Tilly and the Wall - O

Tilly and the Wall’s twee-as-fuck indie credentials couldn’t be much stronger. Bezzies with Conor Oberst, tourmates with Rilo Kiley and Of Montreal, and signed to uber-cool label Moshi Moshi. And they’ve got a tapdancer instead of a drummer, appear on Sesame Street and sing songs about rainbows. Or at least they did.

Third album O sees the Omaha band branching out from their summery indie-pop comfort zone, producing a glossier, fuller sounding record which misses a little less than it hits.

Opener Tall Tall Glass is reminiscent of the Tilly of yore, all saccharine vocals and acoustic hooks, a love-song to our favourite genre. We’ve all been there: “When there wasn’t anywhere for me to go, oh, I stumbled into deep love with you, rock and roll.” Anyone who’s ever found solace in alternative music, be it In Untero or In the Airplane Over the Sea, or indeed Tilly’s previous albums, will understand this sweet, light ode, the sentiment of which seems to pre-empt the sudden change of direction that follows on track two.

Pot Kettle Black is Tilly as loud as we’ve ever heard them: they’ve actually plugged in their guitars, and the rhythm section goes all out, giving the track a stomping driving force you simply can’t get with tap shoes. The infectious, dual vocal chorus is reminiscent of Le Tigre at their party-rock best.

Its tap to the fore on Cacophony though, but the song doesn’t deliver the noisy kitchen-sink antics that the title suggests, as it becomes a bit much of a muchness, the introduction of sax falling flat. The whole of I Found You falls flat as well, although again there’s more electric guitar than long-term Tilly fans will be used to.

Jumbler gets things back on track, a subtle bassline working perfectly with glockenspiel, tap dancing and call-and-response vocals. Chandelier Lake is the sort of typically lush sound we’ve come to expect out from American alt-pop on canonised labels like Moshi and Saddle Creek, if a little too forgettable.

Falling Without Knowing has an unusually speedy-yet-ethereal quality, another departure for the band, and an absolute treat. Blood Flowers has a glam feel to it, and tells you not “go fucking around in the garden”: older fans will remember Tilly quashing their butter-wouldn’t-melt image via the popular method of swearing (a method I’m very fucking fond of).

Tilly’s older albums typically closed on epic, folky efforts. This time out we instead get a Blondie-meets-Girls Aloud number with a handy “fuck you” ending and an “I don’t give a fuck, if I’m cool or not” mantra. Sweary, indeed, although you have to think that this newer, angrier Tilly and the Wall may be one that is squarely aiming to break out of the doldrums of college radio and support slots and become, well, cool.

O is an interesting departure for them; certainly more rock than their earlier work, with a swagger that suggests they could at some point cast off their cardigans in favour of leather jackets and truly “stumble into deep love” with rock and roll.

The Hold Steady - Stay Positive

The Hold Steady came to (slightly) wider prominence in 2006 with the release of the rip-roaring Boys and Girls in America, an album heavily influenced by the themes and the beat of Jack Kerouac’s seminal coming-of-age novel, On the Road. In many ways, it was also a coming-of-age record for the Brooklyn five-piece, a hazy, rowdy trip across the States seeing them truly finding their feet after the promise of their previous two releases. However, for many, Kerouac and his Beat Generation cohorts never truly fulfilled the potential of their early work, and after dispensing with the literary references, we hope the Hold Steady don’t follow suit (avoiding the drug abuse would also be handy).

The album begins as loudly as the previous, Constructive Summer tearing from the proverbial 0-60 in about a second, another instant Hold Steady classic, as gnarled and edgy as you’d expect: you can just imagine it soundtracking a bar fight on HBO. Sequestered in Memphis begins as a more melodic affair, and ends as a singalong, the song seeing the band back on the road (and subpoenaed in Texas) and shagging ‘n’ that, although this turns out a mistake, as “in bar light, she looked alright, in daylight, she looked desperate.”

False alibis are the subject of One for the Cutters, which asks “If one townie falls in the forest, does anyone notice?” I’m unsure of the American definition of ‘townie’, but if its anything like mine, then my guess is ‘no.’

Navy Sheets begins promisingly, but its noisy guitars and background synthesising don’t do enough to mask a generally lacklustre track, the lowpoint of the album. The tender Lord, I’m Discouraged is a slight departure from their usual output, even if the message to God is once more about a lost love. “Excuses and half-truths and fortified wine” says more about the foibles of the Church than the song’s subject, however. Its on this track that frontman Craig Finn’s vocal lessons appear at their most fruitful, his famously gruff voice displaying a softer edge, which is underlined on Both Crosses, a song reminiscent of Nick Cave both in style and in its dark content.

Yeah, Sapphire is a pleasant enough FM rock song, and the title track is the record’s poppiest moment, a jaunty paean of respect to the Youth of Today, telling us to stay positive about the future. Magazines begins in similarly happy style, but this makes way for a lament about a friend’s relationship failing under the weight of alcohol, ‘magazines, and daddy issues.’ The piano-led Joke About Jamaica unsurprisingly begins in a bar: if they’re not careful, the Hold Steady may get a bit of a reputation…

Slapped Actress rounds things off on a high, a typically raucous effort about attempting to keep a relationship secret, ending with an epic choral flourish.

Stay Positive doesn’t quite match the highs of Boys and Girls in America, but whilst they may have left behind Kerouac, the Hold Steady remain one of the most adept bands at chronicling the true American Dream, a murkier affair than many would have you believe.

Stay Positive can be streamed at: www.myspace.com/theholdsteady

Physical release July 14.

Girl Talk - Feed the Animals

Hip-hop is dead.

The Superstar DJ is dead.

Or at least, you’d think so.

DJs thankfully appear not be releasing albums any more, the superclubs are degenerated to tools to sell half-arsed compilations, and Ibeefa is just too bloody expensive for your average Weekend Millionaire.

And looking at the genre as a whole, hip-hop is a stagnant mess of egos, tired beats, and prison sentences, occasionally lifted above the level of dross by few-and-far between albums from the likes of the Def Jux stable, or are-they-hip-hop-or-not releases from the likes of M.I.A. That M.I.A. often isn’t accepted truly into the rap canon could be an indication of her renowned eclecticism, or of a genre digging its heels and refusing to evolve.

“Is it really hip-hop?” is also a question that could be aimed at of Girl Talk’s fourth outing Feed the Animals, the Pittsburgh DJ again throwing together an album consisting mainly of hundreds of samples, with the odd bit of original orchestration (there is yet to be a definite number on exactly how many samples are included, but its well into the hundreds. An incomplete list can be found on Wikipedia, and after only one listen you’ll have spotted something yet to be included).

What blurs the line over the pigeon-holing though is Feed the Animals’ eclectic variety of samples. Underneath various rapped verses from otherwise tedious artists, we’re smacked in the face with myriad other rips.

If these samples do defy the album’s hip-hop credentials, then we’re not sure exactly at which point it loses ghetto credibility.

Is it the inclusion of M.I.A.? We’re not sure where to categorise her, admittedly, but its more likely to be the skinny-white-boy indie rock of the likes of Radiohead, Blur and Yo La Tengo that moves the album out of the Hummers and onto suburban coffee-tables.

Even more likely still, it’s the amount of music generally reserved for pre-pubescent girls and middle-aged Tesco shoppers (who should really know better): Avril Lavigne, Kelly Clarkson, Pink et al.

Yet more likely to dissatisfy hip-hop purists is the amount of sheer cheese, though. Dexy’s Midnight Runners, for fuck’s sake!

What’s amazing though, is that on the whole, this works, and it works excellently. There’s so much to take from this LP. Gain indie points from spotting the Unicorns and Of Montreal, or sit in amazement as a Kraftwerk and Velvet Underground backdrop makes Low by Flo Rida not only listenable, but enjoyable. Wonder why the bloody hell you’re listening to Journey, or why nobody has used My Sherona as a hip-hop beat before. Wear out your rewind button trying to spot Rod Stewart, or hope nobody you know thinks you’re actually listening to Vanilla Ice. Or just stick it on, switch your brain off and dance your arse off.

Critics wondered whether previous release Night Ripper would date poorly, with many of its samples very much of its time, but the sheer range of the music involved means that each listen reveals something intriguing and new, even if you’d rather not still have to listen to Fatman Scoop. Whilst Girl Talk has once more sliced up the ringtone charts and thrown them into his musical blender with the inclusion of the likes of the ubiquitous Soulja Boy, Rihanna, and everyone’s favourite sample Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, again there are enough stone cold classics torn apart to keep the record almost timeless, whether from bona-fide hip-hop greats (ODB, Missy Elliott, Public Enemy) or the likes of The Cure and The Beach Boys.

Whether Feed the Animals is accepted as a hip-hop record is unclear, but to deny it would be to suggest that rap is completely averse to any innovation or inspiration. To accept it would suggest there is still life in the genre, and that Girl Talk may well be the Superstar DJ to save it.