If the picture-newspaper hasn’t noticed anything that most others knew about, she likes to write about “secret” machinations (X’s secret marriage, Y’s secret change of clubs). The equivalent here would be a hymn to the “insider tip” C Duncan: The Scottish soft popper is a real discovery. But maybe only in this column, and everyone else already knew it. After all, the man has already released three albums, his songs are used in English television series and in general.
His new fourth album is called “Alluvium” (Bella Union) and to put it bluntly, it’s absolutely wonderful. Pop songs like soap bubbles, gently shimmering against the light, melodies painted as if with the paint boxes of Brian Wilson and Burt Bacharach. Duncan breathes 14 uplifting songs that take you on a little flight through the clouds while Scott Walker and Rufus Wainwright wave up from below. By the way: Duncan recorded this small, big marvel all by himself. Only on “The Wedding Song” does he have two classical musicians as guests: his parents. Isn’t that touching? Isn’t that nice?
How about the word “pleasant”? Can you call music pleasant? Or do you inadvertently insult them as inferior, complacent, background? The Viennese Klaus Waldeck has been making extremely enjoyable music (without his first name) for 30 years, and that’s meant in a completely positive way here. In the early 1990s he moved in Kruder & Dorfmeister– Haze circle (yes, also there constantly the pleasant question). He later founded his own label Dope Noir and released albums from various bands and projects such as Waldeck Sextet, Soul Goodman and Saint Privat – all of which he himself was behind. A fun roleplay between downbeat, electro-swing and chanson. Between computer tinkering and easy listening jazz lovingly played live. It is not Mr. Waldeck’s fault that this type of music has meanwhile found its way into advertising. It just creates a certain sense of well-being. What’s wrong with that? For the 20th birthday of his label, the multiple man has now put together a retrospective: 32 tracks on a double album. Sometimes danceable, sometimes leaning back, in the perfect dose between melancholic and joyful. Can you run it exactly like this? In a word: pleasant.
The four musicians from Warpaint have been celebrated for years for their psychedelic art-pop, which is always exciting but can also be a bit exhausting at times. On their fourth album “Radiate Like This” (Virgin) they now curb the experiments. Maybe they trust their songs more. Hardly any rhythm hacking, hardly any echo orgies, the instrumentation leaves a lot of space. Often there is just a subdued beat over which the voices hover as if in search of something to hold on to. But they don’t need it at all. Everything is sound, as soft and gentle as feather grass in the spring wind. The British Magazine mojo spoke of a “downbeat triumph”, an admirer of the band wrote on YouTube under the video for the new single “Champion”: “A sweet return to an inner tranquil home”. Sweet return to an inner quiet home. That’s very good.
Is it actually the case for many people that they often read the accompanying texts to an exhibition with great excitement, but are then quite disappointed with the art? The anticipatory images in your head are sometimes much more exciting than the real ones on the wall. The Canadian indie rock band Pink mountain tops has compiled a small list of the influences that will shape their new album “Peacock Pools” (ATO Records): “Cultural artifacts, David Cronenberg’s sci-fi works, early Pink Floydalbums and John Carpenter films, as well as a 1991 essay by feminist Camille Paglia on the cult of bodybuilding.” Wow, give it to me! But the exhibition, pardon me, the album takes a different approach – more late indie pop 80’s, a bit Stone Roses and the kind of British suburban romance that automatically has well-worn Doc Martens growing on your feet. But that doesn’t matter, it’s still good and scores with some nice melodies. After all, there is actually a tiny bit of early Pink Floyd if you listen very carefully. And the bodybuilding theses actually come towards the end – the song is called “Muscles” for the sake of simplicity.