Grant Lee Phillips and Jeffrey Clark, natives of California's San Joaquim Valley, formed Shiva Burlesque in what is now Santa Clarita, 30 miles north of Los Angeles, in 1986. As you can hear from their eponymous debut album, released in 1988 to howls of approval from an enthusiastic fanbase at what used to be Melody Maker, Shiva were in thrall to the looming psychedelia of The Doors and Love.
Set fire to anything. Set fire to the air," urged John Cale at the beginning of Music For A New Society. That 1982 masterpiece was the evisceration of a man whose fractured psyche was mirrored perfectly by songs arranged in jagged, improvisatory style; a knife held at the throat of sweetness. Now he reappears with his first album of songs for seven years, and his finest album in any genre for over two decades.
Imagine Stephen Foster—or at least Van Dyke Parks—armed with a laptop and you're close to understanding the extraordinary charm of Californian duo Matmos' fifth album. Like 1999's The West, The Civil War negotiates a fragile entente between Americana and electronica, but does so on a bigger, constantly astonishing scale. Fireworks explode, battlefield drummers march across John Fahey's porch, Dr John is reconstructed out of glitches, an entire track is made from samples of a rabbit pelt, and "The Stars And Stripes Forever" is reduced to a postmodern shambles.
