AsiaLIFE

Last month Sebastian Blockley considered some recent U.S. albums, this month he shares some of his favourite releases from other countries.

There is something of a malaise with the U.K.’s slurry of identikit skinny boy guitar bands ¬– indie landfill. It has been left to the middle-aged to set the standards. Paul Weller celebrated his fiftieth birthday with the release of the double CD, ‘22 Dreams’ – his most ambitious ever. Having outgrown the Modfather tag, this record moves (not always entirely comfortably) between acid folk, cool jazz, rock, spoken-word and noise experiments. Some of the instrumentals sound rather like audition pieces for film scores, but are intriguing nonetheless. Like many good double CDs, ‘22 Dreams’ would have made a superb single CD. Clearly, Weller is still a questor, a man of restless musical curiosity. In a world of increasing musical genre conformity, we should be grateful for that.

Australian Nick Cave is really a World citizen, his works transcend any nationalism. He also reached his half-century with a corker of an album, ‘Dig!!!Lazarus Dig!!!’ that reveals no mellowing with age. He is back with the Bad Seeds, who have not lost any of their sense of threat, with guitars like switchblades. Here, though, they are almost indecently funky and tuneful. Cave himself, the hell-fire preacher of perversity, is in fine voice and delivers dark but highly literate, defiant rants for a sick society.

Since Portishead’s last album 11 years ago, the Bristol outfit’s albums had become U.K. dinner party mood music standards. ‘Third’, the band’s … err… third release, is in danger of taking appetites away – it sounds more like the soundtrack for global disintegration. Unsettling and ominous, like a spooky dark cavern, this is heavy Krautrock doom and gloom over which Beth Gibbon’s disconnected, beautiful voice mournfully floats.

Dengue Fever’s ‘Venus On Earth’, is the band’s third long player. Containing only self-penned new songs, it represents a clear progression from the earlier albums of western-friendly covers and pastiches of Cambodian Independence era pop. This recording shows their music becoming increasingly original rather than homage. The spirit of 60s Cambodian psych pop is now thriving as an export as Dengue Fever tours and builds what is becoming a global fan base.

Amadou and Mariam’s ‘Welcome to Mali’ is adorable. Their previous album, ‘Dimanche a Bamako’, produced by Manu Chau introduced the rest of the world to this irresistible pair’s contagious party music. Their latest album is even better, while still eclectic in its musical influences. I defy anybody to listen to it without smiling at its charm – or staying still for long. This ear-to-ear grin, good time music is joyous, shimmering, happy, huggable, classy global pop from Africa.