Memorials – Memorial Waterslides / Windy & Carl – Heavy Early And The Creation Of Venus / Dean and Britta and Sonic Boom – A Peace Of Us

For those feeling forswunk and seeking to switch-off over the mid-winter break, then musical products conceived by artists in hermetic bubbles seem suitably worthy of some eleventh-hour examination, at the end of a very hectic 2024. As the three below albums attest…

Constructed in the garden shed studio of Verity Susman (ex-Electrelane) and Matthew Simms (It Hugs Back, Slows and Wire) – who trade under the Memorials moniker – Memorial Waterslides finds the duo delivering their first full-length for Fire Records, after a series of soundtrack-based offerings elsewhere.

Somewhat appropriate to its recording location, this is a veritable compost of genre-straddling aural visions, mulched and sifted into ten diverse sonic containers. Whilst this does lead to some unevenness in places — particularly with the harsh musique concrète-like “Memorial Waterslide II” and the meandering multi-movement “I Have Been Alive” – there is plenty of fertile and arresting invention to be embraced overall.

Which means Susman and Simms stretching themselves through twisted kosmische grooves (“Acceptable Experience”), joyously propellant art-pop (“Lamplighter” and “Book Stall”), new-agey eddying (“Name Me”), skronking art-jazz (“False Landing”), wispy pastoralism (“Horse Head Pencil”) and hymnal balminess (“The Politics Of Whatever”) with an unrestrained giddiness, all infused by the energy and eclecticism of Yo La Tengo, Stereolab and their own past CVs.

In short, Memorial Waterslides is a compelling calling-card, from a pair patently brimming with a healthily profuse supply of ideas.

Taking a contrasting approach, is Heavy Early And The Creation Of Venus (Blue Flea) from Michigan-based drone-rock veterans Windy & Carl. Featuring two fifty-minute-plus wordless pieces built between 2018 and 2023, this double-CD collection finds the long-time cottage industry couple of Carl Hultgren and Windy Weber in a deep but inviting immersion space.

Hence, “Heavy Early” uncoils as an utterly mesmeric vocal-less essay, formed from overlapping circular layers of guitars, all looping and swirling into a near-endless otherworldliness. Elsewhere, on the second disc, “The Creation Of Venus” resembles a serene séance with the spirit of Pink Floyd’s Richard Wright, as it unfurls through passages of evocative ecclesiastic organ-like synth lines and mysteriously generated ululations.

In lesser hands, these two epically-lengthened explorations would have been wearyingly indulgent, but in the shared grip of Windy & Carl, they sometimes just don’t even seem long enough. All told, this is a sublimely transcendental affair, for those requiring some healing auditory absorption.

In an altogether more accessible avenue – albeit timebound to December listening – is A Peace Of Us (Carpark Records), which finds Dean Wareham (Galaxie 500, Luna) and Britta Phillips (Luna) formally conjoining their dependable DIY-minded Dean & Britta duo enterprise with long-time associate Sonic Boom (AKA Pete Kember of Spacemen 3, Spectrum et al) for a lateral assemblage of Christmas-themed compositions.

For some musicians of a similar vintage, this might have been considered a shrewd pension planning venture, ripe to be repeatedly repressed and redistributed for years to come. However, Wareham and Phillips have been sneaking out imaginatively-rendered festive material for a fair while now, across seven-inch single and other non-album routes.

These previously cut songs are revisited here in modified incarnations, alongside a slew of extra selections, to be wrapped up in the ribbons of Kember’s added synths, vocals and production. Consequently, A Peace Of Us manifests as a warming and fans-serving exercise rather than as a cynical commercially inclined conception.

Thus, amongst the stylistically varied highlights, there’s a lovely Luna-like Wareham-led take on “Snow Is Falling In Manhattan” (from David Berman’s sole album heading-up Purple Mountains); a pulsing Phillips and Kember co-sung sultry rewiring of Willy Nelson’s “Pretty Paper”; charmingly tweaked versions of previously Dean and Britta-dispensed renderings of Glen Campbell’s “Old Toy Trains” and The Wailers’ “He’s Coming Home”; a twangy sleigh bell-driven Phillips-fronted makeover of Merle Haggard’s “If We Make It Through December”; and a subtly rousing multi-voiced reading of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”.

Both comfortingly familiar and crate-digging in its reach, as well as covered in a suitably intimate atmospheric wintry fogginess, A Peace Of Us is a very welcome addition to a discerning Christmas records collection, that in time might become as appreciated as Low’s much-loved Christmas mini-album or Sufjan Stevens’s sprawling Songs For Christmas boxset.

-Adrian-