These New Puritans

The latter. Only listened to it once and there's a lot to absorb, even though it's very subdued and mostly sombre, but it sounds lovely.

Also lol @ them roping in a Portuguese fado Singer and then getting her to sing like the main dude.

it ain't on w@ffles... Excited by the descriptions except that

Also lol @ them roping in a Portuguese fado Singer and then getting her to sing like the main dude.

is :-/

a lot like Talk Talk and a little like Field Music, too, especially "fragment two"

xp I guess people who remembered Talk Talk from the first album didn't think Spirit of Eden computed either. It was just an accident of timing that TNP briefly got spoken of in the same breath as the View et al. They hated all the other indie bands even then. I like this Jack Barnett quote:

"A lot of those bands, you can’t blame them really. They’re quite endearing in a ridiculous way. We watched the Subways at some festival in Wales and they were just hilarious. I don’t know if they mean to be hilarious. Maybe they don’t."

I agree there's a hell of a lot to absorb here. The Talk Talk comparison is unavoidable on first listen but it feels so limited.

I'm not sure I get the Field Music thing, they're very much a classicist rock band that's inclined to grandiose arrangements and song structures and this is anything but that.

I listened again on the way in and the lead singer's voice is still a problem, more so than on the last album where it suited the thunderous austerity of the whole thing. Here there's not really anywhere to hide especially given how obviously considered and well thought-out everything else is. Fortunately there's not much of it on here.

I might retract the Messiaen and Taverner comparison upthread but they've definitely abandoned even vague rock structures and ramped up the 20th century classical influences that were on the last album. 'V (Island Song)' is the really astonishing one here, the way it transitions through different moves from atonal piano to synthy soft-rock ballad outro. 'Organ Eternal' is lovely as well.

Didn't really pay any attention to the View and the Enemy so I could be very wrong about them, but I never really thought about TNP in quite those terms, they seemed a lot artier than some of the cack-handed clods that were around. First album is very Pink Flag/Gang of Four but mixed with a big early Liars influence (not just the sound but the occult themes in the lyrics too) that definitely skewed it to the weird side of the indie-rock spectrum. Think that 'Infinity' is probably a very important track with regard to pointing out where they were going to go next, but you would be quite right to say that there is absolutely nothing on it to suggest they'd end up where they are now. One of the most amazing things to me is that (I think?) Jack Barnett's totally self-taught - much like Mark Hollis? - but in an age where there are all these shortcuts available to someone who hasn't got the prior education in orchestration etc. Such a sense of ambition and sheer doggedness in what he's doing.

He definitely seems to have an attitude I can get behind - continual exploration, expansion, divergence...

i hear Field Music (or more to the point, the Week That Was side project) in the tasteful neo-prog vibe

i wonder, are there any people doing similar things to this new record but coming from the opposite direction i.e. the Classical realm?

nadia sirota, sort of

I think most of the ppl doing this type of rock/symphonic hybrid are actually composing videogame music

And the ones who aren't and who are doing it all wrong in any event are signed to terrible European labels and think Dream Theater is the height of sensuality.

And the others are Muse :)

Mention them not.

Actually, I'd really, really recommend North Sea Radio Orchestra, a chamber-prog-indie-classical outfit whose music might be to your taste:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hp3yViKCLo

I'd also recommend William D. Drake's output. Here's a choice track from a fucking amazing instrumental chamber-pastoral-pop record: http://williamddrake.bandcamp.com/track/at-the-end-of-the-harbour-wall

Ignore the one I just linked - might not be to all tastes. Start at the beginning. http://williamddrake.bandcamp.com/album/yews-paw

XXXP - I don't think I've ever heard Nadia Sirota's music, I only know her as a Nico Muhly cohort.

Maybe some Muhly/Bedroom Community stuff comes close, Ben Frost or Valgier?

NSRO hmm, maybe I don't see them as coming from the Classical world really, neither that weasel faced little knob from Muse either.

Muse was not 100% a serious recommendation

someone should tell them that

SERIOUS RECS ONLY PLZ

Oh wow.

I'm listening to the album again and V (The Island Song) is so, so fucking good.

Van der Graaf Generator "Climb every mountain"

Just listening to this for the first time now. Obviously I like it but it seems too composed. The chord changes are kind of oppressively drawn out and there's always something sinister lurking in the background.

"Organ Eternal" is the only thing so far (nearly done the album) with any real lift to it.

Great job by Graham Sutton though. The production is massive.

This is a eh ell of a record but I've no idea when I'll actually listen to it.

That's what I thought. Maybe at work?

I'm still at the stage of figuring out what it sounds like, I feel like there's a really obvious touchstone that hasn't been mentioned yet. Talk talk obv, and the 2nd this heat album (as ever) but something else on the tip of my tongue. For a minute I sort of fancied that it sounded like aerial but that isn't it.

June 10 can't arrive fast enough IMO

Reminds me of 'Hex' more than Talk Talk (perhaps inevitably), but also of 'Comicopera' in parts.

wyatt came to mind instantly but I thought it was just the this heat-ness of it

I'm still certain there's a missing piece, and a really obvious one, but maybe not

I just did a track-by-track of this for tQ which mentioned Wyatt. Amongst others.

http://thequietus.com/articles/12399-these-new-puritans-field-of-reeds-review

that's my train reading sorted then, thx scik

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2013/may/30/these-new-puritans-popandrock?CMP=twt_fd

there is an undercurrent of Labradford circa E Luxo So in the song structures here, though the arrangements aren't nearly as sparse

Going to have to wait a bit on that due to morning work but I WILL hear that before lunch, dammit.

Also how did I forget you were a Labradford fan.

in fairness I only know that one album (but MAN that album)

Agreed! Trying to remember if that was the most recent one the one time I saw them on tour...

Just on my first listen now. Obviously there is a there is Talk Talk comparison to be made, but also there's a maybe little hint of Radiohead too in places? In the first half of the record anyway - I'm thinking of the offishness of the melody in Fragment Two, and it's also got that dusk-is-falling ambience that I associate with Hail To The Thief. Mostly though wow, this is just out there on its own. Going to take a while to digest cos it doesn't really boil down to one particular mood, it's quite complex in that sense. Some bits are full of this awful creeping dread and you've got things like those phantasmagorical voices rising up out of the murk in 'Spiral' which are pretty fucking diabolical, but then there's all these other feelings being introduced into it all the time, all those little harmonic shifts in the scenery, notes that puncture the gloom like shining shards of glass, certain passages that don't exactly sound hopeful but maybe do have have a sense of resolve about them... fuck shit fuck I wanna shut up now and listen more, this is awesome!

One thing I really love about this band is the amazing sense of place that you get from their music. Obviously the title of this album is pretty suggestive anyway but yeah, for me this is totally music of boggy brownfield sites, those shitty neglected places at edge of city, places that always seem to be lashed with rain or hidden by mist, or at least they seem that way whenever I've been birdwatching or walking or whatever there. But it's not just about the rubbish and ruin of our times, there's also this weird sense of history, secrets held in the mud and in the ditches, like lifting up a rusty shopping trolley and finding a bog-man in the mire beneath. I guess the Karl Hyde album is about the same edgeworld zone too, but this is so much richer and more mysterious.

That's what I hear in it anyway, always get reminded of those passages in Riddley Walker where they're at work wallowing around in the mud looking for scraps of mangled metal and finding all these redundant artefacts from our civilisation and then trying to piece them together to get some sort of understanding of how they got to where they're at now.

Listening now; predictably enough I'm fucking bowled over. The missing piece of the comparisons puzzle you're all trying to assemble upthread is quite possibly later-period Ulver, btw

V (Island Song) will be very, very, very hard to beat for song of the year

here's a stream for the curious: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2013/may/30/these-new-puritans-popandrock

Linked a few posts back...

that's true. nice one getting scik mouthy out of retirement as well, tnp - not many bands manage that nowadays

this album seems to ebb and flow - some tracks feed into the grander narrative, and some serve as climaxes in themselves. so it can be listened to as a whole and as a showcase for some amazing songs. which means it'll be making some severe inroads to both of my year-end ballots

Finishing my listen now, quite lovely. Not as monumental per se as Hidden but it doesn't need to be, and I enjoy it very well from the get-go. Glad there's still interest in these kind of approaches out there.

Really wish an interviewer would bother to ask them about the 20th century classical music they're influenced by because there's something a bit eyeroll-provoking about the parade of straw-grasping comparisons to whichever ambient rock band the listener happens to like best.

ok, the missing piece of the puzzle is *googles* arvo part!

Yeah, there's something to Part for sure in there.

file under: snarky comebacks that accidentally passed sincere comment

meanwhile the album's still very good, on track 7 now. when's the HI DERE liveblog?