For a Promised Works special that we ran in the last issue of Epigram for 2009 I wrote a few reviews of my albums of the decade. Due to space and fairness, I only printed the review of Camille’s Le Fil, but I thought I’d share the others here. They were written at about 3am whilst in bed with headphones on, so let me warn you in advance of quite how soppy the one about The National’s Boxer is…
Beggar’s Banquet
May 2007
“You might need me more than you think you will,” from ‘Brainy’, the third song on Boxer, is probably the best way to sum up my relationship with this record – when my friend Mark first played it to me on its release in the Spring of 2007 it was in the final few weeks before the record shop we worked in shut down, so it took on a certain amount of poignancy. But over time, hundreds of listens and slowly corralling more experiences to hang off its lyrical branches of life imitating art imitating life, its gruff, heavy warmth and genuinely profound words have become a cardinal part of my life. That sounds like pretentious, post-Changing Tracks toss – but listen to Matt Berninger singing “I leaned on the wall, the wall leaned away,” Padma Newsome’s velveteen string and horn arrangements and Sufjan Stevens’ gentle piano on ‘Ada’, and just you try not to become irrevocably attached.
EMI/Virgin France
April 2005
With its squelching mix of percussive mouth raspberries, gulps and erratic vocal ticks, Le Fil is unlike any album made this decade. True, it shares a similar ambition to Björk’s Medúlla, to investigate the most meandering realms and possibilities of the human voice (and coincidentally, they both comment on the American government’s response to 9/11), but it transcends its self-imposed conceptual limitations. Working around a single note (“le fil” means the thread or wire) a double bass and keyboard, Paris-born Camille Dalmais moves between beatboxing like a new wave Justin Timberlake, emoting in powerful, wave-like swoops and fiercely spitting contradictions on the three parts of ‘Janine’ as if embroiled in an increasingly enraged battle rap with a dictionary. But that’s not to say you need to know any French to appreciate this record – you can stop and start at “magnifique”.
Jens Lekman – Night Falls Over Kortedala
Secretly Canadian
October 2007
Fact: there are not enough songs about pretending to be your lesbian friend’s fiancé in front of her father to enable her to elope with her girlfriend. Luckily Gothenburg’s king of sampling and bombastic romantic swooning Jens Lekman is here to plug that gap with ‘A Postcard to Nina’, both lyrically hysterical with its description of her father’s lie detector, and touching with his promise that “Nina, I can be your boyfriend.” Bolstered by huge horns and what one friend described as the “gayest” samples he’d ever heard (that’s probably true), it’s a record rich in the unwavering physicality of love – the strings on ‘And I Remember Every Kiss’ burn with the gut punch of that first infatuation – wry Stephin Merrit-esque wit and an ambrosia bright glow.
