My Top 40 Albums of 2008: Numbers 8 Through 1

And so we've reached the end of this year's journey through my top albums. Before we get into the top eight, I'll try to sum up which albums released in the last few months of 2008. September brought offerings from Jenny Lewis, Mercury Rev, People in Planes, Butch Walker, No and the Maybes, Glasvegas, Santogold, Jon Ryman, Metallica, Chairlift, Kings of Leon, and a sophomore record from former Suede frontman, Brett Anderson. There were also a few that have already made this countdown, including TV on the Radio, Ladyhawke, and Okkervil River.

October's albums was jam-packed with records from Empire of the Sun, Department of Eagles, The Sea and Cake, Eugene McGuinness, Of Montreal, Kaiser Chiefs, Keane, Euros Childs, Bloc Party (the physical version), Los Campesinos!, and AC/DC with their long-awaited return. There were also a couple of disappointments from The Cure and Cold War Kids. Snow Patrol demonstrated that they couldn't compete with Chasing Cars while Oasis produced another unneccessary album. And there were several antlered mammals afoot with releases from Deerhoof, Deerhunter, and The Dears. Again, there were several released in October that you've already seen in this series, namely, from Simon Bookish, Maps of Norway, Polarkreis 18, and Twig.

November saw records from We Are Standard, Glass Candy, Razorlight, Threatmantics, Max Tundra, Thieves Like Us, Kanye West, and The Killers. Of course November was also the momentous occasion of Guns 'n Roses' Chinese Democracy. I apologize, but as the year wound down, I didn't note any albums released in December except for an inexplicably successful comeback from Britney Spears.

To recap, the countdown thus far is:

40. The Penguin League - Antarctica Takes All!
39. This Gift - Sons & Daughters
38. Apocalypso - The Presets
37. Sea From Shore - School of Language
36. The Colour of Snow - Polarkreis 18
35. L'anthologie des 3 perchoirs - Duchess Says
34. Everything That Happens Will Happen Today - David Byrne and Brian Eno
33. For Emma Forever - Bon Iver
32. Seventh Tree - Goldfrapp
31. Die Off Songbird - Maps of Norway
30. Hercules & Love Affair - Hercules & Love Affair
29. The Devil, You + Me - The Notwist
28. The Jade Motel - Zeigeist
27. The Stand-Ins - Okkervil River
26. Evolutionary Sunset Call - stanleylucasrevolution
25. Oracular Spectacular - MGMT
24. Life After Ridge - Twig
23. V - Van She
22. Cut the World - Moscow Olympics
21. O My Heart - Mother Mother
20. Hold On Now Youngster - Los Campesinos!
19. Dear Science - TV on the Radio
18. Saturdays = Youth - M83
17. Aurora - The Deer Tracks
16. We Just Are - The Japanese Popstars
15. Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
14. Do You Like Rock Music? - British Sea Power
13. Limbo, Panto - Wild Beasts
12. Surreal Auteur - Allegories
11. Everything/Everything - Simon Bookish
10. Ladyhawke - Ladyhawke
9. Velocifero - Ladytron

Drumroll please...

8. Lust Lust Lust - The Raveonettes

The Danish duo are on fire this year with both this brilliant album released at the start of the year and then four outstanding EPs spread throughout the rest of 2008. Kicking off with the distorted, brain-shredding wall of sound and dirge-like guitars in Aly, Walk With Me, Lust Lust Lust is a triumph from beginning to end, and after so many successful releases, it is even more of a victory. The reverb effects applied to their dissonant, clanging guitars produce some haunting, slightly Western film-tinged soundscapes; songs like Aly, Walk With Me, Lust, and Expelled From Love give you the feeling of trekking through a wind-sculpted desert of volcanic ash during a peach-hued sunset. These darker songs share space with peppier, sweeter songs like Dead Sound, Blush, You Want the Candy and Blitzed. This record achieves a perfect balance between JAMC/Sonic Youth fuzzy noise and chirpy melody. Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo have every right to sound aloof and cooler-than-thou - they are the kids with black lollipops in their mouths at the prom.

Aly, Walk With Me - The Raveonettes

Dead Sound - The Raveonettes

7. A Certain Feeling - Bodies of Water

This Californian band was so impressive live when I saw them early this year in Toronto that I bought their debut album, Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink, on the spot. Then they released their sophomore album this summer and I continued to be enthralled with their rich harmonies and inventive song structures. The epic album opener Gold, Tan, Peach, and Grey still plays my vertebrae like a xylophone, and the choral gusto of Under the Pines that strips the breath from my lungs. Throughout the album, there's a fragility juxtaposed to a straining intensity and a keening mourning abutting an unbridled celebration. Styles are hard to pin down in this record as they swirl and eddy around your knees, threatening to drag you under and stir you into the sand. It's a baptism worth experiencing.

Gold, Tan, Peach, and Grey - Bodies of Water

Water Here - Bodies of Water

6. The Midnight Organ Flight - Frightened Rabbit

This sophomore effort from Scottish band Frightened Rabbit is a continuation of their brand of painful, almost self-flagellating, honesty over shambolic folk and taut, whip-snap percussion. Singer, Scott Hutchison, sings in a ragged, broken wail that can sometimes remind me of Conor Oberst and sometimes of Gary Lightbody back when he was in Polar Bear not Snow Patrol. They may have grown more accessible, but they are no less stingingly accusatory or violently truthful. Like the modern leper in the album opener, the band sounds like it's going down kicking and screaming against a senseless world full of heartbreak and internal conflict. But like a slight brightening at the edge of the horizon during a thunderstorm, The Midnight Organ Flight tempers the gloom and harsh proclamations of the human condition with a sliver of salvation in the gloaming.

The Modern Leper - Frightened Rabbit

Keep Yourself Warm - Frightened Rabbit

5. In Ghost Colours - Cut Copy

And so the last of the Modular artists on this countdown makes their appearance. When I first heard So Haunted, the first song released prior to the album, I wasn't convinced that Cut Copy was heading in a direction I could follow them into. I had been so immersed in their first album, Bright Like Neon Love, and its cooler, airy genre of electro, that it took awhile for me to adjust to the higher energy, brighter style. Now I've come to the conclusion that In Ghost Colours is actually an unexpected, but massive leap forward in the Cut Copy sound. I would even go so far as to elevate them to the same innate feel for melodic dance music as that of New Order in the 80s. There's a shimmer and twinkle to the album that ranges from the twee sprays of baby's breath of Feel the Love, Unforgettable Season, and Midnight Runner to the pumping, technicolour electro-disco of Out There On the Ice, Lights & Music, Hearts on Fire, Far Away, and Nobody Lost, Nobody Found. At least two thirds of the album have been or should have been hit singles, and I never tire of listening to it. It's like listening to a rainbow so dazzling that you hope you never find the pot of gold.

Feel the Love - Cut Copy

Far Away - Cut Copy

4. Intimacy - Bloc Party

While all their Brit Invasion of 2004 contemporaries have either produced disappointing second and third albums or faded away all together, Bloc Party has forged onwards with a respectable second album, and this year, a genius third. Their Gang of Fouresque minimalist post-punk has exploded into a razor-sharp hybrid of stark, crisp guitars and electronic acrobatics with interludes of vulnerable candor. The album begins with the brain-searing volley of Ares, Mercury, and Halo as the band wields their guitars like machine guns before dipping into the delicate melancholy of Biko, Signs and Zepherus. The bonus tracks, Letter to My Son and Your Visits Are Getting Shorter, included on the physical copy of the album that released well after the digital copy are equally gorgeous; in the latter track, the overlapping samples of Kele Okereke's voice emulate a scattered and conflicted stream of consciousness perfectly. And of course, Okereke's lyrics over the whole album are as beautifully poetic and insightful as always, creating deft allegories and intelligent commentary on human behaviour and relationships; the words are sung with such urgent passion that you can feel the desperate searching of another's eyes, the aching need of the mouths depicted in the album's cover art, and the turmoil over recoiling from closeness with another.

Mercury - Bloc Party

Biko - Bloc Party

3. Skeletal Lamping - Of Montreal

It would have been difficult to top Hissing Fauna Are You the Destroyer?, but Kevin Barnes manages at the very least to equal it in boundless imagination and myriad stylistic turns. If anything, Skeletal Lamping is labyrinthine in its construction as it blazes through glam, funk, psychedelia, twee rock, and electro, often all in one track. This unpredictable mixture was deliberate as Barnes created the most experimental and ambitious album of his career and attempted to flit through musical and lyrical ideas which seem to last about thirty seconds each. The genius comes in the composition because despite the seemingly capricious insanity, the album hangs together as a coherent, intricate whole without disintegrating into self-indulgent proggy wanking. You also get the feeling that Barnes isn't taking himself so seriously and is there to entertain, a flair that extends to his famously flamboyant live shows and his alter ego, the black she-male, Georgie Fruit. Barnes has the ability to innovate and the panache of the legends he channels on this record, including David Bowie and Prince, but he takes these attributes and stretches them into the farthest reaches of his psyche and libido, daring to tread beyond his heroes.

Nonpareil of Favor - Of Montreal

Beware Our Nubile Miscreants - Of Montreal

2. American Demo - The Indelicates

This highly literate, arch English duo have gotten nowhere near the amount of attention they should have from music fans and critics. This debut album made me believe in brilliantly witty lyrics again, and what's more, the music lives up to the words with its melodic sensibilities and propensity for gushingly expansive anthems. I like artists who make me think about things from a different angle, and The Indelicates do that more than the majority of new bands I've come across in the past few years. Their lyrics are definitely on par with anything Morrissey or Luke Haines created, and they make American Demo a piece of zeitgeist literature, a document of a mass media fatigue and disgust at a bloated, meaningless popular culture. They lambaste everything within reach, including feminism, sacred cow idols like Jeff Buckley, the rotting music industry, and youth itself. Perhaps the most surprising and startling track is Unity Mitford, an extraordinary song from the point of view of Mitford and her sympathetic love for Hitler - the concept and the lines "the indescribable beauty/Of a million hands raised to salute you/Like poppies lean when winds caress them/Cut flowers pressed to solemn duty" are enough to forgive the Gallagheresque guitar solo. Unity Mitford is a far cry from the trendy use of communism and fascism mocked in the song Sixteen while stand-out track New Art For the People, which acts as the theme for the album, is a bittersweet epic of a pathetic couple with all the romance of tragedy drained from them. These anthems make you believe in ideas like you did when you were young - they're like an adrenaline shot in the heart. I get chills every time I listen to the song Heroin and its rushing merge into We Are the Kids, the culmination of a generation frustrated by promises of inspiration in art, but which rather ironically provides the inspiration it violently mourns.

Unity Mitford - The Indelicates

We Hate the Kids - The Indelicates

1. Vanilla Swingers - Vanilla Swingers

Many months ago I stated that this album was my frontrunner for album of the year, and lo and behold, Vanilla Swingers managed to fight off all the other bands snapping at their heels. This self-titled debut is a concept album about two people who fall in love in the present, run away to the past (specifically, the 1980s), lose each other on their return to the present and then meet again in the future. It's a fluid work of art that takes John Gray's philosophical book Straw Dogs, which denies the progress myth of the human race, and weaves it into a narrative that defies progress by its convoluted, non-linear use of time. The London duo, comprised of Miles Jackson and Anne Gilpin, spin their tale over a backdrop of bittersweet, hushed melodies, which showcase the interplay between their diaphanous vocals and the intelligent beauty of their lyrics. This album makes me think about the innate human capacity to tell stories and to create myths in order to understand the world and humans themselves. Without our stories we are nothing. And these myths include one of the most perpetuated ones alongside progress: romantic love.

Vanilla Swingers deconstructs and plays with this myth as history erodes it from all sides and dimensions. At the same time, this album makes me understand why we cling to the myth of romantic love: romantic love provides us with an escape from reality, but in its bittersweet tragedies, it also gives us just as much pleasure from pain and heartbreak. Songs like I'll Stay Next to You and Back to the Present are romantic precisely because they present the transience of love and speak to our fetishization of the fleeting. The music complements the theme elegantly as it flows like quicksilver in an hourglass and period details of the 80s creep in with bubbles of electro and washes of Pet Shop Boys synths. In the world of this album, there is no golden past, there is no improved future, and there is no true escape from the present. But human salvation and self-preservation comes in the form of storytelling. In the track Goodbye Lennon, which is set to the sound of a heartbeat and a ticking clock, a graceful fusion of different measures of time, the following lyrics appear: "I didn't find myself back there/But I lost myself in you/And it felt so.../It doesn't have to end this way/Cos you can always start again/It's just a possible world." And that is how Vanilla Swingers transcends the rest of the albums this year; Vanilla Swingers have shown how humans can make an ellipsis pregnant with meaning and how our survival is bound up in the creation of possible worlds.

I'll Stay Next To You - Vanilla Swingers

The Hive - Vanilla Swingers

The honourable mention for this final installment is Brett Anderson's Wilderness, a rather welcome surprise after what he has produced post-Suede. While I didn't find too much exciting about his debut solo album and his not-so-impressive reunion with Bernard Butler as The Tears, Wilderness is an acoustic guitar-led, intimate album that made me believe that there is some talent left in Anderson after all. There is an almost dark medieval tone to the record as Anderson sheds his former self-assured preening for an unguarded glimpse of his exquisite fraility.

Funeral Mantra - Brett Anderson

And so ends the countdown and a crazy year of New Kids on the Block reunions (an event that I was convinced was a practical joke for months) and of RIAA reassessments; of Chinese Democracy and of threats to Blogger MP3 blog democracy; of Russell Brand's fall from grace and of Noel Gallagher's tumble into the monitors at the Toronto Virgin Festival. Thank you for coming along for the ride down my rather bumpy lane of musical memories. This weekend brings the final part of my weekly mix round-up, and as an extra special gift for the end of 2008, there will be a New Year's Eve mix waiting for you on Tuesday.

Has the World Changed Or Have I Changed?: Musings on the New Musical Express Train to Nowhere

I've been meaning to write something about my general feeling of malaise with new music, and now that I've read two very eloquent posts about this same feeling at To Die By Your Side and The Vinyl Villain, I very likely don't need to now because I don't know if I have that much more to add, to be honest. But since I must write something to keep this blog alive, I'll do it anyway. It's my blog and I'll rant if I want to.

I'm twenty-five, so why I feel so jaded about music already is something I would like to try to understand. I agree with what the bloggers above have said about how maturity and acquired knowledge does eventually make music sound less "new" and "innovative"; the more you know about music and music history, the more connections you can make between new and old music. And if there's one thing I had to learn over the years, it's that art of any kind must always use what's come before it in some way. Originality is a flawed concept, and it's a concept that has dogged me for many years as I shied away from writing creatively for long periods of time, believing that I had nothing "original" to say. In fact, I wrote a short story called Life is Art is Life all about that particular conundrum. I realized that it's how you build on what's come before you that makes you special and memorable; no one reinvents the wheel, instead, you get fantastic variations like cars, ferris wheels, and my personal favourite, the pennyfarthing.

As others already noted as well, the music of your youth or the music tied to "new" experiences in your life will always be special to you. It's why there's such a thing as nostalgia. I like to think that there will continue to be new bands that will impress me in the future as I grow old, but at the same time, I don't think they could ever make me feel the way the Manic Street Preachers, The Smiths, The Clash, and New Order do. These artists/bands got to me first and changed my life in their respective ways; for the most part, they ushered me into adulthood. Sadly, only one of them is still around, and through unfortunate circumstances, have had to change from their first, truly brilliant incarnation.

So, have I changed? And is that at the crux of my lack of excitement over most new bands? Likely, that's a big part of it, but at the same time, the music industry and its attendant press has changed rather drastically in recent years. Technology and the Internet have expanded access for both artists and fans, and they've sped up the process of production and promotion. While these developments can be hailed as the next stage of a truly DIY music scene, in a lot of ways, to borrow from Dick Hebdige, they've defused and diffused it. It's become increasingly harder to pick through the sheer masses of artists/bands out there (for my thesis, I made some rough calculations and figured there are at least 450 000 artists/bands with profiles on MySpace). Add to this overwhelming number the erosion of interest via media bombardment, and the situation gets sadder - the more information people are exposed to, the more apathy there is. The brain can only handle so much before needing to defer to others' opinions to make decisions, and in some cases, the brain just shuts out information wholesale in an act of self-defence.

And of course the advent of MP3 blogs and their aggregators have made it quite easy and speedy to hype a new artist based on very little. Of course, if a band is ultimately worthy of praise, they will weather the hype and continue to make interesting music. But this mad rush for the "new thing" has accelerated to such speeds, I can't bother to keep up, and instead, have found refuge in filling out my collection with older bands' back catalogues. Often I end up discovering an old band that I had never heard of before (some blogs can be thanked for this). For example, I only just found out about the post-punk band The Sound this year, and I now consider them one of my favourites. I'm also very aware that the bulk of new music I end up paying attention to is created by artists/bands that have been around for awhile - though, I can often also be disappointed in new output by old artists as stated in my post about The Cure. That's a different discussion for a different time, mind.

At this stage, my modest patch of cyberspace has by no means garnered too much attention by promotional people, but out of the emails of this nature that I have received, I've only been interested in two or three, and only really and truly loved one. As Coxon from To Die By Your Side stated, most bands are just too samey to be worth listening to, let alone worthy of a blog post. I require more than just a new Libertines or Arctic Monkeys, and I am too often disappointed by the comparisons of these new bands to older bands that I love, comparisons which never pan out.

Not only do I have to be critical of the promotional hype I get in my inbox, but I have to be just as critical of the information I get from "professionals." I know I'll sound like some whiny curmudgeon when I say that the music press isn't what it used to be. Sure, in the past, editorial and journalistic styles have displaced that which preceded them, but the recent shifts really don't speak to me. I like to believe that I would have been far more impressed with the work of Lester Bangs and Nick Kent had I been alive at the time they were prominent. I may also have romantic notions of the more politicized, intelligent NME of the early to mid-eighties, considering I was a small child then, but I do long for those times. I read less and less music magazines these days because either their information is out-of-date, or they're too busy chasing the next Libertines/Strokes to care about what really matters in music and the discourse that surrounds it. You will never see as brave a cover as that nearly all-black 1986 issue of NME that discussed youth suicide, nor content as brave. As much as I love The Mighty Boosh, they are merely a sales figure booster for the NME with comedic links to music and Noel Fielding's rather pathetic public antics. I can't imagine the bands being championed in the recent press as being as iconic and meaningful even ten years down the line as bands like Joy Division and The Smiths were/are. And though I don't expect all artists/bands to carve "4REAL" into their arms in order to prove a point to the NME, I do long for those who are willing to stand out and stand by their beliefs and opinions, or frankly, willing to have an opinion at all.

Having said all of this, I will say there have been rare instances when the white noise of bands clamouring for attention has cleared for a moment, allowing me to hear new music that I believe has that capacity to change my life. I believe in these bands and what they stand for; not only do their music and lyrics affect me, but so do their ideologies and philosophies, aspects which make art meaningful. They take the brilliant elements of previous artists, musical and otherwise, and multiply them into something more than the sum of their parts. They are "4REAL" in the same way Richey Edwards once was. And these bands aren't even at their peak yet; there's no reason they should be, and that very fact makes them exciting. These bands are Vanilla Swingers, Stroszek and Black Umbrella, and you can read about them in more detail when you follow the links below.

Post #1 on Vanilla Swingers

Post #2 on Vanilla Swingers

Post on Stroszek

Post on Black Umbrella


These are the bands that will mean something to me in ten years time. These are the bands I would feature on the cover of a magazine purporting to be about "new" music. These are the bands that continue to give me hope that not all good music was in the past.

Goodbye Lennon - Vanilla Swingers

Railway of Bones - Stroszek

Secret Kiss - Black Umbrella

Fall For Them: Vanilla Swingers Album Out This Summer

I raved about Vanilla Swingers in an earlier post having heard five of the tracks off their eponymous debut album, and now that I've heard the full nine tracks, I'm going to have to say that this is a frontrunner for my favourite album of 2008. The official release date for the LP (both as downloads and a physical album) is now July 14, so mark your calendars. Since I already made rather detailed descriptions of the five tracks I was initially sent, I will focus on the remaining four tracks for this post.

For those who didn't read my earlier post (and for those who would rather not bother with clicking the above link to do so), I'm going to quickly explain the premise for this spectacular concept album. Influenced by the John Gray book Straw Dogs, a piece of philosophy which discredits the progress myth of humanity, Vanilla Swingers follows the story of "two people who meet, run away, go back in time, lose each other, and meet again in 2015." Featuring some of the best lyrics of the year and a tender interplay between male and female voices in a similar vein to Stars, this album deconstructs the myth of human superiority, but rebuilds by using what truly makes humans human: myth creation, especially that of romantic love. It's our capacity to invent and create who we are, flaws and all, that truly defines humanity, and Vanilla Swingers plays on all the bittersweet emotions that result from this capacity.

The Town, which I briefly commented on in my earlier post based strictly on lyrical content, is a lovely album opener, setting the scene and mood for the rest of the record. Miles opens the song, backed by lazy strums of the acoustic guitar and piano, and Anne comes in for the second verse as they describe the sterile boredom of living in a suburban wasteland, where people keep reassuring themselves that they are, in fact, "ok." The characters in this album do manage to find each other amongst the dreary "pre-postmodern" structures and vapid fun bars, and so a tenuous, but tender, romance ensues. Though the lovers attempt to run away from everything in the song I'll Stay Next to You, The Hive finds them in the realization that no matter where you flee in time and space, you cannot escape the same negative aspects of humanity. The Hive, within its eight minutes, shifts between styles and rhythms like the fluid time it represents, beginning with a more subdued hushed vocal accompanied by lightly pulsing guitars and hi-hat, but then ending with a bouncier, twee melody worthy of Belle and Sebastian or Camera Obscura. Accompanying the restless music is the incredible lyric of: "Screensave faces, Chinese walls divide/Monitors flicker but I only saw the light behind your eyes/We're part of a problem with no solution/Everywhere you go, everything so cheap/Someone's gonna pay/From the daily rail to the NME, sing the same old song/'They build you up they knock you down. Fifteen minutes counting down. Changes like the weather. You built me up you won't knock me down - I'm keeping both feet on the ground. And it's getting better!'" The wasteful commericalism combined with the climate of false progress (most famously and most recently endorsed by "New" Labour) ends up being ubiquitous and inescapable.

In Back to the Present, which logically follows Danger in the Past, the lovers flee the 1980's for the amorphous present. The dreamy melody is propelled by twinkling piano lines and punchy chords while Miles' mournful, but thoughtful, vocals muse over the loss of his lover, who didn't appear to accompany him back to his present. The narrator must comfort himself with the dreams of what if's and potential futures while never actually achieving them in his reality. Album closer, If You Fall, comes after the lovers reunite in the future and realize that they could still believe in the bond between them, and that even though they were lost, they were lost together. If You Fall's bittersweet, delicate melody suits the fragility of the lyrics. The last lines of the song and album are: "On your way to work remember/If you fall for this you'll fall for anything that passes by you/If you fall for this you'll fall for anything." These words leave you wondering if you shouldn't fall for the Humanistic myth or if you shouldn't fall for the myth of romantic love. Or that perhaps they're inextricably connected, and thus, inescapable anyway.

If you're in the London area, or are going to be on May 27, go to see Vanilla Swingers' first live gig at the 12 Bar. And as I mentioned earlier, their album, which is produced in a limited run of 1000, is out in a couple of months. Run away with Vanilla Swingers. You just might find yourself back where you started with the ground beneath your feet feeling strangely new.

The Hive - Vanilla Swingers

If You Fall - Vanilla Swingers

Telling Stories, Feeling Human: Vanilla Swingers

Just over a week ago, I received an email in my inbox from Vanilla Swingers. To be honest, being new to the world of music blogs and not getting many artists contacting me, I almost deleted the message, thinking it was some sex organization for caucasian people. Thankfully, I looked at the subject line a little closer and realized that it wasn't spam, but a message from a UK musical duo called Vanilla Swingers in which they offered me five sample tracks from their self-titled debut album which will come out this May. I was going to wait until I got the album proper before writing anything, but I liked these tracks so much, I figured I'd write about them now. I can always elaborate later when I receive the full album.

Consisting of Anne and Miles, Vanilla Swingers produce delicate, bittersweet music in a style similar to both Stars and Black Box Recorder with undertones of Pet Shop Boys. Their album was recorded with Ian Catt (Saint Etienne, Stars) and mastered by Kramer (Galaxie 500, Low) and it is a concept album that tells "the story of two people who meet, run away, go back in time, lose each other, and meet again in 2015." I can't say I hear too many concept albums these days, and I think this particular idea is an intriguing one for me. And I'll tell you why.

Vanilla Swingers is largely based on John Gray's book Straw Dogs, a piece of philosophy which questions the myth of Humanism and asks why humans believe themselves to be so much more superior to animals when they rarely achieve what they're believed to be capable of. In essence, he turns the myth of human progress on its head. According to an interview done by Rock Sellout, Miles says: "lyrically, besides the story, you might say it’s about the differences between what people actually achieve, what they could achieve and what they believe ‘humanity’ can achieve. The idea of humans being the authors of their own destiny is a powerful myth, probably one that would be difficult to live without. Then there’s a bit of romantic love in there - another myth, if you like, and another one without which things would be pretty bleak. It’s a cliche but I hope it comes across that there’s redemption in beauty and in the whole mess of what it is to be alive and reacting to all the contradictory impulses that make us what we are." So, it appears that Vanilla Swingers sets out to achieve quite a lot while knowing that their very achievement will be another myth. Heady, but brilliant stuff.

I'm hugely impressed by the lyrics of all of the songs, which you can peruse on their Web site. The first song, The Town, of which I only have the lyrics, already grabs my attention and my emotions with its bleak urban/suburban imagery. Echoing Morrissey's apocalyptic seaside town, The Town reads: "There's a cone in the river and a Safeways trolley overturned/By the pre-postmodern business centre someone forgot to burn down." Thankfully, the music lives up to the promise of the lyrics as I listened to the next song, Like Straw Dogs. It obviously namechecks John Gray and Miles' heartbreaking vocals begin the musical dialogue with "All I have is words, words that don't obtain/And I feel I'm a stain on your horizon/So I stay away - it's easier that way/And there won't be no-one I need to rely on" before Anne comes in with "Is it him, is it me/Or is there something only I can see." The strains of a relationship wrought out of myths about identity are felt in every strain of the music and turn of vocal, and hesitant piano blossoms into hard guitars. In a reponse to and as a relief for these tensions, I'll Stay Next To You begins with a crash of thunder, and then drives along to a bassline that mimicks the restless spirit of running away from the terrors and mundanity of reality, which could very well be the same thing. The end of the song echoes that deadpan observational rapping Neil Tennant does in West End Girls before it enters a jamming outro.

A couple of songs later, Danger in the Past begins with a sample from Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love and a host from Top of the Pops - a contrast to the gloom of the present, but also a reminder of the artificiality of romantic love mythmaking and the shiny false promises of the '80's themselves. Then the song kicks in with beautiful hushed vocals by Anne, who is soon joined by Miles in mourning infected hearts and careless memories in a hypnotic, lush melody. For the moody, swaying The Way She Walked Out the Door, Johnny Brown of The Band of Holy Joy steps in with vocals, words and melody, providing an interesting interlude between the lover characters from the other songs and almost acting like a narrator. In the second last song, Goodbye Lennon, against the ticking of a clock and a heartbeat, Anne sings, "It's thirty years since '85/Robbie's dead but Pete's alive/Or so the weblogs say/But no-one's reading them." The mechanics of humanity's progress provide a counterpoint for its very heart as the world continues to lose itself in celebrity myths until it can't be bothered to know anymore. And although everyone's lost in this future, the lovers have lost themselves in each other amidst surging synths and chiming chords. Ultimately, we tell each other and ourselves stories in order to survive as a species.

I'm quite excited about hearing the full album. In the end, somehow Vanilla Swingers still make me believe in love. Even after they've dissected the myth and torn down what it means to be human, I feel more human than ever listening to it.

Web site: http://www.vanillaswingers.com/

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/vanillaswingers

I'll Stay Next to You - Vanilla Swingers

Danger in the Past - Vanilla Swingers

The Way She Walked Out the Door - Vanilla Swingers