Halifax, Nova Scotia's Nap Eyes, have new material forthcoming. Keepers of a sacred flame their first two records were stoner classics. And here's a wonderful taster for their new album, I'm Bad Now, due in March. They do that loose limbed, late sixties/ early seventies, Sterling Morrison, Lou Reed and Jonathan Richman thing better than any band I know of on the planet at the moment. But this is no dewey eyed nostalgia exercise. These boys are classicists. An early marker is laid for 2018!
Saturday, January 13, 2018
Song of the Day # 1,455 Alien Stadium
Steve Mason, (Beta Band) and Martin Duffy, (Primal Scream, Felt, Charlatans), combine on a gloriously 'out there' four track EP called 'Livin' in Elizabethan' Times'. Here's one moment from it.
Friday, January 12, 2018
Song of the Day # 1,454 Courtney Marie Andrews
One fine album I neglected in the stampede last year was the self-titled debut album from American Singer Songwriter Courtney Marie Andrews. I can make amends early in 2018 with this taster from her second which is coming up the pike.
Thursday, January 11, 2018
Songs About People # 529 Samuel L. Jackson
Still fuming no doubt about not getting that Oscar for Pulp Fiction. And he was right!
Song of the Day # 1,453 The Vertebrats
There's nothing that the sad likes of me relishes more than unearthing a largely forgotten classic such as this. The Vertebrats were a Garage / Punk band, active in the Champaign-Urbana, Illinois region between 1979 and 1982. This song, Left in the Dark was covered over the years by The Replacements, Uncle Tupelo and Courtney Love. It has a special, dark energy, full of the snarling invective of the very best of the Nuggets band upgraded for the following decade.
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
Crystal Stilts
To honour Crystal Stilts further here's a Song(s) of the Day post for them a couple of years back. No sign of band activity on their front for a while but I very much hope they return eventually:
I'm a bit late on the case with this one but Crystal Stilts are my new current, favourite band. Not particularly active at the moment, their last single came out a couple of years ago, but I'm presently immersing myself in their records and particularly their last two albums, 2013's Nature Noir and 2011's In Love With Oblivion.
I'm a bit late on the case with this one but Crystal Stilts are my new current, favourite band. Not particularly active at the moment, their last single came out a couple of years ago, but I'm presently immersing myself in their records and particularly their last two albums, 2013's Nature Noir and 2011's In Love With Oblivion.
Brooklyn based, active in some form for over ten years, and very much a New York band in terms of sensibility though their two main members, singer Brad Hargett and guitarist JB Townsend hail originally from Florida, they draw on the heritage of driven, murky, melodic alternative guitar bands from the last fifty years, very much record collection rock, but with time their mix of sounds and feel becomes more distinctive and original, more and more their own voice.
I seem to be swimming against the tide here. They're receiving less attention rather than more with every successive release, as from my perspective, they get better and better. Nature Noir for example seemed to garner very little media attention or acclaim, even though it's a very fine record. The Velvet Underground is the clear start off point, but there' are also traces of those who picked up the baton from the Velvets years down the line, The Fall of Dragnet, The Blue Orchids, the Flying Nun bands, particularly The Clean, and also, as an aside, the mid-sixties garage bands, Aftermath period The Stones and 13th Floor Elevators.
Perhaps they're one of those bands whose reputation will build with time, as happened with many of those listed above, I certainly hope so. They have a dark, but inventive melodicism and lyrical focus that seems to touch on art, literature and the subconscious in the way that The Velvet Underground & Nico, Marquee Moon, The Modern Dance and Dragnet did. Listening to them is somewhat akin to being present at a seance among good friends all dressed in black and wearing shades.
It's difficult to make your voice heard playing this stuff nowadays, so prevalent is this psych sound that draws in turns from the decades that preceded it and walls the listener in with immersive, strangely familiar noise. I hope Crystal Stilts have more strings to their bow although I'm very happy just to have stumbled upon what they've put out up to date, I imagine they have.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,451 Robert Lester Folsom
Seventies singer songwriter from Georgia whose only album, Music & Dreams came out to general indifference in 1978 but was reissued in 2010 by Mexican Summer to greater public attention. It's an oddly deceptive record, on the surface generic, mainstream and unremarkable but on closer inspection containing a few very interesting tracks that lean closer to Todd Rundgren and great lost enigma Jim Sullivan than Bread and The Eagles
Monday, January 8, 2018
Songs About People # 528 Emmylou Harris
It was Gram yesterday so it might as well be Emmylou today. From First Aid Kit who are returning soon with a new record. This is from 2012's The Lion's Roar.
Song of the Day # 1,450 Seazoo
Wrexham's Seazoo have their debut album due at the end of January 2018. Judging by this taster it should be well worth listening out for. It serves to illustrate all that is best in leftfield Welsh pop.
Sunday, January 7, 2018
Songs About People # 527 Gram Parsons
Something I didn't know until today. Gram was short for Ingram. Here's a song for him which manages, (quite skillfully), to integrate a namecheck to Guided Palace Of Sin alongside some slightly dodgier wordplay.
Song of the Day # 1,449 Brona McVittie
Here's something beautiful and new for 2018. Brona McVittie is an Irish musician who has just returned home after spending some time in London. This comes from her debut album We Are The Wildlife, which came out on Friday. Wonderfully embroidered folk and electronica, it reminds you that spring is only just around the corner.
Saturday, January 6, 2018
Songs About People # 526 John Paul Getty
Back in the news and not in a way that he would like as the anti-hero in Ridley Scott's new film, All The Money In The World. Here's a track about him by Jackie Leven.
Song of the Day # 1,448 Saba Lou
From the seventeen year old daughter of King Khan and her debut album from last year Planet Enigma. It's a must hear record, as simple as it could possibly be, drawing on all kinds of goodness, Lee & Nancy, Mo Tucker fronted Velvet Underground, Sixties Girl Groups, Jonathan Richman, Moldy Peaches, Cat Power. She's been doing this for quite a while since she was kissed as a baby by Iggy Pop and made her first recordings when she was only six so it should come as no surprise that the record is so good. It's as unadorned and pure as you could ever want, just Saba Lou and acoustic guitars with the occasional backing vocal from dad or the most minimal of studio effects. Nine originals and a deeply haunting version of Nature Boy. Recorded at her father's studio in Berlin between 2016 and 2017, it's a classic example of Rock and Roll naivety, and why sometimes it's best when things are stripped to the absolute bare essentials!
Friday, January 5, 2018
Songs About People # 525 Lloyd Cole
Speaking of Lloyd Cole. This, quite beautiful indie song by Camera Obscura, (the very best of them really do take flight), namechecks Lloyd and the Commotions' classic Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken.
Song of the Day # 1,447 Pale Lights
New York's Pale Lights sound a lot like Lloyd Cole & the Commotions. And I mean a lot, not a little bit. The guitars, the vocals, the lyrics, the way the songs ebb and flow. In fact the resemblance is so complete and inescapable that it's rather difficult to know how to take it. But I happen to very much like Lloyd Cole & the Commotions. So here's the lead song from their latest album, The Stars Seemed Brighter.
Thursday, January 4, 2018
Songs About People # 524 The Queen of Sheba
From Nick Lowe's quite splendid 1982 album Nick The Knife.
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 261 Wreckless Eric
Nice bit of Wreckless Eric for my first trip to Rosie's for the New Year.
Song of the Day # 1,446 Crepes
Pleasant. There's no doubt at all that what Melbourne band, (seriously, another Melbourne band...) Crepes serve up on their debut album Channel Four can be fairly described as pleasant. The cover shot of the band looking down at the camera from a balcony is probably an indication of formative influences and they produce an assured, consistent sounding record without burning any bridges. Still, pleasant is good, and gets them a Song of the Day.
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
Songs About People # 523 Fred 'Sonic' Smith
Back in 1979 Patti Smith wrote this for Fred 'Sonic' Smith, former guitarist of the MC5 and her current amour and future husband. It was the first track on her fourth and final album, in her first incarnation, Wave, before she went into semi-retirement with him to start a family. It sounds almost like a Fleetwood Mac song to me and I could imagine Stevie Nicks singing it. No bad thing!
Song of the Day # 1,445 Blacanova
Spanish underground band that have been around since 2005 and whose latest song rattles confidently along the rails established most of all by Stereolab. A winner!
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
Twelve Songs by Bands That Are Named After That Band # 5 Kool & the Gang
Kool & the Gang back in the days of their first album from 1969 when they were seriously funky!
Songs About People # 522 Oscar Brown
It's illustrative to listen to Baxter Dury's early records just to see how far he's come over the last fifteen years or so. This comes from his 2002 debut Len Parrot's Memorial Lift a truly lo-fi DIY album which is closer in spirit to Syd Barrett than his dad. Here's a stand out song from it, a tribute to today's Song of the Day which lifts wholesale the hook from The Velvet Underground's Sweet Nuthin.
Song of the Day # 1,444 Oscar Brown Jr.
Something of a Jazz classic. Originally recorded by Bobby Timmons, but lyrics were added by Oscar Brown Jr. and added a whole dimension to proceedings. A child's conversation with his daddy and his daddy's resultant conversation back to his son. Much covered over the years with and without the lyrics by Cannonball Adderley, Art Blakey, Rickie Lee Jones and Tony Bennett but nothing bettered this. Brown Jr. had a fascinating career as a poet, playwright, civil rights campaigner, actor and more. He shares inspirational DNA with Nina Simone and Gil Scott Heron.
Monday, January 1, 2018
Songs About People # 521 Brian Eno
And here they are from 2010 record Congrtulations, paying tribute to an obvious hero.
Song of the Day # 1,443 MGMT
2017 has become 2018. MGMT have a new album on the way and judging by the taster tracks they've released it should be worth a listen. They have a magpie's eye for bits of the past which they rearrange into imaginative and highly poppy and melodic collages which may remind you of myriad things but are still essentially theirs. Here they layering slightly sour thoughts on a sweet, confectionery bed.
Sunday, December 31, 2017
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