the times | Friday September 11 2020 1GT 9
music reviews
Marilyn Manson’s schtick as a scary
rock monster who’s here to corrupt
your children and make your lawn
turn brown has always been a little
hard to take seriously. However, his
latest blend of intense industrial rock
and Bowie-style theatricality is his
most convincing in years. “I’m a king
bee and I will destroy every flower,”
Manson warns us, like a gothic pest at
the garden centre, but then the
melodramatic balladry of Don’t Chase
the Dead and the satanic glam rock of
Perfume bring their own drama.
Produced, surprisingly, by the
country musician Shooter Jennings,
son of Waylon, this album brings out
the dysfunction beneath the persona.
As Manson sings on Solve Coagula:
“I’m not special, I’m just broken.”Marilyn Manson
We Are Chaos
Concord
{{{((colours that sometimes suggest
that they are playing
Ravel. Very refreshing.
The coupling, the
Symphony in 17
Parts by François-
Joseph Gossec,
the musical
servant of ruling
regimes before
and after the
French
Revolution, is
melodically
impoverished,
although the outer
movements with their
belligerent manner
certainly echo the period’s
tempestuous spirit. File this release
under “interesting”.
Geoff Brownthe first few refreshing
exposures, will you return
for the complete
experience,
occasionally dip
into the odd track
or file away and
move on? Only
time will tell.
No one in this
Beethoven year
has issued his
symphonies
chopped up with
movements by other
composers, but, hey,
it’s only September.
Meanwhile, François-Xavier
Roth’s wonderful period
instrument group, Les Siècles, enliven
his Fifth Symphony with phrasings,
dynamics and wind instrumentPatricia
Kopatchinskaja
What’s Next
Vivaldi?
Alpha Classics
{{{{(François-Xavier
Roth
Beethoven
Harmonia Mundi
{{{{(T
he world isn’t short of
classical albums devoted
to music by Vivaldi; a
skyscraper could probably
be formed from recordings
of The Four Seasons alone. Yet when
Patricia Kopatchinskaja, right, that
flaming free spirit of the fiddle, attacks
four Vivaldi violin concertos (he
wrote about 230), you know that
the music-making will be special.
Playing alongside Giovanni
Antonini’s group, Il Giardino
Armonico, no shrinking violets
themselves, she hurtles through notes
with such dizzying speed and athletic
force that the listener’s head starts to
whirl. Doused with the storm waves
in La Tempesta di Mare from Vivaldi’s
op 8 set, I never needed Antonini’s
added wind machine to remind me
what was happening and where I was.Kopatchinskaja’s violin also drifts
into an Indian swoon during the
Grosso Mogul concerto, quotes a
snap from Pirates of the Caribbean,
and never lets the ears fall asleep.
Philosophical justification for all this
is supplied in a booklet quote from
Nietzsche, granting artists “the right
to reanimate the works of earlier
times with their own souls”.
To underline that Vivaldi is
a 21st-century man, not a mere
porcelain bust, each concerto is
interwoven with five short pieces
from contemporary Italian composers,
variously skittish, unearthly and
sun-drenched, each with Vivaldi
echoes. All are worth listening to.
Yet however well played and cleverly
programmed, there’s always a
question hovering over fancy
potpourri albums like this. BeyondVivaldi with va-va-voom from a free spirit of the fiddle
classical that they ar
Ravel. V
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periodhe has taken the drug just after
discovering that one friend had been
jailed for trying to rob the local store
and another is on the verge of death
after a motorcycle crash. Result: the
ultimate bad trip. The self-explanatory
At the Movies on Quaaludes drifts
along in suitably sleepy fashion, while
You n Me Sellin’ Weed is a love story
with a twist: a boy and a girl, bound
together by dealing dope. “Free to live
our lives however we please,” Coyne
sings in a faltering tone that suggests
it’s only a matter of time before it all
goes wrong. There’s a tragic quality
throughout, not least on Brother Eye,
on which the narrator begs his elder
brother not to kill himself. These are
songs about everyday people who have
slipped through the cracks.
Best of all, American Head is held
together by the kind of classicism
that has been missing from Flaming
Lips albums for the past decade.There are enough freaky sound
effects to keep things interesting,
but harmonies are rich, melodies
unfold with ease, crescendos rise
before breaking into musical
Technicolor and there is a luxurious,
Beatles-esque quality throughout.
Many of the songs are augmented
by the sweet tones of Kacey
Musgraves, the Texas country star
who has also written about what
really goes on in provincial America.
Her contributions are a delight,
from her wordless vocals on the
slow-burning Watching the Lightbugs
Glow to her duet with Coyne about
the loss of innocence on Flowers of
Neptune 6 (“Tommy’s gone off to
war... Jane’s got busted and doesn’t
give a f*** any more”). The prettiness
of the music, the sun-drenched mood
and the tales of messy, imperfect lives
make this a nostalgic classic, and a
thoughtful one at that.The Flaming
Lips
American Head
Bella Union
{{{{{A
merican songwriters
have always been
good at capturing
the dreams and
realities of
small town life,
whether it’s Bruce
Springsteen’s young
lovers escaping provincial backwaters
in Born to Run or countless country
singers eulogising the wholesome
joys of sitting on your front porch.
Where, though, have been the songs
for small town America’s drug-addled
losers? Step forward, the Flaming
Lips, for whom such people are
more commonly described as fans.
The Oklahoma band have made
a hallucinogenic epic about the other
side of the American dream, and it’s
their best album since their 1999
masterpiece, The Soft Bulletin. By
taking difficult subjects and turning
them into something beautiful,
they have created something
strangely moving.
Recent Flaming Lips albums have
been gimmicky or unlistenable,
from the midlife crisis-inspired
collaborations with Miley Cyrus on
Oczy Mlody (2017) to King’s Mouth
(2019), a concept piece on which Mick
Jones of the Clash narrated all kinds
of nonsense about a monarch with a
big head. Here they rediscover what
they do better than anyone, which
is a dreamy, richly melodic take
on psychedelic rock containing
stories culled from experience. The
starting point is the singer Wayne
Coyne’s childhood in the Seventies,
when he grew up amid tearaway
drug-dealing elder brothers and
a coterie of outcasts.
On the melancholic, Pink Floyd-like
Mother, I’ve Taken LSD, the teenage
Coyne confesses to his mum thatFlaming into musical Technicolor
A hallucinogenic
epic puts the
psych-rockers
back on top, says
Will Hodgkinson
The Oklahoma band have made their best — and most moving — album in 20 years
Jazz album
Cool school saxophonist
Allison Neale reviewed
at thetimes.co.uk/artsRichard and
Linda Thompson
Hard Luck Stories
(1972-1982)
Universal
{{{{(Starting out as the first couple of
folk rock, living for a spell in a Sufi
community in Suffolk and splitting
after Linda got sick of Richard’s
holier-than-thou ways and booted
him in the shins halfway through
a concert in 1982, Richard and
Linda Thompson spent a decade
making exquisitely personal,
revelatory music.
This eight-disc box collects together
the lot, and if you are familiar with
strange and/or bitter masterpieces
such as The Calvary Cross and Shoot
Out the Lights you’ll find it a pleasure
to dig deep into the unheard material,
such as Linda singing the tragic The
End of the Rainbow (Richard does the
famous version) or duetting with
Sandy Denny on the Everly Brothers’
When Will I Be Loved.
Hearing two dulcet singers
detailing the intricacies of their
marriage in virtuosic folk rock
proves absolutely compelling.pop
GEORGE SALISBURY