Tony Stamp reviews Princess Chelsea’s newest mix of sweet & sour songcraft, classical/ EDM madness from Britain's Jockstrap, and the latest by Canadian producer Daphni.
Everything Is Going to be Alright by Princess Chelsea
Photo: Frances Carter
Lil Chief Records celebrated its 20th anniversary this year. The local label started as an outlet for The Brunettes and The Tokey Tones - the bands of its co-founders Jonathan Bree and Scott Mannion - and went on to house an enviable catalogue of indie pop acts old and new.
They’ve since stopped signing new artists, and looking at their site, seem almost solely focused on Bree, who’s gone onto solo success, and Princess Chelsea, whose collaboration with Bree on ‘The Cigarette Duet’ made her a viral star.
It may be an indicator of her success outside NZ that on the release of her excellent new album Everything Is Going to be Alright, she wasn’t in the country, but touring in Europe.
Chelsea Nikkel’s first solo album Lil’ Golden Book came out just over ten years ago, and mixed petite bedroom arrangements with knowing, cynical lyrics. The ‘Princess’ half of her nom de plum - an ironic nickname from her time in the band Teen Wolf - added a certain naivety to her music that she happily played into.
This album more than the previous ones feels like the work of an artist with her guard somewhat down. There’s an ease to it, and a confidence that's well earned.
Nikkel is a musician slash producer, and in the past has played or sequenced most of her albums, but for this one drew inspiration from her live band in terms of the arrangements. The single ‘Love is More’ has the zest of a live performance (even if it isn’t one), and the band appears on at least one song, the epic and energising ‘The Forest’.
In a press shot for this album Nikkel is wearing a Judas Priest t-shirt, and while the influence of genres like metal have always been there if you listened for them, this album has them creep to the fore. Her snarl in 'The Forest' might be the most rock ‘n’ roll thing she’s done, and ‘We Kick Around’ packs a similar attitude, complete with a spoken intro.
Her previous two albums of original material were called The Great Cybernetic Depression and The Loneliest Girl, so as a title, Everything is Going to be Alright is slightly surprising, even if it feels perfect for a world of increasingly alarming headlines.
It does sound optimistic, with a lot of songs that, on the surface at least, celebrate long term relationships and love. But her music has always been about conflicting impulses, so read the lyrics to ‘Love Is More’ and you realise the relationship it describes is an abusive one, and ‘Forever Is A Charm’, which has a similarly swooning chorus, features the line “when you're with me I feel like I could die”.
The songs on Everything is Going to be Alright are, I think, the best Princess Chelsea has written. They’re her lightest in terms of tone, her darkest lyrically, and her heaviest in terms of production - by which I mean they feature a lot of guitars. The trademark vintage synths are still there, but the six-string is a constant presence, and used in multiple canny ways.
On ‘I Don’t Know You’, she shows another new side to her sound, layering in acoustic guitars, or possibly mandolins, over a warm chord progression. Eventually a churning guitar solo creeps in, and seems to suggest that actually, everything isn’t alright.
I Love You Jennifer B by Jockstrap
Photo: Eddie Whelan
The first few EPs from English duo Jockstrap were off-putting by design, a bit like their name. They mixed classical influences with electronic production in a way that was coloured by their time at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, in that, it was challenging, and jarringly eclectic.
In press for their debut album, they insist that, like their EPs, it's a disjointed experience, even referring to it as a compilation. But I beg to differ. No doubt this record, I Love You Jennifer B, sports a diverse array of influences. But its success comes from how well they cohere.
‘Greatest Hits’ is clearly an homage to 80s pop, and its production reveals a lot about producer Taylor Skye’s dedication to his craft - its slightly lo-fi parts were run through a tape machine, and not just that, he sent a finished version of the track to BBC6, who played it late at night under a fake name, then Skye recorded it off the radio, spliced in parts of that dub, then had it remastered.
Vocalist and violinist Georgia Ellery also plays in the band Black Country, New Road, and is responsible for the string orchestrations that often pop up, played by an 18-piece orchestra.
Ellery’s songwriting and voice often have a cinematic sweep, a vintage sort of feel that’s accentuated when she heads to her higher register. That frequently butts up against Skye’s digital, EDM-influenced production. But rather than feel jarring, it’s always exciting.
‘Concrete Over Water’ starts off like a wistful torch song, and when a squiggly synth, vocal chants and programmed drums enter they don’t feel intrusive, but perfectly matched. A few tracks later there's ‘Debra’, a similarly syncopated banger with hints of Bollywood sass.
In interviews Ellery and Skye have talked about the speed of Jockstrap’s process, and the way they try not to second guess things too much, writing lyrics in an afternoon and using rehearsal takes in the finished songs.
That off-the-cuff, anything-goes energy runs through the whole album, to its huge benefit. In one moment a disembodied voice starts talking about crocheted pants - turns out it’s a friend of theirs they decided to include. At the end of another song they fast forward through an entire verse, as if they got bored with it.
All of this works, but so do the more labour-intense moments of production and orchestration. This is an album they worked on for three years, and it shows. It’s the mix of spontaneity and meticulousness that makes I Love You Jennifer B such an exciting release.
Cherry by Daphni
Photo: Supplied
Canadian musician Dan Snaith has been releasing music since 2000, and has been through a few aliases, as well as styles. His first album under the name Manitoba was icy and electronic, then the next sounded like seventies psychedelia. After a legally-obliged name change to Caribou, the sound began to shift toward more traditional songs that featured his voice, and were performed live by a full band.
Snaith is pals with Four Tet, who started in a similar broken beat place before taking a sideways hop into more danceable territory, and in 2012 Snaith did too, putting out his first record under the name Daphni. He’s just released his third, and it continues the project’s spur of the moment approach.
Apparently Daphni started as a way for Snaith to bolster his DJ sets, taking snippets of disco and afrobeat and laying modern beats underneath them. This is a tradition that’s been around since the mid ‘70s, the results commonly called disco edits.
On this album, Cherry, there are still plenty of those sampled fragments to be found, but some songs are built in other ways, like the tweaked synth riffs in ‘Crimson’ and 'Arp Blocks'.
On ‘Always There’ he lets a good chunk of some Latin jazz play out, at around double its intended speed. ‘Take Two' feels like a more traditional edit, sitting on one bar for a while, then letting the original track play, then switching to a different bar as he brings the bass back.
A lot of these songs are just a few minutes long, and consequently don’t feel interested in catering to DJ sets. What unifies them is their urgency - by comparison Caribou songs feel carefully thought out. Daphni is more interested in bottling a certain energy.
Snaith has said he makes loops every day, some of which become full compositions. On Cherry they often feel like initial ideas captured at their moment of creation.
Interestingly some of them come full circle, like ‘Cloudy’, which, with its sparse production and twinkling keys, would have fitted in nicely on that first Manitoba record.
