Chicago duo Ratboys registered at # 11 of my Albums Chart of last year with their fine record GN. They're back already with a fine four track EP called GL. It does what they do so well already. Coming on between fast and slow and happy and sad, like Country cousins of The Breeders. This will do very, very nicely indeed!
Monday, February 26, 2018
Thirty Days & Thirty Studio Producers # 14 Tom Wilson
And in a similar vein, here's Tom Wilson, producer of early Dylan, The Velvet Underground, Nico, Simon & Garfunkel and The Mothers of Invention in among others in a golden run of magical records from 1963 to 1968. He died of a heart attack in 1978 aged just 47.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,499 Olden Yolk
The really rather lovely, self-titled debut album from New York band Olden Yolk is just out. Full of textured, melodic, vaguely narcotic songs which touch on Indie, dip their toes in Folk and soft focused Psychedelia and are consistently left of the mainstream but also instantly approachable. It'll mind you of other things, they work within a clearly established tradition, but the record creates its own pleasures and is well worth a listen. Shane Butler, (also of Quilt), and Caity Shaffer take turns with vocals and the album is a rich and nuanced autumnal record.
In some respects this is a very Sixties sounding album, making me think at various points of Pentangle, Great Society, The United States of America and the gentler moments of the Velvet Underground. Occasionally precious, in the best Beatnik sense and very, very New York, the songs and promos posted here evoke the sights, sounds and smells of the coffee shops, tenement buildings and squares of Greenwich Village and Chelsea . As I've said, the sixties act as source inspiration, but it's all filtered through the prism of succeeding decades. I was reminded of the way that Ultra Vivid Scene, Felt and Dean Wareham in Galaxie 500 and Luna drew on similar traditions but created songs that never sounded like pastiche and had their own carefully crafted glowing hearts and sounded just right for their times. Such is the case here too.
My own instinct on listening through to a record for the first time is whether I want to hear it again and in the case of Olden Yolk, my reaction a few songs in was already a definitive 'yes'. By the end of it, I was smitten. I'll be coming back to this album again and again over the coming months until I feel I own it. In the meantime I commend it to you in the highest possible terms.
Sunday, February 25, 2018
Thirty Days & Thirty Studio Producers # 13 Mike Hedges
And while we're still here, here's a man who produced so many records that crafted that sound. The Cure, Banshees and here the marvellous Associates.
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 275 Siouxsie & the Banshees
And with Frigs in mind here is an early example of the Banshees at their best which I've been playing a bit at Rosie's recently. Poppy, drawing on the scary qualities of childhood and demonstrating precisely the primitive but unique qualities that John McKay particularly brought to the original incarnation of the group. Here too, is the splendid, ritualistic promo the band made for the song.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,498 Frigs
Toronto band Frigs love the sound of early Sonic Youth. Drawing this conclusion is inevitable from a cursory listen to the first couple of tracks of their debut album Basic Behaviour, just out. The way the guitars clang and chime. The way Bria Salmena's vocals communicate endless unease and anxiety, of living in a fallen world. The way the glass is always half empty, something awful is always about to happen and we're immersed in the sense of endless night.
Although the band's influences are immediately and transparently evident, PJ Harvey and Siouxsie feel like they're making guest appearances on later tracks, Basic Behaviour has much to recommend it. The band conjure up a powerful backdrop for Salmena to work within, while she makes a compelling argument for the suffocating experience of modern urban existence, without ever letting drop an indication that it may be getting any easier of better any time soon.
There's an obvious appeal and considerable audience for this kind of art. This has been evident since the Banshees put out The Scream in 1978. Frigs don't really add anything to the body of work that has come out since which has followed its lead into darkness. They do work well within its traditions though, and Basic Behaviour is a record I'll surely come back to, as on first listening I get the strong impression that it offers incremental rewards.
Saturday, February 24, 2018
Songs About People # 563 Whitney Houston
And while we're here you get the sad rendition of the tale of Whitney Houston and her daughter, played live by Insecure Men in Brixton.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,497 Insecure Men
Now here's a somewhat unexpected treat. Yet another offshoot of Fat White Family, Insecure Men a band led by former lead guitarist Saul Adamszewski and school friend Ben Romans-Hopcraft of Childhood and their self-titled debut record. Unexpected, in that unlike his former band it's an approachable pop record of the indie persuasion, albeit one that tackles slightly unsettling and leftfield lyrical themes.
The Guardian's Alex Petridis has made it his Record of the Week and he generally knows something about these things. So, you get tuneful melodies about drugs, addiction, Heathrow Airport, Penge, Cliff and general dysfunctionalism, dressed up in Glam, Exotica and Pop trappings, making good use of the evident influence of Go-Kart Mozart and Television Personalities' Dan Treacy. It's all less consciously designed for shock factor than Fat White Family records customarily are and betrays an altogether welcome sensitivity and bruised hurt in addition to considerable songwriting craft . It's all incredibly English. And I like it.
Friday, February 23, 2018
Thirty Days & Thirty Studio Producers # 11 Conny Plank
Produced Kraftwerk, Neu!, Can, Cluster, DAF, Devo and umpteen more. Also was fundamental in the sea change that Eno and Bowie made in the mid-seventies. Impeccable pedigree!
Song of the Day # 1,496 Anna Von Hausswolf
Slightly scary but well worth a listen from Swedish artist Anna Von Hausswolf from her new album Dead Magic which is out today.
Thursday, February 22, 2018
Lloyd Cole & the Commotions - Rattlesnakes
A friend and colleague of mine is going to see the man who fronted this band tomorrow. So it gets a re-post
This is pretty much a perfect record. There aren't that many in my collection. I've got a great deal of history with it as do a lot of people of my age and background. My own copy is worn and approaching a stage of vague decrepitude as I am myself and jumps irretrievably on occasion like my own slightly irregular heart but I'm reluctant to replace the copy I bought on its release in 1984 just yet, because it's seen me through more than half of my given span and I'll be listening through to it, whether this copy or another, 'til that span expires, whenever that is. Because, perhaps more than any other album it speaks of the emotions and experience I was going through while first listening to it.
A good friend of mine, who follows this blog, said something along the lines that it was among the best records ever made by a minor league artist. I'd agree with that. Cole himself has I imagine seldom reached these heights since, (though he still puts out very good stuff and is excellent live by all accounts). I guess he knows the truth of this very well. It was an album and a statement he could never possibly trump because it was so much of its time and said so many of the essential things that he had to say. It defined forever a moment, an age of life and a perspective on it better than almost any record I know
I bought it at the time when my life was changing, more quite than it has ever done, before or since. I was eighteen, finishing off my A Levels and thinking about university. I knew very little idea about relationships, the opposite sex or pretty much the world. Records coming out at the time like Rattlesnakes, Murmur, High Land, Hard Rain and The Smiths were the stuff I constructed my identity around along with books, films and politics they referenced and drew on. I could make a list but I wouldn't want to bore you. It was stuff to aspire to and identify with, to construct yourself around in terms of the things you wore and I bought into it. I was far from alone.
Cole suffered slightly at the time from being bracketed with R.E.M, The Smiths, Aztec Camera and also Prefab Sprout who were coming at things from a similar angle. He seemed a minor talent by comparison as perhaps in retrospect he has proved. But it was a perfectly formed minor talent. He also meant a lot to quite a lot of people. I imagine many of those who fell for this record, what he was saying and the way he was saying it have never entirely grown out of it. I haven't.
Fast forward a couple of years from the record's purchase to the Summer term of my first year at University. There's a girl there that I'm falling for and something is starting to happen with. It's a university disco. She lives on campus and I'm at residences a few miles away. It's coming to the end of the night and I have to get on the pre-arranged minibus with the others who stay there. Perfect Skin comes on. We close dance to it, an odd song to close dance to, it's more of a giddy jig really. I go get the bus without a kiss but she's taking me over. We start going out together shortly afterwards, do so for the next four years. I fall completely in love with her. There's talk of marriage but with one thing and another it doesn't happen. Lloyd and the Commotions were there at the start of it all. I'll never hear Perfect Skin without being transported back to that brief pocket of time as it all began. She had a teddy bear called Bloomingdale and eyes like sin. She went into journalism. Wrote something for The Face. But not Cosmopolitan.
Back from myself to the record itself. All in all it's a flawlessly constructed album; track-listing, arrangements, lyrics, length. Nothing outstays its welcome. It's tasteful. Refined. It speaks of an ingrained love of all things America. Lloyd half sings, half speaks in immaculately assembled American Beat prose hip-speak throughout. He and the band's sound yearns for the open road and also New York in particular in all its Sixties glory. America as dreamed of in youth spent in Buxton, Derbyshire and nailed into achievable reality as a university student, meeting and mixing with the right people, soaking up the sights and sounds of Glasgow, a city forever in thrall to the States. It's no great wonder that Lloyd ended up moving there permanently himself. Rattlesnakes is chock full of namedrops. Eve Marie-Saint, Greta Garbo, Leonard Cohen, Simone De Beauvoir, Grace Kelly, Norman Mailer, Arthur Lee, Truman Capote. The kind of people and culture that you were gobbling up at this point of life, so desperate to impress, with the youth to get away with it sometimes but without the raw and real experience or knowhow to really back it up. It's a life learned, soaked up through books, films and music.
But there's pain there too. It's marrying these books, films and this music against the intense, brief, rites of passage experience you were actually going through. About wasting precious time as he says himself at one point. It's about first and failed relationships. The ones that hurt the most. It's about trying to understand women that are impossibly attractive, elusive and unobtainable, or even if they are obtained, the moment of possession is sure to be only fleeting. Because you're only twenty one once. It's about being flippant and eager to impress with surface cool and charm whilst all along underneath beats a desperate, yearning heart.
The playing is remarkably tight. I'd pick out Neil Clark the lead guitar but the whole band are hugely adept. Because really they're grounded in Soul. They know their Stax and incredibly they pull off a truly astonishing approximation of its gleam, spark and sheer discipline. And it's in this understanding of the essence of great Sixties American music, not just Dylan and The Velvet Underground but The Temptations, Staple Singers, Aretha and Booker T & the MGs that's the foundation of the record's success. They have the chops. Three of the band were in a Soul group before the Commotions formed. They made a point of playing with vintage equipment and using basic recording techniques rather than letting Eighties sounds and effects leak into the mix. These are some of the reasons the record has lasted.
There are five songs on either side of the album and they all fit as snug as can be. There's not a note too many, a line that doesn't work or a hook too laboured. They can speed it up and slow it down. It's funny and smart and touching by turns. It's a record of ten potential 45s. Lloyd is centre stage of course. The band took his name and it's his artfully constructed self that defines the record. Observant, wry, cynical, but really you suspect beneath the veneer, bruised and hurting.
The band had their brief moment in the sun. The record was feted and they had chart and critical success. They made follow up records, some of which recaptured the glory, most of which in retrospect didn't. Because they'd already made their statement. I played second record Easy Pieces a lot when it came out as it was part of the soundtrack to the great romance I talked of earlier which I was busy experiencing. I'd recommend a few songs from it that would fit right in on Rattlesnakes, Why I Love Country Music, Pretty Gone, Grace. Some of it doesn't work though. It tries too hard. Or else not enough. I didn't bother with the third. The band seemed to care less themselves by this point and split shortly thereafter. They'd run their course. They split shortly before the relationship of mine which they'd played their small part in did.
This is over thirty years ago. Lloyd is back. His latest album got his best reviews in years and his songwriting has aged gracefully. He has a silver flock of hair, barely receded from where it sat in its prime. He's not trying to be twenty, hasn't lost his looks and the man could certainly always write a lyric. He still can. He's always asked about Rattlesnakes of course and answers patiently and honestly. He seems like a good bloke though he still seems to find it hard to suffer fools. But he knows his place in the scheme of things.
So listen to his and his band's first record if you don't know it already. It's forever somewhere amongst my Top Thirty. It always makes me slightly lovelorn and nostalgic, for obvious reasons. I haven't gone into the songs individually here because they speak for themselves and are of a piece. I'd be here forever if I did but it would be all description and not enough feeling. Like I said it speaks for itself. A perfectly assembled row of books on a bookshelf. It's a record which within the dimensions and parameters it constructs for itself, frankly could not be bettered.
There it is. Always sitting there silently in the assembled ranks of albums stacked in boxes on my living room floor demanding to be played again. And again. From the first song, 'When she smiles my way. My eyes go out in vain,' to the last, 'Are you ready to be heartbroken.' I decided at the end of my first Lloyd Cole & the Commotions phase and the end of that relationship that I wasn't ready. I've learned since that the heart always finds a way to miraculously mend itself, work once more and need to love again. Meanwhile, Rattlesnakes plays on in the background. Never changing because it doesn't need to. It will outlast Lloyd. And me.
Songs About People # 562 Marmalade
Lawrence's Go-Kart Mozart, one of the oddest manifestations around of the individualistic, singular personal vision that Pop Music allows for, are back in circulation, with a new album out shortly. In the meantime, while we wait for that, here they are, from a few years back, singing of the joys of listening to Marmalade, the Glasgow band of the sixties and seventies, (rated by Hendrix no less),. Certain similarities between Lawrence and Jarvis Cocker's vocal stylings evident here.
Thirty Days & Thirty Studio Producers # 10 Terry Melcher
Best known for a few things. Being Doris Day's son. Knowing, wanting to work with and being targeted by Charles Manson after they fell out. And producing The Byrds.
Song of the Day # 1,495 Flower Travellin' Band
Julian Cope's fabulous Japrocksampler rightly eulogises the likes of Flower Travellin' Band, one of the most prominent early practitioners of this scene. Here's the first track from their second album which demonstrates well where they were coming from.
Wednesday, February 21, 2018
Songs About People # 561 Calamity Jane
Frontier legend and compadre of Wild Bill. Grant Lee-Phillips sings her praises.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,494 Jade Imagine
Fine, psychedelic stuff from Courtney Barnett and Jen Cloher Milk Records label mate Jade Imagine and last year.
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
Song(s) of the Day # 1,493 The Orielles
I found listening to The Orielles debut album Silver Dollar Moment yesterday a glorious experience. 'Yes' I kept thinking. 'Yes,' 'Yes', 'Yes'! Halifax's pride and joy, a young indie trio come out with a joyous, poppy marvel of a record to shake away the cobwebs of winter. It meanders, but that is surely a big part of its attraction as it just invites you to dive back in to discover what intrigued you so much in the first place. Indie album for the first quarter of 2018.
Monday, February 19, 2018
Song(s) of the Day # 1,492 The Estimations
Two classic soul tunes that take us back to the sixties but are newly minted songs and first releases on the Kimberlite label.
Sunday, February 18, 2018
Songs About People # 560 T.Rex
San Francisco Garage Band Burnt Ones, (who have a new album out now), testify to the joys of T.Rex back in 2010, capturing the other-worldly wonder of Bolan's early seventies vision.
Thirty Days & Thirty Studio Producers # 6 John Cale
The Stooges, Modern Lovers, The Marble Index and Horses. More than enough on their own to deserve a slot here.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,491 U.S.Girls
Until earlier on this week I was quite unaware of the existence of U.S.Girls, the project of multi-media Canadian artist Meghan Remy. But I started hearing tracks from her sixth album In a Poem Unlimited, before its official release on 4 A.D on Friday and became intrigued. On listening to it in its entirety, I'd say it's destined to be one of the records of 2018. It's a quite blistering album.
An angry, defiant record, walking the line between art, pop and protest in a quite brilliant way. A State of the Nation address. Whereas Remy has previously drawn on the Ronettes and the girl group sound, In a Poem Unlimited fast forwards into the seventies and beyond, feeding off Blondie, ABBA, Disco 54 and Madonna to create a glorious, swirling feast,tipping a nod to the avant garde with eight minute closer Time, but elsewhere just revelling in the most wondrous grooves and melodies,
So, a highly political and timely album in a week where Alela Diane, Joan as Policewoman and Courtney Barnett have all put out great records focusing on different aspects of the world that women live in. U.S.Girls in many respects is the bleakest and most furious of the lot, commenting on the #me too campaign, male violence and abuse of power, Obama's drone bombing campaign and now to the times of Trump. The promo videos posted here attest to that. It's artistic and social statement but also a wonderfully seductive pop album.
Saturday, February 17, 2018
Songs About People # 559 Jeff Bridges
Swedish band eulogise the idea of being Jeff Bridges. Not a bad thing to want by any means.
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 274 MGMT
I'm still not entirely sure about the new MGMT album. I certainly liked it on first listenings but then all of its eighties reference points began to pall. But Sean, one of the barmen at Rosie's is a big fan and this sounded pretty good last night.
Thirty Days & Thirty Studio Producers # 5 Guy Stevens
Produced Procul Harum and Mott the Hoople, (whose band name he suggested). Chronic alcohol and drug dependency contributed to his early death aged just 38 in 1981. But not before he'd managed a late renaissance with his co-production of The Clash's magnificent London Calling album.
Song of the Day # 1,490 L.A. Salami
Highly promising taster for London singer-songwriter L.A.Salamis's second album The City of Bootmakers coming up soon.
Friday, February 16, 2018
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 273 Madonna
A couple of beers with regular barman James after his shift. He seemed to have some confusion between Debbie Harry and Madonna tracks. Well it was so long ago. I put this on as some explanation of what it was like for those of us who lived through the eighties.
Songs About People # 558 Sylvester Stallone
Rather charming last track from a fine album from the end of last year called Snow from sibling duo Angus and Julia Stone. Where Sly fits into it all is anyone's guess.
Thirty Days & Thirty Studio Producers # 4 Joe Boyd
All of those great sixties folk records. Many of them associated with Island; Fairport, Richard Thompson, Nick Drake, Vashti Bunyan. John Martyn, Incredible String Band and so on and so forth. He also produced Fables of the Reconstruction, the most enigmatic of all R.E.M. albums. But here's Vashti.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,489 Natalia Lafourcade
It has to be said that the new album from Mexican diva Natalia Lafourcade. just out and entitled Musas (Vol 1), is much better than a slap round the chops, false austerity or anything whatsoever to do with those two cursed Gallagher brothers. Lafourcade has been doing this for a while of course. A Grammy winning artist what's she's doing here, presenting a concoction of Latin American folk music is nothing new but everything here is judged to perfection, so feather light, evocative and charming and you're transported at once to a warm Mexican courtyard with the sights and sounds of that part of the world all around you.
All the while, Lafourcade's voice floats through the mix, sometimes backed by the whispered backing vocals of her band. It's all just enchanting from opening to closing curtain. Sometimes you need a winsome indie band, sometimes you need some soul. Sometimes you need some food for thought. And sometimes you just need this!
Thursday, February 15, 2018
Courtney Barnett - Nameless, Faceless
'I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup. And spit out better words than you...'
Hot off the press! The new Courtney Barnett song just released today. Ahead of her new album entitled Tell Me How You Really Feel which is due mid-May. I have to say that there are very few contemporary artists that make me hot under the collar quite like Courtney, since I came upon her at my sister's recommendation five or so years back. I've seen her a couple of times in Newcastle, both wondrous occasions and though not everything she's done has quite floated my boat the way the first stuff I heard did, she is still a wondrous and exciting artist. As for this particular taster for things new Nameless, Faceless is an instant winner, with the kind of lyric that frankly only Courtney can write, treading a similar road to past glories of hers, with slightly more serious intent than we might be used to. This here is newly unearthed treasure!
A few hours later and listening to it again a great way of dealing with male aggression from a talented female artist. Through humour. This song is really about finding a way of coping and making a statement on the evident violence that's clearly abroad in this world. 'I want to walk through the park in the dark. Men are scared that women will laugh at them. Women are scared that men will kill them...' Margaret Atwood's words apparently. But put to a great tune. In just over three minutes. Use your words like Dylan. That's always the key. Apparently punched out on an old fashioned typewriter.The album should be worth waiting for...
Ultimate Painting
Very sad to see that Ultimate Painting are no more. They announced their split a couple of days back. The union of two very talented songwriters Jack Cooper and James Hoare, they released three fine albums between 2014 and 2016 in a whirl of momentum and another was due in the next couple of months but has been scrapped. I shall be listening to their stuff slightly glumly today!
Songs About People # 557 Kendra Smith
And now from R.E.M. fellow travellers. They supported them on early tours. Here's Dream Syndicate, from their splendid comeback record of last year, How Did I Find Myself Here? This, the final track of the album, is dedicated to, and a collaboration with Kendra Smith, the bassist of the original band unit. After her adventures with them, and her time with David Roback and the splendid Opal, she became something of a recluse, living off the grid in rural isolation . This track brought her back into the fold, at least momentarily and it's a haunting and evocative close to the record. Life as a living dream.
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