosis, Grant wonders what the late actor would do in his situation: “When I think about everything that he’s been through/ I wish he’d call me on the phone and take my ass to school.” And in regards to his ex, he’s throwing dagger after dagger: In “Black Belt” he sasses, “What you’ve got is a black belt in B.S./ But you can’t hawk your pretty wares up in here anymore” and in “Vietnam” he sweetly croons, “The only thing that brings me any comfort/ is the knowledge that no matter who you’re with/ You’ll always be alone.” With the help of Icelandic producer Birgir Þórarinsson, Grant’s woes are balanced out with skittering electronic beats (“Pale Green Ghosts”), LCD Soundsystem-channeling disco (“Sensitive New Age Guy”) and measured acoustic guitars (“It Doesn’t Matter to Him”); besides the vocals, the backdrop is a drastic change from 2010′s Queen of Denmark, which had the brooding folk group Midlake as the backing band. Pale Green Ghosts is an emotional rollercoaster, to be sure, but it’s one that ends on a high: In the gay-rights anthem “Glacier,” with soaring strings and angelic harmonies behind him, Grant closes the record with, “This pain, it is a glacier moving through you/ And carving out deep valleys/ And creating spectacular landscapes/ And nourishing the ground/ with precious minerals and other stuff/ So don’t you become paralyzed with fear/ when things get particularly rough.”

Maps, Vicissitude Posted: 09 Jul 2013 06:00 AM PDT Grandiose innerzone pop for the discreetly blissed-out listener While shoegaze artists were sometime pretentiously described as building “sonic cathedrals of sound,” not many of those records sounded like they were made in actual cathedrals. Step forward Northampton’s James Chapman, aka Maps. Unlike Chapterhouse, Slowdive and Ride, his is largely a guitar-free zone, but towering cosmic walls of trance-inducing noise are present and correct, if supplied by ranks of keyboards rather than endless feedback. What really strikes is this third album’s cavernous spatial quality. As synths tinkle, drum machines wallop, ersatz strings stir, analog chimes chime and Chapman sings softly — which is his chief register — the whole thing seems to echo through the chambers and vaults of some vast stone structure. You can practically hear the gargoyles. Vicissitude is a lot lither than its predecessor, 2009′s Turning The Mind. Underneath the baroque electronic stylings on “Built to Last” there’s a “Planet Rock” rhythm, although Chapman clearly likes the song’s nagging synth melody so much he allows it to run on for a good two minutes after the song proper has ended, decaying into a spangly reverie. Elsewhere there’s an imperious boom to the single “A.M.A.” with jittering synths gathering in the distance — imagine Ladytron rearranged for a papal funeral. But the lyric is minor-key neuroticism, a plea for love or at least attention. Listen to ‘I Heard Them Say’ below: It’s not exactly a warm record. “Nicholas” sounds so insidious and practically medieval that it could have come from a Radiophonic Workshop album of horror themes, and Chapman’s interest in dislocation and broken communication makes this a necessarily oblique record. The nearest it has to a message is the refrain “Forgive yourself” on the delicate “This Summer,” a surprisingly commonplace thought for an otherworldly record. Neither is Chapman’s voice the most potent of tools; the album could use more variety than his breathy, half-whispered vocals can supply. But then this is grandiose innerzone pop for the discreetly blissed-out listener. The last thing it needs is a human being getting in the way.