Thursday, October 13, 2016
Song(s) of the Day # 998 The Marvelettes
The Marvelettes late run of golden American hit singles, five, six and seven years after their first, Please Mr. Postman, which got to number one.
By this point they'd been eclipsed in the Motown scheme of things, by The Supremes. These three though gave them a late run in the Top Twenty. All three written by Smokey Robinson and fine examples of his artistry.
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
The Heart of Rock and Soul # 823 The Castaways
'Second most famous frat-rockers to attend the University of Minnesota - the first was Bob Dylan of course. This is probably the kind of juvenile noise that drove folky Bob out of Dinkytown, and into Greenwich Village - an overamped organ, guitar, falsetto, and scream raveup that makes up in the inelegance of guitar band simplicity and energy what it lacks in every other measurement. Twenty years later, Prince came out of the same town with two-finger organ riffs that surpassed this one, but it took that long to beat 'em.'
Song of the Day # 997 Chemtrails
Fine, punky melodic single from a London three-piece. Out in December.
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Death # 13 Slim Whitman
Seems like a while on here since death took its turn at the wheel. So here's Slim Whitman, doing what he did best over a lifetime.
Songs About People # 237 Pancho Villa
Link Wray tips his hat to the Mexican renegade and insurrectionary hero.
The Heart of Rock and Soul # 824 Martha & the Vandellas
Always an appropriate song for a blog like this. See tag at the top of the page!
Monday, October 10, 2016
Things Found on my Local's Jukebox # 158 The Charlatans
Tune for a quiet Monday night at Rosie's. The band's debut single, which came out in 1990 on their own Dead Dead Good label. The prototype for their breakthrough The Only One I Know.
The Heart of Rock and Soul # 825 Fats Domino
'It wasn't until the sixties that rock and roll really became guitar-dominated music. In the fifties, it revolved around piano, drums and most of all saxophone as I'm Walkin' more than amply shows. Its furious, snare-centered shuffle beat, played in counterpoint to something that might be cymbals, might be handclaps, provides a link to classic New Orleans jazz. The centre of the song becomes not the straight-ahead rapid-fire jollity of Fat's vocal, but the pair of honking sax-breaks, which elevates proceedings from the ordinary with grit and funk.'
Twee # 53 Jesus & Mary Chain
The opening track and emotional core of the Mary Chain's debut album Psychocandy. It's difficult to convey how important this album and this song were to so many people in 1985.
Song(s) of the Day # 995 Blue Cheer
Blue Cheer. San Franciscan power trio who took their name, appropriately from a brand of LSD, another example of those strange conflated band names so popular with American psychedelic outfits in the late sixties; see Jefferson Airplane; Moby Grape; Buffalo Springfield; Iron Butterfly and Vanilla Fudge. Best known perhaps for their proto-metal cover version of Eddie Cochran's Summertime Blues. These are quite different however. Two fine tracks from the last studio album of the original outfit, 1971's Oh! Pleasant Light.
Sunday, October 9, 2016
Songs About People # 236 Kurt Cobain
More from The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. You can take your pick over which item of Kurt's wardrobe they were obsessing over. It probably depends on how you distinguish cardigans and jumpers.
Songs Heard on the Radio # 156 Allah-Las
A fine song from the excellent new Allah Las records Calico Review. Not a million miles, in fact a fairly short walk from today's Song of the Day by Cool Ghouls. Both of their albums will feature in my end of year list.
Things Found on my Local's Jukebox # 157 New Order
From the coach that dropped us off back in Newcastle I made my way to Rosie's and this was among the songs I put on. Not a crowd-pleaser for sure but it sounded just wonderful to me. So tightly meshed and inventive. New Order were also such fabulous, innovative players, and already had such a clear, inspired idea of where they were going, into American dance music. Remarkable pioneers!
Twee # 52 The Pains of Being Pure of Heart
Something else along similar lines although perhaps located deeper in the indie basement. The first track from their 2009, self-titled record. It's as if the eighties never ended.
Song of the Day # 994 Cool Ghouls
I spent a very wonderful day in York, one of my favourite cities. A very sunny October day and plenty of browsing and generally soaking up the sights, sounds and sunshine of a wonderful, historical place. I made an early visit to my favourite record shop there, The Inkwell, which I've mentioned on here before. I told the proprietor, one of these great conversationists and enthusiasts that I wouldn't be buying a record this time, I needed to spend time with all the albums I'd already purchased and hadn't listened to recently.
Who was I kidding! I was back a couple of ours later after a beer or two to get this, the latest record from San Francisco's Cool Ghouls Animal Races and a further musical related chat with the owner. The album is a fine memento of a great day. Free spirited guitar adventuring that starts with The Byrds most obviously and then continues with the conversation that Rock music has been having with itself along those lines ever since. I wish I could post the title track and opening song, which is the finest piece of fluent Rock and Roll I've heard all year, but there is no internet link to it. I'll add it as a postscript if and when it appears. Instead its second track Sundial will stand for the whole in addition to its bizarre and somewhat inspired album cover. Great band. Great unheralded record!
Saturday, October 8, 2016
Song of the Day # 993 Warehouse
Warehouse, from Atlanta, Georgia, released their second album, super low, last Friday. It's a tremendous record in many ways. It feeds on the energy of the Athens, Georgia, college music scene of the late seventies and early eighties. The alternatively angular and fluid guitars of Alex Bailey and Ben Jackson and the rhythm section of Josh Hughes and Doug Bleichner create a bedrock for Elaine Edenfield's extraordinary vocals which are a raspy, fluttering, throaty howl. It's arty in the extreme and incredibly diverting in every respect.
It's reminiscent to me of R.E.M's Murmur, an album that meant an enormous amount to me personally in the early eighties. The first record that I really made my own. Also the first album I wrote about on here. I must have listened to it in my room at the top of our family house in Teddington hundreds of times, hearing different things in the mix every time so nuanced and thoughtfully was it put together.
super low promises comparable long term rewards on the basis of having listened to it over the last couple of days. It's similarly textured and ambitious, offering reminders both of early R.E.M and their college compadres Pylon. It's wonderful to hear these bands' spirit built on and echoed, but not slavishly imitated, Warehouse have a scope and ambition all of their own.
With song titles like Arbitrarium V, Modifier Analog, Simultaneous Contrasts and Audrey Horne, if anything their intent is more obscure and enigmatic even than these two bands. Reservoir, (posted here), is super low's, Radio Free Europe, the nearest they come to a bold anthemic statement. Edenfield's voice is sure not to be to everyone's taste, but I love its swooping, questing qualities, (it took me a day to work out her gender), just as I love the melodic, punky, adventuring of the musicianship. Their aren't enough bands that attempt to dig this deep. Warehouse, ones to watch!
Friday, October 7, 2016
Song(s) of the Day # 992 Big Thief
Big Thief's album Masterpiece from earlier this year is the sound of the human heart breaking in twelve different ways. The soundtrack of downtrodden, downbeat, urban America where the combatants cling to each other in the wreckage of their dead end lives.
It's a skillful and wounded document of the ways that life can unwind, and for some inevitably does, not as you'd hoped or expected. Led by the splendidly bruised Frances Quinlan, this Brooklyn band will remind you of plenty else you'll recall fondly from your collection. For me personally it took me back to the early to mid nineties when they were plenty of bands charting this lonelyheart highway with no certain point of arrival. Always room for one more. Especially when it's all rendered as deftly as it is here.
Thursday, October 6, 2016
Songs About People # 235 Marie Provost
'She was a winner. But became a doggie's dinner...'
One of the more tasteless tributes in Pop History. Marie Provost, a huge star of the Silent Movie era who could not survive the transition to Talkie's. She died in 1937 at the age of thirty eight from the knock on effects of acute alcoholism. Her body was not found for a couple of days during which time it was alleged that her dachshund took bites off her dead body which Lowe alludes to here in no uncertain terms.
Song of the Day # 991 Plastic Mermaids
Marvelously, from the Isle of Wight, which may be a first for this blog. My finest discovery yesterday and a small revelation, I needed something to get me away from listening to the Regina Spektor record on loop. It was all getting a bit too emotional. The Mermaid's latest, four track EP, Everything is Yellow and Yellow is my Least Favourite Colour, is a thing of wonder, a quite splendid record. They sound like some altercation between Mercury Rev, The Beta Band and Neil Young, and their tracks rise to quite splendid crescendos. This week's recommended 'caulkheads'.
Wednesday, October 5, 2016
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
Songs Heard on the Radio # 155 The Men They Couldn't Hang
Good to see full on, committed political statement on the BBC. That's eighty years back and we're still standing!
Regina Spektor - Remember Us To Life
I'd say that mine is only a natural response as listening to the record, track by track I think it touches on small, perfectly realised genius. Why she isn't plastered all over front covers while dullards like Coldplay continually are is beyond me and is a reproach on sorry times. Remember Us To Life is a constant delight, like finding yourself in a dream exploring an enchanted garden or working your way through a new Angela Carter short story collection you never knew existed that's magically been dedicated to you.
Spektor is a special musician indeed. A one off really, though she's been constantly and lazily bracketed throughout her career with other 'oddball' artists. She deserves to be appraised on her own merits and without that utterly meaningless description.. Her personal biography alone is extraordinary. Fleeing religious persecution from their native Russia, the Spektor's, young Regina and her brother, resettled in the Bronx in 1989. Her parents struggled to make ends meet while Regina practiced the skills she'd learned in Moscow on tabletops and empty window sills until they could afford a piano.
She emerged and proceeded to blossom in the early millennium years, in association with other New York Renaissance artists like The Strokes and Moldy Peaches and the Anti-Folk scene in Downtown Manhattan. Originally a street and outsider artist, she's gradually, over the years, edged her way consciously, or through a natural development, towards the mainstream, and I'd say this is the record that should allow her to fully grasp her place within it it should she wish to. It's to her immense credit that she's never compromised her incredibly special artistic vision during the lengthy process its taken her to get here.
A uniquely warm, emotional and personal musician in an era where artists increasingly seem to shy away from such direct expression, every word on Remember Us To Life is clearly enunciated, every note comes pure and distinct. If there is anybody who Spektor might fairly and usefully be compared to it's probably Kate Bush, because both work from a premise of immersing the listener in a romantic, fictionalised, but all consuming experience. A night at the opera. Or if you're staying in, a bedtime story.
Spektor's probably getting used to telling bedtime stories herself, having taken time off since her last record, 2012's What We Saw From The Cheap Seats, to give birth to and start to raise her first born. The break seems to have paid dividends as Remember Us To Life is a further step forward from that album, which though it had several wonderful moments was not the complete and utterly coherent statement that this record is. A deeply considered emotional gift to the world at a time when frankly it needs just that.
Spektor, in a recent interview talked about the dark times we're fated to be living through right now and how it's all best countered:
'I do think that human connection and human awareness and education are the key to everything. As long as we keep trying to keep the channels free, and prevent propaganda, prevent iron curtains...it's very hard to do. It's somewhere between resigning yourself and saying, ' Hey this is just how things go,' and being devastated and paralyzed with fear and anger. I think that changes come from a personal place.'
This certainly comes from a personal place, but it's all grounded in musical skill and personal growth. After all she's in her mid-thirties now. One of the things I love most about Spektor is her classical background and how the deeply romantic strains of it resonate throughout her songs. It's a rare quality to her music that continually sets it apart from pretty much all of her contemporaries, except as I've mentioned, perhaps Kate Bush. A gift that allows her to sprinkle small epiphanies for her listener throughout the record, clues that allow us to recognise the infinitely magical qualities both of the world she's portraying and through it the one all around us.
She's also keenly literary, almost an artist from a bygone age, and deeply rooted in the European tradition, even though she's now also recognisably the product of New York, the most Western looking of all American cities. Draped on the front sleeve in a glittering golden sheet, wearing thirties hat and immaculately applied film star make up, she's something of a throwback, appropriate for a Western world that's looking backwards rather than forwards nowadays.
Beauty of course is in the eye of the beholder. While writing this, I've also been browsing interviews with Spektor, and reading reviews of her work and listening to previous albums of hers. Generally the critical consensus jury, still seems to be out on her. Perhaps it always will be! While early responses seem to delight in plumping for oddball, quirky and eccentric as descriptions for her approach, (as if those words really tells us anything), other reviews of Remember Us To Life, conclude that she's lost a little of her initial spark by playing it straighter and beefing up the orchestration. It seems she can't win. Damned if she does by some critics, damned by others if she doesn't.
Personally, I think she's coming into her own as an artist now. The lack of such urgency, the more considered, thoughtful approach makes Remember Us To Life her first realised symphony from my perspective. It's an altogether beautiful and precious piece of work. She's playing in my home town in a few weeks and although I had initially given up on seeing her, (as I couldn't find anyone to see her with), having heard this I'll now bust a gut to get a ticket. Another record of the year in a year which has been altogether remarkable for them!
Songs About People # 234 Nancy Sinatra
Nancy Sinatra, certainly another Twee pin up girl, gets the treatment from former Ample Record Label players Granville, during a record shop appearance in Caen.
Song(s) of the Day # 989 Wilco
There comes a point when well established bands reach a comfortable lull where they'll seemingly always remain. Wilco seem to have arrived there now. Once considered genuinely as one of the most important bands in the world, critically if not commercially, I doubt if anyone would seriously suggest the same now. They've achieved respected veteran status. Their 2002 album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, generally considered their best, still ranks on the Best Ever Albums website as the 47th greatest LP ever released. That's almost fifteen years back now.
Since then they've gradually ceased to be front page news. It's hardly due to the quality of their output, which has generally remained consistently excellent, so much as the implicit short attention spanned nature of the industry they chose to work in. It happens to almost everyone and they're hardly to be pitied. I imagine the members of the band barely care themselves. They still command respect, can fill decent sized arenas comfortably every time they choose to tour and probably have family and general midlife distractions that preoccupy them more than where they stand in the pecking order of contemporary Rock and Roll.
Their new album, with the typically unassuming, title Schmilco, meets the standards of other releases of theirs. It's an unpretentious product all round, breathy and partially acoustic, addressing forty something concerns, articulately and with understated grace. The opening couple of tracks Normal American Kids and If I Was Ever a Child are particularly noteworthy, addressing leader Jeff Tweedy's childhood and adolescence in definitive and remarkable fashion. He might as well be speaking for tens of thousands of us and how we perceived ourselves during our bruised, teenage years as misunderstood poetic waifs outside the orbit of the anointed princes and princesses of our school and college days, the jocks and cheerleaders, (I'm British, but we had equivalent figures too). Convinced we were blessed by a higher and purer vision, but vulnerable and unfulfilled all the while. A lack of fulfillment we might fail to fully address until well into adulthood.
If the rest of the record was as good as these two tracks then Wilco would have another landmark album on their hands. It's not, but it's still pretty damned good. Tweedy's wisdom seems as hard-won but valuable as ever and his group is as sensitive and fluid group of musicians as any American outfit of the last thirty years. They're a cracking band and Schmilco is yet another cracking record. At their best they say more in single three minute songs than many others do in entire albums. Careers even.
Monday, October 3, 2016
Covers # 65 The Castilles
Springsteen's first real band. An incredible live take on the Leonard Cohen song sounding like a garage band transmuting into The Velvet Underground with Bruce up front searching towards his own voice.
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