Songs To Learn And Sing #14

Quick piece of housekeeping first - if you've been enjoying this feature and haven't already been signed up, it's turned out one of our contributors scheduled for the last few days of the month may not be able to put their copy in, so if you want to contribute a standby piece let us know ASAP.

Onwards with the collection of recommended listening, which continues with a less obscure choice than a lot of other participants have come up with but no less well argued by Robin from throughsilver:

Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Oliver's Army

I initially considered this single invalid for a topic of 'singles everybody should hear'. Not that it shouldn't be heard by everybody (it should), but more because I was labouring under the belief that it, in fact, had already been heard by everybody. It was only when talking to friends that it became clear a worrying amount of today's young populace had never heard the greatness that is Oliver's Army so, on the off-chance readers here find themselves members of such a group, that can now be rectified.

What is odd about this song is that, while I was always aware of its existence, it is only really in the last few months that it has been elevated in my mind to the level of true great. Indeed, and this is by no means intended as a slight on today's music scene, a modern equal to Oliver's Army, in its combination of aesthetic and commercial success, is sorely lacking; this truly is the perfect single. Clocking in at (a shade) below three minutes, not a second is wasted. A sympathetic satire on the situation school-leavers would find themselves in during the late 1970s, the title references Cromwell's New Model Army (a precursor to the modern army), and concerns the near-predatory targeting, by the British army, of the youth: "Call careers information/Have you got yourself an occupation?"

The song opens in friendly enough fashion, as Costello warns "don't start me talking/I could talk all night", but develops into rather an aggressive treatise on the policy of the time. This song is also the closest one is likely to get to hearing the 'N-word' on Radio 2; Elvis references the historical subjugation of the Irish with an eye on the contemporary Northern Irish violence:

There was a checkpoint Charlie
He didn't crack a smile
But it's no laughing party
When you've been on the murder mile
Only takes one itchy trigger
One more widow, one less white nigger

What is truly sad is that, while Northern Ireland has thankfully seen less of the overt violence than in the past, young British army recruits are still being packed off to many a 'murder mile' around the world. Though the closing quip of "if you're out of luck or out of work, we could send you to Johannesburg" is less of a threat than it was during the dark days of Apartheid, little (other than integrity of rhyme) would be lost by replacing it with a Kabul or Baghdad in 2006. Sobering indeed is the knowledge that the reference to the Palestine is as relevant now as it was twenty-seven years ago. Familiar, too, is the "London is full of Arabs" line, to anyone who has seen the sensationalising news of late.

Not for Costello the politico-single that is merely a wordy essay, though. With such intelligent, abrasive, lyrics, the erstwhile Declan MacManus paired a very simple, and incredibly smart, arrangement. The key vocal melody in the verses is both well-written and exquisitely performed - Costello gets little recognition for his singing ability, but he sings here with a sensitivity of voice, while dancing subtly around the notes. The chorus, meanwhile, is a very simple melody, but crafted well in that it rises to mini-climaxes every time it is sung.

Musically, it is also on the money; to think the half-finished song was very nearly omitted from the Armed Forces record. Thank goodness, then, for keyboardist Steve Nieve who, at the last minute, came up with a catchy piano riff. By Costello's admission, it was more than slightly in thrall to Dancing Queen by ABBA. Still, if one is to steal, it might as well be from the pop masters.

Such grand piano flourishes meet Reggae-tinged keyboard stabs in the mix without sounding at all incongruous, but the devil really is in the details: the quickly ascending piano notes lead listeners into the middle-eight that, itself, is the verse melody sung gloriously in a higher key. The loose, yet brilliant, harmony in the chorus really adds to the anthemic feel of the song. The way the piano directs the ears into the climactic chorus, with a solitary rendition of the vocal melody itself, is the icing on the cake.

In a nutshell, then, Oliver's Army is a single that managed to marry the conciseness and pure pop sensibility of the very best ABBA, with a near-Swiftian taste for the satirical. And for that, as well as countless other reasons, I love it.

More bad news for Matt Tong

Now he's done his lung in, the Independent reckon he's on the path to becoming a junkie schizophrenic

Songs To Learn And Sing #13

Continuing our series of handpicked selections from the great and good is someone who we featured as a Myspace pick on Weekender a couple of weeks ago, one of our favourite discoveries of the last few months, and someone who we're sure would like us to tell you that his first proper release, The Independent Scrutineer EP, is out on the 27th, Pagan Wanderer Lu:

Molasses - La Berceuse d'Eve (Eve's Lullaby)

In deciding what song to write about for this blog I was torn between two extremes - should I pick a song that's been 'important' to me in defining my own musicial trajectory? If I'd gone that way I'd have gone straight for Common People by Pulp, the first record that ever made me think music might actually be important as well as fun. But then I decided there was little point in writing about a song that everyone pretty much knows already and which has been recently trotted out on its 10th anniversary double cd reissue (Christ I feel old). So I've gone intentionally for something a little more obscure.

Molasses are a collective of Montreal post-rock/avant-jazz musicians, some of whom are also members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. They've released four albums over the last five years, the first two being quite harsh and long drawn out pieces of sombre, soporific improvisation hanging by a thread onto the sotto voce, folksy, and almost exhaustingly downbeat songs of songwriter Scott Chernoff. Those who are familiar with Godspeed and their more peripheral side-projects like Set Fire To Flames or Esmerine will hopefully understand what I mean by the Hotel2Tango feel, H2T being the loft space where members of Godspeed live and record and where more recently the Arcade Fire recorded Funeral - all 'real' analog warmth, the creaking of floorboards, the dust on mantelpieces and the heavy hearted trudge of a long walk home. Whilst they were interesting and at times beautiful they were ultimately quite hard work and not ones I'd recommend to everyone.

Their third album, A Slow Messe was a double CD, but rather than this meaning it sprawled and meandered even more they chose instead to hone in on the songs, creating shorter, more composed sounding songs. It is their masterpiece; though the tone throughout is bleak and defeated and the tempo never rises above the same weary pace it's utterly compelling throughout.

The particular song I've picked is a bilingual lullaby, Chernoff cleverly writes alternating verses in English then French, managing to say the exact same thing in both languages and still make it rhyme - which is kind of neat in itself but set to music it becomes something magical. Chernoff often uses biblical imagery in his lyrics - "may the lion and the lamb fornicate on your soul" being another particular favourite line from this album - and here sings soothingly for Eve, burdened with the entire fall of mankind, to simply lie down and sleep her troubles away. With Molasses' Francophone singer Jennifer Ménard alternating with him on the translated verses she sounds almost like a voice coming from a another place. Throughout, Thierry Amar's distinctive drunken stagger of a bassline adds a strange nautical feel to the song - or is that just me? The piano chimes, the guitars are gently strummed, organs and harmoniums hum, and between verses strings swoon and caress the gentle ebb and flow of the song - the perfect lullaby.

At the end of the day though, this is a recommendation not a review. I could bore you to tears with the ins and outs of this record - I just hope the mp3's already playing on your computer by the time you've read this far and its woozy beauty tempts you to invest in A Slow Messe, one of my very favourite albums.

Never a full time collective Molasses have managed one more album, Trouble At Jinx Hotel, since then, which sees them refine their sound closer towards pop music and further from the avant-garde, but with Chernoff apparently having fled to Tokyo it's unsure if the group will continue. Still, they've already left behind a small but stunning body of work for the curious and enlightened.

Weekender : rating the superhunks

CHART OF DARKNESS: You already know who's number one, right? 14 up for Westlife, which oddly it is now revealed was 143 last week on downloads. And they say nobody cares about when CD singles go on sale any more. U2 and Green Day are at 2, All Saints at 3, Sugababes 8, Madonna 9. Justin Timberlake might well be surprised, assuming he cares, to find he's only the second highest download entry at 14, with Akon, whose rise actually began roughly two years ago as Locked Up gradually climbed into the top 75 on import, goes for the safest option and hires Eminem to appear, somewhere, on his new single, getting him to 12. Infernal have a second top 20 single, which if they have fans will obviously act to prove the doubters wrong. They're just the new Alice Deejay, that's all. Paul Weller fans are supposed to be rabid about any new material, but his new single, not on the new box set or any album, only ends up at 22. It's probable many of them also picked up the Pigeon Detectives' single, which enters at 39 and is only worth any attention as it gives Dance To The Radio a third top 40 single. Plus they've outsold Paris Hilton (55) and, more surprisingly, Gnarls Barkley (60).
There's a record seven new entries in the albums top 8, and what a motley crew they are. Jamiroquai's hits, from the not bad first couple of singles (are we allowed to say that in polite company? We quite liked Space Cowboy too) to the water treading last few years, makes for a slightly surprising number one, which at least holds off Angelis, proof if it be needed, which it doesn't, that eventually we really would run out of names for pop-classical acts. These are six 11-14 year old choir members brought together under Cowell's auspices, the album description boasting that it is on "the label that brought you Il Divo, Celine Dion and Barbara Streisand". Yes, that'll be Sony BMG, then. To show what level they're aiming it, it also refers to a cover of "Eva Cassidy's Over The Rainbow". We bet the Cassidy estate can't wait for those royalties from that original work to come flooding in. Damien Rice shoots his load early in comparison to O at 4, Katherine Jenkins does her Katherine Jenkins thing at 5, McFly enlist two of A to little effect at 6 (track one's called We Are The Young! Somewhere Jimmy Pursey slaps his forehead), Weller's in at 7 with what we assume is the single CD best of rather than the all-encompassing four-disc set and Cliff's duets set is at 8. His partners, since you weren't going to ask, range from the inevitable (put Lulu down now, adult pop partner seekers!) to the credibility ruiners (Elton John) to the cheating (Hank Marvin). The Magic Numbers' second album campaign seems to have passed by unnoticed, such is the lot of the first album high flyers in a sector of the industry ever more obsessed with newness, which makes 11 decent enough. The six people without Abba Gold are catered for by a new hits collection at 15, ahead of those of Moby (23), the Charlatans (38) and 10cc's fifth (42). Now, we're not completely au fait with how plugging works, but we're taking a guess that Drag City cut their losses and didn't bother with selling the supermarkets on Joanna Newsom's Ys, meaning a midweek top 30 place ends up at 41. You know the Statler and Waldorf routine where they go from "that was wonderful!" to "Boo!"? Watch the Newsnight Review take on this album from Friday to see it recreated. The Long Blondes still fail to live up to, well, anything at 44, while we bet JJ Cale never expected to see the top 50 again, even if he is piggybacked by Eric Clapton.

FREE MUSIC: Tom Waits has a new album out. Or new in the sense that Orphans is in fact a three-disc set of out-takes and rarities, Bottom Of The World being from a 2003 documentary he scored. You should already know the Waitsian style, so suffice to say this is acoustic blues with what sounds like a mandolin prominent in the mix, plus a voice that appears to have gone right past 'grizzled' and actually be sung as if by barbed wire.

HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: The law of averages always suggested we were going to get round to Johnny Flynn sooner rather than later, given he's played with Jeremy Warmsley and Emmy The Great and is managed by the Transgressive duo. Luckily his musical worth transcends just clicking on whoever's in the top friends of people we've interviewed - it's lyrically aware and as breezy as this new strain of British anti-folk can ever be, not dissimilar in a way to a UK-parochial Beirut, if that makes sense. Only two tracks, though?

VISUAL REPRESENTATION: So it's all about New Rave these days, as bands who would have been post-Franz knockoffs this time last year buy a synth and a couple of glowsticks. But where will it all end? Lest we forget, old rave when it went commercial ended up going in some very strange directions. Oh, it started well enough, what with Injected With A Poison, On A Ragga Tip and Ha-ha-ha-Hardcore Uproar but then some decided that all this was too faceless. Unfortunately what that meant was the very definitely faced but not in a way you particularly needed Guru Josh ("1990s, time for the Guru" No it wasn't) and Altern 8. We like a band in matching uniforms, but it has to be chosen well. Then, in the wake of the Prodigy's Charly, came the ironic samples. Mark Summers' Magic Roundabout-cribbing Summers Magic we can live with because it was quite good, but Smart E's Sesame's Treet was the straw-camel interface made flesh and you can sense the desperation to get something, anything, in around A Trip To Trumpton. And then it died. And then Klaxons pretended they were reviving it and only went "nah, just joking!" a little too late. For what it's worth, here's a live recording, apparently without the aid of being able to pick up a bass sound, of their cover of The Bouncer to compare and contrast with Kicks Like A Mule's original.

VISUAL REPRESENTATION EXTRA, BECAUSE WE'D ALREADY DECIDED ON THE WEEK'S THEME BUT THIS WAS TOO GOOD TO KEEP ON THE SIDELINES: From the 1979 BBC VT engineers' Christmas tape, Sports PA by Suzi Quatro.

FALLING OFF A BLOG: Angels Twenty is another of those blogs that scans not just whatever's hot off the leak but does the work for you with the less recent stuff too, and all with clear-minded writing. At the moment, savour Death In Vegas, Petra Haden doing Thriller, Basement Jaxx, Blow and Annie singing in Simlish. As one does.

EVERYBODY GET RANDOM: How to dress like Adam Ant. No, not the current fedora/shades/light beard look, the various stages of his proper dressing up phase.

IN OTHER NEWS: As bands and labels attempt to get to grips with the concepts of downloading, avant-funk outfit Superthriller are taking a new approach on new album Blank. It's a fully packaged blank CDR retailing for a tenner... but when played in a broadbanded computer the listener gains access to a site from where they can download whatever they want from a choice of more than thirty tracks ready for burning. It seems a long-winded way of attracting attention and we're not sure it'll catch on, but it'll be impossible to review.

Songs To Learn And Sing #12

Today's lamb to the slaughterhouse of popular music opinion is head boy of The Runout Groove, who's even supplied his own pictorial backup, Jamie Summers:

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Cathedral

The power of religion in people's lives, both positively and negatively, has to me seemed to be a difficult subject for popular song. Often, on the positive side, we get musicians who are far more interested in expressing the strength of their faith than they are in producing something beautiful. Thus we have huge industries of Christian Music made specifically for Christian people creating music that has no real impact on anyone outside of that group. The same can be said for most religions. However there are of course some musicians who make the crossover, either by being so fantastic that you can't help but love them despite not having any idea what they're on about (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan), or through expressing their faith so beautifully or cleverly that you can't help but be touched/affected in some way (Sufjan Stevens/Danielson Famile) or through being so obtuse about it that you can be forgiven for thinking that they're not talking about religion at all.

On the other side of the spectrum, things are pretty much the same. There are barrel loads of very embarrassing anti-religious songs that act as album filler and are usually an excuse for stupid lyricists to try to show us how clever they are for, you know, spotting that religion is sometimes a bit too powerful; there's probably one on the new Killers album (I wouldn't know). However, again, there are a bunch of exceptions. First of all you can have your metal anti-religious songs that can border on the comedic (Marilyn Manson when he's not being rubbish - and there are times), then you have ones that are musically different or very clever in how they express themselves (see PIL's Religion 1 and 2), and of course you have some that are such fantastic poppy songs that even religious types among us can't help but tap their feet (XTC's Dear God for instance).

The one crossover, I think, is when it comes to songs of real deep emotion. Just as there can be incredibly beautiful songs about faith that touch us even if we're not at all religious, there can be songs about the failure of religion that express the disappointment about the realities of faith and religious organisations so well that their very anti-religious nature makes them truly...religious. These songs may express disdain, but this disdain comes from a true desire for religion, for God, for some sort of universal love or meaning. The people who write the heartfelt religious songs that amaze us and the people who write the heartfelt un-religious songs that amaze us are divided by a very thin barrier. Perhaps that's why many of the best songs about the problems or pressures of faith are usually written by lapsed Catholics/lapsed Protestants.

My song for today is an anti-organised religion song that works well because it's both very beautiful in its expression of disappointment, and also because it's bloody catchy and stunningly performed.



Whilst on tour in Britain in the seventies David Crosby, at the time part of uber beautiful supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, was on an acid trip when he wandered into Winchester Cathedral (just a few miles down the road from my home of Southampton). In reaction to the power of the atmosphere and architecture he experienced a deep crisis of faith which resulted in the song Cathedral, which featured on 1977's CSN album. It's a multi-part epic which soon turned into a high point of any live performance, and has since the 70s come to be seen as one of Crosby's best songs.

I was in the cathedral a few months ago, having not been there for a number of years, and have to say that the opulent, oppressive nature of much of the surroundings is both very beautiful but also very sad, raising questions of how a religion of supposed poverty could gain so much wealth and use it in such a (perhaps) uncharitable way. It's truly a stunning place, and the chance to see caskets containing the remains of the first five kings of England, as well as (a few minutes walk down the road) an artefact that was long thought to be the genuine Round Table of King Arthur's court, is quite a special experience. But anyway, here is the song, and I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for reading!

In shops tomorrow: 13/11

Singles

This is about the point at which everything starts to thin out except singles releases as everyone tries to get one last squeeze out of existing material or a shot at establishing themselves ahead of the full year. In the former category we find ¡Forward Russia! reworking Nineteen to actually not as good as the album effect and the Flaming Lips doing their usual trick of rounding off an album campaign in Britain with a tour and an EP of odds and sods led by an album track, At War With The Mystics providing It Overtakes Me. In the latter, the Maccabees' charge towards establishing a parochial foothold gathers apace on First Love while The Hours, the duo of former Joe Strummer & The Mescaleroes backmen Antony Genn (who famously-at-the-time streaked Elastica at Glastonbury) and Martin Slattery (who didn't, but he was in Black Grape), go all anthemic to a not unlikeable extent on Ali In The Jungle. There's Q's tip for the new year sorted out. No prizes for guessing which side of the divide Oasis fall, especially as the Stop the Clocks EP is entirely made up of material most have - Acquiesce, The Masterplan, a demo of Cigarettes & Alcohol and a live version of Some Might Say. Over on 7" we'll draw your attention to Birmingham's oddest Misty's Big Adventure and the Fashion Parade EP, typified by its less than subtle title track aim-taking.

Albums

Later on today on our Myspace blog you can find out what we made of the almost certainly never to be seen again experience, a word we use very advisedly, of the live Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. To coincide with this fortieth anniversary tour Wrestle Poodles... and Win is a recording of their initial 40th anniversary reformation show with all surviving members plus Stephen Fry, Adrian Edmondson, Phill Jupitus and Paul Merton. It's been out on DVD for a while (and over on their official site they've now got a two-disc forty year retrospective DVD set available just in case you thought you had everything you needed) but as every home should have one this is not a bad thing. It's certainly a more fulsome expenditure option than the Sugababes' rewriting of what was already a relatively patchy pop history - great at its heights, poor at its lows, and they've re-recorded some of it - on Overloaded: Greatest Hits, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead's plain rotten crash down to earth So Divided and, sad to say, Jarvis. Yes, four and five stars across the board, but we've been listening to it a bit recently and have come to the conclusion that it doesn't quite work or click in the way we so desperately hoped it would.

DVDs

Never a great visual band, at least the Charlatans have packed out Forever - The Singles with live and TV performances, and not left Weirdo off. The apparently variable Under Review series of critical reappraisals meanwhile continues with Tom Waits: Under Review 1971-1982. We're expecting dimmed shots of blue fascia lights already.

The Weekly Sweep

Band Of Horses - Our Swords

Booker T & The MGs - Time Is Tight [live YouTube]

Brakes - No Return

Cold War Kids - We Used To Vacation [mp3 from A Soundtrack For Everyone]

Dananananaykroyd - Some Dresses

Fields - If You Fail We All Fail [mp3 from The World Forgot]

Goodbooks - Leni [YouTube]

Gruff Rhys - Candylion [YouTube]

Guided By Voices - Motor Away [YouTube]

The Hidden Cameras - Awoo [YouTube]

Idlewild - If It Takes You Home

Jeremy Warmsley - Dirty Blue Jeans [YouTube]

Los Campesinos! - We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives [Myspace]

The Lucksmiths - If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now (Inevitably, one of our favourite discoveries as we come towards the end of the year is Warmer Corners, released 2005)

Misty's Big Adventure - Fashion Parade [YouTube]

Peter Bjorn & John - Objects Of My Affection [mp3 from Rewriteable Content]

Rumble Strips - Oh Creole [YouTube]

Spearmint - The Space [Myspace]

Tilly And The Wall - The Ice Storm, Big Gust, And You [YouTube]

Tokyo Police Club - Nature Of The Experiment [YouTube]

Songs To Learn And Sing #11

For today's choice of a song that everyone should take to their hearts, we turn to the only collaborator on our own World Cup blog Finals Fantasy who managed to get his work linked to from the BBC's own blog. The comments box was fun that day, we can assure you. Presenting Matt Sullivan:

Madness - In The City

I recently found myself in the unusual situation (for me, anyway) of being in deep conversation with a nice young lady. As cold drinks were consumed and the amazing coincidences of bands we'd both seen years ago were seized upon as being terribly meaningful despite there invariably being 60,000 other people at these gigs as well, she asked me who my favourite band were. And this caused a moment's discomfort, because trying to pin down one band above all others would be a difficult enough task as it is - off the top of my head I can think of at least five bands that hugely affected who I am today - without the added pressure of attempting to impress my new friend. Should I mention the band that got me through my A-levels, or the band that changed
the way I thought about everything when I was 19, or the band that only those who'd listened to John Peel on a regular basis in the late 90s would have heard of? It's a difficult question, particularly for someone who's had rather a lot to drink.

After some time mulling it over, I plumped for the answer that I suspect is closest to the truth. There was a band, I explained, that I loved when I was three years old, to the extent of learning how to operate my parents' record player just so I could play the records that they'd bought for me, that were the first band I ever went to see, and that despite everything that's turned my head in the meantime still thrill me today. That band, I told her, were Madness. I'm not sure that she was impressed by my choice, but there was distinct admiration that I was buying records (well, having them bought for me; it's a bit difficult to buy records when you're 3) before she'd been born. Well, I think it was admiration. The alcohol had taken hold of us both at that point.

But when the UK's 34th most popular music blog comes a-calling, and you feel compelled to choose a song by a band that everyone is familiar with, you're left with something of a dilemma. The singles are all far too well known (although, from my fanboy's perspective, some don't seem nearly as seared into the collective consciousness as they should be, Tomorrow's Just Another
Day particularly springing to mind), and while the albums are a treasure-trove of goodness - all of them are at least worth listening to, even last year's potentially UB40-ish set of cover versions - selecting one song to explain why this band have had a hold on me for so long is a tricky task.

Hurrah, then, for the humble world of the b-side, satisfying my desire to be slightly obscure and providing a tremendous tune to boot. Well, In The City wasn't just a b-side - as well as appearing on the back of Cardiac Arrest, it also turned up on the Complete Madness compilation of early singles, the sleevenotes to which reveal its origins as the tune to a Japanese car commercial that the band featured in. This, I suspect, goes some way to explaining the song's appeal; there's so much crammed in there, trademark wonky sax, organs being politely battered, unusually prominent guitars, someone shouting "OOMPA DOOMPA DOOMPA DOOMPA" at regular intervals, that it makes sense that it was originally 30 seconds long. And the process of stretching it to song-length - adding some more "OOMPA DOOMPA DOOMPA DOOMPA"s and a splendid ending that can leave even a fairly taciturn sort of a fellow attempting to play simultaneous air guitar and air piano - only adds to
the sense of gleeful chaos.

It's fair to say that the lyrics don't drip with pithy social observation, and it's by no means the most profound song in this feature, but it's fun to lustily shout along to and it's got a bloke going "OOMPA DOOMPA DOOMPA DOOMPA" on a regular basis, and what could be better than that? It's a song that makes the world a slightly brighter place for just under three minutes. Which is always useful when you're sitting around impatiently waiting for a nice young lady to return your calls.

Songs To Learn And Sing #10

We reach double figures with the recommendation of the keeper of Parallax View, Dead Kenny:

Tina Dico - Losing

Although I could have dredged my vinyl collection for obscure b-sides by the likes of The Edsel Auctioneer, The Telescopes and The Popguns that would have been very worthy of your attention, I have no clue as to how to convert these to mp3, so in a departure from the convention already set by my collaborators on this feature, I'm going for a song that actually came out (in the UK, at any rate) this year.

Not being minded to do any in-depth biographical research these are the facts about Tina Dico I know: she's Danish, in her late twenties, devastatingly pretty, is hugely popular and award-winning in her native country yet best known elsewhere for her vocal contributions to some Zero 7 songs. Oh, and somewhere along the line she lost a W from her surname in translation.

Losing is the first song I ever heard from her, and is the self-proclaimed 'dark, but hooky' opening tune from her solo album In The Red. It was one of those occasions when you hear a song on the radio and hunt it down immediately from Amazon, so maybe there's a chance it'll have the same impact on you. The opening piano notes seemingly act as bell tolls, immediately setting up a tense atmosphere before Dico's vocals kick in with the intriguing opening lines "how many lies have you told today/into the dark of your coffee cup?" She has a warm, bold, yet vulnerable voice (there's a sprinkling of Dusty perhaps and more than a hint of Rita Coolidge) which is unusually distinctive for such a conventionally attractive woman of petite frame.

Lyrically the song seems to be something of a break-up song, a slightly bitter lament of a (former?) lover's lapse into self-deception and betrayal which is elliptical enough to suggest there may be autobiographical elements contained therein. Musically, I have to concede it undeniably has to be classed as MOR, but the string arrangements and additional programming (courtesy of Dave McCracken) add a cinematic splendour and unsettling edginess respectively to Dico's hurt and recrimination. The result is a timeless gem with a cracking chorus, that acts as a fine introduction to her work. Good for singing along to in the shower, too.

Songs To Learn And Sing #9

Today's entry into the unheard pantheon is from Static Multimedia contributor Ian Pointer:

Jackie Lee - The Town I Live In

For some reason, the British girl-groups and singers of the 1960s have been swept under the carpet by history, as if we're somewhat embarrassed by the looming presence of the superior Motown/Stax counterparts across the Atlantic. This is a little unfair, as amongst the chaff of this era, there are many lost gems, and one of these happens to be Jackie Lee.

Lee, a childhood musical prodigy, found early success as the lead vocalist in the form of The Raindrops, a girl-group popular enough to have their own show on BBC Radio. She went solo from the group in 1965, after a failed attempt three years before to become Britain's entrant for the 1962 Eurovision Song Contest. Lee released many singles under many different names during the next few years, none of which were received all that enthusiastically by record-buyers. Rescue came in the form of Children's TV; she scored a hit with White Horses in 1968, and in 1970 another in the form of Rupert from the TV version of Rupert The Bear. She was also an accomplished session singer, working with the usual stalwarts like Cliff Richard and Tom Jones, to more esoteric fare such as Jimi Hendrix (Hey Joe) and Richard Harris (MacArthur Park).

Despite never becoming a star, and forced to retire early in the 1970s because of throat problems, Jackie Lee's career is full of wonderful songs that deserve a second chance, the highlight being The Town I Live In, recorded in November 1966.

It begins slowly. Quietly. "Nothing very much happens in the town I live in", she sings, against a gentle tick-tock beat, each line punctuated by a booming drum; the doom of boredom in a lifeless town. She's trying to escape before time runs out, Lee seemingly getting more desperate as she approaches the first chorus. "Lots of little dreams that can never come TRUE!" she cries, the song opening up into a glorious cacophony of 27 churches and their bells, silver birches and tiny streets. A song of its time just as much as Cindy Williams' They Talk About Us (which you should also investigate), it rejects the nostalgia of the pre-Beatles era, embracing the then-new and then-now. Plus, it's really catchy. You will be singing the "la la la la la" parts by the end of your second listen.

It even manages to include a sting in the tail, a little wry dig at the implications of the New Town era. "There's several hundred brand-new houses/and lots of brand-new primary schools" Lee sings, fading out into nothing with a heavenly "et cetera, et cetera, et cetera" as the towns are engulfed by the Baby Boom. Pithy social commentary, and you can dance to it too, which is more than you can say about Bob Dylan.

While it was forgotten by most, you can just imagine a young Bob Stanley listening to and taking notes from this, a proto-Saint Etienne song if there ever was such a thing. It definitely deserves to be freed from the British girl-group obscurity that it currently resides, so I commend it to the good audience of Sweeping The Nation.

Cowell's ruining it for us all

46 days, or 46 shopping days, to go until Christmas and one fewer until we find out who this year's Christmas number one is. Our early warning system ready and cocked, were's William Hill's latest book:

1-3 Winner Of X Factor - Some Ballad Shit Or Other
Worked last year, of course, when the competition got ruthlessly hurried up a bit so that, unlike Steve Brookstein, everybody was actually ready to salute the winner. By our reckoning this year's final will be on the 16th and maybe this year they might pick someone with the merest scintilla of actual X factor. Funny how they can by and large manage it on music-based talent shows not called The X Factor.

8-1 Cliff Richard & Daniel O'Donnell - Yesterday Once More
Erm, that'll work. It's pretty much the only thing without sexual overtones of some stripe they could have done, to be fair. Not sure if this is up here for Cliff reasons or because they genuinely think grandparents will be getting this from nephews across the land. Curiously, this isn't on the new release schedule we're working off.

8-1 All Angels - Angels/Silent Night
That must have taken weeks of focus grouping. Angels you know, All Angels are, oh joy, a classical-pop female teenage hymnal harmony major label crossover act who look like Stepford Wives on their album cover. If any of them declares in a newspaper sub-heading "we're all devils really!!" we're getting a gun.

10-1 Take That - Patience
We're guessing Gary's been listening to a lot of James Blunt in the last year. Someone's banking on a long stay given it's out on 20th November.

16-1 El Chombo - Macarron Chacarron
Scott Mills there.

20-1 Lazytown - I Love Christmas
Have you ever seen this? It's the sort of kids show that could only have originated in mainland Europe - Iceland, in fact - where everything is dayglo bubble sized and the classic all-ages subtleties of actually great kids TV is thrown straight out of the window at the outset. The Tweenies singles were never that big and at their height they had much more crossover potential so this seems ambitious.

20-1 Girls Aloud - I Think We're Alone Now
But remember the See The Day farrago of last year. We must check if you can get a spread bet on references to this being 'a cover of Tiffany's 80s original'.

20-1 Cliff Richard - 21st Century Christmas Song/Move It (featuring Brian May)
Christ's fat cock! The latter was voted Cliff's greatest ever single a couple of years ago, to which he rather ungallantly wondered whether he hadn't been wasting his time for all the years since. God knows what May squealing all over it will be like. The prospect of the former is too horrific to contemplate.

20-1 Katherine Jenkins - The Green Green Grass Of Home
A Tom Jones cover rather than a Murry The Hump one, more fool us. Jenkins, clearly not a soft classical fusion pansy like Church, will be doing this sort of thing for ever.

25-1 Westlife - The Rose
Proving that if we all waited long enough of course Westlife would release a single comparing their imagined sweet to a rose eventually. This is out this week, so you'll get better odds on it being ITV's Record Of The Year, a competition that seems solely to exist to give Westlife something to aim for each year.

25-1 The Puppini Sisters - Jingle Bells/The Little Match Seller (Silent Night)
Are we right in thinking one of them is also a professional songwriter, making this an even more curious busman's holiday? The Andrews Sisters-aping trio whose album cover burned itself onto everyone's retinas over the summer go for route one Christmas success. Why have they got Nick Cave in their top Myspace friends? Isn't that giving the game away somewhat?

25-1 Scissor Sisters - Land Of A Thousand Words
Out December 4th. It's exactly what you imagine a Scissor Sisters power ballad would sound like.

25-1 Lily Allen - Littlest Things
Corking interview on Pitchfork this week, not least for the bit where she tears into the NME. Be interesting to see their unspoken relationship in future.

25-1 Eskimo Disco - 7-11
Eskimo Disco are an electro trio who've been around for a couple of years and were on Shifty Disco for a bit but are now on Protest Recordings, who bring out Foreign Beggars and Dr Octagon in the UK and were the similarly minded to those Akira The Don's home for a while. What's this doing up here? Ah, it's a flyer on This Year's Nizlopi, a re-release featuring a video that stars Pingu that's allegedly been the talk of YouTube. Well, we haven't heard the talk.

33-1 Paul Carrack - What A Wonderful World
Tempted notwithstanding Carrack's always felt a bit journeyman English growly soulster to really make an impact, and a Mike And The Mechanics life membership doesn't help. If you're covering this straight, as he is, good luck to you.

33-1 James Morrison - Pieces Don't Fit Anymore
Meh.

33-1 David Hasselhoff - One Supported By The Post-Ironic Internet Campaign Supposedly Designed To Cheer Him Up After His Marriage Split That Carefully Neglects To Mention That His Wife Cited Domestic Violence As The Reason For The Divorce
FUCK. OFF. FUCK. OFF. Actually we don't think he's bringing anything else out soon.

33-1 Crazy Frog - TBA
Like Tupac, a very small amount of left material is being stretched a very long way.

33-1 Andy Abraham - December Brings Me Back To You
"He is the first and only X-Factor (2005) contestant to release a second album" declares his official site. Does he want a sweet? It's an "inspired and credible" - right - Motown covers album, apart from this one track, which is called Soul Man. Soul Man, that is, named after the song by Stax artists Sam & Dave. We expect the same level of care to have gone into the rest of the album.

40-1 Eminem & 50 Cent - You Don't Know
It's there on the schedule but it seems very low-key for such a duet, and indeed for being new Marshall material just after he'd announced his retirement. Did anyone in rap ever stay retired? Stupid question, even the dead ones keep churning out product.

50-1 Tony Christie - God Only Knows
It's called not knowing when the joke's finished.

50-1 Shakira - Illegal
50-1 Pink - Nobody Knows
66-1 Sandi Thom - Lonely Girl
66-1 Lemar - Someone Should Tell You
66-1 Justin Timberlake - My Love
66-1 George Michael & Mutya - This Is Not Real Love
66-1 Christina Aguilera - Hurt
All out in November. Got to fill the book somehow.

66-1 Gwen Stefani - Wind It Up
Although apparently this one's out on December 11th and on these grounds is a better bet than McFly's next single, which is also out on that date, however that line works.

Songs To Learn And Sing #8

Thanks for the comments so far - we're appreciating the feedback, as we're sure the other writers are, and keep it coming. Stepping up to the plate today, Tim off The Daily Growl:

Willie Hightower - Walk A Mile In My Shoes

It was listening to Coldcut's latest album Sound Mirrors that reminded me (as if I needed it) how great Willie Hightower is. Jon More and Matt Black cover the old Joe South song Walk a Mile in My Shoes with assistance of Robert Owens on vox. Good though this version is, every other version (yes, that includes Elvis - especially Elvis) of this song pales beside Willie’s. Maybe it’s his rough Sam Cooke-style vocals, maybe it’s the loping, funky beat, maybe it’s the way the horns explode midway though. Whatever, it’s hard to get a more perfect three minutes or so, and it’s one of my all-time favourite songs.

My copy of the song is on the ace compilation Willie Hightower (on Damon Albarn’s Honest Jon’s Records). Funnily enough, in the sleeve notes, music writer Tim Tooher tells how he used to drop ‘Walk a Mile..’ into his set back in the heyday of acid house, and got the ravers going wild! The whole album is worth a listen. No, scrub that - you need this album. It’s basically a compilation of three singles (six tracks) he recorded at the legendary Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, and other singles and album tracks he recorded over a too-short career (although apparently he still lives and performs in Alabama).

The music is gritty, funky, soulful, and totally heartfelt and real. You know that Willie meant what he was singing, particularly on the songs that have a strong civil rights theme, like the brilliant Back Road Into Town and Time Has Brought About a Change, which is Willie’s personal follow-up to Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come, written because he felt that things were changing for his people. Although the best is no doubt Walk a Mile.., there’s so much more great stuff on the album, but I’ll have to stop going on about it, mainly because I would run out of superlatives. Bloody essential.

Songs To Learn And Sing #7

Very much up to the mark with the latest song deserving of a wider airing, half of the team behind The Indie Credential, The Ledge:

The Chills - Pink Frost

It was almost twenty years ago that I first heard The Chills’ Pink Frost, sitting in my bedroom at the family home in Manchester, listening intently to Tony The Greek’s legendary (in my eyes, at least) Sunday night show on Piccadilly Radio. So taken by the song was Tony that he played it again at the end of the night and it become a staple of the show for the next few months. Its effect on me would be far greater than I could have known back then, and lead to the discovery of New Zealand record label Flying Nun and the embarrassment of riches that make up its back catalogue in the Eighties from the likes of The Clean, The Verlaines, The Bats, The Jean Paul Sartre Experience, The Terminals and many, many more (even some that didn’t begin with the definitive article). A four week shopping trip to NZ in 1994 yielded approximately 25 CDs, most on Flying Nun. I may also have done some sightseeing while I was there.

Pink Frost is a truly haunting pop song. We join the action as the singer struggles to control his emotions as his girl lies dying in his arms. He admits to the crime ("How can I live when you see what I’ve done?") which it seems was committed in an uncontrolled rage ("I thought I was dreaming - so I didn’t heed her screaming") but he’s already full of remorse by the first chorus, the thought of her death filling his heart with the eponymous pink frost. One verse later and the girl’s dead. "She’s lost" the protagonist wails mournfully in the chilling middle eight.

But the song’s narrative is less than half the story. What really makes this a classic is the incredible atmosphere created by what was then just a standard guitar/bass/drums three piece. The chiming, upbeat guitar riff that opens the song bears little relationship to what comes after but it’s a great intro that renders the song instantly recognisable. Things change dramatically with a quite beautiful segue into the first verse where Terry Moore’s ethereal, pulsating bass and Martin Phillips’ now muted guitar chimes rise and fall in unison, creating a feeling of great unease. When the song settles into its main riff the bass and drums take over and the song positively throbs with menace. It’s a superb confluence of music and narrative content that few bands are capable of (Joy Division spring to mind here and Martyn Bull’s drumming certainly owes a debt to them) and it pulls the listener into the thick of the action. I’ve always had a clear picture in my mind of the song’s setting: It’s night, it’s snowing, we’re in a forest, the guitar is the icicles hanging from the branches, the bass is the pulsing heart of the murderer, the pink frost is not the chill in his heart but the girl’s blood soaked into the snow, the murderer’s final gasp of "Oh no!" hangs crystallised in the cold air long after the song has finished.

Songs To Learn And Sing #6

Next into place on our qualititive shuffle function, an extensive effort for one pulled from the memory store of Doug from Talent In A Previous Life:

My Life Story - 12 Reasons Why I Love Her

Of course, the whole problem with choosing one song that we reckon everyone should hear is actually choosing that one song. There’s so many possibilities in the world of fantastic tunes that it’s almost impossible to narrow down the selection to just one. Should we pick an all time classic that everyone knows and loves, such as Girls Aloud’s Biology, or ELO’s Mr Blue Sky? Should we go for a lost slice of genius that never quite made the impact it should have, like Catch’s Bingo or The Faders’ Jump? What about a cover version that shows the original in a new light? Surely China Drum’s Wuthering Heights or Buffalo Tom’s Going Underground would have to get a look in? And then there’s songs which are of such obvious quality that only an imbecile would turn down the chance to rave about them: Ooberman’s Shorley Wall, 4Hero’s Les Fleur or Helen Love’s Does Your Heart Go Boom. Hell, an argument could even be made for covering Chico’s It’s Chico Time, if only so that everyone could have a demonstration of exactly how not to do it. We’ve ummed and awed a lot over this, even as we write this introductory paragraph, but eventually we’ve decided that tonight, Matthew, the song we’re going to convince you is one of the greatest ever written is My Life Story’s 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, partly because it’s incredibly ace, partly because they’re a band who will always hold a special place in our hearts, partly because the field of orchestral pop is much neglected these days, but mainly because it allows us to hang our over-excitable ravings on a mildly interesting structural device. These things matter. Anyway, join us as we proudly present 12 Reasons Why We Love 12 Reasons Why I Love Her. OK, it’s not that interesting a structural device, come to think of it.

1. It’s a list song, and list songs as we all know are ace. Apart from Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire, which still inspires effigies of him to be burnt atop great flaming pyres every bonfire night. And pretty much every night of the year, come to think of it. Well it does in our house, anyway.
   
2. There’s always something endearing about a man whose ambition far outstretches the reality of the situation. There are few who would consider the idea of taking a twelve piece band, including a string quartet and three piece horn section, on jaunts around some of the country’s less salubrious toilet venues, but Jake Shillingford, a man for whom the phrase 'touring logisitics' meant much the same as 'fringy beep flower hat', would do so on a regular basis, even if the less that adequate size of the stage meant that the pianist was at a very real risk of losing an eye if the violinist positioned his bow at a slightly wrong angle and half the band were still trying to get off the stage when the rest of them came back on for the encore.
   
3. It proves, as should be obvious to anyone who’s ever had the misfortune of sitting through a compilation released solely to cash in on the Valentine’s Day market, that love songs should never be dull, leaden embarrassing soppy schmaltz fests. They should, like this, be bold and brassy, full of excitement and enthusiasm, lust and possibilities, glitter and glamour and the simple sheer euphoria of the endorphin rush caused whenever they step in the room. And besides, everyone, even the dead ghost of Mary Whitehouse, knows that sex and violins go exceptionally well together.
   
4. And the glamour! This is the sound of eyeliner and body glitter, the sound of evening dresses being torn asunder in the back of a limousine, the sound of raw energy surging out in a rush of blood to the head, wherever that head may be located. Just listen to way the intro soars into action, the way Jake yelps his lyrics, in sharp contrast to the carefully enunciated posh female counting his reasons, and the way it ends with an excitable flourish and try denying that this is something very special indeed.
   
5. The random, but yet oh so perfectly right reasons that Jake chooses to celebrate his love: the way she puts her fingers in her mouth, the smell of sweet mangolias in her hair, that she prefers the night to day. It is, as he himself admits lyrically, a random, off the cuff list of what it is about her that stirs his emotions. It may just be a shopping list of love, but it’s hardly likely to find you searching for the receipt in the hope of getting a refund.
   
6. Now defunct indie mag Select gave My Life Story’s Golden Mile album a less than enthusiastic review, hailing it as "the worst album ever made" and rating it not with the more traditional stars system, instead awarding it a small picture of a dog turd instead. Mentioning this, you may be thinking, is not exactly doing our bid to have this track revered as the masterpiece it undoubtedly is much favours, but you need to bear in mind that Select’s judgement was such that they felt that a really good way of increasing its readership was to lose its sense of humour overnight and have Coldplay on the cover every other month in what we can only assume was a doomed attempt to become a Q for people who were too embarrassed to actually buy Q every month. It is safe, therefore, to say that they really didn’t have a clue what they were talking about.
   
7. The use of orchestration is much maligned in the world of music. Well, pop music, anyway, it pretty much comes as a given in the world of classical. It’s got this reputation on the not entirely unreasonable grounds that it’s a lazy cop out for any halfwit indie band who wants to try and force a bit of emotion onto their leaden and unwieldy cliché ridden attempts at music, but for My Life Story this was never the case. Jake was always looking at the big picture and for him the strings, trumpets and harpsichords weren’t just there in addition to the music, they were the music. This song is unimaginable if done by a standard guitar, bass and drum set-up. Mind you, it’s barely imaginable to have existed in any other place than the fevered imagination of Jake’s head at all. Few bands have ever made a sound anything like this and, given the complete failure of the population at large to grasp them to their hearts, few bands probably ever will. In other words, you’re all bastards. Grr, etc.
   
8. It’s also hugely educational. As long as the only gap in your education is an inability to count up to twelve, that is. It’s unlikely to help you out if the holes in your knowledge are in the fields of stem cell research or, indeed, the ability to count to any number higher than twelve.
   
9. As these things are, despite what some foolish people may tell you, important, it’s worth pointing out that the band weren’t exactly ugly. Although given the amount of them in the band, the odds on you not finding one of them attractive were rather slim, even if the odds of them having enough screen time in their videos for you to decide on this fact were.
   
10. And, just to make the whole thing even more perfect, there’s also an extended version of the track which appeared as a b-side - this was before they’d taken to putting a version of Emerald Green on every single, another reason to love the band - to the Sparkle single, called 17 Reasons Why, offering five more reasons why he loves her. How fantastic!
    
11. Come to think of it, perhaps attempting to do twelve reasons on why the song is ace might have been just a tad overambitious.
    
12. Yes. Yes it was.

Weekender : we're down here!

CHART OF DARKNESS: Making a late rush for the time of year to bring back the concept of the dance crossover hit from endangered species status, Fedde Le Grande crawls up to number one, taking advantage of an odd thing about McFly hits, that they do tend to hurtle back down the charts after their usual high entry. Right at the start 5 Colours In Her Hair spent two weeks atop then fell to 6, I'll Be OK went in at 1 then down to 8, even Don't Stop Me Now hardly helped charity by going 1-6, and now Star Girl goes 1-9. Not just the number ones either - That Girl 3-10, Ultraviolet 9-24 - and only All About You, the higher profile charity record, has hung around in the style you expect of a heavily promoted pop band. If their album Motion In The Ocean is titled after the Rock Lobster lyric we'll be asking questions. Bodyrox make it a modern disco music double at 2, and we've dealt with that suggested diplomacy already. U2 and Green Day's The Saints Are Coming, which doesn't actually feature many of Green Day or U2, wasn't in the midweek lists but crashes in at 6 on downloads, with All Saints proving more of an attraction these days than we'd have guessed at 11. We're not sure people will remember this one as fondly all the same, though. Simon Webbe, now a permanent fixture of the GMTV set, is at 12, Depeche Mode do the fanbase thing at 13, Babyshambles and some people somewhere in the mix are at 17, Jamiroquai ratchets up another one at 18, Keane find their memory sticks chart ineligible but get to 19 instead, the interestingly low-key so far The Good, The Bad And The Queen is at 22, one-joke Tenacious D outstretch themselves and don't even appeal to the Hasselhoff masses at 24 and shoe salesman The Game is at 26. New Rave has clearly yet to take off in the provinces with Klaxons only at 29, although at least they beat Sunshine Underground, who've spent the last couple of months of a much longer build-up going "New Rave? Us, mate. No, here. Really. No, see our glowsticks!" and consequently make 46 (and while we're about NME sloganeering, we must keep an eye out for when the full top 200 is released to see how the 7" only Horrors single did) Unsurprising news of the week: the still baffling in light of no extra airplay re-release of the Young Knives' The Decision only at 60. Demonstration of how times change in terms of alternative movements: Post-Arctics New Yorkshire's Milburn at 66. Well, Worth A Shot news of the week: The Gossip at 64. Chart curio of the week: Alesha, who entered at 69 on downloads, has had a lot of publicity work and no small amount of goodwill, all of which only takes her to 45.
As it was surely evident from the kickoff that it would be the only full-length release of theirs that would actually be necessary, of course The Sound Of Girls Aloud is at number one. Horrible cover, overstretched second CD, covers on the verge of stinking the place out, originals by and large of top drawer quality, and finally even their handlers seem to have noticed that it's more than 11 year old girls taking notice. Amy Winehouse, so called because she'll drink your house clean of wine and every other spirit, ho ho, and her post-modern Stax revue is at 3, with the Who's concept-not-concept album doing very well at 9, better, you might want to note down, them ...Sell Out or any of their three celebrated Official Soundtracks did. Madeline Peyroux takes care of the Parky demographic at 12, Tony Bennett (15) and Aerosmith (19) both make it to four charting hits compilations, Michael Ball's back with another overwrought pop covers album at 22, One Voice containing Since You've Been Gone. We can't find out which Since You've Been Gone it is exactly, but we can but hope and fear. At least it's not like his last album's version of Life On Mars, the very idea of which makes our skin crawl.

FREE MUSIC: San Francisco's self-sufficient Cult Of Sue Todd have called their album Kelsey Grammar Loves Us, presumably just to give anyone interviewing them a head start on the first question. Pitched somewhere between Sebadoh ramshackle lo-fi and the withering zombie of cowpunk, in our eyes you have to listen to anything called ExBoyfriends of the World (Unite and Take Over).

HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: Au Revoir Simone are, inevitably, from Brooklyn. We say inevitable because the female trio sound like they've been piped directly from a faux-boho practice space, all singing and playing keyboards. Musically we're hearing influences from the Magnetic Fields' twee days, a blissed-out Ladytron, Cocteau Twins' ethereal synths and great swathes of warm Germanic electronica. Apparently they can be quite disco, but as there's only two tracks uploaded we'll have to take their word for it. The kings in waiting of Moshi Moshi Records have picked this up for the UK and they're currently hanging onto We Are Scientists' coattails around the country.

VISUAL REPRESENTATION: It's 25 years this week since the release of the first Fun Boy Three single, so with new material allegedly on the way let's scour Google-O-Look for Terry Hall's back catalogue. Let's start with the shortlived but brilliant ska revolution of 2-Tone and its 1979 debut Gangsters, the live version in Japan of the ever resourceful Too Much Too Young and the Top Of The Pops performance of Ghost Town, which is actually quite odd - where is everyone? What set is that? That record was 25 years old this year too, as celebrated in a special feature on BBC Midlands' Inside Out that here runs over two parts. See Jerry Dammers there? Curiously, that's much like what Green Gartside looks like these days. Then Terry, Lynval and Neville left to form the Fun Boy Three and only realised when they got to the studio that they couldn't actually play much between them, hence the percussive sound of The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum. Then they got some musicians in and made quality spooked pop like Tunnel Of Love, launching Bananarama along the way with jazz cover It Ain't What You Do It's The Way That You Do It. From there he progressed through Colourfield and their own moment of pop inspiration Thinking Of You and onto Terry, Blair & Anouchka, which we thought was the largely overlooked phase of Hall's career until we noticed Blair Booth herself has uploaded Waiting and Ultra Modern Nursery Rhyme (we say again - ooh, Jerry Sadowitz). The solo career isn't so well covered here, although there is a live version of his cracking Dub Pistols guest spot Problem Is, but at least he's keeping his hand in and isn't afraid to look back, as seen when he joined Blur to cover Nite Klub for French TV in 1995.

FALLING OFF A BLOG: The FunkyFunky 7 is one of those blogs that doesn't need gimmicks, although they're really strong writers, it just has the correct attitude, here demonstrated by a lovely dancepop compilation, discussion of how the word emo changed and why the modern Killers might actually be worthwhile. One slightly disturbing sentence we noticed: "An acquaintance in the UK... reports using the word "emo" in an article he wrote for the Daily Mail". Oh yes? (yeah, we know it's got a female byline, but who knows)

EVERYBODY GET RANDOM: Remember the national music list blogger craze of about this time last year? In Canada it's still going, I Heart Music revealing the results of this year's list (ooh, good work for Tokyo Police Club, and Cadence Weapon whose full album we must get hold of at some point) Which reminds us...yes, we're doing another UK blogger poll for albums of the year for publication on New Year's Day. Don't post anything yet, we've not settled on our own list yet never mind everyone else's, but details will follow in about a month's time...

IN OTHER NEWS: To spread the word, and possibly to make up for our own RW drive dying a couple of weeks ago, why not send the Victorian English Gentlemens Club a mix CD?

Songs To Learn And Sing #5

For your listening pleasure, an actual volunteered reader! Let's have him stuffed and mounted. Ryan O'Grady:

The New Pornographers - Sing Me Spanish Techno

I'm a sucker for flat out pop songs. I would cut my right arm off to have been involved at any point in the writing process that led to the creation of How Bizarre by OMC, I would. Because it seems like I could have written that - I could definitely have sung it! It's an absurdly simple song. The great ones always are. There's an everyman charm to them because you can aspire to have written them. Anyone could, given enough time, an El Camino and enough cheap whisky. It's the musical equivalent of seeing Billy Joel married to Christie Brinkley. There's a small part of you that hates him, the lucky dwarf, but there's a part of you delighted because he's ugly. You're ugly. You could be him.

The New Pornographers do not give you this opportunity. They are not simple. I could neither have written or performed this song (hell, if we're being honest with each other, I couldn't even have written the title) Partly because it has at least three distinct choruses. One of which could only be sung by a drunk man spinning round and round as fast as possible in an effort to restore some misplaced equilibrium. Partly because it relentlessly lays on syrupy vocals harmonies with all the care of Brian Wilson on his most obsessive compulsive day, a day when the remaining Beach Boys would have to refer to him as 'Anal McAnal'. And yes, partly because I don't know any outrageously sexy broad with a voice like heaven to back me up.

But still I dig this song like no other. It fills me with self loathing - these Canadians, who aren't even a real band (don't even get me started on Broken Social Scene), writing a perfect pop song I could never have conceived of and performing it to perfection. If you can listen to the bridge, get carried away by the soaring confluence of four thousand separate melodies, and not instantly rush out and buy everything of theirs it is possible to own (including that cover from some eighties throwback film that blew) then you, my friend, are a bigger man than I. Or woman.

In shops tomorrow: 6/11

Singles

Big week for singles this week, with releases ranging from Westlife's now seemingly annual single release to U2 and Green Day sending Stuart Adamson spinning in his grave and Richard Jobson surely thinking about joining him, from Paris and Madonna to the Sugababes and George Michael with Mutya, from All Saints to, erm, 10cc. That's what it says here, a single issue of The Dean & I. And the Rocky Horror Show's Time Warp 2007. One day we'll explain exactly why the Rocky Horror Show must die, but we have work to do. Not a great amount of songs we actually can recommend you shell out for, actually, but one of the most enjoyable surprise packages back at the Truck festival, SixNationState, issue Fire!, the first proper shot, and an impressive one at that, at capturing their full-on live skank'n'roll intensity. Intriguingly, we make it the first release on Jeepster since Belle & Sebastian's Storytelling album almost four and a half years ago, which even given Stiff Records is putting out a single for the first time in 20 years this week (shame it's the uneventful The Enemy, really) is quite a curio, really. Two more prevalent but not as common in these digital days formats also crop up this week: the double A-side, Gnarls Barkley's Who Cares?/Gone Daddy Gone, and the EP, Sparks sticking out a largely live set around Dick Around and the perenially overlooked drily funny, pinpoint lyrical gifts of Simon Rivers' The Bitter Springs finding five new songs for Poor Trace EP. Vinyl? That'll be Thom Yorke sneaking Analyse past us on 12" and the not-leaving-us-as-keen-as-many-others-but-we-can-appreciate-that Midlake putting out Head Home on 7".

Albums

Brakes' Give Blood, our tenth best album of 2005, clocked in at 29 minutes. The Beatific Visions doesn't even quite make that, albeit there's six fewer tracks. As ever, then, this is not a band that hangs around, although this time there's the added dimension of having been to Nashville to record most of it. The formula's much the same - wistful alt-country next to angular screes next to Violent Femmes-esque everything at the same time - but it now seems more focused, as befits a band by and large now concentrating on this project as opposed to the previous busman's holiday status, and that bit more thought through. You watch, they'll be up there in the end of years again. We mentioned the other week how we've never quite fallen for the Long Blondes despite ourselves, and as we say every time we know from their references and musical near neighbours that we should be treasuring this band's every move but we can't quite make the connection. We've not heard Someone To Drive You Home in full but we hear a lot of similar waverers have been convinced by it, so maybe. Thunderbirds Are Now! briefly looked like becoming blogger hypes at the start of last year but never quite made the jump but their serrated dance-punk-pop is worth a shot through third album Make History. And what of Joanna Newsom's Ys? Again, there's something about her that means we here have never quite made the leap into accepting her, and despite the presence of Van Dyke Parks, Steve Albini, Jim O'Rourke and Bill Callahan here and the five star reviews pretty much across the board we're not finding ourselves rushing to embrace a five track, 56 minute album. Convince us, commenters. As we get nearer Christmas the best ofs and repackagings really start building, and there's plenty here to convince the early shoppers. Notably the Everything Must Go: 10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition comes six months after the actual tenth anniversary, but it's hardly scrimping and saving with two discs full of live tracks, B-sides, alternate versions, remixes, demos and first takes plus a DVD of videos, live tracks, TV appearances and new Patrick Jones documentaries. Meanwhile it's the turn of Pavement's most prominent excursion into their more outre side, Wowee Zowee, in their own repackaging campaign, the Sordid Sentinels Edition, with the usual collection of fragmented memories in a mighty booklet, live and session tracks, unreleased material, B-sides and sundry obscurities. What do you suppose the Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks compilation, which provides one track, is? The Charlatans have put out a singles collection before but that only went up to North Country Boy, not even the last single off that album, so high time we got Forever: The Singles, although you still need to run it alongside Melting Pot for the full story. Paul Weller seems to release a career-spanning Finally Definitive Collection every couple of months, but we're assured the four disc Hit Parade is the genuine article. Produced By George Martin: Highlights Of 50 Years gets you know who out of the way quickly, takes time in the middle to remind you that part of what attracted Them (no, not Van Morrison's band, you know exactly who we mean) to him was his history with Goons-related comedy records and digs up all sorts of oddities, including a Tom Jones song called Come And Sweep My Chimbley. See, Colin Meloy, not so smart now. XFM Presents: This Is Music is actually quite decent for what it is, that is to say a cash-in Christmas 'indie' compilation, while We Are Scientists, who will surely qualify for British citizenship given another tour, throw together remixes, rarities and covers (Be My Baby, Hoppipolla, Art Brut's Bang Bang Rock & Roll in the style of the Velvet Underground) on Crap Attack.

DVDs

English as tuppence, changing yet changeless as canal water, nestling in green nowhere, armoured and effete, bold flag-bearer, lotus-fed Miss Havishambling opsimath and eremite, feudal still, reactionary Sweeping The Nation, that's us. Finally, Vivian Stanshall's peculiarly genius Sir Henry At Rawlinson's End is out on DVD, and there's an original trailer on YouTube to prove it. Where were we? Paul Weller: Hit Parade is two discs of videos and TOTP performances, Later With Jools Holland: Later... The Best Of 2000-2006 sweeps up everything not on the previous releases, climaxing with that mighty drum-off on Franz Ferdinand's The Outsiders from the last series, and oh go on then, Chas And Dave: Live At Shepherds Bush Empire. Including Snooker Loopy! Does Chas do impressions of the players, or what?

The Weekly Sweep

Band Of Horses - The Great Salt Lake [YouTube]

Brakes - Margherita

Chuck Prophet - Dyin' All Young (Also just assume we were inspired by our Songs To Learn And Sing nomination to listen back to our David Ackles collection, OK? We'll keep The Weekly Sweep aside from all that business, bar saying it was between him, Neutral Milk Hotel and this song for our choice)

The Decemberists - O Valencia [mp3 from The Muso] (And we saw a non-import version in a chain store this week, so screw you, Rough Trade. Well, screw only so far, but what of your press released January release plans now?)

Fields - If You Fail We All Fail [mp3 from The World Forgot]

Goodbooks - Leni [YouTube]

The Hidden Cameras - Awoo [YouTube]

Jarvis - Don't Let Him Waste Your Time [mp3 from The Yellow Stereo] (Not totally convinced this is the great big world setting to rights comeback everyone expected, but it sounds like a grower of an album to us)

Jeremy Warmsley - Dirty Blue Jeans [YouTube]

Los Campesinos! - We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives [Myspace]

Madness - Grey Day [YouTube]

Rumble Strips - Oh Creole [YouTube]

SixNationState - Fire [YouTube]

Squeeze - Slap And Tickle (Pop by our Myspace blog before the end of today to see what we made of Glenn Tilbrook live this week)

Swan Lake - All Fires mp3 from Side One: Track One (Yet another Dan Bejar project, this one a US college campus supergroup with Wolf Parade's Spencer Krug and Frog Eyes' Casey Mercer)

Terry, Blair & Anouchka - Ultra Modern Nursery Rhyme [YouTube] (More on this subject, tangentially, tomorrow in Weekender. We have such memories of when this came out - and ooh look, Jerry Sadowitz)

Tilly And The Wall - Sing Songs Along [YouTube]

Tokyo Police Club - Nature Of The Experiment [YouTube]

Vincent Vincent And The Villains - Johnny Two Bands [YouTube]

The Young Knives - The Decision [YouTube]

Songs To Learn And Sing #4

Bringing along a favourite song you should know about today, from Silent Words Speak Loudest and The Art Of Noise, Ben Woolhead:

The Black Heart Procession - A Truth Quietly Told

Draw the curtains closed, grip the duvet tight, and let me begin.

Once upon a time (1997, to be precise), in a place far, far away (well, San Diego) two men by the names of Pall Jenkins and Tobias Nathaniel decided to put their band Three Mile Pilot on indefinite hiatus and try something new. Thus The Black Heart Procession were born.

With the help of a supporting cast of additional musicians and over the
course of two albums (called 1 and 2, for simplicity), the duo honed the sort of unique and unsettling sound that one might expect of musicians who claimed in an NME interview to be influenced equally by Black Sabbath and Eastern European folk music.

2 was followed by Three in 2000 - but not before the characteristically
self-explanatorily-titled 3 Songs EP had been sent blinking and cowering into the light of day. At first it was the second track, the instrumental 'Destroying The City Of Hearts', that held me transfixed in its thrall - but before long I had escaped its clutches only to find myself utterly, utterly possessed by the opener.

'A Truth Quietly Told' is, shall we say, a song that very definitely has something of the night about it. It starts with an eerily desolate
soundscape of chimes and saw (that most underrated of instruments) - and then in crashes one of the most archly melodramatic piano lines you'll ever hear. It's Tom Waits gone Hammer Horror.

And yet, for all its pantomimic excess and gothic flourish (complemented by the EP's cover art featuring cartoon bats and a man with a horse's head), there's something seriously unnerving about this song which gets right under the skin. Just listen to the crescendo at 2:30 and tell me your hair isn't standing on end.

And then there's the key lyric: the apparent "truth" that is being "quietly told" is that "I'll be there for you". Words that would ordinarily be a source of comfort and consolation instead assume a sinister and threatening shape in the context of the music to which they're set. He'll be there all right, lurking in the shadows, waiting and watching.

It tails off into the night as it began, with unsettling chimes and saw, and it's fairly safe to assume that no-one lived happily ever after. At very least, they will have woken up with bite marks to the neck.

Songs To Learn And Sing #3

Today's suggestion of the song you must hear comes from The Art Of Noise contributor and gentleman blogger in his own right Swiss Toni:

Dusty Springfield - If You Go Away

I discovered one of my favourite songs in the whole world entirely by accident. I had been a big fan of Scott Walker for many years when my new French girlfriend introduced me to the works of Jacques Brel. Because I hadn’t spent my sixth form years sat at a street table in an Orléanaise Café, smoking a Gauloise and discussing the works of Sartre, I was blissfully unaware of the great Belgian songwriter and had naively assumed that songs as good as Next, Jackie and Mathilde were all Walker originals and had been written to be sung in that magnificent honeyed baritone. In fact, they were rather sensitive translations of the original French by the poet Rod McKuen, and I subsequently took great pleasure in discovering every rolled ‘r’ of the original Brel versions of the songs.

It was through the chance purchase of a bargain priced collection of Brel covers that I discovered that many other English speaking artists had covered these songs too: David Bowie, Alex Harvey (a sensationally bonkers version of Next), Marc Almond, The Divine Comedy, Terry Jacks (although to be honest, Seasons in the Sun neuters the glorious sarcasm of Brel’s Le Moribund), Frank Sinatra... the list of famous artists paying tribute to the work of this Belgian chanteur was seemingly endless. Although the quality of the covers varied wildly, that compilation was well worth £5 just for introducing me Dusty Springfield’s version of If You Go Away - my vote for the greatest cover version of all time. Of course, I was already familiar with the song from Walker’s version of it (which can be found along with his other covers of Brel songs on Scott Sings Jacques Brel), but for me Walker’s cover had always lacked the punch of Brel’s tear-soaked original. Ne Me Quitte Pas is Jacques Brel’s signature song. It is delivered with such heart-breaking sincerity and has such emotional impact that it is hard to imagine that it could ever be bettered, but somehow Dusty manages it.

It’s that voice that does it; that heartbreaking voice. She delivers those pleading lyrics against some gentle orchestration with her icy cool and yet achingly fragile voice. It sends shivers down my spine and makes the hairs on the back of my neck prickle - always the sign of a great song.

She even sings a verse in French, managing not just to carry it off, but also to somehow sound even more vulnerable. It’s a song about despair, shredded dignity and desperation, and even more than Jacques Brel’s original version, Dusty sings it in a way that makes you believe that she’s lived it. If you’ve heard the original (and you really should) then you’ll know just what a tribute that is. If you aren’t in tears by her final spoken exhortation, then you’ve got a heart of stone.

Songs To Learn And Sing #2

Second up to reveal what you should be listening to, and our first guest of the run, Stylus contributor and maintainer of Delete As Appropriate, Iain Forrester:

Art Of Fighting - Heart Translation

Art Of Fighting are from Melbourne and are named after an old Japanese computer game. I first heard of them from an Australian friend who sent me their first album, Wires, a few years ago. I liked it, but it was one of those records where nothing really stuck enough to make me come back to it.

Fast-forward a few years and I come across their follow-up, Second Storey, with very few expectations, only to be blown away by a few of its songs and, most of all, its stunning finale. Post-Sigur Rós or, well, Coldplay, there are an awful lot of bands trying for just the same kind of epic sound as Heart Translation but few ever nail it quite as perfectly. It builds up over most of its six minutes tantalisingly slowly, tension in every ponderous bass note, deliberate piano chord and smear of guitar even before Ollie Browne starts singing. He sounds like he’s taken an emotional beating at the best of times, but from the start here he sounds positively shattered, grasping desperately for a lifeline.

In its key moment, though, the song eventually surges with triumph, rather than despair. A beautiful hum (keyboard? guitar effect?) comes in and his line "THERE you were, black silver dressed in gold" is a revelation that the written words can’t do justice to, filled with relief and awe and wonder. I’ve never had much of a religious experience and I don’t know if Browne has, but I imagine it feels a bit like that moment in Heart Translation.

But just much of the heartbreak and power of the song lies in how fleeting the moment of light is. It isn’t God that he’s addressing and reality crashes in, the object of his affection crushing him beneath with "a million words, so few sentences" as he tries and fails to understand. This sort-of-chorus comes round a second time, louder and more overwhelming than the first, and then the song runs on calmly for another couple of minutes, its numbed musical anticlimax strangely appropriate.

If you’re going to make a big deal out of not being able to talk to a girl, then, this is how to do it.

Songs To Learn And Sing #1

If you've come to this post from Largehearted Boy, this is the proper link

If you've somehow missed all our trails, what this is is every day in November a different writer, one whom we trust implicitly, will be recommending a song that they reckon everyone should hear - to that end, leave comments on them all should the mood take you. And where better to start than with the choice of slightly dour and generally unreliable blogger Sweeping The Nation:

David Ackles - Waiting For The Moving Van

There are many things that confuse us about the ley lines of popular music, but even in our quieter moments when we become more aware of ourselves one of those that continually vexes us is precisely how David Ackles isn't now feted as one of the great cult singer-songwriters. It's not for the want of others trying - Elton John said in 1971 that he should be as big a star as he himself was becoming, Joni Mitchell invited him along as tour support, Phil Collins picked one of his songs on Desert Island Discs, Elvis Costello cited him as an influence in his Rock'n'Roll Hall Of Fame speech. His 1972 album American Gothic, from which this comes, was produced by Bernie Taupin, arranged by Robert Kirby and featured members of the London Symphony Orchestra, so it wasn't as if Elektra didn't put the effort in, but it remains an album as frustratingly undervalued as it is still singular. Notably Ackles was living in England at the time, noting in the liner notes that "it seems like you get a sharper perspective on your own country when you're away from it".

Ready for some world class pseudism? Good, because the Ackles approach demands it, being, even in the early 70s theatrical melting pot, adventurous by the standards of mature pop music. Musically it unashamedly channels Bernstein and Brecht & Weill with a country-soul-folk vein and within an elegant quasi-symphonic patchwork (one reviewer called it "the Sgt Pepper of folk"), while lyrically Ackles, who possessed an unrepossessingly warm, empathetic voice, takes on the mantle of the great middle American sociological observer, poetically lamentational and at times smilingly cynical but ultimately admitting as much to himself as the listener that this is how life is, making him a kind of positivist Scott Walker. The people who inhabit the songs exhibit world-weariness in a way that laces them with often romantic optimism for the future. Every so often he'll dwell in a moment of satirical irony, then drop in a lyric that breaks your heart, Ackles having a way of demonstrating his ideal that it's memories and imagery of better things that keep us hanging on. It was introduced to us four years or so ago as one of those rare records that could genuinely move us. They were right.

Really, we could have gone anywhere on the album - if you like this, track down the genuinely heartbreaking Love's Enough, the sucker punch of One Night Stand, the ridiculous cabaret underpinned with Vietnam satire Ballad Of The Ship Of State or the remarkable ten-minute closer Montana Song, where Ackles laments a forgotten countryside and a long-buried generation of American Dream chasers. The track we've chosen, if one of its more explicable songs, strips the occasionally Brechtian levels of dramaticism right back to tell the almost unbearably well drawn story of a man moving out of his home and his previous married life, wondering to himself about what will happen to the features he's leaving behind while trying not to think of everything else that's being left. It's an incredibly emotionally arresting song, an image of attempting to be dignified against reality's odds, mirrored by the gentle arrangement offsetting the grimness. Ackles recorded one more full scale album, as unsuccessful as the first three, before moving into teaching and writing for the stage, and died of lung cancer in 1999. Everything he wrote about lives on.

Songs To Learn And Sing: the complete collection

NB. These mp3s have now been taken down, so you'll have to source those yourselves

1 David Ackles - Waiting For The Moving Van (us, here)
2 Art Of Fighting - Heart Translation (Iain Forrester, Delete As Appropriate)
3 Dusty Springfield - If You Go Away (Swiss Toni)
4 The Black Heart Procession - A Truth Quietly Told (Ben Woolhead, Silent Words Speak Loudest)
5 The New Pornographers - Sing Me Spanish Techno (Ryan O'Grady)
6 My Life Story - 12 Reasons Why I Love Her (Doug, Talent In A Previous Life)
7 The Chills - Pink Frost (The Ledge, Indie Credential)
8 Willie Hightower - Walk A Mile In My Shoes (Tim, Daily Growl)
9 Jackie Lee - The Town I Live In (Ian Pointer)
10 Tina Dico - Losing (Dead Kenny, Parallax View)
11 Madness - In The City (Matt Sullivan)
12 Crosby, Stills & Nash - Cathedral (Jamie Summers, Runout Groove)
13 Molasses - La Berceuse d'Eve (Eve's Lullaby) (Pagan Wanderer Lu)
14 Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Oliver's Army (Robin, throughsilver)
15 Sunset Rubdown - We Got Broken Eyes (Shane, Torture Garden)
16 Rhoda & The Special AKA - The Boiler (Kieron Gillen)
17 Esther Phillips - Home Is Where The Hatred Is (Neil, Music Like Dirt)
18 Fatima Mansions - Blues For Ceausescu (Dave Walsh)
19 AfterChristmas - Burn The Bungalow (Jeremy Warmsley)
20 Geneva - Tranquiliser (Lord Bargain)
21 Little Birdy - Relapse (Sheila Pham)
22 The Ocean Blue - Ballerina Out Of Control (JustHipper, Indie Credential)
23 Mid-State Orange - Best Intentions (Gareth Parton)
24 Noah And The Whale - Death By Numbers (Emmy The Great)
25 Yo La Tengo - Blue Line Swinger (Tom Campesinos!)
26 Bikini Kill - In Accordance To Natural Law (Gareth Campesinos!)
27 Talking Heads - This Must Be The Place (Naïve Melody) (James, Yer Mam!)
28 Kings Have Long Arms feat. Phil Oakey - Rock And Roll Is Dead (Brig Bother)
29 35 Summers - Really Down (TJ Worthington)
30 Snoop Dogg - Ain't No Fun (If The Homies Can't Have None) (Colonel Knowledge)