Variety is the spice of life, so they say. After all, don’t things get boring if they stay the same? Just imagine if the Beatles had spent an entire career playing “Love Me Do”. No Rubber Soul, no Sgt Pepper’s, no Abbey Road etc etc. What a waste! How many times have you rushed out and bought a band’s new record only to think upon hearing it: Damn, I wish they hadn’t drifted into becoming so lazy (the Album Leaf)/ over-produced (Flaming Lips) / boring (the Manics) / self-parodying (Beck)? Or perhaps all of the above (Primal Scream). One has only to consider the accusations thrown at Sigur Rós for selling out with their most recent LP, Takk; these things really do matter to people! But it’s a cruel and all-too-frequent irony that a band only becomes commercially viable with the album which sees them at their most easily-digestible and, so it goes, mundane. In this crazy world of ours, innovation is considered a commercial risk, and money is put behind 'winning formulas' in the same way it would be bet upon a horse with a good track record.
Just look at the conveniently coffee-shop friendly Richard Ashcroft, surely the very embodiment of this blandward spiral and its terrible depths. Didn’t his music used to mean something to people? And how the hell is his new material - the soulless tripe that apparently passes for music - selling by the bucket-load, when the first two Verve albums (despite being classics) sold so few that it lead to the break-up of the band? Of course, the answer is simple: bland and inoffensive equals radio-friendly, TV-friendly, coffee-shop-friendly, and so on. But why complain about that? Surely, each to his own and all that? No. I’m sorry, but the whole thing is so transparent, so painfully insidious, that before long the bland, soullessness of Ashcroft starts to overwrite the beauty and power of the Verve; the frankly boring and derivative Zero 7 make you doubt whether Air were ever really inventive.
And this is where the facts start to get a little shaky. Sigur Rós become "The Band That Did The Theme Music To Planet Earth." Takk suddenly appears everywhere. Previous albums become deleted, then curiously reappear bearing ludicrous price tags and stickers saying "Specially Imported from Iceland" and "From The Band That Did The Theme Music To Planet Earth." The first Takk-related deaths are reported, then swiftly denied. Ashcroft announces his true identity as the Second Coming of Christ (inadvertently coinciding with the release of his new double A-side and subsequent tour). With caffeine as the catalyst the world soon explodes in an overwhelmingly monotonous, Starbucks-sponsored shade of beige.
So there you have it: variety is important.
Thank God then, for New Zealand’s Salon Kingsadore, who, despite recording a fantastic (though dangerously coffee-shop friendly) self-titled debut, are not content simply to retread the same old ground. The debut album occupies the band’s isolated, though thankfully pleasant and introspective niche of "Instrumental Psychedelic Surf Jazz." Imagine, if you will, an upbeat Album Leaf, or a more blissed-out Tortoise and you won’t be far wrong. Without a doubt the debut is an unusually happy album, but with a tremendous emotional range always played against its overriding innocence such as you might find in the playful psychedelic pop tunes of the Olivia Tremor Control’s Dusk at Cubist Castle. This is summer music alright, but with depth, beauty, sincerity, and feeling. It would’ve been so easy…so easy for them just to gravitate toward the Ashcroft-centred world of mediocrity, to become the next pre-packaged Zero 7, obligatory Prozac for the masses, delivered surreptitiously with a morning coffee in the form of background music. But no!
The first thing that hits you upon listening to Hotel Azteca is a difference in the production. It feels as if things have been stepped up a notch, loose screws tightened, levels adjusted and effects refined. Alongside this (and clearly a result of it) the album has a newfound sense of space At first impression, opener and title track “Hotel Azteca” seems to wallow in this newfound awareness, beginning where the previous album left off, with the familiar sun-drenched acoustic guitars. But all too soon this apparent wallowing becomes stretched out into a more confident sound, bringing the song into a territory you’d normally associate with an epic, soaring Pink Floyd jam. It’s almost as if this track acts as the transition from one album sound to the next, since as soon as it ends we are confronted by a barrage of jazz-funk which clearly marks Hotel Azteca’s departure from it’s predecessor.
It seems fitting that this second track is entitled “Economy and Space,” which encapsulates the band’s new direction as one which attempts to utilise fully the possibilities of studio recording, to create a greater range of sounds through an awareness of dynamics and by keeping layers distinct and uncluttered. And this is where the comparison to Tortoise returns for a new reason; tracks such as “The Bulb” “Loma” and “Coloured Silence” echo the sheer sense of scope and awe which John McEntire’s band only managed to capture on 2004’s It’s All Around You. But this association also helps to highlight that when Tortoise embrace a more epic sound they also feel cold and calculated, whereas Salon Kingsadore, on the contrary, become more funky, driven and danceable.
That’s where the album really shines. Despite being carefully crafted and produced, it retains that all-important ‘live’ feel. So I guess that’s where the comparison falls apart. And I’m glad. I’m glad it’s difficult to pigeonhole the album. I’m glad it’s very different from the last album. And no doubt I’ll be glad if they decide to be equally open-minded with the next record, because that’s what music is all about: variety and experimentation. And anyway, this band deserve better than being played in some shitty coffee-shop through some tinny little speakers. Help fight the musical ennui; make this, rather than Ashcroft, your soundtrack to the summer, play it fucking loud and pass out on the sofa or dance around like a loon…with coffee or otherwise.
-Alan Miles