Erasure play muted, instrumental tribute to the great man of the oceans.
Friday, June 30, 2017
Song(s) of the Day # 1,258 Gold Connections
An EP actually recorded in 2014 but out this year, Gold Connections is a project for singer and multi-instrumentalist Will Marsh who initially established connections with Will Toledo and was involved with an early incarnation of Carseat Headrest. Breaking off on his own, these recordings are a result. He comes across as a slightly more reticent Stephen Malkmus in terms of his vocals but the really interesting thing is the guitar work on the five tracks here. Free-wheeling and genuinely innovative, it will be interesting to see what he comes up with next!
Thursday, June 29, 2017
Instrumentals # 61 Francis Coppieters
From a just released compilation of Belgian funky soul from the seventies Funky Chimes the title of this particular track. The album makes the country at that point in time seem a sultry and rather sexy place,
Song of the Day # 1,257 Cornelius
Some kind of genius. New music coming up from Cornelius. The first in ten years!
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Song of the Day # 1,256 Owl & Mouse
Always a sucker for literary indie that namedrops Camus and Dickens and speaks of a broken heart. Owl & Mouse from three years back.
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Song of the Day # 1,255 Smog
Here's one of my very favourite songs of all. From Smog, which used to be the moniker Bill Callahan worked under for many year before he decided to drop the pretence and work under the moniker Bill Callahan instead. His is a very particular sensibility. Influenced by other things obviously, I'd put The Velvet Underground and Leonard Cohen as the core of where he started out from but with a clear identity and guiding personality all of its own, identifiable in virtually all his work, which could perhaps best be described as wry and stoical.
Here's the opening track from Red Apple Falls, one of Smog's best which came out in 1997. Remarkably, that's now twenty years ago. The song's called The Morning Paper. The morning paper is something which always arrives, (supposing you're in that small minority that still orders delivery of these things, it happened more back then). I think it's about learning to ignore what goes on out there and maintaining an inner vedic calm. Jolly good advice and a cracking downbeat tune, complete with parping trumpets. The kind of thing the indie fraternity does best.
Monday, June 26, 2017
Songs About People # 408 Emerson Fittipaldi
And another from Joan Miquel for the legendary pin up Brazilian formula One Racing Driver with the best name going from those long gone days of the early seventies.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,254 Joan Miquel Oliver
Two songs from an album I rather liked from a Majorcan artist Joan Miquel Oliver named Atlantis. Lo-Fi and rather charming.
Sunday, June 25, 2017
Song of the Day # 1,253 Sutherland Brothers
Some AOR radio memories. At least of mine.This stuff absolutely swamped the airwaves in the mid-seventies and though history has it that it was really just there to make the case for the absolute need for Punk it was nevertheless a soundtrack to millions of youths all in itself. Here's one that still haunts me, tacky as it is, drifting back across the years.
Saturday, June 24, 2017
Songs About People # 408 Sax Rohmer
Another feature in this series from Mountain Goats who seem to like this way of looking at the world. A song for the creator of Fu Manchu from their 2008 album Heretic Pride.
Song of the Day # 1,252 Richard Dawson
Utterly in the leftfield and clearly not for all tastes, Newcastle folk artist Richard Dawson is one of the bravest artist.going, his latest album is a song cycle based on the lives of the inhabitants of Bryneich, a Kingdom of the Old North. No, stop! Listen to it. It's good!
Friday, June 23, 2017
Song(s) of the Day # 1,251 Bedouine
There is such a sea of music, constantly incoming, that it's often difficult to differentiate between individual voices and statements and judge what you want to retain and what you'll just let flow on. This caught my ear yesterday, A couple of songs from a debut album released today. By a Syrian singer, born in Aleppo of all places, who made her way from there to Saudi and then to the States.
Something of a traveller since across its states since, California seems like a natural home. This is very much a Laurel Canyon record in terms of inspiration and feel though Bedouine never forgets for a moment where she's from and the traces of her journey are here in the music. A contemplative and meditative set of songs you might like to open up to and enjoy.
Thursday, June 22, 2017
Song(s) of the Day # 1,250 Mother Evergreen
Utterly hypnotic track of Illinois winter, not a million miles away from the mood Sufjan evokes. From Mother Evergreen's eponymous debut of last year.
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
Songs About People # 407 Donald Crowhurst
The story of Donald Crowhurst is one of the strangest and saddest of all. The man pressured by debts and events into a position where it seems he considered cheating in the 1969 single-manned round the world race before succumbing to insanity and probable suicide.
Ride - Weather Diaries
A couple of years I saw the reformed Ride at Newcastle Academy and it was not only the best gig I witnessed in 2015 but definitely up there with my best ever and I've seen quite a few bands down the years. With Ride ultimately the appeal hinges on whether you surrender to the sheer sincerity and sound of the songs, the Byrds front section backed by the Who's rhythm section, (in this respect bassist and drummer Steve Queralt and drummer Laurence Colbert are a remarkable unit who have never quite received their due), or find their undeniable Home Counties qualities negligible and weak. Seeing them live established their credentials once and for all for me. They take you to some places that are definitively theirs.
Now they've taken their reformation further and produced an album that has much to recommend it. If nothing else it clearly establishes that Ride was the proper place for Andy Bell and becoming a sideman for Oasis was actually a failure on his part to acknowledge his own personal legacy and his primary working partnership with frontman Mark Gardener rather than someone whose proper place in the world was standing a few feet behind Noel Gallagher.
Ride were a band who did not fully realise the potential of their first two albums first time round and its difficult to resent them some time in the sun time round now. Although some lyrics fall apart before you, Weather Diaries is musically sturdy and has some decidedly transcendental moments where they reach for and achieve a mid-life grace. This is a considered and worthy statement, slightly battered by middle age and the assault that living in the UK makes on all our nervous systems, (both in terms of its incomprehensible weather and turbulent and dangerous contemporary political climate, an obvious concern throughout). Ride should make some deserved waves this weekend at Glastonbury. They'll also be back in Newcastle this winter and I'll make a point of being there to see them again.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,249 Alex G
A noteworthy new album called Rocket from Alex G. also known as Sandy, with a rather fetching goat on the front cover. The stuff I really like from it is the almost traditional songs in an Elliott Smith vein. Elsewhere he goes a little bit more leftfield without any immediately apparent rationale for me but I do commend you to the bits of the record that work. I'd say he's at his best when he plays it straight.
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
Songs About People # 406 Seneca
One of the great Romans gets a nod from Patti, who loves doing this kind of thing!
Kevin Morby - City Music
Kevin Morby follows up last year's splendid Singing Saw with the equally splendid City Music. An artist with a very strong sense of place, he shifts his focus from the rural to the urban, (most obviously New York, the city of all cities), and it feels like choosing to put on your New York Punk records after playing Nashville Skyline.
It's a deft, assured record. Morby understands the rhythms of the city, just as he appreciates the artistic predecessors who've charted this territory before. On second track Cry Baby the glacial riff that powers I Wanna Be Your Dog gets disinterred, then 1234, (less than two minutes long and quite perfect for it), pays tribute to The Ramones and Jim Carroll for their lives of urban purity in the most apt and succinct terms imaginable, 'Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, Tommy, Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, Tommy, Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, Tommy, they were all my friends. And they died...'
After these two early peaks it would seem that City Music will do well to maintain it's high water mark but Morby is an artist not only with a clear and nuanced understanding of the sources he draws on but enough sheer vision, talent and guts to put his own work up for worthy comparison with the greats. Each successive track remarkably achieves new plateaus. There's soul, blues, folk, rock and punk music here for your delectation and Morby does justice to each. There's also a keen feel for the literary heritage of urban existence in all its contradictory, trapped abandon. A great record, of the old school, for 2017!
Song of the Day # 1,248 Frankie Rose
A Brooklyn Indie veteran, having done service with Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts and Dum Dum Girls, Frankie Rose's solo stuff finds her breaking off into fresh territory. Trouble, the lead off single from her forthcoming album Cage Tropical is Giorgio Moroder meets Stereolab. It gets better with every play. Neat video too. A good start to any day!
Monday, June 19, 2017
Song of the Day # 1,247 Clem Snide
Here's their contribution to Song of the Day. The opening track from their latest album 2015's Girls Come First.
Songs About People # 404 Joan Jett
A short Clem Snide feature. They're a trio, operational since the early nineties, formed in Boston by Eef Barzeley, named after a William Burrough's fictional character and notable for deft, wry songs that mix up elements of jazz, folk and country. Here they tip their hat to Joan Jett. Though it may really be mere wordplay.
Sunday, June 18, 2017
Song(s) of the Day # 1,246 Enderby's Room
A couple of tracks from the wonderful new Enderby's Room album, just out on fika Records which speacialises in this kind of homely folk and indie. Powered by traditional instruments such as church harmonium, French horn and ukelele, it's a beautful, warm and thoughtful collection of songs
Saturday, June 17, 2017
25 Days of Shel Talmy # 25 Trini Lopez
And to close off this series in small tribute to the genius of Shel Talmy, Trini Lopez.
Song of the Day # 1,245 Strange Lot
Swampy psych, garage rock from Tuscon, Arizona band and their latest album Gods & Clods.
Friday, June 16, 2017
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 220 Mamas & the Papas
Mamas & the Papas were always pretty good! Here's a lesser known song.
25 Days of Shel Talmy # 24 Tim Rose
No link to Jamie Sue so here's the A-Side of that single, a cover of the Bee Gees original.
Song of the Day # 1,244 Bonny Doon
'Another year's gone by. Hell, I'm still alive...'!
Hey, I love the Velvet Underground, Jonathan Richman, Pavement, Silver Jews, Bill Callahan, Dean Wareham, Parquet Courts, Nap Eyes and that whole wonderful indie sensibility of underachieving, laconic, stumbling American alternative Rock and Roll. So clearly do Detroit's Bonny Doon, (not to be confused with the tiny town in the wine growing region of California from which they take their name ), whose self-titled debut album, just out, almost embodies the combined sensibilities of the artists just mentioned. Virtually every song sounds like a late contestant for the Juno soundtrack. Perhaps the fact that it doesn't break a single rule laid down by its forbears or really carry it into anything even approaching fresh territory should really mark it out for reproach even in it's mildest form but I simply don't have the heart, because they play the part so well and someone somewhere will be surely be chancing upon this record as we speak and it may well be their first entree to that whole delicious feast. Tuck in, whoever you are!
(The one song I've found a link to, posted above, was initially released on a 2014 EP, which I think is the version you get above, but also features on the current album).
Thursday, June 15, 2017
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 219 John Barry
And from a film strongly featuring Nilsson's version of Fred Neils's Everybody's Talkin' here's the title cut.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,243 Sneaks
Spare, minimalist but poppy electro music from Sneaks,who are a Washington D.C. project fronted by Eva Moolchan. Their latest album is ten tracks long, short of twenty minutes and not a moment wasted.
Wednesday, June 14, 2017
Song of the Day # 1,242 Tom Tom Club
Woke up with Tom Tom Club going round my head, definitely a good thing and a sign it must be summer. Here's perhaps their best known song, (along with Wordy Rappinghood), a celebration of everything that's so wonderful about black dance music, from their essential first album.
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Anita Pallenberg 1944-2017
Not a musician herself but as much a totem of Rock and Roll culture as any that were.
Songs About People # 399 The Big Bopper
'You can't stop the cretins from hoppin'. Died on a plain with the Big Bopper...'
Austin Texas Shoegazers Ringo Deathstar offer up one to the man who went down with Buddy Holly and Richie Havens. Taken from their last album, 2015's Pure Mood which seems to find the precise midway point between the sensibilities and sounds of My Bloody Valentine and Nirvana and is worth a listen.
Song of the Day # 1,241 Sundays & Cybele
More cool, Japanese Kraut-Rock in the wake of Kikagaku Moyo. Just wonderful!
Monday, June 12, 2017
Songs About People # 398 Soren Kierkegaard
A rather lovely song that brings up the idea of Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, at least in its title, from Tyler Lyle, who is well worthy of further investigation.
Song of the Day # 1,240 Heliocentrics
'Cosmic jazz, skewed hip-hop, keening psychedelia and twitchy Afrobeat.' Mojo Magazine, July 2017.
Blistering opening track from the new Heliocentrics album A World of Masks, just out. They're a band not a million miles away from Can, Goat and Massive Attack's more 'out there' moments. Some of the rest of the record seems a bit cluttered on first listening for my tastes but this certainly hits the spot.
Sunday, June 11, 2017
What I Did on Election Night
Thursday was a funny old day weather wise in Newcastle. Pouring, driving rain in the early to mid morning. Then things brightened with warm sunshine as I walked with a friend to the Sage in Gateshead albeit accompanied by swirling wind which we joked about being perhaps the wind of change but ultimately discounted.
Support band Kero Kero Bonito were an odd spectacle indeed. A young female Japanese vocalist, leaping around like she was twelve years old, backed by tow keyboardists and samplers making odd shapes and punching out sounds of Sesame Street pop and dance music that encouraged the audience to suspend their adult states. I ultimately couldn't do so and songs about not wanting to get up, trampolines and graduation, 'didn't learn a thing' made me feel I was having a jellybean overdose induced.
Saint Etienne were a muck sleeker proposition. Well they've got twenty years on their support. Bob Stanley didn't appear to be there unless he was buried somewhere behind the large and accompished stage band. But Sarah Cracknell certainly was and she was a good humoured and effective front woman in sleek dress and elegant boa. Chatting to the audience in between songs and dealing very patiently with a large and drunken middle aged heckler who called for 'He's on the Phone' loudly and rather annoyingly between each song before getting his wish on the last song of the night when he and proceeded to race to the front of the stage and dance flamboyantly.
Occasionally the band crossed the boundaries towards slight blandness, which has always been my feeling about much of their recorded output but the evening was a reminder of just how many great singles they've put out over the years. Special mentions for You're in a Bad Way, Who Do You Think You Are, Nothing Can Stop Us, Only Love Can Break Your Heart and the aforementioned He's on the Phone which all sounded great. Also kudos for the slideshow which skillfully evoked all our childhoods and especially the shots of seventies concrete shopping precincts which particularly took me back to family trips in the seventies to Eastbourne to stay with my gran.
Also just before the end of the night they lit up a 'for the many not the few' slide, echoing the Labour Party campaign slogan. It was a touching, brief but nice gesture. I went back to watch the election night unfold to a rather surprising resolution warmed by the show. I'm now in the process of working my way through the band's backing catalogue and finding a great deal to treasure and appreciate.
Song of the Day # 1,239 Amor
Now this is interesting. A fourteen minute debut single from Glasgow based quartet Amor. It's arty Euro-Disco reminiscent of some of the things put together by A Certain Ratio and New Order in the early eighties and drew me in more and more the longer I listened to it.
Saturday, June 10, 2017
Big Thief
A record I really liked last year was Masterpiece, the debut album by Brooklyn band Big Thief. They're back already with their second, Capacity and it confirms them as a formidable prospect indeed. The album, (like its predecessor), is no easy listen, as it's quite clearly from catching the briefest snippet of any one of its eleven tracks, the soundtrack to bruised and damaged lives.
Led by Adrianne Lenker, who has a remarkably emotive voice, articulating pained experience with such skill and care that it feels like you're being asked to stare into an open wound, Capacity, (the human ability to soak up all that life and other humans care to do to us and still endure?), is an astonishing document, a forty minute tour round a downtrodden shabby American smalltown blue collar community and the skeletons hidden in each and every closet there.
The band know very well what they're doing. They show that it's quite possible for a rock and roll band to chart the lives that some people are obliged to live with every bit as much nuance and depth as great writers of fiction. Raymond Carver and Denis Lehane come to mind in this particular respect. Capacity is a mighty step forward from Masterpiece which was a very fine record in its own right. This is right up there with the very best things I've heard this year.
Songs About People # 397 Siouxsie Sioux
A song for the Ice Queen, very much in the tradition she helped lay down. Siouxsie in the Box from Portugues band The Anarchicks.
Songs Heard on the Radio # 213 Songhoy Blues
Something from the new Songhoy Blues album, which comes out next Friday.
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 218 The La's
On a drink sodden post-election night at Rosie's I chose this, along with Miles Davis, Neu, 13th Floor Elevators and far too many others.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,238 Pylon
Turn up the volume! One of the truly great art Post Punk cult bands. Yet they were always oddly poppy too. Here are the opening two tracks from their big statement, debut album Gyrate.
Friday, June 9, 2017
Song(s) of the Day # 1,237 Entrance
The first album from Entrance, (Guy Blakesee essentially) for over a decade, (it came out at the beginning of this year), is a really evocative affair. To put it plainly. it's evocative of the mid to late sixties where artists like Dylan, David Blue, Leonard Cohen, Donovan and Tim Buckley did all they could to make music the very stuff of poetry. The record, Book of Changes, sounds much like many of those, (despite obviously modern production values) in terms of its vision, instrumentation and sheer unchecked vaulting ambition.
It's not an entirely coherent album as there isn't really a sustained mood to it. Not even from one track to the next for the most part. Blakesee to some degree is cherry picking from his record collection. But its peaks are sublime. Songs about romance, rites of passage moments and emotions at their most stretched and vivid, in the place where everything seems to be at stake. Some of the melodies here are quite glorious.The stuff of dream.
Thursday, June 8, 2017
Songs About People # 396 Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti, one of the most distinctive and fascinating artists of the Twentieth Century gets some jazz.
Song of the Day # 1,236 Michael Nau
A song I like from Michael Nau's second album, Some Twist, which comes out next Friday. A bit, Phosphorescent, a bit Kevin Morby, but I like both of those very much and can recommend both this and them for your listening pleasure.
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 217 LCD Soundsystem
When I get up I'll go out and vote for change. Unfortunately I only have a small voice!
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