Authenticity. It's a concept that has been the elephant in the room of popular music ever since Elvis/Ike Turner/Bill Haley handed this rock stuff over. Think of the bluesmen having to "pay their dues" or PWL registering as an independent label just to get back at the majors who overlooked Pete Waterman for years. But of course this is a thing of the past. We're all popists now, entirely comfortable with taking all forms of music for what they are no matter what the promotion budget, a world where only Girls Aloud receive unanimous praise and even Disney songs are scoured for something that college kids can latch onto despite them being the only form of popular music that doesn't so much as wink at their sensibilities. This never happened with Cartoons.
But of course we aren't. Nobody agrees on anything in this blog age, so it's not like years of inbred genre parochialsm will be washed aside overnight because Kelly Clarkson once made a record featuring a riff that sounded a bit like watered down Strokes. And this isn't the public face of rockism, Gordon Smart and Noel Gallagher droning on about Jay-Z as if Glastonbury should only ever be for lumpen guitar bands - why exactly are Kings Of Leon seen as Glastonbury headliners? Nobody's actually answered that yet, especially as they'd barely headline an amphitheatre in America. No, we're thinking about how, say, all discourse about the Ting Tings now factors in somewhere someone trying to keep their cynical side up with the dual details that their live show only features live guitar and drums and includes pre-recorded elements triggered by pedals - yes, so does No Age's - and that Katie White was in a girl group in the late 90s, a fact so obviously secretive and potentially damaging that it's mentioned in the band's album press release. See also Alphabeat, a goodtime pop band straight from the early 80s mindset that saw no difference between populist and artistic merit but reactions to whom are so wildly split that you dare not mention that you don't mind them for fear of being assailed from both sides.
Thing is, we in the blogosphere - well, we say 'we', but obviously we're above all this - think we have an influence that just doesn't exist further afield. Sam Sparro's Black And Gold is already second in Radio 1's last.fm profile (see posts passim) yet you'll find plenty of clued up people who have no idea who or what this is. And this is nothing to do with, say, Steven Wells firing off yet another reverse-snobbery-with-swearing piece about how all pop is excellent and all that music you listen to is shit like the idea had never occurred to anyone else. (In fairness, Swells was seriously ill a couple of years ago and it's entirely possible that, given the writings of Oliver Sacks on post-traumatic obsessiveness, he genuinely can't remember how to write any other way.) It's the assumption that different people can now all learn to think the same way and anyone who doesn't is on the obvious wind-up. It's nobody's fault - we read Popjustice as much as anyone (which admittedly crowbarred like that in the middle of this paragraph sounds a bit like "I've got plenty of gay friends!") - it's called individual taste, and why people seem to genuinely think that because we're all on the broadband express line to pop culture we must now all subscribe to a new slanted orthodoxy is a curiosity that affects too much blogging.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Monday, June 02, 2008
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Weekender : we make our own mythologies
WHAT CD?
- "ghosts n vodka, friday 6pm - saturday 1pm, the stupidly pretty girl from the ub40 show (says lex, we don't collectively hang out these types of places in general (i saw her like, 2years later, she lost her glow)), the combination of amoxicillin n paracetamol, longpigs (both albums, yeh?), staring vaguely into middle distance, liking someone so much you cant meet their eyes, kel moving heavy amps whilst the guys blag free tees from the other bands, standing alone in festival crowds, the calming presence of lea room, the ibanez tubescreamer ts-9, nearly falling asleep in metal pubs, actually needing a ponce rack, that night kelly showed the academy her arse, talking the proverbial shit, sorry alexei likes (sleeper), no-one knowing the answer to my dynasty warriors 5 question cos no-one else plays it, alexei and ryans 7 year plan, feeling you should really be somewhere else, the big ass emulator discs 1 and 3, hiding from bayliffs, remembering that it used to be called college rock, sub of the day, shocked elevator family, dead relatives you hate talking about, good concierge, bad concierge, good taxi, bad taxi, good soundchecks, bad soundchecks, good customs, bad customs,not being violently sick all day, laura who never added us". This is just a small selection of the 278 bands, experiences and detritus of life Johnny Foreigner cite as influences on their Myspace. And they list all of it because they care. They care about the precise messthetics of the music they make, a music that gets compared curiously often to their mates, ex-tour accompaniment and occasional public tryst partners (note: world's smuggest look to camera at 0:35, and it's not even intentional) Los Campesinos! but bears more resemblance to some mutant child of any number of modish defunct American bands - Dismemberment Plan, Cap'n Jazz, Braid, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Minus The Bear, Pavement, that sort. There's an exuberance and a preciseness despite the all over the place garnish you can't manufacture, and that is why we've been going on about the impending nature of Waited Up 'Til It Was Light for months. Then there's everything else - the volume, the smart quotable lyrics, the incessantly detailed references to Birmingham ("some say Shaun Walsh saved our city" perhaps even too specific for purpose), the awareness that this should be pop all along, albeit not in any sense mainstream pop understands and played with a zest that shames plenty of others. Best British rock album of the year so far? We'd doubt the 'British' and 'so far' bits at this moment in time. Over at a better run place, you can read Alexei explaining why they named a song after their tech, the Craig Finn influence and their "Blues Brothers song".
- Another band who know a thing or two about counter-melodic dissonance and turning up the volume while stamping on every distortion and feedback unit tohand foot are the Manhattan Love Suicides, two of whom we hadn't realised until comparatively recently had spent the early part of the decade as the underrated Pop Threat, an even more apt name when you think about it. Burnt Out Landscapes is a compilation of their four limited edition singles, US radio sessions, obscurities and buried somewhere in there four new songs. This whole post-Jesus And Mary Chain feedback pop plus tribal drums thing is making a huge comeback at the moment everywhere from Glasvegas to A Place To Bury Strangers but we reckon none do it better than MLS with their collections of Velvets, C86, garage rock and girl groups to go at as much as their pedals.
- And while we're talking pedals, here's an album named after two distortion units. Superfuzz Bigmuff reputedly sold dreadfully on first release but is now routinely lazily labelled as grunge's great precursor, the first record to successfully marry Nuggets-via-SST wanton energy, Stooges primalism and fuzz tones. Twenty years on, the same age as the Sub Pop label it brought into focus, it's grown singles, demos and live and radio gubbins. Mudhoney are also releasing a new album, The Lucky Ones, this week as they're wont to do whenever repackaging their back issues, but even Mark Arm probably doesn't care that much.
- In a week that sees both a stream of new releases and a concurrent litany of disappointing albums (Ladytron, She & Him, Lykke Li, Oppenheimer, maybe the Notwist but we've not heard any of it yet), Shearwater keep up their end with Rook. Jonathan Meiburg has worked long and hard to pull his project away from the Okkervil River sideline it was long seen as - indeed he's just announced his departure from that band - and he managed it with 2006's Palo Santo. Rook is described as a meditation song cycle on man, nature and the relationship thereof, more muted and expansive, emerging from the previous John Cale/Talk Talk ingredients into more pastoral, falsetto folk-rock waters.
- All of which brings us to the Radiohead Best Of. People will argue back and forth forever about Best Ofs - the whole Nirvana furore, anyone? - and its performance in the charts will be fascinating as Tesco browsers get their own one-stop shop on the days when they by and large had melodies about them. More worthwhile is the accompanying Best Of DVD, which is their always fascinating videos, even Pop Is Dead, and moreover the ultrarare Pulk Pull Revolving Doors/Like Spinning Plates.
- Loads of singles to go at this week, two of which we particularly commend. It feels at times that before sundry excitable Cardiffians and Brummies arrived Jeremy Warmsley was premier totem for Sweeping The Nation, so much did we bang on about him, although we still argue The Art Of Fiction justified all that. While he still gigged here and about and in the last few months has established Welcome To Our TV Show Warmsley spent most of 2007 working on a second album with Marcus Dravs, collaborator with Arcade Fire and Bjork (and co-producer with Eno of the new Coldplay album. Move along, nothing to see in these brackets), and occasionally unveiling some even more packed out dramatic new songs. They will appear in September's second album; before then two non-LP songs previously debuted as his in-house soirees are soldered together on a double A side. The Boat Song is a poppy tale of imagination co-written by and featuring backing singer to the gentry Emmy The Great (whose own album is released at about the same time), Temptation a more arrythmic number written by Sumner, Hook, Gilbert and Morris. Yet more J-Wo news will follow shortly.
- It's a question that's bothered self-regarding scholars ever since 21 was released - exactly who does the Mystery Jets' Two Doors Down sound like? "Something from the Eighties" does for most people, but such imprecision doesn't wash. So it's not Johnny Hates Jazz as Zane Lowe reckons, but then it's not really Aztec Camera either. For what it's worth we're pitching our stylistic tent towards Popjustice's suggestion of Prefab Sprout, with nods to Squeeze's Black Coffee In Bed. Whatever, it actually transcends mere "the shoulder pads!" ironic nostalgia by being a great little pop song and a sautory reminder as the Here & Now tour resumes that Eighties pop was for the main part so memorable not because of School Disco post-modernism but because compared to what has been sold to the mass market since it was so offbeat and remarkable.
- What else? Restlesslist's Butlin Breaks, the sound of Anticon making a 60s spy theme with a mariachi band next door, and Fighting With Wire's Everyone Needs A Nemesis, essentially Biffy Clyro having their faces ground in the dirt, have both been previously discussed when their initially published release dates came around, but that's labels for you. Laura Marling seems to have carried on just below the radar even after the release of Alas I Cannot Swim, which is what suits that album's porcelain construction. Cross Your Fingers is the wise single choice; an inevitable single choice is One Day Like This, Elbow's only real attempt to trade on past glories on The Seldom Seen Kid by streamlining Grace Under Pressure's choral alternative anthemry. Joyous multi-handedness comes in the varying forms of the Young Republic's brass and woodwind aided download only Paper Ships and The Strange Death Of Liberal England's further adventures in overwhelming quasi-atonality Angelou.
COMING SOON: Also out this week is Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, the sixth album by Silver Jews, who actually seem to have now stabilised around central presence David Berman. It's almost a summery West Coast album as Berman has learnt to straighten out and enjoy himself on songs like Strange Victory Strange Defeat, although obviously there's still the baritone wry poet in there. Note how, like Bill Callahan, he refers to 'squirls'.
MYSPACE INVADERS: We're going to have to pretend we ever listen to post-hardcore soon if we continue to post gossamer-light playful indiepop. Cassie And The Cassettes (current Myspace quote: "Doing A-levels, back soon". Gah, not you as well) are one of those female-fronted band that roll around in the softest cotton wool musically, all fluttering keyboards and upbeat, tender lyrics with drawing pins sequestered in the group hug. Two Of A Kind even sounds a bit like Kate Nash's cabaret piano without preceding killing sprees.
VISUAL AID: How many times have acts playing live on British television engineered a situation where everything has gone sideways? Hendrix on A Happening For Lulu, obviously, but then we're in a grey area. The Stone Roses didn't cause the power to go down on the Late Show and Shaun Ryder just swears anyway. No, it seems to be on American network television where British bands reserve their capacity to throw things into complete chaos for. Elvis Costello on Saturday Night Live in 1977 is the most famous such incident but that seems to be undergoing one of its periodical periods of YouTube rights exile and we've linked to it before anyway. Costello and the Attractions were only on SNL because the Sex Pistols pulled out, and when John Lydon finally got onto the network in 1980 it was Public Image Ltd on American Bandstand. Told they'd be miming Poptones and Careering Lydon took the art to extreme levels while the rest of the band swap or give away instruments and the audience relocate themselves in the frenzy. Moving on six years Fox trialled a Late Show rival to Johnny Carson's chat show pre-eminence, hosted by Joan Rivers but one week by sitcom actress Suzanne Somers. That was the week they had Wire on. And not any old Wire period, but when they were promoting Drill, set up so loudly it distorts in places. Keep watching afterwards for Somers' meeting of minds with Bruce Gilbert while Graham Lewis films the exchange while sporting one of fashion's least well aged hairstyles.
LINKS EFFECT
* We really thought the cupboard was going to be bare newswise this week until two live events of high priority flitted across our desk. The first came from the good burghers of Transgressive records, who have clearly forgiven our once sending them a desperate "send us some records, won't you?" email and wanted to pass on details of the Transgressive Hot Summer Tour 2008. Seven of the label's affiliate acts are being put on a rotating line-up, five a night, across the country over a fortnight in the month of July, beginning on the 4th in Oxford, ending on the 19th in Glasgow and hitting Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Cardiff, Bristol, Birmingham, London and Brighton in between. As is only proper Jeremy Warmsley is playing all nights, as is much touted electro-new wave, lyrically-obtuse, Popjustice-approved, no-mention-in-press-release-of-him-having-been-drummer-in-Ladyfuzz Esser. For the other three, take your pick from baritone-voiced suave dramatists Absentee (actually on Memphis Industries, but also Trangressive Publishing), looped-up chamber pop type and Neil's son Liam Finn, long gestating ethereal singer-songwritress Mechanical Bride, Metal Box as imagined by former Les Incompetents frontman melange Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man and recently mp3-highlighted Antipodean mess o'electronics So So Modern. In a move unconnected with this tour Warmsley, along with another outfit mentioned earlier in this post, has contributed to our SUPER SECRET EXCITING SPIN-OFF PROJECT, revelation of which very soon.
* While we're talking label awaydays, the lovely people behind Smalltown America have resurrected their September all-dayers of recent years only to find they've grown into a weekender, or "urban festival" if you're the person who writes this stuff. This Ain't No Picnic takes place on September 27th and 28th at King's College London, featuring roughly thirty bands on two stages plus a special bar with its own film programme and a late clubnight attached. All proceeds go to charity: bands confirmed so far, because we like this descriptive thing we started up there, are Falkous' revenge Future Of The Left, irked troubadour Chris T-T, everything-at-a-prog-wall Cats In Paris, playfully perverse power poppers the Young Playthings, Scottish Pavement/Sebadoh hybrid Copy Haho, ukelele touting lo-fi wordsmith Jam On Bread, lo-fi cut-up electronicist Alan MX, 'new Bearsuit' Antiques Roadshow-cameoing septet The Dierdres and Tropics, who we've never heard of before. *pause* Oh, right. Lively. Anyway, tickets are £20 until 27th June, £25 thereafter.
* Oh yeah, this as well, which we've known about for ages and then received a cajoling email about in the week. Music Spotlight Presents: Snapshots Volume 1 Compilation is a free downloadable compilation of eleven new bands, 4 or 5 Magicians the only ones we've featured, And So I Watch You From Afar and I Concur others that you may be dimly aware of, most worth the effort.
* A thing we noticed from watching television this week: As the Leicester players came out for yesterday's rugby union Premiership final, preceded by the sort of film that no footballer, or indeed anyone in any other sport, would ever stand for, they were accompanied by the Who's Won't Get Fooled Again. Does that really send out a fearsome message?
- "ghosts n vodka, friday 6pm - saturday 1pm, the stupidly pretty girl from the ub40 show (says lex, we don't collectively hang out these types of places in general (i saw her like, 2years later, she lost her glow)), the combination of amoxicillin n paracetamol, longpigs (both albums, yeh?), staring vaguely into middle distance, liking someone so much you cant meet their eyes, kel moving heavy amps whilst the guys blag free tees from the other bands, standing alone in festival crowds, the calming presence of lea room, the ibanez tubescreamer ts-9, nearly falling asleep in metal pubs, actually needing a ponce rack, that night kelly showed the academy her arse, talking the proverbial shit, sorry alexei likes (sleeper), no-one knowing the answer to my dynasty warriors 5 question cos no-one else plays it, alexei and ryans 7 year plan, feeling you should really be somewhere else, the big ass emulator discs 1 and 3, hiding from bayliffs, remembering that it used to be called college rock, sub of the day, shocked elevator family, dead relatives you hate talking about, good concierge, bad concierge, good taxi, bad taxi, good soundchecks, bad soundchecks, good customs, bad customs,not being violently sick all day, laura who never added us". This is just a small selection of the 278 bands, experiences and detritus of life Johnny Foreigner cite as influences on their Myspace. And they list all of it because they care. They care about the precise messthetics of the music they make, a music that gets compared curiously often to their mates, ex-tour accompaniment and occasional public tryst partners (note: world's smuggest look to camera at 0:35, and it's not even intentional) Los Campesinos! but bears more resemblance to some mutant child of any number of modish defunct American bands - Dismemberment Plan, Cap'n Jazz, Braid, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Minus The Bear, Pavement, that sort. There's an exuberance and a preciseness despite the all over the place garnish you can't manufacture, and that is why we've been going on about the impending nature of Waited Up 'Til It Was Light for months. Then there's everything else - the volume, the smart quotable lyrics, the incessantly detailed references to Birmingham ("some say Shaun Walsh saved our city" perhaps even too specific for purpose), the awareness that this should be pop all along, albeit not in any sense mainstream pop understands and played with a zest that shames plenty of others. Best British rock album of the year so far? We'd doubt the 'British' and 'so far' bits at this moment in time. Over at a better run place, you can read Alexei explaining why they named a song after their tech, the Craig Finn influence and their "Blues Brothers song".
- Another band who know a thing or two about counter-melodic dissonance and turning up the volume while stamping on every distortion and feedback unit to
- And while we're talking pedals, here's an album named after two distortion units. Superfuzz Bigmuff reputedly sold dreadfully on first release but is now routinely lazily labelled as grunge's great precursor, the first record to successfully marry Nuggets-via-SST wanton energy, Stooges primalism and fuzz tones. Twenty years on, the same age as the Sub Pop label it brought into focus, it's grown singles, demos and live and radio gubbins. Mudhoney are also releasing a new album, The Lucky Ones, this week as they're wont to do whenever repackaging their back issues, but even Mark Arm probably doesn't care that much.
- In a week that sees both a stream of new releases and a concurrent litany of disappointing albums (Ladytron, She & Him, Lykke Li, Oppenheimer, maybe the Notwist but we've not heard any of it yet), Shearwater keep up their end with Rook. Jonathan Meiburg has worked long and hard to pull his project away from the Okkervil River sideline it was long seen as - indeed he's just announced his departure from that band - and he managed it with 2006's Palo Santo. Rook is described as a meditation song cycle on man, nature and the relationship thereof, more muted and expansive, emerging from the previous John Cale/Talk Talk ingredients into more pastoral, falsetto folk-rock waters.
- All of which brings us to the Radiohead Best Of. People will argue back and forth forever about Best Ofs - the whole Nirvana furore, anyone? - and its performance in the charts will be fascinating as Tesco browsers get their own one-stop shop on the days when they by and large had melodies about them. More worthwhile is the accompanying Best Of DVD, which is their always fascinating videos, even Pop Is Dead, and moreover the ultrarare Pulk Pull Revolving Doors/Like Spinning Plates.
- Loads of singles to go at this week, two of which we particularly commend. It feels at times that before sundry excitable Cardiffians and Brummies arrived Jeremy Warmsley was premier totem for Sweeping The Nation, so much did we bang on about him, although we still argue The Art Of Fiction justified all that. While he still gigged here and about and in the last few months has established Welcome To Our TV Show Warmsley spent most of 2007 working on a second album with Marcus Dravs, collaborator with Arcade Fire and Bjork (and co-producer with Eno of the new Coldplay album. Move along, nothing to see in these brackets), and occasionally unveiling some even more packed out dramatic new songs. They will appear in September's second album; before then two non-LP songs previously debuted as his in-house soirees are soldered together on a double A side. The Boat Song is a poppy tale of imagination co-written by and featuring backing singer to the gentry Emmy The Great (whose own album is released at about the same time), Temptation a more arrythmic number written by Sumner, Hook, Gilbert and Morris. Yet more J-Wo news will follow shortly.
- It's a question that's bothered self-regarding scholars ever since 21 was released - exactly who does the Mystery Jets' Two Doors Down sound like? "Something from the Eighties" does for most people, but such imprecision doesn't wash. So it's not Johnny Hates Jazz as Zane Lowe reckons, but then it's not really Aztec Camera either. For what it's worth we're pitching our stylistic tent towards Popjustice's suggestion of Prefab Sprout, with nods to Squeeze's Black Coffee In Bed. Whatever, it actually transcends mere "the shoulder pads!" ironic nostalgia by being a great little pop song and a sautory reminder as the Here & Now tour resumes that Eighties pop was for the main part so memorable not because of School Disco post-modernism but because compared to what has been sold to the mass market since it was so offbeat and remarkable.
- What else? Restlesslist's Butlin Breaks, the sound of Anticon making a 60s spy theme with a mariachi band next door, and Fighting With Wire's Everyone Needs A Nemesis, essentially Biffy Clyro having their faces ground in the dirt, have both been previously discussed when their initially published release dates came around, but that's labels for you. Laura Marling seems to have carried on just below the radar even after the release of Alas I Cannot Swim, which is what suits that album's porcelain construction. Cross Your Fingers is the wise single choice; an inevitable single choice is One Day Like This, Elbow's only real attempt to trade on past glories on The Seldom Seen Kid by streamlining Grace Under Pressure's choral alternative anthemry. Joyous multi-handedness comes in the varying forms of the Young Republic's brass and woodwind aided download only Paper Ships and The Strange Death Of Liberal England's further adventures in overwhelming quasi-atonality Angelou.
COMING SOON: Also out this week is Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, the sixth album by Silver Jews, who actually seem to have now stabilised around central presence David Berman. It's almost a summery West Coast album as Berman has learnt to straighten out and enjoy himself on songs like Strange Victory Strange Defeat, although obviously there's still the baritone wry poet in there. Note how, like Bill Callahan, he refers to 'squirls'.
MYSPACE INVADERS: We're going to have to pretend we ever listen to post-hardcore soon if we continue to post gossamer-light playful indiepop. Cassie And The Cassettes (current Myspace quote: "Doing A-levels, back soon". Gah, not you as well) are one of those female-fronted band that roll around in the softest cotton wool musically, all fluttering keyboards and upbeat, tender lyrics with drawing pins sequestered in the group hug. Two Of A Kind even sounds a bit like Kate Nash's cabaret piano without preceding killing sprees.
VISUAL AID: How many times have acts playing live on British television engineered a situation where everything has gone sideways? Hendrix on A Happening For Lulu, obviously, but then we're in a grey area. The Stone Roses didn't cause the power to go down on the Late Show and Shaun Ryder just swears anyway. No, it seems to be on American network television where British bands reserve their capacity to throw things into complete chaos for. Elvis Costello on Saturday Night Live in 1977 is the most famous such incident but that seems to be undergoing one of its periodical periods of YouTube rights exile and we've linked to it before anyway. Costello and the Attractions were only on SNL because the Sex Pistols pulled out, and when John Lydon finally got onto the network in 1980 it was Public Image Ltd on American Bandstand. Told they'd be miming Poptones and Careering Lydon took the art to extreme levels while the rest of the band swap or give away instruments and the audience relocate themselves in the frenzy. Moving on six years Fox trialled a Late Show rival to Johnny Carson's chat show pre-eminence, hosted by Joan Rivers but one week by sitcom actress Suzanne Somers. That was the week they had Wire on. And not any old Wire period, but when they were promoting Drill, set up so loudly it distorts in places. Keep watching afterwards for Somers' meeting of minds with Bruce Gilbert while Graham Lewis films the exchange while sporting one of fashion's least well aged hairstyles.
LINKS EFFECT
* We really thought the cupboard was going to be bare newswise this week until two live events of high priority flitted across our desk. The first came from the good burghers of Transgressive records, who have clearly forgiven our once sending them a desperate "send us some records, won't you?" email and wanted to pass on details of the Transgressive Hot Summer Tour 2008. Seven of the label's affiliate acts are being put on a rotating line-up, five a night, across the country over a fortnight in the month of July, beginning on the 4th in Oxford, ending on the 19th in Glasgow and hitting Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Cardiff, Bristol, Birmingham, London and Brighton in between. As is only proper Jeremy Warmsley is playing all nights, as is much touted electro-new wave, lyrically-obtuse, Popjustice-approved, no-mention-in-press-release-of-him-having-been-drummer-in-Ladyfuzz Esser. For the other three, take your pick from baritone-voiced suave dramatists Absentee (actually on Memphis Industries, but also Trangressive Publishing), looped-up chamber pop type and Neil's son Liam Finn, long gestating ethereal singer-songwritress Mechanical Bride, Metal Box as imagined by former Les Incompetents frontman melange Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man and recently mp3-highlighted Antipodean mess o'electronics So So Modern. In a move unconnected with this tour Warmsley, along with another outfit mentioned earlier in this post, has contributed to our SUPER SECRET EXCITING SPIN-OFF PROJECT, revelation of which very soon.
* While we're talking label awaydays, the lovely people behind Smalltown America have resurrected their September all-dayers of recent years only to find they've grown into a weekender, or "urban festival" if you're the person who writes this stuff. This Ain't No Picnic takes place on September 27th and 28th at King's College London, featuring roughly thirty bands on two stages plus a special bar with its own film programme and a late clubnight attached. All proceeds go to charity: bands confirmed so far, because we like this descriptive thing we started up there, are Falkous' revenge Future Of The Left, irked troubadour Chris T-T, everything-at-a-prog-wall Cats In Paris, playfully perverse power poppers the Young Playthings, Scottish Pavement/Sebadoh hybrid Copy Haho, ukelele touting lo-fi wordsmith Jam On Bread, lo-fi cut-up electronicist Alan MX, 'new Bearsuit' Antiques Roadshow-cameoing septet The Dierdres and Tropics, who we've never heard of before. *pause* Oh, right. Lively. Anyway, tickets are £20 until 27th June, £25 thereafter.
* Oh yeah, this as well, which we've known about for ages and then received a cajoling email about in the week. Music Spotlight Presents: Snapshots Volume 1 Compilation is a free downloadable compilation of eleven new bands, 4 or 5 Magicians the only ones we've featured, And So I Watch You From Afar and I Concur others that you may be dimly aware of, most worth the effort.
* A thing we noticed from watching television this week: As the Leicester players came out for yesterday's rugby union Premiership final, preceded by the sort of film that no footballer, or indeed anyone in any other sport, would ever stand for, they were accompanied by the Who's Won't Get Fooled Again. Does that really send out a fearsome message?
Saturday, May 31, 2008
The Weekly Sweep
Friday, May 30, 2008
Just out of interest
Does anyone reading this fancy blogging about the forthcoming European Championships? (Er, in football/soccer, maybe we should qualify) Two years ago we organised a World Cup group blog and we're going to do the same again from a week today (well, hopefully the blog will be up and running before then, but you know what we mean) but we need assistance. If you're up for adding pithy, knowledgeable comments for three weeks email dressingroom{at)dsl.pipex.com over this weekend, replacing with a @ where necessary.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Forward thinking
Time to see what forthcoming music's come in recently, we think.
Glasgow's Q Without U claim on their press release that we have received their songs as "you either play/put out records by, book shows for, say nice things about or manage bands that we love. Either that or you are in the possession of a really great haircut". Let's call it misdirected mail. They quote the Super Furries as an influence and it's not hard to imagine them being Scottish cousins to those SFA moments when warped power-pop is given a thorough going over. Their album, Shut Up! I Invented You, will be available to buy or download from their Myspace account from Monday.
Q Without U - Licking Batteries
Aptly named So So Modern are from Wellington, New Zealand, so already exotic. Their first UK release, The Collected Works: Friends And Fires + 0000EP's, is as it suggests a compilation of two mini-albums, and even by the standards of albums compiled from two seperate releases it's all over the place, sometimes direct shouty nu-rave, sometimes krautrock workouts filtered through Foals, sometimes Deerhoof down the No Wave disco. Quality control is similarly scattered across the graph, but we commend to the house this.
So So Modern - Contracts
And finally A Classic Education, the Bologna based band whose glorious string-laden mini-epics showed up on our radar just in time for featuring in our Class Of '08 Covermount. In just under a year and a half of operation they've already played with Arcade Fire, Modest Mouse and Lightspeed Champion and worked with Jeremy Warmsley and Fanfaro. They're now self-releasing a 12" EP rounding up everything made available to date, the cunningly titled First EP, limited to 300 copies available to order through their website and released on June 6th. They're coming back over to play Indietracks festival, which we'd put down as yet another reason for a weekend out at the Midland Railway Centre.
A Classic Education - Victories At Night
Glasgow's Q Without U claim on their press release that we have received their songs as "you either play/put out records by, book shows for, say nice things about or manage bands that we love. Either that or you are in the possession of a really great haircut". Let's call it misdirected mail. They quote the Super Furries as an influence and it's not hard to imagine them being Scottish cousins to those SFA moments when warped power-pop is given a thorough going over. Their album, Shut Up! I Invented You, will be available to buy or download from their Myspace account from Monday.
Q Without U - Licking Batteries
Aptly named So So Modern are from Wellington, New Zealand, so already exotic. Their first UK release, The Collected Works: Friends And Fires + 0000EP's, is as it suggests a compilation of two mini-albums, and even by the standards of albums compiled from two seperate releases it's all over the place, sometimes direct shouty nu-rave, sometimes krautrock workouts filtered through Foals, sometimes Deerhoof down the No Wave disco. Quality control is similarly scattered across the graph, but we commend to the house this.
So So Modern - Contracts
And finally A Classic Education, the Bologna based band whose glorious string-laden mini-epics showed up on our radar just in time for featuring in our Class Of '08 Covermount. In just under a year and a half of operation they've already played with Arcade Fire, Modest Mouse and Lightspeed Champion and worked with Jeremy Warmsley and Fanfaro. They're now self-releasing a 12" EP rounding up everything made available to date, the cunningly titled First EP, limited to 300 copies available to order through their website and released on June 6th. They're coming back over to play Indietracks festival, which we'd put down as yet another reason for a weekend out at the Midland Railway Centre.
A Classic Education - Victories At Night
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
The Muxtape Challenge update
After the previously mentioned Muxtape backup crash it's probably best to repost all the details so far so we all know where we are, as well as maybe encouraging more people to plug the remaining gaps. If you're late to this, we're compiling a twelve track Muxtape for the last forty years inclusive, each by a different person, and this is how it's going so far.
Completed years:
1968 (23 Daves)
1969 (Chris Brown)
1971 (Jez)
1972 (Raki
1973 (douchebag)
1976 (Ben)
1977 (poptimusgrime)
1978 (James)
1979 (Koen Fillet)
1982 (Dave)
1983 (Daniel Saunders)
1984 (Jamie Summers)
1986 (Mike)
1988 (Jim Waterson)
1989 (Mark}
1990 (Matt Gaynor)
1992 (us)
1994 (JohnM)
1995 (David Pott-Negrine)
1998 (Matt Sullivan)
1999 (Tom Alvarez)
2000 (Ben Hall)
2001 (lemonbrickcombo)
2004 (Adas)
2005 (yes_)
2006 (Tom Whyman)
2007 (TheWildSon)
Years deleted in the crash:
1993 (Dan)
1997 (James)
2002 (Paulo)
(The linked pages are where the compilers have listed their choices, if anyone else wants to put them back together for us. The rest of the people listed will have to get in touch to let us know whether they want to reconstruct their Muxtapes or hand them off to others)
Years reserved:
1967
1970
1975
1980
1981
1991
2003
(No, we're not naming and shaming. Yet.)
Years still available:
1974
1985
1987
1996
Completed years:
1968 (23 Daves)
1969 (Chris Brown)
1971 (Jez)
1972 (Raki
1973 (douchebag)
1976 (Ben)
1977 (poptimusgrime)
1978 (James)
1979 (Koen Fillet)
1982 (Dave)
1983 (Daniel Saunders)
1984 (Jamie Summers)
1986 (Mike)
1988 (Jim Waterson)
1989 (Mark}
1990 (Matt Gaynor)
1992 (us)
1994 (JohnM)
1995 (David Pott-Negrine)
1998 (Matt Sullivan)
1999 (Tom Alvarez)
2000 (Ben Hall)
2001 (lemonbrickcombo)
2004 (Adas)
2005 (yes_)
2006 (Tom Whyman)
2007 (TheWildSon)
Years deleted in the crash:
1993 (Dan)
1997 (James)
2002 (Paulo)
(The linked pages are where the compilers have listed their choices, if anyone else wants to put them back together for us. The rest of the people listed will have to get in touch to let us know whether they want to reconstruct their Muxtapes or hand them off to others)
Years reserved:
1967
1970
1975
1980
1981
1991
2003
(No, we're not naming and shaming. Yet.)
Years still available:
1974
1985
1987
1996
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Weekender : thinks it stood behind Linda from Prolapse at a gig the other night
WHAT CD?
- We don't often lead on a reissue but back out this week, apparently just because Try Harder records had run out of stock, is Jonquil's glorious Lions, one of the most widely underrated albums of the last year. If you missed our countdown of the best albums of 2007, we placed it a possibly too low sixteenth and wrote it up thus. If you missed our countdown and are too bone idle to find out how to open a link in a new browser, it's an English pastoral psych-folk record which aims straight past daytime radio's clutches, a heartwarmingly expansive touch from a gloriously solitary figure in the Oxfordshire countryside, full of sonic detail and adventurousness (the opening track sounds like an Akron/Family sea shanty) topped by Hugo Manuel's bravura croon. Some, including Foals, are tipping them for big things, and while it may not sell a lot plenty need to become acquainted with it. And those people may get the chance as they're heading right across the country throughout June, are 'doing' Latitude and have already got the follow-up EP ready in the wings. It's their time alright.
- Reviewing Johnny Flynn at End Of The Road last year we labelled him a star of "the British nu-folk scene, as some arse will eventually christen it so it might as well be us". And whaddaya know, the NME has started in the last couple of months to refer to this whole Marlingised phalanx as the British nu-folk scene. Arses. Anyway, Flynn stands well aside of most of his contemporaries and indeed virtually all of current British music's CV - attended Bedales and Winchester College, hung around the anti-folkers of New York, was a member of the all-male touring Shakespearian acting collective Propeller under whose auspices he acted at the Old Vic and afterwards dragged Kevin Spacey to a gig, and Jerome Flynn is his half-brother. With the exception of housewife's choice versions of Unchained Melody all this kind of informs A Larum, a record in which characters from all walks of life find their voices, stop off around the world and take on a heady mix of Alan Lomax blues, traditional and otherwise English folk, hoedowns, ragas and sea shanties - Flynn has mentioned in an interview taking inspiration from how Fairport Convention heard The Band's Music From Big Pink and realised they could do the same for British folk traditions, lyrics at once intentionally dated and somehow contemporary. The Sussex Wit are still around, by the way, but their name seems to have dropped back off joint billing.
- It's easy to forget that News And Tributes, now a routine pinata on which to hang everything around the Futureheads from 679 departure to current 'embarrassing the record industry' call to arms, reached number 12, one place lower than the self-titled debut, and is by no means a bad album. A little uncertain at times, sure, but it works through ideas and hangs together in a way that would embarrass many a more lauded album. Now on their own Nul Records, conversely they're enjoying the biggest fruits in terms of press and radio in their history since leaving the major label. No, This Is Not The World is no hark back to the glorious debut album, if anything more one-paced and stinting on the barbershop harmonies so as to come across like a 1979 new wave band with an understandable right cob on throughout. They're still committed and energetic, though, and that's what forces its way through the morass once more.
- While we're talking melodically inclined fast paced indie stalwarts, The Wedding Present have gone down in the annals of rock's wider world as a meat and potatoes style band, singing love songs over jangly guitars. There's an element of truth in there. Of course there is. The Beatles, by the same reasoning, were a fun little band of jovial Scousers with their two and a half minute songs about liking girls. The Weddoes crashed into Peel playlists and 12" racks with warp speed jangles and David Gedge not getting the girl 23 years ago now, during which time they were recorded by Steve Albini, covered Pavement, went Balkan and had big theories about singles when all of these were deeply unfashionable or just unknown. They're back with Albini for the first time since 1991's Seamonsters for album eight El Rey. Gedge calls it his Californian album, perhaps with tongue deeply embedded in cheek, but some of the old vituperativeness is there, although as with the Cinerama time-out Gedge can still do restrained when he wants. He's still got it.
- Stroud-via-Brighton's Drift Collective is a little psych-folk colony we've got a lot of time for, especially if they keep pulling things out of the hat like Matt Eaton's Finish Your Chips. Great title, if nothing else. According to the label Eaton "holds a special place in British music, not only as a songwriter, but also as manager, tour manager, session guitarist, runner of venues and booker", which doesn't sound that special to us considering. He's marginally better known as leader of long serving Brighton power poppers Actress Hands but here devolves into West Coast-ish acoustic country folk, the sort of thing that restores Americana's good name. Johny Lamb and Sally Megee of Drift's foremost members Thirty Pounds Of Bone pop by, as does Rose Elinor Dougall of being blogged about the other day fame, but this is very much his melancholy worldview at work. Have a listen for yourselves with the ungrammatical Everyone’s Got To Fallen Into Line.
- They used to call bands like Slow Down Tallahassee pure pop, before the marketing people got their hands on the words. They say: "Thunder and gasoline. An explosion of harmony and handclaps at times, sparse and elegant at others." We say: classic post-C86 bubblegum indie - fizzing guitars fill one half of the spectrum, analogue synths the other, and up front two female singers harmonise on what seem to be featherbeds of vocals but lyrically go a much darker place full of panic, direct appeals and heavy foreboding. The Beautiful Light wouldn't be half as good as it is without.
- You'll have no money for singles after that lot, but regardless they keep coming out: Vampire Weekend's Oxford Comma, Foals' Red Socks Pugie and the Long Blondes' Guilt were dealt with at album time. Conversely Blue Hands, the second Hot Puppies album first previewed late last summer, is slowly attaining a very miniscule type of mythical status. Following months of label issues Becky Newman has recently announced her pregnancy, expecting on Hallowe'en, and with Somewhere only on a single deal with Bristol club-based label Purr (home of the celebrated Panther Girls) we wouldn't put a pre-order in yet.
COMING SOON: There was a story in the local press this week that the Liberty of Norton Folgate, a 19th century independent borough status for the North London area that now links Bishopsgate and Shoreditch, may never have actually been rescinded. By no doubt sheer coincidence, North Londoners Madness release an album tenatively scheduled on June 30th called The Liberty Of Norton Folgate. Funny, that. It's said to be in the Kinks/music hall/reminiscence style of their Rise & Fall album, a semi-concept album telling "a tale of a city born in blood, mud and immigrant, which grew through adventure, betrayal and treason – fought to breathe the dirt, muck and scum of survival – raged through the pains of passion – threw thee before greed and bankruptcy of emotion and thought, struggled for freedom, rights and the welfare of all, danced, skanked and bogled for the cause of man and woman’s need to be – and express happiness – we give you the working man’s mozart – a bright shining virus of joy therapy for the masses and a belter of a good night." Mmm. The title track bears that out anyway. They're introducing the album with two dates at the Hackney Empire on 24th and 25th June.
MYSPACE INVADERS: We really think we've got out of our system our insistence on promoting bands on the basis Los Campesinos! like them. No, now it's promoting bands Johnny Foreigner like. Study their current press photos and note that upon Kelly's upper body is the merchandise of Brummie compatriots Sunset Cinema Club. Yes, JoFo's noise and confusion is a good pointer - and why, here's the gents and lady covering SCC - but file these under melodic post-hardcore, sharing the stop-start tautness of Fugazi, the fat-free funk fuckups of the Minutemen and the funk-punk of Jetplane Landing's Backlash Cop album of last year (you remember it, we went on about it enough). EP available through mail order now, album in autumn, apparently. Seeing Hot Club De Paris over the next couple of weeks? Get there early. Especially if it's one of the dates where the previously featured Copy Haho are also supporting.
VISUAL AID: Adam Buxton has recently uploaded an overliteral fan video for Spoon's Don't Make Me A Target, intended for a BBC3 pilot. Buxton is a huge fan of the band and last year filmed Britt Daniel performing Black Like Me solo, but others do Spoon, we're here to dig out Adam & Joe clips. Course, back in the Channel 4 days putting clips to their own songs was second nature, but how harder it is to get something out of actual pop stars, especially when taking it upon themselves to enter their property and rifle through their records in the name of Vinyl Justice, whether the recipient be as intriguing as Gary Numan or as potentially violent as Mark E Smith. Another victim was "king of shouting" Frank Black, who seemed to like what he got himself into so much he invited the pair to direct the video for little remembered 1998 single Dog Gone, starring Nigel Buxton AKA BaaadDad. That itself followed Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's Sweet Johnny (Chart Show clip!) in the style of the Toymovies. More recently Buxton got involved with Radiohead's Thumbs Down webcast, our favourite bit being the somehow still on YouTube Se7en reworking. And when he wasn't doing that, he was fronting sketches about NWA for easily forgotten BBC3 pilots. Why was that last bit written in the plural?
LINKS EFFECT
* If you've been keeping an eye on the south-east's ska-punk-pop supremos SixNationState's online doings recently you might have seen a lot of videos popping up over the last couple of months. The sum total of such work is a video album, available from their official site as of tomorrow, a series of low budget band-directed clips for every track on last year's self-titled debut album
* Never ones to do things the straightforward way, folk-stadium rock satirists the Indelicates have put a load of bonus material online relating to their American Demo album, chiefly an alternative version of New Art For The People featuring Eddie Argos and a load of other people, an album commentary track, a cover of Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty's country song title email circular favourite You're The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly, alternate versions, remixes and "a MOST HAUNTED INDELICATES SPECIAL with Simon as DEREK ACORAH and Julia as YVETTE FIELDING" which is so low budget they've not even bothered with wigs and costumes. The instructions are on their website. Go the long way round. We dare you.
* Seems a while since we heard much from Leeds power trio Sky Larkin; in fact last week they flew out to Seattle to record their album with John Goodmanson, whose CV includes two Sleater-Kinney albums, Bikini Kill, Blonde Redhead and The Blood Brothers. So, pretty much safe hands for a band with their ambitions. As is the way of modern communications, they're documenting their time away on Flickr. Not many of the band so far, though.
* You're right, this last bit wasn't here before, but just up over at Keep Hope Inside we've helped it celebrate its second birthday by writing about Hold On Now, Youngster...
- We don't often lead on a reissue but back out this week, apparently just because Try Harder records had run out of stock, is Jonquil's glorious Lions, one of the most widely underrated albums of the last year. If you missed our countdown of the best albums of 2007, we placed it a possibly too low sixteenth and wrote it up thus. If you missed our countdown and are too bone idle to find out how to open a link in a new browser, it's an English pastoral psych-folk record which aims straight past daytime radio's clutches, a heartwarmingly expansive touch from a gloriously solitary figure in the Oxfordshire countryside, full of sonic detail and adventurousness (the opening track sounds like an Akron/Family sea shanty) topped by Hugo Manuel's bravura croon. Some, including Foals, are tipping them for big things, and while it may not sell a lot plenty need to become acquainted with it. And those people may get the chance as they're heading right across the country throughout June, are 'doing' Latitude and have already got the follow-up EP ready in the wings. It's their time alright.
- Reviewing Johnny Flynn at End Of The Road last year we labelled him a star of "the British nu-folk scene, as some arse will eventually christen it so it might as well be us". And whaddaya know, the NME has started in the last couple of months to refer to this whole Marlingised phalanx as the British nu-folk scene. Arses. Anyway, Flynn stands well aside of most of his contemporaries and indeed virtually all of current British music's CV - attended Bedales and Winchester College, hung around the anti-folkers of New York, was a member of the all-male touring Shakespearian acting collective Propeller under whose auspices he acted at the Old Vic and afterwards dragged Kevin Spacey to a gig, and Jerome Flynn is his half-brother. With the exception of housewife's choice versions of Unchained Melody all this kind of informs A Larum, a record in which characters from all walks of life find their voices, stop off around the world and take on a heady mix of Alan Lomax blues, traditional and otherwise English folk, hoedowns, ragas and sea shanties - Flynn has mentioned in an interview taking inspiration from how Fairport Convention heard The Band's Music From Big Pink and realised they could do the same for British folk traditions, lyrics at once intentionally dated and somehow contemporary. The Sussex Wit are still around, by the way, but their name seems to have dropped back off joint billing.
- It's easy to forget that News And Tributes, now a routine pinata on which to hang everything around the Futureheads from 679 departure to current 'embarrassing the record industry' call to arms, reached number 12, one place lower than the self-titled debut, and is by no means a bad album. A little uncertain at times, sure, but it works through ideas and hangs together in a way that would embarrass many a more lauded album. Now on their own Nul Records, conversely they're enjoying the biggest fruits in terms of press and radio in their history since leaving the major label. No, This Is Not The World is no hark back to the glorious debut album, if anything more one-paced and stinting on the barbershop harmonies so as to come across like a 1979 new wave band with an understandable right cob on throughout. They're still committed and energetic, though, and that's what forces its way through the morass once more.
- While we're talking melodically inclined fast paced indie stalwarts, The Wedding Present have gone down in the annals of rock's wider world as a meat and potatoes style band, singing love songs over jangly guitars. There's an element of truth in there. Of course there is. The Beatles, by the same reasoning, were a fun little band of jovial Scousers with their two and a half minute songs about liking girls. The Weddoes crashed into Peel playlists and 12" racks with warp speed jangles and David Gedge not getting the girl 23 years ago now, during which time they were recorded by Steve Albini, covered Pavement, went Balkan and had big theories about singles when all of these were deeply unfashionable or just unknown. They're back with Albini for the first time since 1991's Seamonsters for album eight El Rey. Gedge calls it his Californian album, perhaps with tongue deeply embedded in cheek, but some of the old vituperativeness is there, although as with the Cinerama time-out Gedge can still do restrained when he wants. He's still got it.
- Stroud-via-Brighton's Drift Collective is a little psych-folk colony we've got a lot of time for, especially if they keep pulling things out of the hat like Matt Eaton's Finish Your Chips. Great title, if nothing else. According to the label Eaton "holds a special place in British music, not only as a songwriter, but also as manager, tour manager, session guitarist, runner of venues and booker", which doesn't sound that special to us considering. He's marginally better known as leader of long serving Brighton power poppers Actress Hands but here devolves into West Coast-ish acoustic country folk, the sort of thing that restores Americana's good name. Johny Lamb and Sally Megee of Drift's foremost members Thirty Pounds Of Bone pop by, as does Rose Elinor Dougall of being blogged about the other day fame, but this is very much his melancholy worldview at work. Have a listen for yourselves with the ungrammatical Everyone’s Got To Fallen Into Line.
- They used to call bands like Slow Down Tallahassee pure pop, before the marketing people got their hands on the words. They say: "Thunder and gasoline. An explosion of harmony and handclaps at times, sparse and elegant at others." We say: classic post-C86 bubblegum indie - fizzing guitars fill one half of the spectrum, analogue synths the other, and up front two female singers harmonise on what seem to be featherbeds of vocals but lyrically go a much darker place full of panic, direct appeals and heavy foreboding. The Beautiful Light wouldn't be half as good as it is without.
- You'll have no money for singles after that lot, but regardless they keep coming out: Vampire Weekend's Oxford Comma, Foals' Red Socks Pugie and the Long Blondes' Guilt were dealt with at album time. Conversely Blue Hands, the second Hot Puppies album first previewed late last summer, is slowly attaining a very miniscule type of mythical status. Following months of label issues Becky Newman has recently announced her pregnancy, expecting on Hallowe'en, and with Somewhere only on a single deal with Bristol club-based label Purr (home of the celebrated Panther Girls) we wouldn't put a pre-order in yet.
COMING SOON: There was a story in the local press this week that the Liberty of Norton Folgate, a 19th century independent borough status for the North London area that now links Bishopsgate and Shoreditch, may never have actually been rescinded. By no doubt sheer coincidence, North Londoners Madness release an album tenatively scheduled on June 30th called The Liberty Of Norton Folgate. Funny, that. It's said to be in the Kinks/music hall/reminiscence style of their Rise & Fall album, a semi-concept album telling "a tale of a city born in blood, mud and immigrant, which grew through adventure, betrayal and treason – fought to breathe the dirt, muck and scum of survival – raged through the pains of passion – threw thee before greed and bankruptcy of emotion and thought, struggled for freedom, rights and the welfare of all, danced, skanked and bogled for the cause of man and woman’s need to be – and express happiness – we give you the working man’s mozart – a bright shining virus of joy therapy for the masses and a belter of a good night." Mmm. The title track bears that out anyway. They're introducing the album with two dates at the Hackney Empire on 24th and 25th June.
MYSPACE INVADERS: We really think we've got out of our system our insistence on promoting bands on the basis Los Campesinos! like them. No, now it's promoting bands Johnny Foreigner like. Study their current press photos and note that upon Kelly's upper body is the merchandise of Brummie compatriots Sunset Cinema Club. Yes, JoFo's noise and confusion is a good pointer - and why, here's the gents and lady covering SCC - but file these under melodic post-hardcore, sharing the stop-start tautness of Fugazi, the fat-free funk fuckups of the Minutemen and the funk-punk of Jetplane Landing's Backlash Cop album of last year (you remember it, we went on about it enough). EP available through mail order now, album in autumn, apparently. Seeing Hot Club De Paris over the next couple of weeks? Get there early. Especially if it's one of the dates where the previously featured Copy Haho are also supporting.
VISUAL AID: Adam Buxton has recently uploaded an overliteral fan video for Spoon's Don't Make Me A Target, intended for a BBC3 pilot. Buxton is a huge fan of the band and last year filmed Britt Daniel performing Black Like Me solo, but others do Spoon, we're here to dig out Adam & Joe clips. Course, back in the Channel 4 days putting clips to their own songs was second nature, but how harder it is to get something out of actual pop stars, especially when taking it upon themselves to enter their property and rifle through their records in the name of Vinyl Justice, whether the recipient be as intriguing as Gary Numan or as potentially violent as Mark E Smith. Another victim was "king of shouting" Frank Black, who seemed to like what he got himself into so much he invited the pair to direct the video for little remembered 1998 single Dog Gone, starring Nigel Buxton AKA BaaadDad. That itself followed Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's Sweet Johnny (Chart Show clip!) in the style of the Toymovies. More recently Buxton got involved with Radiohead's Thumbs Down webcast, our favourite bit being the somehow still on YouTube Se7en reworking. And when he wasn't doing that, he was fronting sketches about NWA for easily forgotten BBC3 pilots. Why was that last bit written in the plural?
LINKS EFFECT
* If you've been keeping an eye on the south-east's ska-punk-pop supremos SixNationState's online doings recently you might have seen a lot of videos popping up over the last couple of months. The sum total of such work is a video album, available from their official site as of tomorrow, a series of low budget band-directed clips for every track on last year's self-titled debut album
* Never ones to do things the straightforward way, folk-stadium rock satirists the Indelicates have put a load of bonus material online relating to their American Demo album, chiefly an alternative version of New Art For The People featuring Eddie Argos and a load of other people, an album commentary track, a cover of Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty's country song title email circular favourite You're The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly, alternate versions, remixes and "a MOST HAUNTED INDELICATES SPECIAL with Simon as DEREK ACORAH and Julia as YVETTE FIELDING" which is so low budget they've not even bothered with wigs and costumes. The instructions are on their website. Go the long way round. We dare you.
* Seems a while since we heard much from Leeds power trio Sky Larkin; in fact last week they flew out to Seattle to record their album with John Goodmanson, whose CV includes two Sleater-Kinney albums, Bikini Kill, Blonde Redhead and The Blood Brothers. So, pretty much safe hands for a band with their ambitions. As is the way of modern communications, they're documenting their time away on Flickr. Not many of the band so far, though.
* You're right, this last bit wasn't here before, but just up over at Keep Hope Inside we've helped it celebrate its second birthday by writing about Hold On Now, Youngster...
Saturday, May 24, 2008
The Weekly Sweep
Friday, May 23, 2008
Muxtape Challenge - urgent message
Muxtape arsed up their backlogs after a software crash and so a number of entries have been deleted. The years affected are:
1969 (Chris Brown)
1971 (Jez)
1977 (poptimusgrime)
1979 (Koen Fillet)
1986 (Mike)
1988 (Jim Waterson)
1990 (Matthew Gaynor)
1993 (-dan-)
1997 (James)
2000 (Ben Hall)
2002 (Paulo)
2004 (Adas)
1969 (Chris Brown)
1971 (Jez)
1977 (poptimusgrime)
1979 (Koen Fillet)
1986 (Mike)
1988 (Jim Waterson)
1990 (Matthew Gaynor)
1993 (-dan-)
1997 (James)
2000 (Ben Hall)
2002 (Paulo)
2004 (Adas)
Not making your mind up
Isn't it time the whole Eurovision thing was put to bed? Not necessarily the contest, although the Wogan-promoted idea of an Eastern Europe block vote is extraordinarily tiresome especially since it was found the top five would have been the same had the eastern bloc voting been taken out. Just this whole idea of Eurovision parties and people genuinely analysing the songs, the sort of thing that was the preserve of final stories on regional news bulletins when we were growing up, where the And Finally reporter would gently mock someone who collected the records while making jokes about Sandie Shaw's feet and Bucks Fizz's dresses. Now we're all supposed to be like it. The irony has come full circle and now nobody's sure whether we should mean it or not. Eurovision is the only event left that the mass media tell us is cool, or rather (oh god) "so uncool it's cool", and everyone believes it.
We think part of it is because of the British attitude to the ongoing contest. We're told only Britain doesn't take it seriously, yet Andy Abraham's song is just about the tritest and most Route One commercially attuned there. And Wogan's no fun any more since he spent two thirds of the show moaning. We'd suggest you went out, except there's parties in pubs now. In five years' time imagining that Bosnia's entry is reflective of their entire music scene even though nobody would claim the same for the UK will be enforced by law, you mark our words.
We think part of it is because of the British attitude to the ongoing contest. We're told only Britain doesn't take it seriously, yet Andy Abraham's song is just about the tritest and most Route One commercially attuned there. And Wogan's no fun any more since he spent two thirds of the show moaning. We'd suggest you went out, except there's parties in pubs now. In five years' time imagining that Bosnia's entry is reflective of their entire music scene even though nobody would claim the same for the UK will be enforced by law, you mark our words.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Rose bloom
We like a good side project, and checking back we seem to particularly enjoy those connected with bands on the Memphis Industries label. Following our recent promotion for School Of Language (David from Field Music), The Week That Was (Peter from Field Music), Kaputt (Silke ex-Go! Team), Wet Paint (three of Absentee) and George Washington Brown (who recorded for MI as J Xaverre), not to mention Andy 'Blue States' Dragazis' production sidelines, comes a Pipettes spinoff to file alongside those by Gwenno and Monster Bobby. Matt and Ollie from the label need to work their charges harder if they're just going to go off and do other stuff besides.
Actually, it's not technically a side project at all. Rose Elinor Dougall is the fully named solo side of the young woman you'll know as Rosay Pipette, or at least would have known as that until about a month ago when she left. Known during her band tenure to have been a closet folkie, and possibly alone even on Myspace for citing influence from both Julie London and Spank Rock*, she's responsible for what on the basis of one track is after-hours electronic lo-fi of a type so far stripped down due to bedroom recording materials necessity. No idea what she's planning to do with it beyond "I'm hoping to get some more fully formed material together in the not too distant future", but we'll keep 'em peeled.
(* To be honest we've just checked this and it's not true, but the other likeminded soul is a piano jazz singer so doesn't count in our cloistered world)
Actually, it's not technically a side project at all. Rose Elinor Dougall is the fully named solo side of the young woman you'll know as Rosay Pipette, or at least would have known as that until about a month ago when she left. Known during her band tenure to have been a closet folkie, and possibly alone even on Myspace for citing influence from both Julie London and Spank Rock*, she's responsible for what on the basis of one track is after-hours electronic lo-fi of a type so far stripped down due to bedroom recording materials necessity. No idea what she's planning to do with it beyond "I'm hoping to get some more fully formed material together in the not too distant future", but we'll keep 'em peeled.
(* To be honest we've just checked this and it's not true, but the other likeminded soul is a piano jazz singer so doesn't count in our cloistered world)
Monday, May 19, 2008
It's not laziness
We're working on a hush-hush side project, which all being well we should be able to unveil by the end of the month.
In the meantime, there's still nine years available and nine pending in our Muxtape Challenge, so get on with it.
In the meantime, there's still nine years available and nine pending in our Muxtape Challenge, so get on with it.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Weekender : we can dye our hair and you can call us Tracy Tracy
WHAT CD?
- A couple of big weeks are approaching, but when we looked at this week's schedule we found little of real note. New Sparks album, Scarlett Johanssen's thing with David Sitek and some Tom Waits songs that aren't Sixteen Shells In A Thirty-Ought-Six - damn you! - the Ting Tingssssss... El Perro Del Mar might be worth a shot, 2006's self-titled dark Spectorisms a slow burning triumph, From The Valley To The Stars widening to take in a Brian Wilson Smile kaleidoscope and reflects the title's melancholy wonderment.
- There's nothing more disappointingly disconcerting than a hype band who have everything except hype. If you've read anything about Johnny Foreigner it's that everyone's talking about them (they aren't), they're creating an enormous nationwide stir (we counted eighteen people when we last saw them, and that included the support acts and their famed driver Lea - Alexei tried to take a register mid-set) and they're bound for the very top, because god knows there's nothing Heart FM love more than songs about rubbish nightclubs in Birmingham set to the sound of Tim Kinsella throwing Gareth Campesinos! at a wall at a Urusei Yatsura barbeque. The outcome is it might mean you've already decided you want nothing to do with them. For our part we've been as pumped up about them as anyone, and we apologise, but some people on the Internet adoring them is not the same as every media outlet suggesting you do likewise. Remember that. On the other hand, if they keep producing singles like Eyes Wide Terrified we're going to keep salivating and reddening in the face over their glorious images.
- More on them when their album comes out in two weeks' time, inevitably. Two artists have singles out one week ahead of new LPs, and while the Futureheads rally against the tyranny of major label commercial expectations by, um, releasing their most commercial single to date (Hounds Of Love inclusive), Radio Heart, more interesting is Johnny Flynn's Tickle Me Pink. This appeared on our Class Of '07 covermount in demo form when it was an understated, violin-led gem; now, with the Sussex Wit on board, it's a banjo-fronted fully committed quasi-hoedown. Actually, we reckon both versions are as good as each other now. Young Knives do the decent thing and put Turn Tail out, while Feist finds the other single-worthy indie-soul nugget on The Reminder and releases I Feel It All on download only. Also out tomorrow: My Year In Lists! At last. Come on, LC!, you're never going to take over the world with this sort of flexible release schedule.
- Now the only live music show on television not sponsored by a hair care company, and we refuse to count Sound before anyone says because it keeps going on about sixteen year olds going to gigs as if it's a new development in life, Later With Jools Holland sticks out The First Fifteen Years. On this volume are more delights than you'd imagine, as long as they haven't been on one of the previous Jools DVDs: the celebrated audience confusing Scott Walker performance of Rosary, John Cale taking back Hallelujah, Love with Arthur Lee doing Alone Again Or, Radiohead, Johnny Cash, Elvis Costello, REM, Blur, Beck, Arcade Fire, Battles, Nick Cave,, Al Green, LCD Soundsystem, Kirsty Maccoll, The Who, the Flaming Lips, PJ Harvey, Martha Wainwright, Warren Zevon, Massive Attack, the Foo Fighters, Feist solo with a proper brass section...
COMING SOON: Slow Down Tallahassee are one of those bands who could earn themselves a mighty cult following no matter how much radio and press coverage they did. Doubtless they already have in their native Sheffield, and doubtless those people will lap up The Beautiful Light, out on the 26th. They're a dual female vocalist outfit who cite Henry Darger and early Madonna as equal influences and make pure lo-fi harmony indiepop wondrousness with ageing synths and a drum machine. Let's say the Breeders reworking Dolly Mixture, save a bit for next week's proper preview and instead serve up tracks offered by their label as an aperitif, single manque The Beautiful Light and piano-led Limbs.
The fine people putting this out, by the by, are Thee Sheffield Phonographic Corporation, longtime supporters of the local underground scene who put out a couple of Long Blondes singles way back when. Also on their books are The Bon Bon Club, a vox, bass and drum-only covers band apparently made up of Sushi Quatro, Thirsty Moore and Chapatti Smith, and if you're looking at their photo and thinking "but that's just Reenie and Screech out of the aforementioned Long Blondes and Claire from Navvy and moreover Slow Down Tallahassee, who this bit is supposed to be about!", then we're impressed that you recognised the latter.
MYSPACE INVADERS: London based Anglo-German outfit Kaputt were formed by one-time Go! Teamer Silke Steidinger. That band like the odd Sonic Youth noise moment and so do these, although it's the streamlined moments of their early major label days that it's most reminiscent of, given a Peter Hook bassline, the records Interpol had by the studio CD player when they were making Turn On The Bright Lights and working knowledge of Electrelane-style femme-cool motorik. They'll get well under your skin.
VISUAL AID: Look at the tableau at the start of this German telly clip. A probably self-consciously 'wacky' gentleman, some curious greenery on the table, the general air of a mid-afternoon talk-in. When the female presenter introduces some music, you half expect Donny Osmond or some sub-Parkinson nu-jazz. No. It's McLusky, doing She Will Only Bring You Happiness. To make them seem even more out of place, watch the onscreen DOG's scrolling display of musical guests on some other forthcoming show, including Avril Lavigne and a couple of German popettes. They've amused the girl on the left at 4:19, in any case, perhaps because unlike her disinterested mate she's aware of what they're singing at the end. It's questionable how much Andy Falkous actually wants the host to take their photo afterwards too, although bear in mind we now know the unwitting irony of the question posed by her at 4:35. Regular readers will know McLusky's other great TV appearance and b3ta fans will know their Joel Veitch history, but here's a thing. Falco has always sought to divorce Future Of The Left from McLusky to an extent, but apparently because the latter never toured Australia, when FOTL went there in March he made it up to them. They've come up with a workable method of finising a set too.
LINKS EFFECT
* Apparently we have featured the Black Cab Sessions before, which we'd expect as the first two people to be stuffed in the back of a cab driven round London and told to play for the bloke in the front with the digicam were Johnny Flynn and Emmy The Great, but we can't find it now. Don't worry, though, they've got on fine without us, the scope and depth in no way fully represented by a list of Okkervil River, the Futureheads, Spoon, Noah And The Whale plus Laura Marling, Daniel Johnston, Jeffrey Lewis, Death Cab For Cutie, The National, Bill Callahan, Lightspeed Champion, Scout Niblett, the New Pornographers, Seasick Steve, the Raveonettes, Lykke Li and the Felice Brothers. And the Kooks. Doesn't say how they slipped through.
- A couple of big weeks are approaching, but when we looked at this week's schedule we found little of real note. New Sparks album, Scarlett Johanssen's thing with David Sitek and some Tom Waits songs that aren't Sixteen Shells In A Thirty-Ought-Six - damn you! - the Ting Tingssssss... El Perro Del Mar might be worth a shot, 2006's self-titled dark Spectorisms a slow burning triumph, From The Valley To The Stars widening to take in a Brian Wilson Smile kaleidoscope and reflects the title's melancholy wonderment.
- There's nothing more disappointingly disconcerting than a hype band who have everything except hype. If you've read anything about Johnny Foreigner it's that everyone's talking about them (they aren't), they're creating an enormous nationwide stir (we counted eighteen people when we last saw them, and that included the support acts and their famed driver Lea - Alexei tried to take a register mid-set) and they're bound for the very top, because god knows there's nothing Heart FM love more than songs about rubbish nightclubs in Birmingham set to the sound of Tim Kinsella throwing Gareth Campesinos! at a wall at a Urusei Yatsura barbeque. The outcome is it might mean you've already decided you want nothing to do with them. For our part we've been as pumped up about them as anyone, and we apologise, but some people on the Internet adoring them is not the same as every media outlet suggesting you do likewise. Remember that. On the other hand, if they keep producing singles like Eyes Wide Terrified we're going to keep salivating and reddening in the face over their glorious images.
- More on them when their album comes out in two weeks' time, inevitably. Two artists have singles out one week ahead of new LPs, and while the Futureheads rally against the tyranny of major label commercial expectations by, um, releasing their most commercial single to date (Hounds Of Love inclusive), Radio Heart, more interesting is Johnny Flynn's Tickle Me Pink. This appeared on our Class Of '07 covermount in demo form when it was an understated, violin-led gem; now, with the Sussex Wit on board, it's a banjo-fronted fully committed quasi-hoedown. Actually, we reckon both versions are as good as each other now. Young Knives do the decent thing and put Turn Tail out, while Feist finds the other single-worthy indie-soul nugget on The Reminder and releases I Feel It All on download only. Also out tomorrow: My Year In Lists! At last. Come on, LC!, you're never going to take over the world with this sort of flexible release schedule.
- Now the only live music show on television not sponsored by a hair care company, and we refuse to count Sound before anyone says because it keeps going on about sixteen year olds going to gigs as if it's a new development in life, Later With Jools Holland sticks out The First Fifteen Years. On this volume are more delights than you'd imagine, as long as they haven't been on one of the previous Jools DVDs: the celebrated audience confusing Scott Walker performance of Rosary, John Cale taking back Hallelujah, Love with Arthur Lee doing Alone Again Or, Radiohead, Johnny Cash, Elvis Costello, REM, Blur, Beck, Arcade Fire, Battles, Nick Cave,, Al Green, LCD Soundsystem, Kirsty Maccoll, The Who, the Flaming Lips, PJ Harvey, Martha Wainwright, Warren Zevon, Massive Attack, the Foo Fighters, Feist solo with a proper brass section...
COMING SOON: Slow Down Tallahassee are one of those bands who could earn themselves a mighty cult following no matter how much radio and press coverage they did. Doubtless they already have in their native Sheffield, and doubtless those people will lap up The Beautiful Light, out on the 26th. They're a dual female vocalist outfit who cite Henry Darger and early Madonna as equal influences and make pure lo-fi harmony indiepop wondrousness with ageing synths and a drum machine. Let's say the Breeders reworking Dolly Mixture, save a bit for next week's proper preview and instead serve up tracks offered by their label as an aperitif, single manque The Beautiful Light and piano-led Limbs.
The fine people putting this out, by the by, are Thee Sheffield Phonographic Corporation, longtime supporters of the local underground scene who put out a couple of Long Blondes singles way back when. Also on their books are The Bon Bon Club, a vox, bass and drum-only covers band apparently made up of Sushi Quatro, Thirsty Moore and Chapatti Smith, and if you're looking at their photo and thinking "but that's just Reenie and Screech out of the aforementioned Long Blondes and Claire from Navvy and moreover Slow Down Tallahassee, who this bit is supposed to be about!", then we're impressed that you recognised the latter.
MYSPACE INVADERS: London based Anglo-German outfit Kaputt were formed by one-time Go! Teamer Silke Steidinger. That band like the odd Sonic Youth noise moment and so do these, although it's the streamlined moments of their early major label days that it's most reminiscent of, given a Peter Hook bassline, the records Interpol had by the studio CD player when they were making Turn On The Bright Lights and working knowledge of Electrelane-style femme-cool motorik. They'll get well under your skin.
VISUAL AID: Look at the tableau at the start of this German telly clip. A probably self-consciously 'wacky' gentleman, some curious greenery on the table, the general air of a mid-afternoon talk-in. When the female presenter introduces some music, you half expect Donny Osmond or some sub-Parkinson nu-jazz. No. It's McLusky, doing She Will Only Bring You Happiness. To make them seem even more out of place, watch the onscreen DOG's scrolling display of musical guests on some other forthcoming show, including Avril Lavigne and a couple of German popettes. They've amused the girl on the left at 4:19, in any case, perhaps because unlike her disinterested mate she's aware of what they're singing at the end. It's questionable how much Andy Falkous actually wants the host to take their photo afterwards too, although bear in mind we now know the unwitting irony of the question posed by her at 4:35. Regular readers will know McLusky's other great TV appearance and b3ta fans will know their Joel Veitch history, but here's a thing. Falco has always sought to divorce Future Of The Left from McLusky to an extent, but apparently because the latter never toured Australia, when FOTL went there in March he made it up to them. They've come up with a workable method of finising a set too.
LINKS EFFECT
* Apparently we have featured the Black Cab Sessions before, which we'd expect as the first two people to be stuffed in the back of a cab driven round London and told to play for the bloke in the front with the digicam were Johnny Flynn and Emmy The Great, but we can't find it now. Don't worry, though, they've got on fine without us, the scope and depth in no way fully represented by a list of Okkervil River, the Futureheads, Spoon, Noah And The Whale plus Laura Marling, Daniel Johnston, Jeffrey Lewis, Death Cab For Cutie, The National, Bill Callahan, Lightspeed Champion, Scout Niblett, the New Pornographers, Seasick Steve, the Raveonettes, Lykke Li and the Felice Brothers. And the Kooks. Doesn't say how they slipped through.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
The Weekly Sweep
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Sweeping The Nation Covermount 12: This Sporting Life
There's a big summer of sport coming up, what with the Olympics and European Championships alongside all the usual summer sport hoopla, as well as in two days' time the most unlikely of FA Cup finals and in thirteen days' time the most inevitable of Champions League finals. Time, then to dust off a long pencilled in Covermount on songs to do with the many and varied methods and angles of sport. We gave ourselves a strict rule - the songs have to be about or reference sport, but they can't be by sportspeople, which we have to point out because we fear hundreds of people posting "ahhhh! Snooker Loopy!" in the comment box or suggesting Dreadlock Holiday. Yes. It mentions cricket. Well spotted. We think we've done well enough in avoiding a lot of the obvious and hackneyed, although ultimately you'll be the judges of that.
This Sporting Life
The Hold Steady - Take Me Out To The Ball Game
A Tin Pan Alley staple written a full hundred years ago and commonly held to be the third most often played song in the US after The Star Spangled Banner and Happy Birthday. Craig Finn adapted a second verse for play at his local team the Minnesota Twins from last year onwards.
Warren Zevon - Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song)
Americana songwriter's Americanasongwriter Zevon had a habit of morbidity well before being diagnosed with terminal cancer; from 2000's Life'll Kill Ya, a darkly ending song about an ice hockey enforcer. Longtime Zevon fan David Letterman does the chorus spoken bit.
Therapy? - Joey
Five time world motorcycling champion Joey Dunlop, once voted the fifth greatest motorcycling icon in history, was killed in a race crash in 2000. A year later Andy Cairns penned this tribute to him on the album Shameless.
The Hitchers - Strachan
Fellow Irishmen the Hitchers' singer was called Niall Quinn, which is a good start. Their 1997 football-as-art squally tribute, from It's All Fun And Games 'Til Someone Loses An Eye, apparently led Gordon to see them live at Reading Festival and send an appreciatory note.
Half Man Half Biscuit - Friday Night And The Gates Are Low
Were we just going on references we could have had our choice from about a hundred HMHB songs, but as far as we can think only this, from Some Call It Godcore, is the only song directly about football in their mighty canon. Bob Wilson Anchorman is about the person Bob Wilson, see.
I, Ludicrous - The Highland League
Similarly the Crystal Palace-associated long serving duo have their fair share of football references. This is from February's Dirty Washing EP and, as they so rarely say on Wikipedia, features original research.
Oh, yeah, The Referee's Alphabet. As you were.
The Long Blondes - Darts
Some will hear this B-side to the original Giddy Stratospheres release and admire its quasi-shambling charm, others will suggest this is why Kate leaves most of the lyrics to Dorian. Still others will note that the LBs do tend to appear on Covermounts more than most bands.
The Pogues - Bottle Of Smoke
Found on nearly high water mark If I Should Fall From Grace With God. Shane MacGowan puts a shitload (unspecified) of money on the titular horse which comes in at "twenty-fucking-five to one". Outcome is pleasing for all.
Jackie Leven - Museum Of Childhood
In a more general treatise on reminiscence on 2005's Elegy For Johnny Cash album Scottish folk singer and former Doll By Doll singer Leven alights on the events of November 25th 1980 in the Louisiana Superdome, Sugar Ray Leonard v Roberto Duran II, the "no mas" fight, a phrase nobody has decisively said they heard Duran say but which has passed into pop culture regardless.
Loudon Wainwright III - Tonya's Twirls
Around the turn of the decade Loudon, taking time out from writing about his family, was employed by NPR to pen the occasional topically slanted song, in much the same way he did for Carrott Confidential, all later collected on Social Studies. Here he tackles the Tonya Harding supported attack on Nancy Kerrigan.
The Mountain Goats - Fall Of The Star High School Running Back
From the last great Mountain Goats lo-fi record, 2002's All Hail West Texas (track 2, in fact, track 1 having been on the last Covermount - limited scope, us?), John Darnielle's college gridiron peer blows out his knee and heads downwards from there.
Billy Bragg - God's Footballer
Subject Peter Knowles was a free scoring striker for Wolves who was heavily touted as a future England regular before suddenly retiring in 1969 ages 23 after experiencing religious revelations and becoming a Jehovah's Witness. Bragg tells his story on Don't Try This At Home.
The Pioneers - Long Shot Kick De Bucket
In 1967 the rocksteady vocal trio had a Jamaican number one with Long Shot, a tribute to their favourite racehorse and an underperforming race. Two years later the horse was killed in an accident at Caymanas Park racetrack, leading to a necessary follow-up and an unlikely for the subject big international hit. Let Your Yeah Be Yeah: Anthology 1966-1986 has both on, as well as pretty much everything else.
Lord Beginner - Victory Test Match
More reportage. Egbert Moore, along with his more famous calypso mate Lord Kitchener, was in the stands at Lords when the West Indies beat England for the first time in 1950. Having led musical celebrations from the ground to Piccadilly that night, he went home and wrote it up.
Johnny Wakelin - Black Superman (Muhammad Ali)
And now, white reggae. Wakelin was a Brighton cabaret artist drawn to record about Ali in 1974. The follow-up In Zaire was about the Rumble In The Jungle. When he started recording about other people and things, his career faltered. A salutory lesson.
Erlend Oye - The Athlete
Between Kings Of Convenience and The Whitest Boy Alive Oye made an eclectic retro-electro solo album, Unrest, here teaming up and partly adopting the language of French electro duo Minizza.
Barcelona - Kasey Keller
In 1998 the US beat Brazil 1-0 largely thanks to the former Millwall, Leicester and Spurs keeper making a series of great saves. Now defunct Washington new wave pop outfit Barcelona document events, adding "we don't blame you for that fiasco in France in '98". That's a relief.
Kraftwerk - Tour de France
Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider are famously cycling obsessives, Karl Bartos once claiming their constant talk about their bikes rather than their music was the reason he left. Utilising the synthesised sounds of chains, gear changes and breaths, it's been remixed and re-recorded several times, but we'd be here all day if we got into that.
Saint Etienne - Conchita Martinez
Spain's most successful female tennis player ever, Wimbledon title winner in 1994 and once number two in the world. The song doesn't really have any further connection with the person, but never mind. Found on So Tough.
Von Sudenfed - Slow Down Ronnie
As with HMHB the Fall's back catalogue has touched upon football (Kicker Conspiracy, Final Score's Theme From Sparta FC, Ray Stubbs banter) but as we're being mildly perverse we've gone for Mark E and Mouse On Mars' collaborative effort (not actually on Tromatic Reflexxions, by the by) on the subject of Ronnie O'Sullivan. You'd fancy yourself against Smith at pool for a tenner, wouldn't you?
This Sporting Life
The Hold Steady - Take Me Out To The Ball Game
A Tin Pan Alley staple written a full hundred years ago and commonly held to be the third most often played song in the US after The Star Spangled Banner and Happy Birthday. Craig Finn adapted a second verse for play at his local team the Minnesota Twins from last year onwards.
Warren Zevon - Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song)
Americana songwriter's Americanasongwriter Zevon had a habit of morbidity well before being diagnosed with terminal cancer; from 2000's Life'll Kill Ya, a darkly ending song about an ice hockey enforcer. Longtime Zevon fan David Letterman does the chorus spoken bit.
Therapy? - Joey
Five time world motorcycling champion Joey Dunlop, once voted the fifth greatest motorcycling icon in history, was killed in a race crash in 2000. A year later Andy Cairns penned this tribute to him on the album Shameless.
The Hitchers - Strachan
Fellow Irishmen the Hitchers' singer was called Niall Quinn, which is a good start. Their 1997 football-as-art squally tribute, from It's All Fun And Games 'Til Someone Loses An Eye, apparently led Gordon to see them live at Reading Festival and send an appreciatory note.
Half Man Half Biscuit - Friday Night And The Gates Are Low
Were we just going on references we could have had our choice from about a hundred HMHB songs, but as far as we can think only this, from Some Call It Godcore, is the only song directly about football in their mighty canon. Bob Wilson Anchorman is about the person Bob Wilson, see.
I, Ludicrous - The Highland League
Similarly the Crystal Palace-associated long serving duo have their fair share of football references. This is from February's Dirty Washing EP and, as they so rarely say on Wikipedia, features original research.
Oh, yeah, The Referee's Alphabet. As you were.
The Long Blondes - Darts
Some will hear this B-side to the original Giddy Stratospheres release and admire its quasi-shambling charm, others will suggest this is why Kate leaves most of the lyrics to Dorian. Still others will note that the LBs do tend to appear on Covermounts more than most bands.
The Pogues - Bottle Of Smoke
Found on nearly high water mark If I Should Fall From Grace With God. Shane MacGowan puts a shitload (unspecified) of money on the titular horse which comes in at "twenty-fucking-five to one". Outcome is pleasing for all.
Jackie Leven - Museum Of Childhood
In a more general treatise on reminiscence on 2005's Elegy For Johnny Cash album Scottish folk singer and former Doll By Doll singer Leven alights on the events of November 25th 1980 in the Louisiana Superdome, Sugar Ray Leonard v Roberto Duran II, the "no mas" fight, a phrase nobody has decisively said they heard Duran say but which has passed into pop culture regardless.
Loudon Wainwright III - Tonya's Twirls
Around the turn of the decade Loudon, taking time out from writing about his family, was employed by NPR to pen the occasional topically slanted song, in much the same way he did for Carrott Confidential, all later collected on Social Studies. Here he tackles the Tonya Harding supported attack on Nancy Kerrigan.
The Mountain Goats - Fall Of The Star High School Running Back
From the last great Mountain Goats lo-fi record, 2002's All Hail West Texas (track 2, in fact, track 1 having been on the last Covermount - limited scope, us?), John Darnielle's college gridiron peer blows out his knee and heads downwards from there.
Billy Bragg - God's Footballer
Subject Peter Knowles was a free scoring striker for Wolves who was heavily touted as a future England regular before suddenly retiring in 1969 ages 23 after experiencing religious revelations and becoming a Jehovah's Witness. Bragg tells his story on Don't Try This At Home.
The Pioneers - Long Shot Kick De Bucket
In 1967 the rocksteady vocal trio had a Jamaican number one with Long Shot, a tribute to their favourite racehorse and an underperforming race. Two years later the horse was killed in an accident at Caymanas Park racetrack, leading to a necessary follow-up and an unlikely for the subject big international hit. Let Your Yeah Be Yeah: Anthology 1966-1986 has both on, as well as pretty much everything else.
Lord Beginner - Victory Test Match
More reportage. Egbert Moore, along with his more famous calypso mate Lord Kitchener, was in the stands at Lords when the West Indies beat England for the first time in 1950. Having led musical celebrations from the ground to Piccadilly that night, he went home and wrote it up.
Johnny Wakelin - Black Superman (Muhammad Ali)
And now, white reggae. Wakelin was a Brighton cabaret artist drawn to record about Ali in 1974. The follow-up In Zaire was about the Rumble In The Jungle. When he started recording about other people and things, his career faltered. A salutory lesson.
Erlend Oye - The Athlete
Between Kings Of Convenience and The Whitest Boy Alive Oye made an eclectic retro-electro solo album, Unrest, here teaming up and partly adopting the language of French electro duo Minizza.
Barcelona - Kasey Keller
In 1998 the US beat Brazil 1-0 largely thanks to the former Millwall, Leicester and Spurs keeper making a series of great saves. Now defunct Washington new wave pop outfit Barcelona document events, adding "we don't blame you for that fiasco in France in '98". That's a relief.
Kraftwerk - Tour de France
Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider are famously cycling obsessives, Karl Bartos once claiming their constant talk about their bikes rather than their music was the reason he left. Utilising the synthesised sounds of chains, gear changes and breaths, it's been remixed and re-recorded several times, but we'd be here all day if we got into that.
Saint Etienne - Conchita Martinez
Spain's most successful female tennis player ever, Wimbledon title winner in 1994 and once number two in the world. The song doesn't really have any further connection with the person, but never mind. Found on So Tough.
Von Sudenfed - Slow Down Ronnie
As with HMHB the Fall's back catalogue has touched upon football (Kicker Conspiracy, Final Score's Theme From Sparta FC, Ray Stubbs banter) but as we're being mildly perverse we've gone for Mark E and Mouse On Mars' collaborative effort (not actually on Tromatic Reflexxions, by the by) on the subject of Ronnie O'Sullivan. You'd fancy yourself against Smith at pool for a tenner, wouldn't you?
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
No, nothing better to link
Watch some BBC One Big Weekend live videos, but be careful out there. Covermount tomorrow, ideas next week, hopefully.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Let the games begin
We don't usually trail Covermounts like this, but this Thursday ahead of the FA Cup final we'll be bringing you a collection of songs about sport. Got that? No suggestions, it's all ready to go, but, only online until Friday, we're sharing a few Covermount near misses, left out whether because they were too general:
The Decemberists - The Sporting Life
Sportique - Sport For All (Olympic 2000 version)
Because we have to acknowledge not everyone is overly keen on the beautiful games:
The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band - Sport (The Odd Boy)
Because we weren't sure whether chess counts as a sport per se:
iLiKETRAiNS - A Rook House for Bobby
Because we don't want to just make a mockery of such a serious business, although you don't hear this often - Rory Bremner catalogues the England cricket team's West Indian collapse of 1984 on the theme of (and secretly produced by) Paul Hardcastle:
The Commentators - N-N-N-Nineteen Not Out
And because we didn't want to include songs by sportspeople, but some just demand to get a word in:
Cassius Clay - I Am The Greatest!
Because we have to acknowledge not everyone is overly keen on the beautiful games:
Because we weren't sure whether chess counts as a sport per se:
Because we don't want to just make a mockery of such a serious business, although you don't hear this often - Rory Bremner catalogues the England cricket team's West Indian collapse of 1984 on the theme of (and secretly produced by) Paul Hardcastle:
And because we didn't want to include songs by sportspeople, but some just demand to get a word in:
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Weekender : thinking it'll never last
WHAT CD?
- As much as we like to believe otherwise, the way to get ahead if you're a hip thrusting new American band is if you have a backstory, whether through origin, taste or anecdote. If there weren't documentary evidence you'd be tempted to wonder about the details that come with Bon Iver, reciting how he, by which we mean Justin Vernon, recorded For Emma, Forever Ago with a minimum of equipment while spending three months finding himself in a log cabin in Wisconsin mid-winter living off the land. While there's something of the sub-zero woodland about its atmosphere, its spectral sound, Vernon's falsetto not unlike Tunde Adebimpe of TV On The Radio's, and insertion of soul in the genuine sense puts it in the folk Americana lineage exhibited by the likes of Iron & Wine. It's not Jose Gonzalez, essentially, and is well worth a listen, if completely inappropriate for this heatwave.
- A quiet week all round, really. Mark Lanegan's keeping himself busy, the last two years seeing releases by his own Band, his Greg Dulli teamup The Gutter Twins and the Mercury-nominated Isobel Campbell duets of Ballad Of The Broken Seas. That's now followed up by Sunday At Devil Dirt, a more grittily countrified take on the Lee'n'Nancy redux diagnostic. Death Cab For Cutie, no longer bound to the OC demographic, use sixth album Narrow Stairs to stretch their wings, venturing into motorik and ambient areas while still mostly allowing Ben Gibbard to retain their yen for collegiate empathy. It'll be a grower. Hayman Watkins Trout And Lee (actually Hayman, Watkins, Mayfield and Tattersall) are Darren Hayman's kitchen bluegrass project, and although all four - Dave Tattersall fronts the Wave Pictures, Dan Mayfield and Dave Watkins are in Hayman's Secondary Modern - write it's still Hayman's Londonite bedroom melodramas that come to the lyrical fore in their new musical surroundings.
- Better late than never - and by the way, regarding that recent and spectacularly hesitant podcast, where exactly is Aleks' speaking accent planted? - Los Campesinos!, who've just announced they're headlining Indietracks (woo!), have another concept single for us. The lead track of the 7" is the 109 second jerky charge of My Year In Lists. As they (alright, probably Gareth) explain: "It's a celebration of brevity and transience in pop music: all the best pop songs are short, or short-lived. As are most pop bands' careers. Probably ours too. Damn this ever-hungry web 2.0 generation... Never mind, no-one really wants to waste time with longevity and patience; this is for those of short attention span that won't sit still." So the B-sides are three covers that together add up to roughly 1:49 - Deerhoof's The Eyebright Bugler, Casiotone For The Painfully Alone's Yr Boyfriend and, as previously touched upon on these very pages, Bikini Kill's In Accordance To Natural Law. If you feel its quality needs further elucidation, welcome to your first visit to this blog. Also out this week, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds almost literally halve the album version of More News From Nowhere, and Lightspeed Champion's Galaxy Of The Lost, for which see last week.
COMING SOON: With their quicker than most turnover of material, if only for compilations, it's easy to overlook that July's Chemical Chords is Stereolab's first proper album in four years. Three Women sees Gane, Sadier etc. continue to rejig the sunshine synths and awry chords fitting in with the groove they settled into around the turn of the decade.
MYSPACE INVADERS: Yeah, we're late to Eux Autres, who released their second album late last year. So sue us. This is the next in our occasional series STN Reccomends Bands So Shambling That They'd Make Simon Reynolds Eat His Own Head, a brother/sister duo originally from Omaha, now of Portland, who've been recorded by Janet Weiss (Sleater-Kinney, Quasi, now sidewoman to Bright Eyes and Stephen Malkmus) and occasionally sing their lovelorn barbs in French. Anyone who holds the Vaselines or early Delgados to their hearts should be here, and you can tell they've worked carefully through the Elephant 6 back catalogue too. Also: handclaps.
VISUAL AID: Actual history this week. The performance is fairly remark worthy as it is, being long forgotten post-Sam & Dave duo Buddy & Stacey performing the even less well known Shotgun on the Nashville WLAC-TV Channel 5 show Night Train in 1965. But get past the frontmen's all-action effort and and the great syncopated swaying of the backing band, and notice its guitarist on the left, swooping with the best of them. That'll be the then pick-up man for hire Jimi Hendrix, this the oldest known film footage of him.
LINKS EFFECT
* We like a "Personal Pop Odyssey" as much as the next man, so we fully recommend Young And Foolish by Alistair Fitchett, which is subtitled as such. Issued in 1998, it's a collection of fanzine articles and extended essays on the pop that shaped his formative years and how it and the people making it manage it, taking in a path from the Blue Aeroplanes and Felt via club culture and The Cult Of Richey to Belle & Sebastian (including an appendix purely for documenting posts to Sinister) and Arab Strap. The best detail is to celebrate its tenth anniversary Fitchett has stuck the whole thing on his blog as a downloadable PDF.
* Those My Bloody Valentine dates are getting ever closer with still no idea of how they'll approach it or even what they look like these days. This archive at least gives those going something to weigh it up against, being an archive of live and Peel recordings.
* We delved into film a couple of weeks ago with an overdubbed pubescent Johnny Flynn, and now we do so again with semi-surreal Brazilian short film Handmade. "The film TELLS a STORY of love, using symbols and images to translate abstract feelings" (capitalisation synopsis writer's own), and it also TELLS how good Lovefoxxx, for it is she as female lead and half the cast, is at multitasking.
- As much as we like to believe otherwise, the way to get ahead if you're a hip thrusting new American band is if you have a backstory, whether through origin, taste or anecdote. If there weren't documentary evidence you'd be tempted to wonder about the details that come with Bon Iver, reciting how he, by which we mean Justin Vernon, recorded For Emma, Forever Ago with a minimum of equipment while spending three months finding himself in a log cabin in Wisconsin mid-winter living off the land. While there's something of the sub-zero woodland about its atmosphere, its spectral sound, Vernon's falsetto not unlike Tunde Adebimpe of TV On The Radio's, and insertion of soul in the genuine sense puts it in the folk Americana lineage exhibited by the likes of Iron & Wine. It's not Jose Gonzalez, essentially, and is well worth a listen, if completely inappropriate for this heatwave.
- A quiet week all round, really. Mark Lanegan's keeping himself busy, the last two years seeing releases by his own Band, his Greg Dulli teamup The Gutter Twins and the Mercury-nominated Isobel Campbell duets of Ballad Of The Broken Seas. That's now followed up by Sunday At Devil Dirt, a more grittily countrified take on the Lee'n'Nancy redux diagnostic. Death Cab For Cutie, no longer bound to the OC demographic, use sixth album Narrow Stairs to stretch their wings, venturing into motorik and ambient areas while still mostly allowing Ben Gibbard to retain their yen for collegiate empathy. It'll be a grower. Hayman Watkins Trout And Lee (actually Hayman, Watkins, Mayfield and Tattersall) are Darren Hayman's kitchen bluegrass project, and although all four - Dave Tattersall fronts the Wave Pictures, Dan Mayfield and Dave Watkins are in Hayman's Secondary Modern - write it's still Hayman's Londonite bedroom melodramas that come to the lyrical fore in their new musical surroundings.
- Better late than never - and by the way, regarding that recent and spectacularly hesitant podcast, where exactly is Aleks' speaking accent planted? - Los Campesinos!, who've just announced they're headlining Indietracks (woo!), have another concept single for us. The lead track of the 7" is the 109 second jerky charge of My Year In Lists. As they (alright, probably Gareth) explain: "It's a celebration of brevity and transience in pop music: all the best pop songs are short, or short-lived. As are most pop bands' careers. Probably ours too. Damn this ever-hungry web 2.0 generation... Never mind, no-one really wants to waste time with longevity and patience; this is for those of short attention span that won't sit still." So the B-sides are three covers that together add up to roughly 1:49 - Deerhoof's The Eyebright Bugler, Casiotone For The Painfully Alone's Yr Boyfriend and, as previously touched upon on these very pages, Bikini Kill's In Accordance To Natural Law. If you feel its quality needs further elucidation, welcome to your first visit to this blog. Also out this week, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds almost literally halve the album version of More News From Nowhere, and Lightspeed Champion's Galaxy Of The Lost, for which see last week.
COMING SOON: With their quicker than most turnover of material, if only for compilations, it's easy to overlook that July's Chemical Chords is Stereolab's first proper album in four years. Three Women sees Gane, Sadier etc. continue to rejig the sunshine synths and awry chords fitting in with the groove they settled into around the turn of the decade.
MYSPACE INVADERS: Yeah, we're late to Eux Autres, who released their second album late last year. So sue us. This is the next in our occasional series STN Reccomends Bands So Shambling That They'd Make Simon Reynolds Eat His Own Head, a brother/sister duo originally from Omaha, now of Portland, who've been recorded by Janet Weiss (Sleater-Kinney, Quasi, now sidewoman to Bright Eyes and Stephen Malkmus) and occasionally sing their lovelorn barbs in French. Anyone who holds the Vaselines or early Delgados to their hearts should be here, and you can tell they've worked carefully through the Elephant 6 back catalogue too. Also: handclaps.
VISUAL AID: Actual history this week. The performance is fairly remark worthy as it is, being long forgotten post-Sam & Dave duo Buddy & Stacey performing the even less well known Shotgun on the Nashville WLAC-TV Channel 5 show Night Train in 1965. But get past the frontmen's all-action effort and and the great syncopated swaying of the backing band, and notice its guitarist on the left, swooping with the best of them. That'll be the then pick-up man for hire Jimi Hendrix, this the oldest known film footage of him.
LINKS EFFECT
* We like a "Personal Pop Odyssey" as much as the next man, so we fully recommend Young And Foolish by Alistair Fitchett, which is subtitled as such. Issued in 1998, it's a collection of fanzine articles and extended essays on the pop that shaped his formative years and how it and the people making it manage it, taking in a path from the Blue Aeroplanes and Felt via club culture and The Cult Of Richey to Belle & Sebastian (including an appendix purely for documenting posts to Sinister) and Arab Strap. The best detail is to celebrate its tenth anniversary Fitchett has stuck the whole thing on his blog as a downloadable PDF.
* Those My Bloody Valentine dates are getting ever closer with still no idea of how they'll approach it or even what they look like these days. This archive at least gives those going something to weigh it up against, being an archive of live and Peel recordings.
* We delved into film a couple of weeks ago with an overdubbed pubescent Johnny Flynn, and now we do so again with semi-surreal Brazilian short film Handmade. "The film TELLS a STORY of love, using symbols and images to translate abstract feelings" (capitalisation synopsis writer's own), and it also TELLS how good Lovefoxxx, for it is she as female lead and half the cast, is at multitasking.
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