Occasionally, I think we do records a bit of a disservice by striving so hard to contextualise them. This occurred to me again over the weekend, when I was listening to Stereolab’s 11th (or ninth, it’s hard to count for sure, as Stephen Troussé points out in his perceptive review in the current Uncut) album, “Chemical Chords”. I’ve held off writing about “Chemical Chords” for a while, not least because for a couple of months I had this incredibly annoying promo copy where all the tracks abruptly cut off after a couple of minutes or so, notionally to prevent piracy. Chiefly, though, my main problem with the record has been that, judged in the context of Stereolab’s vast and endlessly stimulating back catalogue, it felt like a marginal disappointment. I was, I should mention, pretty obsessed with Stereolab through the ‘90s: they were one of the first bands I ever interviewed (circa “Super-Electric”); the band I saw play more shows than any other; and a really important gateway to lots of other music for me, from Krautrock through to post-rock and beyond. I suppose, like a lot of their fans, I’d have been contented if they’d stuck with that motorik dronepop of their early years. But to their credit, Stereolab always had a doggedly progressive agenda, piling more and more influences into their malleable songforms. And this is what they fail to do on “Chemical Chords”, at least superficially. There’s some characteristically interesting ideas in the press release from Tim Gane about how the songs originated with him “messing about with a series of about 70 tiny drum loops”. But while the band might be amusing themselves by changing the rules of the creative process, the results are hugely familiar. Titles like “Neon Beanbag”, “Self Portrait With ‘Electric Brain’” and “Daisy Click Clack” might have seemed charming in 1996, but now they’re treacherously close to self-parody. “Daisy Click Clack”, in fact, sounds more like the name of an old High Llamas track, and Sean O’Hagan’s voluptuous string and horn arrangements are more pronounced than ever here – though “Daisy Click Clack” itself is a mild departure, being a tremendously jaunty piano wobble that has the distinct whiff of Lieutenant Pigeon and early ’70 novelty hits about it. Tastefully re-imagined, of course. So much for context, though. Over the weekend, possibly inspired by Stereolab’s own love of critical discourse, I started thinking about how “Chemical Chords” would sound in isolation, untethered from the obligations of context. It’s not a terrifically good path for music criticism to take in general, but it’s useful to try and invent new ears from time to time – especially when you know so much, maybe too much, about a specific band. What struck me, really, was that “Chemical Chords”, judged in this way, emerges as a thoroughly entertaining record. It’s not essential to know about the labyrinthine avant-garde methods which the band followed to create these effervescent, syncopated bursts of pop music. It’s positively liberating to forget about the riches that have preceded it in Stereolab’s career. It’s simply a bright, boisterous, meticulous 48 minutes of songs, with one killer fuzzed-out instrumental, “Pop Molecule”. But then it occurred to me. Maybe this is how most people who aren’t paid to analyse and think about music actually listen to records: unhindered by expectation and perspective; actively keen to find pleasure rather than fault. “Chemical Chords” is a lovely summer record – perhaps, sometimes, that should be all there is to it?

I’m not, as a rule, fixated on the idea of ‘summer’ and ‘winter’ music, but still, the arrival of the third Brightblack Morning Light album last Friday was incredibly well-timed. I can’t think of a band who make such profoundly horizontal music, who create a soundtrack for being happily paralysed by extreme heat. Or, I suppose, by other stuff. “Motion To Rejoin” got hammered all last weekend, and we’ve been playing this wonderful record in the office all week, too. When Brightblack's last, eponymous album came out in the UK, in the unusually sticky summer of 2006, we would play it at around 3pm every day in the old Uncut offices, where the capricious aircon, the crammed-in computers and the cruel angle of the windows combined to make the whole space unbearably hot. “Brightblack Morning Light” didn’t make it any more physically comfortable, but I guess it helped us mentally adjust to the heat. To slow down, really. Around that time, I interviewed Rachael Hughes from the band on the phone, while she hiked around the national park just outside San Francisco where she and Naybob Shineywater were camping at the time. Now, these notoriously free spirits appear to have fetched up in New Mexico: “Motion To Rejoin”, we are told, was recorded at their adobe hut on the mesa, with the electric energy provided by solar power. Brightblack, as you may be piecing together if you didn’t know already, are serious hippies, of a kind who’ve sporadically tried to ban military personnel from their gigs, and who’ve been known to have a large, sleepy dog as part of their onstage line-up. What’s more important, though, is that they make some of the most lazily, discreetly meticulous music I’ve heard in the past few years, and provide some deep solace for those of us who feel Spiritualized have strayed from the just path of late. I think that, in some review of the last album, I mentioned that Brightblack follow through on the possibilities presented by Jason Pierce on “Ladies And Gentlemen”s “Cop Shoot Cop”. That still holds here. Ostensibly, I guess this is a skilful underground-rock extrapolation of Dr John circa “Gris Gris”: drained, ethereal vocals from Shineywater, anchored by Hughes’ emotionally responsive Fender Rhodes. There are fantastically leisurely, bluesy horn sections flitting in and out of the heat haze, gospel-tinged choruses, and some extraordinarily lethargic calls for insurrection: “Oppressions Each” seems to have a chorus of “Police oppression!”. The general dazed sloth of it all is infectiously psychedelic, but it’d be a mistake to assume that this music was haphazard and wasted. There’s a sense that everything has been meticulously charted, that the soulful swells of the horns on, say, “Another Reclaimation” know exactly where they have to go. “Motion To Rejoin” is a record of great measure and intuitive consideration, I suspect the result of sustained and focused jams, and it has a great stealthy dynamic as well, so that by “Past A Weatherbeaten Fencepost” there’s a cumulative intensity which has increased the pace to something like urgency. Anyway, you can grab an MP3 of the mighty “Hologram Buffalo” over at the Matador site, and behold a striking picture of the duo in their natural environment. One thing, though: without getting too hung up on this weather business, it seems strange we have to wait until November for this to be released in the UK?

A couple or so months ago, I was grappling with Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s “Lie Down In The Light”, and wrote about Will Oldham’s increasing penchant for setting his voice up against more conventionally mellifluous female foils. That point seems worth making even more today, with the arrival of a new live album by the great man, “Is It The Sea”. To be specific, this one’s precise billing is Bonnie “Prince” Billy With Harem Scarem And Alex Neilson, and the action was captured by the BBC at an Edinburgh gig in 2006, on one of those tours where Oldham seeks to rethink his back catalogue by recruiting a fresh bunch of musicians. Neilson is a fairly obvious choice, since the Scottish drummer has a pretty elevated reputation in leftfield and improv circles, and has accompanied the likes of Jandek, among others, in the past. The really interesting development here, though, is the involvement of Harem Scarem, a Scottish folk group who, I must admit, I haven’t come across before, and who feature four female singers, also armed with fiddles, flutes, banjos and so on. It’s these four voices that provide a lavish, hand-knitted cushion for Oldham’s edges, turning “Ain’t You Wealthy? Ain’t You Wise?” into something of a tender lullaby. As usual, I’m tempted to dust down the Dylan analogy here, and go on about Oldham’s restless treatment of his own songs. But I can’t recall Dylan ever straying quite so far as this – though of course, musicologists would doubtless point to the historical ties between Celtic and Appalachian music. The most important thing here is how well these rethinks work: “Cursed Sleep” might be a tremendous relative of Nick Drake on record, but here it’s transformed into a great brooding, bristling epic. There’s a similarly potent version of the traditional “Molly Bawn”, arranged for the occasion by Alasdair Roberts, who’s often been compartmentalised – by me, for a start – as a kind of Scottish folk equivalent to Oldham. If there’s an obvious Scottish counterpart to a lot of this music, though, I’d lean more towards James Yorkston, thanks to the windy propulsion, the gathering majesty of much of this music, not least when Neilson rustles up a sort of breakbeat to drive “Arise Therefore” on to mighty heights. Oldham sounds hugely energised by the whole thing, as he teases audience members making requests, and matches Harem Scarem for their vivacity and warmth. There are a few capricious discoveries: one of the best things here is something I can’t recall noticing before, a Superwolf-era b-side called “Birch Ballad”. And one mild disappointment: a fractionally misfiring version of one of my favourite Oldham songs, “New Partner” (redone better by the Nashville all-stars band on “Greatest Palace Music, if memory serves). Nevertheless, another lovely record to add to an astonishing catalogue, and if anyone can tell me more about Harem Scarem, so impressive here, please don’t be a stranger.