'Now I'm haemorrhaging friends like Elia Kazan.'
Sunday, October 11, 2020
Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 66 Dexys Midnight Runners - Searching For The Young Soul Rebels
'Searching for the Young Soul Rebels is one of the best albums ever made.'
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 70 Wire
''Elusive in meaning, (maybe some kind of hymn to evolution, maybe not), allusive in sound , graceful and ward, almost despite its maverick ambition. Outdoor Miner proved that punks could do the beauty thing.'
Song(s) of the Day # 2,459 Options
A set of brief, effective indie guitar workouts from earlier on this year. Options, effectively the nom de plume of Seth Engel, a multi instrumentalist and engineer living in Chicago have been doing this well. Winds Gonna Blow is their / his sixth album. But it still sounded fairly fresh to me.
Revealing gifts not unlike those unwrapped by It Starts With a Birthstone favourites Lawn have unwrapped on their two albums, this is a record that improves the further you delve into it. Fine, unassuming art.
Saturday, October 10, 2020
John Lennon & George Harrison
Belated acknowledgment on here that Lennon would have turned 80 yesterday. Here he is with Harrison in Dromoland Castle, County Clare in 1964.
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 473 Glasvegas
Glasvegas were the hopes of aging rockers for a season twelve years back. Misty eyed, one beer too many, Glam meets Girl Band meets Ramones on a pub school reunion. This one has the most inadvisable sign off line 'I'll be your social worker', since the Brotherhood of Man horrified us so much at the end of Save Your Kisses For Me all those years back. Sounded fine on the jukebox anyhow.
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 69 The Members
'The suburbs may be crap... but it endless normality is as worthy of our attention as the fashionable and cosmopolitan capital.'
Song(s) of the Day # 2,458 Birdspotter
Not an enormous amount that grabbed my fancy released this Friday. Probably a mercy as I'm about to start my rundown of my Albums of the Year fairly shortly and have more than enough to be getting on with.
This is a decent record though. Gusty, the latest album from Philadelphia band Birdspotter, featuring the splendidly named Gandolfo-Lucia brothers. Nothing startling here but it's a bright, reflective guitar sound. Pitching itself midway between The Shins upbeat and Red Hill Painters downbeat stances. Some neat, ruminative moments.
Friday, October 9, 2020
Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 64 Diana Ross - Diana
'Diana Ross was made to be a Chic vocalist.'
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 68 The Cure
'A maverick masterpiece of blank immorality.'
Thursday, October 8, 2020
Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 63 The Human League - Travelogue
' A space safari that balances the blackest humour and the saddest human tragedy...'
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 67 Blondie
'(Harry's) heart got broken like everyone else's, but she swaggered out of the debris.'
Song(s) of the Day # 2,456 Sleep Powder
Out of Bristol and appropriately so as it seems to draw on that cities' remarkable Trip Hop legacy.
Wednesday, October 7, 2020
Songs About People # 1,187 John Le Carre
Very neat, recent song about the author who came in from the cold.
Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 62 The Beat
'Sounded like a Greatest Hits album ... no flab,no filler, no boring experimental bits.'
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 66 Gloria Gaynor
'To make this stick to so many for so many reasons, the cheesiness of this music wasn't just acceptable, but essential.'
Song of the Day # 2,455 Desert Blonde
Old school Country Folk reminiscent of John Prine or Town Van Zandt/
Tuesday, October 6, 2020
Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 61 Magazine - The Correct Use of Soap
'A key transition point in British pop.'
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 65 Ian Dury & The Blockheads
'The Blockheads reach their peak.'
Monday, October 5, 2020
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 64 Funkadelic
'The greatest dance record ever made?'
Song of the Day # 2,454 Mother's Cake
Surely the first band from Tyrol, Austria to feature on here. They're no oompah band!
Sunday, October 4, 2020
Songs About People # 1,185 John Cooper Clarke
I'm not hugely taken with the debut album from Working Men's Club which is receiving an enormous amount of attention and acclaim at the moment. But any song that takes this man's name is worthy of a post.
Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 59 Young Marble Giants
'Colossal small is beautiful achievement.'
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 63 Magazine
'Never a contender for Simon Bates' 'Our Tune ' as far as I recall.'
Saturday, October 3, 2020
Songs About People # 1,184 Michael Powell
Luke Haines, a mainstay of this series, demonstrates once more his sense of period and atmosphere.
Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 58 The Pretenders - The Pretenders
'A classic album about having a weakness for male junkies.'
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 62 Earth, Wind & Fire
'It's the sound of pure, inexplicable happiness.'
Song(s) of the Day # 2,452 Death Valley Girls
In terms of concepts, Death Valley Girls one is pretty much perfect. Spiritual heirs to The Ronettes, The Beach Boys, The Mamas & The Papas and The Manson Family they claim their inheritance with no little glee with debut album Under the Spell of Joy, (just out).
A howling banshee fronted combo, pumping out wonderfully tuneful Death Garage Anthems with fierce abando, nthe band are utterly in charge from the off. Fronted by the wonderfully named and delightfully tonsilled Bonnie Bloomgarden. She's some parts Exene, some parts Lydia Lynch, some Kat Bjelland, some Courtney Love, some Brix Smith some Hope Sandoval, but who has clearly pledged her allegiance to the Church of Pop rather than selling out to Goth gloom and turpitude.
The antecedents to what Death Valley Girls are doing are immediately apparent but they manage to both honour the past and live in the present, so strong are the actually songs here. Some further reference points. Spector, Beach Boys, Stooges, (some glorious sax squalls here), Punk, Banshees, Cramps, B52's those listed above. Plus their own invention and intention.
It's all channeled to glorious effect. Just loving this on first listen and I'll be back for more. It's a riotous, trashy and wonderfully assured record, full of energy and sass. Clearly an audition to be house band for Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in America. If so they pass with flying colours.
Eleven tracks here. Not one of them sounds a false note. I've given you six. Seek out the rest. This time last year I was in thrall to Mystery Lights Too Much Tension. This is comparably great. Rattling its chains and howling at the moon to similarly thrilling effect. Death Valley Girls. The light is theirs.
Friday, October 2, 2020
Songs About People # 1,183 Bernie Sanders
On a day when the current President of the USA was declared to be Covid-19 positive, here's a song for someone who might do a better job.
Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 57 The Clash - London Calling
'London Calling has become punk's keynote long-player because unlike Ramones or Never Mind The Bollocks it doesn't imply a dead-end. It carries no baggage.'
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 61 Chaka Khan
Khan brought both erotic maturity and a churchy ecstasy to disco vocals.'
Song(s) of the Day # 2,451 Fort Nots
Thirty years back Swedish pretenders Wannadies turned up with a sound that was an awkward approximation of British Indie. It was childlike, minimalist, tuneful and somehow not quite right. Nowadays, similar acts of cultural appropriation are much more seamless. Take Gothenberg's Fort Not and their debut album The Club is Name.
The band take their name from Emily Skillings first collection of poetry. Their musical inspiration from a mix tape compiled by Calvin Johnson, (Beat Happening) Pavement and C-86. This is shambling indie of the kind that fans of early Primal Scream, Razorcuts and Tallulah Gosh would recognise as a quite perfect facsimile of that whole inept, carefree sound.
There is so much of this kind of stuff around nowadays that it's quite difficult to know what to say about it. Except that Fort Not do it terribly well. In Amsterdam they advise you to 'dance, dance, dance to the radio.' But certainly not in the way that Ian Curtis did. This is one long picnic of fizzy lemonade and sweeties. A skip through a field of daisies. Dancing to the portable radio.
Of course this infantilism is all complete affectation at this remove. The songs on The Club is Name are actually all highly crafted, even though they're presented as found objects. Pictures scribbled in crayon as a day at Primary School draws to a close. Not so. Fort Not know exactly what they're doing.
This is a good record and repeats further plays. Whether you will warm to it depends utterly on what you feel about this whole sub-genre. Well into its thirties now it's a sound and sensibility utterly preserved in aspic. Like Peter Pan, or Oskar from Tin Drum destined never to grow up. In some ways the ultimate retreat from reality.
That's an argument for elsewhere Fort Nots stake their claim to the growing queue of candidates for the Indie 2020 crown along with En Attendant Ana, Emma Kupa, Spinning Coin, Galore, Orielles, Proper Ornaments, Strawberry Generation, Tapeworms and several others. This is wistful unconsummated yearning that hits all the wrong notes it's aiming for beautifully.
Thursday, October 1, 2020
50 Days of Glam # 1 T.Rex
It really had to be T.Rex at Number One in this rundown as if anybody had any real ownership of Glam it would have to be Bolan. Could have chosen any number of his and their songs here but this is as good as any.
Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 56 Public Image Limited - Metal Box
'
'The records in this year (1979) took big ideas inspired by punk and black music to their logical conclusion.'
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 60 Chic
'Calling Le Freak a disco record is like calling Taxi Driver a film about cabbies.'
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)