I had never heard of Gabriel Kahane, until I saw mention of his song Charming Disease by one of my favourite singer-songwriters, the mighty Gavin Castleton. And what a track this it turned out to be!

Lyrically, it’s a sad tale of fighting alcoholism, set to music containing delicious aching strings, guitar and piano, and reminding me a little of Leeds artist Lone Wolf.

Listen to a stream of Charming Disease from the Gabriel Kahane bandcamp page below.

“You were sneaking out with little lies, in the morning by the market, for a good time
You tried to hide it by the lemon trees, I took you home and took away your keys.”

Merritt Pkwy is the tale of a chance meeting and a relationship that ends as quickly as it starts. The song could well be a continuation of the story from the previous track.  The tracks are even linked by a string section that could be acting as a bridge between the two lyrics.

“And I say now what I said then 
please let me forget you 
In some hot one gas station town 
please let me forget you”

There are shades of Sufjan Stevens and Rufus Wainwright in Kahane’s music, and although he comes from a classical background, this album is a mixture of pop and indie. It’s true there are shifting time signatures, string sections and theatrical touches, but the album will appeal to those who like intelligent pop music. Nothing is throwaway, every note is carefully considered and exists for a reason.

The track LA opens with a picked guitar refrain, typical of many signer-songwriters, but is uniquely under-pinned by a baroque piano-part.

“LA
The selfish city wins again.”

Watch the video for LA below

Last Dance is a heart-wrenching song of loss and regret. Regret for the words that were not spoken, the final experiences that could not be shared, and the aching desire to share a lover’s touch one last time.

“all I want is a face to hold
and love and light and sex
and cigarettes”

Icebox name-checks New York land-marks that don’t quite resonate with a South-east London boy like me, but the imagery paints a picture of travelling through cities and people watching that is universal.

Winter Song has some wonderful double-bass and electric piano in the middle section of the song, recalling early 70’s John Martyn, and is topped off by a lovely flute arrangement.

“scratching out a past
we don’t remember much
words come apart like
tendon shattered bone”

Where Are The Arms is an ambitious album, covering several genres, often within individual songs, and stands up to repeated listening. Each song is a portrait, with common themes such as regret, isolation and missed connections (Merritt Pkwy is a prime example).

Watch the Charming Disease video

Buy Where Are The Arms from Amazon

The follow-up to 2010’s The Golden Archipelago is the Austin, Texas bands first on new label Sub Pop.

A more accessible album (mainly due to stronger, much more direct songs in my opinion), album opener Animal Life rolls along, topped with a Robert Fripp-esque guitar wail.

Breaking the Yearlings follows the Shearwater trait of being a homage to nature, animals (yearlings are young horses) and birds and this song with it’s full-on drums and 60’s organ riff, is another to add to the list.

Unusually for Shearwater, there are bluesey elements to some of the guitar parts on this album, particularly on the track Dread Sovereign.

The albums key track is You As You Were, which is already shaping up to be my favourite Shearwater track. Hammered piano over a metronomic kick drum gives way to a sweetly sequenced synth line, and a rapidly building frenzied vocal that leaves you breathless by the end of this powerful song.

Don’t take my word for it, have a listen to a stream of the track, from the Shearwater SoundCloud account, below.

“When you fell in the rocks
At a bend in the river
With the blood from your nose
Running hard on your fingers
And through the rest of your life.”

You As You Were

Stream on iPhone / iPad

Insolence sounds like Raintree Crow meets late period Talk Talk (come on, how could I write a Shearwater review without mentioning singer Jonathan Meiburg’s resemblance to Mark Hollis?) and Immaculate starts off sounding like Dr Feelgood until the vocals kick in, which was a bit of a surprise.

The drums and percussion are very prominent and high in the mix on this album, so on occasions the atmosphere / space usually found in Shearwater songs is toned down a little, but it’s forgivable when you hear songs as strong as You As You Were and Open Your Houses.

Run the Banner Down displays a lighter touch, compared to the majority of the album, with a delicate picked guitar and gentle tom and percussion work that gives the song its unique pace.

The album closes with Star of the Age, which is perhaps a little too “lighters in the air” for my liking and a track I won’t return to as often as others on this album. The penultimate track Believing Makes it Easy would have been a more fitting ending to Animal Joy, but if a track like Star of the Age brings the music of Shearwater to a wider audience, it’s a small price to pay for getting music of this quality out to a more mainstream audience.

Buy Animal Joy on Amazon

Visit Amazon’s Shearwater Store

All lyrics © Shearwater

Shearwater website

Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Trent Reznor’s third recent collaboration with Atticus Ross (the other two being the Academy Award winning The Social Network soundtrack and the post NIN band How to Destroy Angels) is the soundtrack to the David Fincher directed The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

The album is framed by a bookend of cover versions – the opener is a cover of Led Zeppelin‘s Immigrant Song, which is probably already one of the most played songs this year, featuring in the trailer for the film that has received millions of YouTube viewings. Featuring  Karen O from Yeah Yeah Yeahs on vocals, its the most guitar heavy piece on the soundtrack.  Bar the final track, the rest of the album is made up of dark, ambient, atmospheric instrumental music.

Reznor & Ross worked together during the latter Nine Inch Nails years, most notably on the Ghosts I-IV album, so this dark electronica is a continuation of their previous work. An early highlight on this 39 track release is What If We Could?, a gentle piano piece that stands out from the darkness of the preceding music. With The Flies follows, and is one of the most disturbing tracks on the album, with an incessant buzzing hinting at what are probably gory visuals in the forthcoming film.

A Thousand Details is an uptempo NIN-like romp, but the parts of the album I enjoy the most are the atypical, softer pieces, of which One Particular Moment is a particular highlight.  The bar-room piano motif is underpinned by soft synth pads that give way to razor sharp buzz synths. Please Take Your Hand Away continues with the bar-room piano and adds some eerie, discordant flute to the orchestration.

The Same As The Others is another highlight – with a simple guitar refrain, and whistling wind effects.  While Waiting stands out due to the rare use of voice – but still no words. The Seconds Drag ticks along at a metronomic pace, underpinned by bells and a nagging guitar line.  Bells feature on many tracks on this soundtrack, and are one of the key sounds that repeat and re-arrange themes throughout the album.

Parallel Timeline With Alternate Outcome is a slow-burning piano led track that starts to change when the buzzing flies previously used appear and lead to a disturbing end to the track.

The album closes with the second vocal track, and the second cover version, in the shape of Bryan Ferry‘s Legend track from 1986, Is Your Love Strong Enough?, performed on this soundtrack by How to Destroy Angels. This haunting version, stripped of the clunky 80’s snare of the original, is a fine end to the album.  It’s the only track featuring vocals from Reznor (towards the end of the song) and does make you hanker for a new Nine Inch Nails album (which may be on the cards for 2012).

Obviously, the main aim of a soundtrack is to accompany visuals, heightening tension, and strengthening the viewers emotional response to scenes, but sometimes soundtracks work as stand-alone listening experiences. For me, this album joins Ryuichi Sakamoto‘s Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence and Clint Mansell‘s Black Swan as non-song based soundtracks that can be enjoyed in isolation of their accompanying films.

The soundtrack is available from the Nine Inch Nails website or iTunes, with a CD release on the 26th December, to tie-in with the film’s release.

Buy The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo on Amazon