The Black Keys – No Rain, No Flowers
★★★☆☆
“We got f***ed,” The Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney now-famously tweeted in June last year. It was a blunt explanation to fans for the Ohio-formed garage-rock duo’s cancellation of their North American tour and subsequent split with their management company.
As potential fodder for a 13th album, it all sounded rather promising. Yet No Rain, No Flowers turns out to be a muted effort from the band behind bristling numbers such as “Howlin’ for You” and “Lonely Boy”. Here you’ll find uninspired tracks like “On Repeat”, which loops over itself in an endless sprawl of Sixties-influenced drum patters and singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach’s soporific croon. Much better is the squelchy soul and dazzling funk of “All My Life”, with its playful electric licks, and the fizzing Seventies rock and layered harmonies of “A Little Too High”.
Elsewhere, they’re sadly devoid of inspiration on the piano-plonking “Babygirl”, moaning obvious lyrics such as “I like the things you wear/ I like the way you stare” over jangling percussion and strutting guitar riffs. The closest we come to anything resembling resolve is “Man on a Mission”, which crawls the kerb in search of late-night seduction but ends up swerving way too close to Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll”.
“I see the fire in your eyes,” Auerbach intones on “Make You Mine”. But where’s the fire in theirs? Roisin O’Connor
Memory of Jane – Unsinking the Cypress
★★★★☆
Even if you don’t know where you’re going, there’s plenty to discover along the way. This is the thrust of electronic artist Memory of Jane’s debut album, Unsinking the Cypress, which charts the musician’s own unsinking after a period of uncertainty and haziness in his personal life.
The 23-year-old French-English artist, real name Maïlé Doremus-Cook, presents an identity in flux as minimalist soundscapes clash with dissonant jazz crescendos, across which he peppers pared-back lyrics about dislocation and self-doubt. Taking cues from Aphex Twin, Radiohead and Squarepusher, the album vibrates with glitchy toplines and melodies that shapeshift, stutter and crunch. On “Eyes Talk”, a fizzy yet sombre number, Doremus-Cook whispers in a gravelly voice: “Your time is out/ And you’re running down.”
The album’s title song, inspired by a transformative trip to Costa Rica, opens with mellow tones before bursting into an epic, swirling synth-pop second half, which feels reminiscent of Tame Impala’s 2015 psychedelic-pop album, Currents. It’s here that Doremus-Cook’s vocals become lighter and gain more clarity, as he sings: “I was wrong/ I was wrong/ to make amends, I had to go/ had to go/ with all my things.”
Many of the tracks on this album lull you into a smooth ambience before summiting into something more experimental and vibrant. “Blind” traverses an eerie starting point that slowly progresses into a drum ’n’ bass-style beat. It demonstrates the versatility of Doremus-Cook’s production: unpredictable yet completely delightful. He’s certainly not afraid to surprise us. Ellie Muir
