Celebrity Playlist #5: Gossamer Albatross

And so, part one of two of our Playlist preview of This Ain't No Picnic, which due to response times and so forth comes in the week following Smalltown America's weekender, arrives in the shape of Gossamer Albatross, the Hereford largely teenage collective whose baroque folk has been much admired here for a while and will be so by more people when their debut 7" is out on October 27th. This is the music that made them:

(from Lewis)
This Ain't Vegas - Short Term Long Term
Absolutely one of my favourite songs ever. The drums, bass and guitar are so muscular but it’s counteracted by the singers vulnerable and uncertain lyrics. Every drum fill, bass note, guitar strum and vocal strain is needed. The chord sequence in the chorus is also insanely good. It gives me goosebumps.

Bright Eyes - Bowl Of Oranges
It’s perfect apart from the couple of minutes of noise at the end. His lyrics are the bomb and this song is one of the best examples of amazing lyrics coupled with a beautiful little melody. “And every time you feel like crying, I'm gonna try and make you laugh!” Yes Conor!

Death Cab For Cutie - A Movie Script Ending
Possibly my favourite Death Cab song. I’m a massive Death Cab nerd and love just about everything they’ve ever released. Ben Gibbard is a genius and along with Conor, John and Sufjan make up my favourite song writers.

R Kelly - Ignition
Me and Ben (our bass player) were singing this song in the pub last night to the utter dismay of all our friends. It was awesome. This song always puts me in a good mood. Sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick. It’s the freakin weekend baby I’m about to have me some fun!

50 Cent - Candy Shop
Really fucking dirty beats. They’re my favourite. This song is awesome.

(from Geena)
Coco Rosie - Werewolf
I absolutely adore this song, with its haunting father/lover parallels set against an achingly beautiful backdrop. Lyrics are a very important part of music for me, and without sounding like some arty prick I love this song even more for its parallels with Plath's 'Daddy', which is one of my favourite poems.

Tunng - Bullets
I find Bullets so bittersweet, and love the irony of searching for insight through religion, through pain just to forget and repeat old mistakes.

The Microphones - I Felt Your Heart
This song makes me tear up in the most fantastic way. Despite being only 1:56 long, Elvrum manages to squash, sit on and tie my heart into a figure-of-eight knot within the duration of this song.

Aphex Twin - Avril 14th
It's sounds so simple, and sends me into this dream-like state. I just think the piano sounds beautiful.

Final Fantasy - The CN Tower Belongs To The Dead
Best thing I've seen live to date, literally grinned ear to ear from start to finish. The string arrangement at 2:00 is just to die for.

Belle and Sebastian - A Summer Wasting
About two of the best things, summer holidays and spending it with friends. I think the mistake 'seven years of river walk ways' instead of seven weeks is deliberate because the song is about the wasted summer holiday that was seven weeks. Its like when The Beatles recorded the wrong name in their song Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da but left it as it was as recording can be so time consuming and expensive.

(And one from Reuben)
Yeasayer - 2080
Couldn't really say what I like about it exactly, the harmonies are perfect, I think I just like the way they use such a ridiculously diverse set of influences and still manage to make it sound amazing!