England are labouring in Atlanta against. I have the TV on, but the volume down. I'm afraid I've seen this too many times and I have Francis of Delirium's Run Run Pure Beauty. on at my desk. Luxembourg's finest woe is me merchant. Some things never go out of fashion
Accessory is one of the less inspired band monikers I've stumbled across of late. But I'm altogether taken by their latest album Dust. The man behind accessory is jason Ball and the band come out of Chicago. The record is like its title . Indie motes in sunlight, coming together and then drifting apart. There's much beauty and wonder to be experienced here.
The one that was hige. Before MGMT decided that what they really wanted to be was the Television Personalities. There's nowt as strage as some American.Folk. But the album is magical and charts fresh pathways. It's unconstructed by genril constraints and considerations like all great Millennium records.
My Uncle Malcolm died recently. He was my last remaining Uncle. We had a special friendship in his last few years. From COVID on. We corresponded on Whatsapp about film and books and family. Work and aging. Rail travel. All kinds of things.He was an incerdibly funny and erudite man. Sweet and wise and sometimes sad. Like the best people who you know ,I'll always miss him.
We sometimes spoke about music as it's my central preoccupation. Hence, this. But it wasn't worth dwelling on things too much as we had much more to talk about when it came to books and films. Malcolm didn't care for Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, David Bowie or Kate Bush who I raised as converation points . I didn't really feel it worth pursuing though he was interested in the writing I do on here. He wrote himself.
He said that he liked Julia Holter which surprised me as it seemed out of character. He wasn't someone who ccould be pigeonholde.and I'm listening to Aviary now as I make my way into my Wednesday morning journey my lessons. My 'work' .
Aviary is symphonic and mysterious. Enigmatic. Reminds me of Bjork sometimes. Of an orchestra warming up at others. It's rather incredible and mysterious. I have Malcolm's dialogue with me on my phone this morning to remind me of his singular voice. As for Aviary. It's like being in a conservatory. A hothouse.Tendrils. Palms. Interior life. There's a lot here. . It's rather wonderful. I'm glad Malcolm liked this. I do too.
'The moral of the story is fish....'
Theres always space in the pop marketplace for the new loundmouth on the block. You're Gonna Need a Little Music Leeds band Yard Act's album tells you very early on that it has nothing to say and then goes on for 40 minutes anyway, after namechecking David Gedge and Howard Devoto in the first three minutes . And piling it on from that point on as if the Arctic Monkeys never even happened
It's like spending an evening in a pub with someone twenty years younger than you who thinks they're hilariousy funny and you're lucky to be in their company and never stop to ask you what you think. It's reasoably diverting but never really makes its own case.
Let's face it many some us grew up with Morrissey, Ian Curtis, Ian McCulloch, Paddy MacAloon and Mark E.Smith. Those before us had John Lydon, Joe Strummer and Pete Shelley. Ten years earlier their were Lennon, Jagger. Ray Davies and Townshend. A few years earlier they had The Kitchen Sink and Thr Angry Young Men. Sillitoe, Braine, Osborne and Amis.
One thing these lists have all got in common . There are no women there. You're Gonna Need a Little Music is all very well but it might have cast its net slightly wider. But Stop Me If you Think You've Heard This One Before.
A horse of a different colour. Wry, dark. Could have written novels.Did really !
Missed Dunks at Summer League debut album Fared Well. The band hail from Greensboro North Caroline. They find a subdued groove somewhere between Built To Spill and Murray Street Sonic Youth. Then ride it round the block onto the highway and into the sunset.
This is a record that builds a fabulous atmosphere of its own drawing evidently on that Nineties sound but building its own nest. And it's a snug rug indeed. Highly more-ish !!!
It's Monday morning and I have a fresh Lido Pimenta album Caribenya to empower me and kick start the working week. It's a wonder which reminds you if you require a reminder of the wonder of the world and how little we understand of the sheer miracle of existence.
I don't speak Spanish though perhaps I should as I have any number of Spanish relatives. But this has rhythms and tendrils that speak a universal language and summon the listener to the dance and the feast,
Waxahatchee, Kevin Corby and todays Song of the Day Star Moles chart new American highways. There will always be a need to tell old stories in new ways.
Speculative Fiction. Wipe that Smirk off your face Punk. Wondrous West Coast Dread Art Punk. X, Crime and Wipers, and Gun Club come to mind. This is a blistering entre to my evening. Breathless, claustrophobic and clutching for the divine. Or failing that a good three minute tune.
Emily Moales is Star Moales and she's on the Highway to Hell . Heading out of Philadelphia where she dwells and onto the Great American Road. Frankly this is an enchanting record akin in some ways to Kevin Morby's Little Wide Open. None of this stuff is over yet. depite the wailing and gnashing of teeth of the glass half empty brigade. Refuge can be found in the magic of the past. Back to the future. On a well travelled road.
There's magic in the desert and the soil. The well travelled roads.Highway to Hell evokes any number of signpost and further reading and listening. Learning. ; Judee Sills, Laura Nyro Joni Mitchell. Same as it ever was. Press your foot on the pedal . Wind down the window. Towards the horizon. Believe in magic
Deep breath. From 2006. Is Bob drunk? He seems in a loose mood. There's fun to be had !
Pop Matters had a tagline which caught my attention yesterday 'Dorea's second album is vulnerable and seaworthy' Like a gullible carp casting its gills around a meaty hook I couldn't help myself. Or alternatively as a Blog writer who enjoys sea metaphors myself.
It's an altogether enchanting record. I'm very taken by albums that make you feel like you're in a dream and O Que Mais Voce Quer Saber De Mim Has that intent and impact. Sometimes Brazilian records in the Tropicalia tradition do this best. It casts a spell that broadens and stengthens its grip with cunning stealth.
Searows Death in the Business of Whaling. An album that I was naturally disposed to warm to given that I've adopted the pursuit of whaling as a metaphor for the journey, guiding principles and momentum of this blog. We drive into the coming storm prow aloft head onwards in the face of it because it's all we can do. Where was I? Ah yes Searows,
This is folk essentually and dispenses atmosphere and tenacity in spades. This record has precedent; Big Thief, Alex G, Phoebe Bridgers and Ethel Cain.Glum resilience and digged and admirable durability. I'm much taken with this.,
Cindy from San Francisco. They're playing songs from The Velvet Underground Songbook, Their latest album Another Country. As I rise and pack and prepare for a train journey South to be with my elderly parents.
Now I'm down South in my family's bosom with all the madness that entails. I have Another Country on again and actually it feels rather like Christmas. Perfect soundtrack. Mum is downstairs preparing tea. All is right in the World. Frankly, if this is Another Country, I'd like to go there immediately.
We must live in the moment and appreciate our good fortune. I appreciate mine. Cindy make me appreciate it more. They don't veer from a well established formula that has kept me happy for my adult life and will do so as long as I'm on this earth. Until it ends with a tombstone as the blog I write's title implies.
Lenny Kaye strikes me as an admirable man. A Rock & Roll Man. Goin' Local his debut solo album at the age is simplicity and wonder and really rather lovely. This strikes me as tapping on a seam of honey. Into an essence. It's a quite beautiful record of childlike wonder.
I've been keeping this in reserve for a few weeks. Planning to post it on a Sunday. Now is the time. It's no longer Sunday Morning but here are the Sunday Mourners. You know what you're getting very early on with A Rhythm Absolute . And that's what you get for ten songs and 41 minutes.
Strokes, meets Nap Eyes meets Television meets Richard Hell & the Voidoids . 'We were saying let us out of here before we were even born. 'There's little deviation from the set script but if it's broke as the saying goes, why fix it ! This is an album that seriously rocks in an appropriately unhinged manner.
Wilco don't really sound like a Millennium Band. If anything they sound like the band that picked up the torch from R.E.M. after Bill Berry left. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot has a grand majesty and scope. It's old school but feels like a cool set of dads hitting the dance floor on the High School Reunion Ball.
I saw Wilco in Newcastle about 16 years ago fairly soon after I'd arrived in Newcastle. I'm glad I've seen them. I always get the sense that they're actually quite modest in the way that bands I really love tend to be.
Sometimes you hear a record that you're not at all sure about initially which gradually insinuates itself as the tracks succeed one another to a point at which your under a spell and falling fast and falling free. Such has been the case this evening with Miserable Chillers Innocent Victims. Their first for six years I'm told.
Wilco meets Astrid Gilberto meet Everything But The Girl at a bus stop and make their way into town on a Friday Night. This will do for a Thursday.
So do you want the good news? Or the good news? I only have good news here. What do you think this us the Daily Telegraph.? Fox News? Well where exactly should I start. It's only February and I seem to have enough great new albums on my playlist for songs of the day for the next week and a half at the very least.
Leeds Noise Pop Merchants Tulpa are first up. and make playung guitars made me feel like I was sevnteen all over again on latest album Monster Of The Week. It's an unreconstructed alternative guitar record and you can trace the bans inspirations within seconds. But that's no burdem for anyone who loves the sounds if streamlines guitars and harmonised reflectuins on the life condution,
Pavement, Teenage Fanclub and theur cpntemporary equivalents are the reference points. We're all twenty four hours from Tulsa. Heading towards Spring.
I saw That Petrol Emotion several times between 1985 and 1987. They broadened my plate. Directed me towards Beefheart and Ubu. Reminded me why I liked the Stones run of simgles from 1965 to 1967 so much. Thrill is the operative word.
But they were also highly politicised and they look the camera straight in the lens. They could play at time when a lot of British bands couldn't . I'm listening to Manic Pop Thrill and its making me feel young again.It's a claustrophobic album. Plenty of contrast. Fury. Melody. It's one that I come back to and will keep doing so.
It's Wednesday. But I'm going through the day. Sweeping through Thursday and Friday to the weekend. And SUNDAYCLUB by sundayclub. A duo from rural Manitoba who appear to have been reared on Shoegaze and The err Sundays and swept through to Allvays. This is precisely what you might expect. But life is not always about taking risks and this will do me as I make some breakfast and make my way to lessons two and three.
Another day. Another Euro. Bibi Club are a Canadian Pop Duo operating in French to a large degree though not exclusively. Latest album Amaro has a fractured intensity that lit up my Mercredi..
Apparently they explore the Liminal Spaces between the here and beyond. It's a response to the passing if lived ones. Letting the days go by. Another recommendation from Starbuck, Darren Jones Meilleure Ami pour It Starts With a Birthstone. Merci Beaucoup Starbuck. Encroyable.
Lauren Auder's Whole World as Vigil is exactly the kind of album that the chattering classes like to chatter about. Precious and drab and probably shortly off to the South of France to recline by a pool. It's the kind of record that seems mostly intent to irritate and enrage the likes of me . Did she really just rhyme BREXIT with taxes. I'm not stopping to fact check. . This is the kind of thing which seems designed to get under the skin of Blog writers like me who are looking for something that reminds them of Pavement to set their Tuesday off on the right foot . Oh it's insufferbale. Bring back Nik Kershaw !.
Life's Too Good is an album I associate with a difficult time in my life. Life always has dangerous aspects to it and we're foolish if we think that danger will ever completely dematerialize or vanish from the horizon. That's the joy.. That's what makes life the great adventure. John Peel fastened onto Birthday and this strange and uncompromising and wondrous album appeared a few months down the line. I didn't really appreciate it at the time. I find it reckless, jittery and altogether wonderful now/ like the best records you feel a new colour has been invented. Willy Wonka has arrived with an entirely new taste !
You carry the people who depart before you for the rest of your days. The ones who leave too soon. You do what you can to bear them with you. To carry their joy with you. To live each day with their flames inside you. It's not always easy but you owe them that. As well as those who are also going forward without them.
A very good friend of mine, the music friend of my lifetime, told a story about this album. About how he was going through a religious phase at school and had been listening to God from this album one day when he was at boarding school and had jumped at a key point and he'd wondered whether it was a religiously inspired moment. And then I imagine he then took a toke of his spliff. The stuff that probably went on to kill him. I miss him. Still.
I think about Matt when I listen to this record. But I also think about Lennon. I didn't really know who John Lennon was until he died. I thought Paul McCartney was The Beatles because he'd been the ever present one while I was growing up in the Seventies. 'Someone's knocking at the door on the Mull Of Kintyre on mists rolling in from the sea...' I was a late developer. Musically. And in other ways.
But Plastic Lennon / Yoko Ono Band helps you to catch up and takes your breath away in quick succession. You're shocked then charmed. You smile. Then feel ike crying. At his rage . And pain. And sense of love. And drive to go on. It's an astonishing record . You get the sense that if he was in the same room as you are in now that he would be hard work frankly. But that you'd be sorry when he left the room. Don't be like the folks on the hill. Whoever they are. Turn over the record instead...
I never particulary warmed to Wild Beats. They struck me as nutered and emaciated Sparks or Associates for a more prosaic age.
