The year 2009 kicks off with two remarkably upbeat albums. Come on, cast away recession doom and January gloom and throw a party!

Unashamedly optimistic and brazenly sunny, both Animal Collective’s ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’ and Franz Ferdinand’s ‘Tonight’ invite you to forget what’s going on and join in the fun. US quartet Animal Collective is, musically speaking, a lot more diverse and very definitely ‘now’. Glasgow band Franz Ferdinand are a tad more conservative, opting for 70s/80s Power Pop - Drainpipes, skinny ties and all. Both albums are worth a listen.

If too much buzzing upbeat-ness and silly pub talk is likely to give you a headache, then take a closer look at the new album by Antony & The Johnsons, ‘The Crying Light’. The mood is eminently more sombre and lyrical subjects are more diverse and don’t shy away from darker themes.

Light and darkness - There’s music for every occasion this month. Personally, I feel that Animal Collective and Franz Ferdinand fit better into the here and now - I’m just amazed at the sheer positive attitude of both albums. Antony pretty much lives in his own universe and ‘The Crying Light’ will still be around to be discovered properly at a later stage.

ALBUM OF THE MONTH

Animal Collective ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’
US four-piece Animal Collective have outgrown their indie folk roots and turned into a seriously tight Pop band over the past couple of years. The band’s vocal harmonies soar over solid Electro Pop, flavoured with a whole bunch of styles taking in Afro-flavoured pop, 60’s surf music and 80’s synth pop.

Are Animal Collective this year’s Vampire Weekend? Listening to ‘Brother Sport’ and ‘Summertime Clothes’ you can spot the similarities: Vocals beaming with that ‘glad-to-be-alive’ glow, deliberately clever lyrics and jerky rhythms. Maybe it’s just the shared Afro-pop references, but replace the synth with a guitar in your head and the two bands could be twins separated at birth.

Thankfully, Animal Collective don’t stick to one formula. ‘My Girls’ lets harmonies hover over shards of icy, ambient electronics. On ‘Taste’ they adopt a casual vocal delivery - there’s almost a Liam Gallagher swagger to it - over precise Pet Shop Boys style synth pop.

It’s when Animal Collective turn to the 1960’s for inspiration that they hit their stride. The Beatles get a look-in on the mildly psychedelic ‘In The Flowers’. ‘Lion In A Coma’ and ‘No More Running’ pick up the atmosphere of Beach Boy Brian Wilson’s LSD fuelled surf symphonies of sweet harmonies and towering orchestration.

Animal Collective are no overnight sensation. The slick, effortless sound on ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’ is the culmination of seven previous studio albums which saw the band morph from a fairly weedy, experimental outfit into a solid Pop act.

The experience pays off, as Animal Collective can bang out ideas and move on fast. I can’t help hearing references to other artists and records, but ‘Merriweather’ does not stand still and dwell on any particular style. It’s a case of ‘you like this? great, here’s something different’ and that keeps me coming back to this album.

If you like Vampire Weekend’s sunny pop and the Fleet Foxes’ harmonies you should check out ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’ - Similar, but different.

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#2: Franz Ferdinand ‘Tonight’
You can look at ‘Tonight’ in two ways. Firstly, it’s simply a well made pop album with catchy melodies and a straight dance beat. Secondly, it’s an uncanny timewarp to the 1980’s in terms of the music and the overall sentiment.

If you’re after some feelgood music, then ‘Tonight’ is so much better than the band’s last album, the unfortunately titled ‘You Could Have It So Much Better… With Franz Ferdinand’ from 2005. The songs on ‘Tonight’ are catchy, the band sounds upbeat and the whole thing has a clear style.

There is no experimenting with different musical directions. Nope, the boys are on a roll and whether it’s a ballad or an uptempo number, the feeling is firmly good times Pop. The band’s basically gone back to their debut ‘Franz Ferdinand’. The main difference is that there are more obviously ‘rock’ styled riffs in the mix.

As indicated by frontman Alex Kapranos recently, the focus is back on making music to dance to. That is, if your idea of a dancefloor is located in a student/alternative/rock disco.

On a more nerdy level, there’s a few other interesting angles to Franz Ferdinand’s new album.

With ‘Tonight’, the band releases an album that invites to dance the night away and escape from the gloom all around us. We have had a banking crisis and rising unemployment for close to a year, yet here is an album full of escapist pop with lyrics by and large focusing on the micro cosmos of the protagonists personal life.

Flashback to 1979/80, a good time for dance-able music that, for a few hours, made you forget what was going on around you. Out of grey, Thatcherite Britain you got the blingy Blitz Kids like Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet rising in technicolour. Over in the Reaganomics ravaged US you had the escapist power pop of The Cars and The Knack. Ok, over-simplified, but enough to illustrate the point.

Where Franz Ferdinand succeed is in creating a bolt hole from reality that I can relate to. This is a welcome breeze at a time when pop music is riddled with too much angst and overtly worn emotions on one side (Coldplay, Elbow) or provided by manufactured artists that have more in common with game characters than with the average music buyer on the other side (Pink, Katy Perry).

Of course, Franz Ferdinand’s music wouldn’t have to be 80’s flavoured to achieve all this. But the band’s continuing fascination with 80’s music is, at least at this stage, incidental. Unlike other 80’s revivalists, Franz Ferdinand’s songs survive largely intact if you strip away the disco bass and wonky keyboards.

On ‘Tonight’, Franz Ferdinand have more in common with the late 70’s/early 80’s US power pop scene than with the UK Blitz Kids ranks. Where the Blitz Kids were modernists, their US contemporaries looked back to the 60’s for inspiration. ‘Tonight’ has a definite feel of the 60’s viewed through a pair of 80’s specs, much more so than Franz Ferdinand’s debut album.

Watch Franz Ferdinand Rehearse ‘Ulysses’

The revived Franz Ferdinand are strikingly close to US power poppers The Cars, The Knack and The Last or, going closer to the roots, to Blondie. There’s nothing particularly 2009 about it, ‘Tonight’ is a feel-good album that sees Franz Ferdinand doffing their cap to many a party band before them. Come on, join in the chorus!

Listen to the album on Franz Ferdinand’s MySpace page.

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Buy The Limited Collectors’ Edition Box Set Here!
Box set contains six 7″ vinyl singles, CD, DVD and a hardbound book.

#3: Antony & The Johnsons ‘The Crying Light’
‘The Crying Light’ calls up faded opulence, dusty velvet curtains and a small orchestra discretely entertaining its world weary clientele. Antony’s voice displays the same yearning, sadness and moderate sprinkling of hope as on previous recordings, but this time the backing musicians fall right behind their vocalist and don’t stray.

Don’t expect any of the rock touches that guest musicians like Lou Reed provided on Antony’s previous album ‘I’m A Bird Now’. Stylistically, ‘The Crying Light’ is a more homogenous affair. It’s strings, piano and acoustic guitar with the musicians keeping the backing fairly minimal.

Occasionally, Antony foregoes all accompanyment and lets his voice carry the song, as on ‘Dust And Water’. The result is intensely fragile and disconcertingly vulnerable - Like an oyster stripped of its shell. It makes you realise how much armour the instruments add on an average Johnsons track.

Antony’s voice is at its strongest when he is turning to piano ballads. ‘Another World’, the title track of his most recent EP, is easily the ‘poppiest’ moment on the album thanks to a confident performance by Antony and a straight, powerful melody.

Other piano dominated tracks like ‘Daylight And The Sun’ or ‘Her Eyes Are Underneath The Ground’ are more minimal affairs with Antony branching out into the territory of avantgarde composers like Alva Noto & Ryuchi Sakamoto, Sylvain Chauveau or William Basinski.

All in all, ‘The Crying Light’ is a move away from the rock stage towards a more austere, chamber orchestra sound. While rock gives Antony’s voice a sleazy, late night feel, the new sound gives him an almost pastoral air. Mind you, his lyrics are far from peaceful. His songs conjure up an image of frozen outdoors populated by ghosts rather than that of lush pastures.

Call it what you like: Pastoral, cool, minimal - It’s a style that suits Antony’s drama laden voice very well. If this is a once off or a direction he’ll explore further on future releases remains to be seen.

For a different side of the artist, Check out Antony’s ‘Another World’ EP from last October for some non-album tracks that rock and shiver quite unlike anything on ‘The Crying Light’. I’d recommend the bone-rattling R&B of ‘Shake That Devil’ and the Gothic ‘Sing For Me’. Both tracks did not make it onto the album and are well worth downloading.

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UK & Ireland Readers - Buy The ‘Another World EP’ Here!

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