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January 10 Signed and Unsigned recommendationsI Monster
I have liked this outfit for some time now, ever since I picked up the 7inch glam rock rethink of "Hey Mrs", and which I still love. "Daydream in Blue", which I seem to hear all over, is apparently their most famous tune, but it is also arguably their most conventional, a little triphop summersong. They are very generous on their myspace, offering up medleys so you get to here more tracks than just your standard four. Actually, their myspace is packed full of goodies and anyone who likes men in suits bearing the heads of giant flies will take to this. Occasionally their retro-futuristic music is fun, sometimes truly dreamy and gorgeous. They often sound like Burt Bacharach On Mars, or a space station lounge lizard act, which to me is sublime.
JAMES MORRIS MUSIC
More spaced-out than spacey, James Morris is making some great bedroom ambience. Like some warm-up act for the radiator lady from "Eraserhead", James Morris has a deliberately home-recorded feel where the hiss matters, where a guitar plays but the words are lost in mumbling and distortion, or singing over himself. It's like when someone is playing music next door but you are only half awake listening and you're having an anxiety dream of some sort. Is there something threatening in there? I am not too sure, and the occasional jangliness belies something sunny, but the love of rough ambience carefully obscuring real songs is wonderful. I think he knows exactly what he is doing November 24 My CD player is happiest currently playing....BAND OF HORSES: "Funeral"
A song of delicacy and incredible longing. The music is sad but the voice is soaring, calling out stream-of-conscious lyrics. If it has you with the verses, you'll be levelled come the chorus two minutes in. One of those songs that can take on depression on its own terms and make it beg for more.
XIU XUI: "Boy Soprano"
If Patrick Wolf were more industrial... Distressed, mumbling and politicised vocals over a mixture of soaring synths and extraneous clunks and beeps. Occasionally, something Gothic wants in on the guestlist. The best part is when those beeps start formulating their own melody like a gatecrashing 80s Atari game trying to audition.
MATES OF STATE: "Fraud in the 80s"
Like the best of all 80s pop, this track demands attention immediately with eccentric electronic noises before it sweeps you off your feet with a synth lick and back-and-forth vocals, then a chorus that makes you want to bop. It's a great 80s homage and if you're a sucker for the "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" playlist, this should prove a glorious indulgence.
MAZARIN: "Another One Goes By"
Both downbeat and celebratory, sounding something like The Shins. It's a quietly beautiful song and it's the vocal melody that really makes it. Jangly, melodic, real nice. (And after their third album, they're 'disbanding' due to conflict with another band bearing the same name!) November 18 Buck Theorem Sings!ANIMALS IN PAIN
That's the name under which you'll find songs I appear on with friends. I do the words and singing part, for good or bad. It's guitar-based and mostly mellow. Nothing fancy. And you can hear them here! Geewizz!
November 10 The Postal ServiceTHE POSTAL SERVICE
I must say, I always really liked the Postal Service stuff, but the more I hear their songs, the greater my appreciation and affection.
"We Will Become Silhouettes" is one of those great ironic pop-tracks that sound like candy but are dark on the inside. The video makes explicit the story it tells: a cold war vision, given the sweetest family afternoon laziness where the boy looks bored and Mom and daughter go ba-ba-ba to accompany the men's household karaoke. Then they head out on their bikes, looking like people left-over from a Ray Bradbury adaptation. The video maintains the irony and bittersweet taste of the original. Ho, even the deceptively Christmassy cover of the single is laced with horror and irony. Has being blown up by Nuclear bombs ever sounded so beautiful?
"Such Great Heights" is a truly beautiful track and a minor immediate classic, methinks. It's an on-the-road track, but the chorus provides an alluring declaration of bliss and denial. Check out this incredible acapella version by the Archodants... truly wonderful, and I'd think these were a fantastic live experience (and don't forget to check the original too)
Achordants cover: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcOumGc1zd0
Postal Service video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMOkfI7wCrI&mode=related&search=
Postal Service also do a cool cover of Phil Collins' "Against All Odd". Ah, it's great when cool bands re-value duff tracks. November 09 Something heavy...Sepultura: Covers
First, a rather good and surprising cover by Sepultura of U2's "Bullet the Blue Sky". Sounds mean with a little metal edge.
I saw them at Brixton Academy, I believe the very last time that Max Cavalera sang with them in 1996. It was an awesome gig, one of the best I've ever been too. I am not the biggest fan at all, but Sepultura's "Roots" era is astounding - sounds like a metal band mugging a Brazilian festival, or vice versa.
Now this is special.... two kids single-handedly knocking a hole through everything with their cover of "Refuse/Resist". This really is incredible; they can really play and make it look effortless. Then they go off and swap instruments and prove adept at those too. So much heaviness going on in one corner of a bedroom. What do the neighbours think? Makes me bellieve in ... everything again. - favoured 10215 times at time of writing.
Something old, something new...BECK: cell phone's dead
A few weeks back, I kept hearing a song being played daily whenever I wandered into HMV. Hey, that's Beck's new track, I thought. "Cell Phone's Dead": it's nothing earth-shattering, but damn I like it. Mid-level groove gets under the skin, Beck mumbles some stream-of-consciousness in your head and some kid apparently asks you and your friends out for a fight. And, hey, what a surprise - Michel Gondry popped round and made Beck a video. It features again Gondry's fetish for repetition, cycles morphing and cartoon elements which, even though you know they're coming, never cease to be a surprise and fascinating. Check song and video here...http://www.partizan.com/partizan/musicvideos/?michel_gondry
ALPHAVILLE: romeos
Perhaps I really should know better, but I wondered if I actually liked anything Alphaville did and checked out some videos. Well, I'm not a fan: "Big In Japan" is passable, probably filed under guilty pleasure; I thought "Forever Young" laughable... But "Romeos" is kinda great. It just jumps right in with synth-sound as big as glass skyscrapers and a squealing guitar scrambling down below and one of those soaring cod-majestic vocals. But what really makes it for me is when it's combined with the video. Isn't that the rather brilliant Noah Taylor, right at the time he was making "The Year My Voice Broke" ('87)? He's bored at home, suffering Eighties venetian blinds alienation, so he spruces up and goes on the prowl, looking for love. But there's some class and wit here: not only Noah's little dance-steps of hope and excitement, but when he gets on the bus and there's some guy twice his age obviously doing exactly the same thing. Narrative starts setting in and what we end up with is a rather neat short story of urban alienation mixed with the thrill of jazzing up and trying your luck. So he's let down and stays lonely, but who knows? Next weekend, maybe. Are the venetian bllinds half open or half closed? ...and the director looks to be Ian Pringle, he who would go on to trouble us with "Romper Stomper". http://www.veoh.com/videoDetails.html?v=e151483NwMN3hyR
November 04 revisiting 80s hitsThanks to the wonder of the likes of veoh and youtube, one can revisit those glorious 80s videos. Of course, this may mean slumming it by seeking out Animotion's "Obsession" .... hmm, "animotion", one of those 'evocative' mashed-up names like "manimal" (and if you remember that series, we are really talking 80s kitsch) ...and then not really knowing the difference between if it is actually rather good still and needs reclaiming as a pop classic, or if it really is crap. It's harder to be critical of songs from your youth, of course. Well, the video is hilarious.... none of the dance moves really fit and so on... and they should have spent the costume money on a choreographer or some extraneous dancers. (It was a cover too!) heh, they could have called themselves "Aniroman". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otuyo0tmd9k
I have no problem with MEN AT WORK: "THE LAND DOWN UNDER" one of the defining 80s hits. I used to pretty much like it as a kid, mostly due to melody and Colin's Hay wondefully toasted vocals, and that's been my prevailing stand over the decades since. But I always suspected there was more to the song that just a goofy celebration of Australia with verses seemingly based on Paul Hogan sketches (I used to really like the Paul Hogan show, and wonder how it would look now...). Rediscovering it now, I was pleased to discover that the song DID have political subtext: it's also about the over-development and selling off ofAustralia. Which, in my book, makes it far more worthy and gives it all the credentials of a pop classic: slightly goofy, immensely singable, great melody and slightly misunderstood.
_____________________
Which brings me to MADNESS. I always felt there was more to them just being "nutty boys". In fact, reckon this nuttiness has obscured the fact that as commentators and observationalists on Englishness, and painters of working class vignettes, they were and are up there with The Kinks and The Jam, et al. The "nuttiness" also diverted from the fact that they could be highly understated and moving.... Two examples: I can't be the only one moved by the verse from "OUR HOUSE":
Followed not by the emotional release of the chorus, but the limbo of a distinct drop into a slightly at-odds instrumental breakdown. Similar tricks in "MY GIRL": the final chorus escalates from emotional bewilderment to its most crushing.
At which point the song suddenly falls into a coda, leaving our protagonist deflated and, perhaps, just about to work up some temper. The song sounds like the moment before bitterness sets in. It also sees Suggs at his most subtle; a better singer than commonly noted, I'd say. Here he affects a pronunciation that casts him as a common, averagely smart mr everyman, a discreetly dropped 'h' here and there, a unassuming tone and, best of all, a beautifully effecting quaver when he sings, "She thought I'd had enough of her." And this is before we get to "MICHAEL CAINE", with the Northern Ireland conflict somewhere in there, dressed up as some Harry Palmer thriller and topped off with the killer lines,
Of course, at one point they became THE MADNESS, because the definite article always denotes earnestness. But they were already a serious band, if not taken as seriously as their peers. _______________________ Finally, to profess and confess my lifelong love of KING... well, at least since they released "LOVE AND PRIDE", in which they kept their spray-can anarchy respectfully to abandoned rockeries and Doc Martens. Then there's the curtain-antics of "WON'T YOU HOLD MY HAND NOW?" which was always more level-headed than it sounded and where Paul King pretends to be a Bond girl. And then there was the very dirty "TORTURE", where I am sure Paul King had something oral in mind. The band only had two albums to their credit, but I still think the lyrics were, for the most part, extremely smart and genuinely surreal; that Paul King had a great voice accompanied by dodgy performance; that the combination of a great voice, smart lyrics, chugging bassline and pounding keyboards made for brilliant pop (see also: "Madness", above).
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