SUNDAY, midday: it’s been raining for 24 hours now, and no one around here can remember the last time this happened (in the newspaper this morning the police advised motorists to ‘pull over if they can’t see when driving’ – that just shows that we Canberrans have actually forgotten how to do this whole wet-day thing). For lunch I’ve knocked off a few slices of shaved ham (which might qualify for Ordinary Ecstasy status; see previous post if you have no idea what I’m talking about, or you’re the police). I’ve chased the ham slices with a couple of chocolate shells. It’s highly likely that I’ll be making myself a cup of peppermint tea, because my no-caffeine diet is going gangbusters. The opposite of gangbusters is The Old Lady of The House and Cat the Ripper who are happily curled on the lounge, dreaming of long mountain walks and cornering rats respectively. We may not be leaving the house for hours.
But this is all by-the-by, because over the past few days I’ve been falling in love…truly madly deeply IN LOVE…with a new album. It’s playing as I write this; in fact it’s been on high-rotation since I bought the thing last Monday. (Does anyone else find semi-colons miraculous, by the way? See? Only when you’re in love do you start asking questions like that!)
The album? Well, it’s the appropriately titled ‘There Is Love In You’ by Four Tet. Four Tet’s 2003 album ‘Rounds’ is also much adored, because it too is electronic music with warmth and humanity. But where ‘Rounds’ more than anything else was an organic album, sampling pianos and mandolins and saxophones (wait, come back – there’s nothing Kenny G about Four Tet’s Keiren Hebden) and even children’s toys, so it could almost be called a folk record, this latest collection is more dance-oriented, in the way that Animal Collective’s ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’ is more dance-oriented. But what really gets me about this music is the sheer beauty. It reminds me of The Field in that Hebden gets a soft little riff going and then plays with it, taking it here a little, taking it there a little, building things up just a bit before bringing us down softly. This isn’t glowstick-and-pills music; it’s more peppermint tea and a nana-blanket, though your toes will be tapping beneath your nana-blanket, nothing is surer than that.
There’s also a touch of Burial. And hints of The Chemical Brothers, in the way that it sounds like the machines making this music are having conversations with each other, although Hebden’s machines are hanging out together in the sandpit, or making daisy chains, or sitting on the front steps with their arms around each other, just cuddling because cuddling is a good thing to do. I don’t post MP3s on Under the Counter, but ‘Angel Echoes’ and the extraordinary ‘Love Cry’ are worth checking out, even if electronic music makes you want to run a million miles to the nearest beer-soaked hotel. (And don’t YouTube them, because someone will have put the music to some shit images that’ll make it all look and feel like a badly drawn ad for aftershave.)
But not only has this album got my heart a-flutter and my arms out wide looking for the nearest thing to hug (The Old Lady of The House and Cat The Ripper are two lucky creatures today!), it also has the brain turning over, forming a question: what is it that I look for in the rather large amount of music that I buy each month? It has to have its own voice. It must know what it’s setting out to achieve, and it must be more than record sales and Video Hits. It has to work my brain and heart and other parts of my body too, like my legs and arms, and…well, you get the picture. It can’t be meretricious. It can’t be copies of something else. Above all, it has to have some kind of resonance; it has to aim for a response. It should make me realise something about myself.
Four Tet’s ‘There Is Love In You’ makes me realise that I like music with heart, in the same way I like people with heart (amazing how many people don’t actually have hearts). ‘There Is Love In You’ also makes me realise that I like music that says, ‘I really don’t care what you think about me, because I’m just going to be myself, because that’s all I can be.’
I like music that has the gentle fighting spirit: never try to take away my soul.
17 comments
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February 15, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Feb
mjrc
i absolutely love falling in love with a new album. you describe it beautifully!
February 15, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Feb
Nigel Featherstone
Hi MJRC, thanks heaps for dropping by. Falling in love with an album really is a great sensation, isn’t it!
February 15, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Feb
adrienne
nigel…
i too find semi-colons miraculous. i do. i get a bit tingly each time i drop one at the end of a thought! perhaps that makes me a geek. oh well.
although that’s not why i came here. i dropped in after reading your comment on ms moon’s last post; yes, it’s beyond reason that you can’t hold the hand of the man you love in public.
i am a woman, and could probably get away with holding another woman’s hand in public most of the time. even so, if i were on the ‘wrong’ block or in the ‘wrong’ bar, i realise i could be harshly beaten and then accused of starting a riot, or perhaps even killed.
this is one of the things that makes me feel shame as a member of the human family. it does.
i apologise for what our brothers and sisters put you through, and i hope we figure out how to get over this particular facet of our mental illness.
xo
February 16, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Feb
screamish
I once got kicked out of a youth hostel in Brighton for being too affectionate with my girlfriend. it didn’t take much, there was very little hanky panky going on. just the bare fact of it was enough to drive the blond surfer-boy manager out of his mind with jealousy at being locked out of his lesbian fantasy…a couple of nasty scenes.
jeez I’d forgotten all about that, it’s years ago now…but not THAT long ago. holding hands in the dining room would have been way out of the question. besides which i was too uptight about it at the time, i probably didn’t dare. but still…how dared they? i wish i could go back now, older and wiser and crankier and give them the withering abuse that they all deserved…
February 16, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Feb
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Screamish, thanks for your thoughts. I love how a post on falling in love with music/the meaning of music has resulted in a dialogue about holding hands! PS I too wish I could go back and dish out a bit of withering abuse…though I think I’d just like things to be a little bit easier right now. Then again, I’m the most impatient person in the world. PPS What a thrill to have in your life the memory of being kicked out of a youth hostel – priceless!
February 15, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Feb
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Adrienne, thanks so much for your thoughtful and kind comments. Yes, it’d be great to hold hands in public and not have to worry about what others might think or do. I guess the positive is that it might be…possibly…perhaps…getting easier…slowly, very slowly! PS I love the fact that you dropped a beautifully placed semi-colon immediately after praising them – priceless.
February 18, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Feb
morningaftershow
hey friend from the other side of the world, Four Tet is just so mighty GOOD!
February 19, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Feb
Nigel Featherstone
Thanks MAS! So good to hear from other Four Tet fans!
February 18, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Feb
A Free Man
I liked “Rounds” but it isn’t an album that I pick out to listen to. If it pops up, as things do, I enjoy it. I’m just not a fan of much electronica, largely because I feel that it lacks, well, heart. But your post here has inspired me to go and listen to it. See if I can hear what you hear in it.
February 19, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Feb
Nigel Featherstone
Hi AFM, I think I can confidently say that this latest Four Tet album is electronica with heart, great big slabs of it. And I must say I’m feeling like I’m getting a bit long in the tooth for dance music, but the stuff Four Tet peddles, at least this latest stuff, really does spin my nipples. I hope you enjoy it!
February 19, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Feb
petiteabsinthe
It would appear we have much of the same taste in music, Nigel Featherstone. I just posted a blog entry about Sigur Ros and Jonsi, to which you replied with the same level of obsessiveness that I feel towards them and now I’m here, checking out your blog, and lo-and-behold, you are musing about Four Tet. This latest album is absolutely fantastic. Kudos to relevant and authentic and lovely music…!
February 19, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Feb
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Petiteabsinthe, kudos to relevant and authentic and lovely music indeed! Actually I do hear the odd echo of Sigur Ros in this latest Four Tet album. Glad you dropped by and commented so eloquently.
February 20, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Feb
Nate
I’ve never heard of Four Tet, but by your excellent description of their music and the feelings it provokes, I would check them out.
February 20, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Feb
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Nate, thanks for visiting. If you do track down this Four Tet album I hope you like it!
March 3, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Mar
brendancanty
Can’t wait to listen to it! 🙂 Great review!
March 3, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Brendan. Glad you like the review. I hope you enjoy the album!
December 9, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Six of the best – the albums of 2010 « Under the counter or a flutter in the dovecot
[…] Tet – There Is Love In You. I wrote about this album back in February, making it clear how much I loved it, and I still play the bloody thing regularly, mostly because […]