01. Shower Melody | 02. Gluetooth | 03. Joy Fantastic | 04. 30 | 05. Trykk | 06. Fruit Touch | 07. ZOo00OOm | 08. Acoustic Lady | 09. Rising 5 | 10. Twistclip Loop | 11. Just Decided (Feat. Olivier Daysoul) | 12. No One Could Ever | 13. Velvet Peel | 14. Tell Me What You Want From Me (Feat. D‚M-FunK) | 15. FUSE | 16. Star Crackout | 17. All hot (Feat. Nadsroic) | 18. Black N Red

Lykke Li x Thom Yorke | Hearing Damage

There is a sense in which fans of Ian Brown are the Bilderberg Group of rock. They are a large, shadowy organisation. No one outside their mysterious ranks really understands their actions or motives, but it’s clear they wield considerable influence: enough at least to keep the former Stone Roses frontman thriving in the music business. His career has survived incarceration, accusations of homophobia and the oft-mentioned but incontrovertible fact that, away from the dulcifying technologies of the recording studio, his voice sounds less like something you’d actually pay money to listen to than something you’d deploy to stop ships crashing into Lizard Point in poor visibility.

On several occasions over the last decade, the present writer has attempted to go undercover, infiltrating their meetings at the Brixton Academy and the Southampton Guildhall, observing their participation in baffling occult rituals, including cheering wildly as Brown sets about a Stone Roses classic with the blunt instrument of his larynx, leaving She Bangs the Drums or I Wanna Be Adored lying insensible in intensive care, with a doctor by its bedside sadly shaking his head and offering grief counselling to its relatives. They appear to be having the time of their lives, but if you are not of their number, you reel away from an Ian Brown gig as you would from an unprovoked assault in a Yates’s Wine Lodge: shaken, confused, unable to work out what possessed you to go in there in the first place.

So perhaps the answer to his appeal lies in his albums, of which My Way – his sixth – is a pretty representative example. While in the Stone Roses, Ian Brown wrote – or at least co-wrote – songs of a swaggering perfection. After the Stone Roses split, he started writing songs like a man who’d never actually heard a song before: My Star, Dolphins Were Monkeys. It’s hard not think something was lost, but a certain naive charm was difficult to dispute. So it proves here. Opening track Stellify sets out his current musical stall, which is nothing if not idiosyncratic: an odd mid-tempo house thud, topped off with electronics and jangling pub piano. The melody ambles along, weirdly recalling the Grange Hill theme, before a vast horn section crashes into view as unexpectedly as a flying cartoon sausage on a fork. It’s a peculiar sonic cocktail on which to base an album, although the most peculiar thing about it might be that it works: on the ebullient Just Like You and the gorgeous lope of Laugh Now.

Elsewhere, there’s a song called Own Brain. As its lyrics helpfully point out, this is an anagram of Ian Brown. You somehow imagine it came about after agonised writing sessions in which he churned out songs called things like Wino Barn and I Warn Nob, but there’s something weirdly gripping about the resulting breakbeat clatter.

Not all of his idiosyncracies are as charming. He wastes the album’s loveliest melody on Always Remember Me, another unedifying comparison of his fortunes with those of John Squire: there’s something about Brown’s endless harping on this topic that recalls the guy who spends the evening loudly informing friends that his ex means nothing to him, then goes home and cries in a candlelit room wallpapered with her pictures. We once more encounter his unique brand of protest song, on which Brown expresses an utterly inarguable point in such a clumsily hectoring way that you immediately feel impelled to start arguing with it: “Save us from warmongers who bring on Armageddon! Save us from all those whose eyes are closed to the plight of the African child!” he bellowed on 2007’s The World Is Yours, causing at least one listener to frantically try to formulate a case in favour of warmongers who bring on Armageddon. This time, it’s a gloomily portentous song called The Crowning of the Poor, which socks it to “zillionaires” and leaves you fighting the urge to demand City bonuses be increased a hundredfold with immediate effect.

It ends with So High, a pastiche of classic southern soul. Given that southern soul is entirely predicated on the singers’ ability to convey raw emotion through the incredible power of their voice, you might reasonably assume that it’s a genre slightly out of Brown’s reach, even if he had the most powerful dulcifying studio technologies known to man at his disposal. But reasonable assumptions count for nothing in the world of Ian Brown: he just ploughs through it, with the reckless abandon of a man piloting a battered Datsun in a banger race. As with the rest of My Way, highlights and lowlights alike, you listen to it struggling to think of anyone else who would do this. And perhaps that’s the secret of the most mysterious continuing success story in rock.

• 08 Marathon Man
• 04 In The Year 2525

El grupo de Liverpool, que en 2002 atrajo la atención de muchos con su primer álbum Light & Magic (2002, Telstar) y que ya llevaban desde 1999 juntos haciendo música, vuelve tras tres años de descanso sin publicar un LP (ya que los formatos menores sí que los han cuidado durante esta etapa y sobre todo las actuaciones en directo).

Ladytron consiguió situar el término indie electronic en un punto totalmente opuesto al que en ese momento estaba, donde se relacionaba más con aspectos tranquilos, mínimos, de ahí la denominación de indietronica y la posición de Laly Puna como grupo de referencia. Los ingleses preferían la oscuridad antes que los ambientes minimalistas.

Witching Hour (2005, Island) fue su gran paso, les fichaba ya una multinacional y podían situarse entre los grandes de la electrónica con un notable trabajo. Quizás ahora se esperaba una continuación o algo superior, como suele pasar cuando se escucha a un buen grupo, que siempre se quiere más, nada de rebajar las expectativas. Y esto Velocífero no lo cumple, no es el tramo ascendente que se podría esperar del cuarteto, (en 2005, Pop Levi les decía adiós para dedicarse en solitario).Velocifero es más bien una montaña rusa en la que hay que agarrarse muy fuerte en las subidas y a la vez soltar las manos para disfrutar de la emoción, pero con pronunciadas bajadas que hacen que uno se tenga que tapar los ojos (oídos) para no presenciar lo que no espera.

Las subidas están en un inicio soberbio del trabajo. La electrónica germana y Kraftwerk vuelven a ser los referentes a los que aferrarse para firmar temas como Black Cat, un rompe pistas comoUnderworld firmaba en su época de esplendor: una escucha y ya es imparable. La fórmula está clara: distorsión, mucha oscuridad y situar las voces de las dos cantantes (Mira Aroyo y Helena Marnie) al fondo, con cierta distancia y eco respecto a la base marcada. Se puede ver en la mencionada, en Ghosts —primer single del disco—, en Runaway y en Deep Blue, el corte que salva el disco en la recta final, directo y con una atmósfera creada asombrosa.

Las bajadas, por su parte, van de la mano de Kletva, donde dejan la oscuridad para preferir un tema pop anodino, y en They Have You A Heart, They Gave You A Name, donde incluso podrían acercarse a los “experimentos” que hacen algunos dinosaurios para renovar su carrera musical entre pantis y coreografías. Tomorrow ya es caso aparte.

Un trabajo que trae a los mejores Ladytron y a los más simplones, con buenos hits y con un criterio de selección que tendría que haber sido más riguroso para no dejar colar esos temas menores entre los grandes. Aún así, Ladytron siguen sonando potentes cuando quieren (y pueden).

1. Black Cat
2. Ghosts
3. Runaway
4. I’m Not Scared
5. Season Of Illusions
6. Burning Up
7. Kletva
8. They Have You A Heart, They Gave You A Name
9. Predict The Day
10. The Lovers
11. Deep Blue
12. Tomorrow
13. Versus