The fourth man on the moon. After retiring from NASA he dedicated much of his energy to painting, documenting his experience in space. Still with us, at the age of 86.
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Moon Cycle # 29 Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Written by Paul and Linda McCartney and first recorded on RAM. But it might well have been written with Screamin' Jay in mind.
Papernut Cambridge
And to follow that, an article I wrote about a wonderful Papernut Cambridge album a couple of years back:
Song(s) of the Day # 462 Papernut Cambridge
: A great weekend with a good friend coming up from Cambridge and staying for a couple of days. Beer, talk of the past, football, music. Co-incidentally Papernut Cambridge is my discovery of the week, particularly their album from last year There's No Underground, (strangely a line from a Go-Betweens song, You've Never Lived, is that deliberate?). A peculiarly English album though. Haunted by the ghosts of Syd Barrett, Luke Haines, Robyn Hitchcock, Lawrence, Tajinder Singh, Ray Davies, Steve Marriott, Marc Bolan and Jesus and Mary Chain (Scottish I know but there's definitely some of that resigned lilt in the vocal delivery).
It's a very specific record and struck an immediate chord as soon as I heard its first notes . It's now on repeat play. Deeply evocative of suburban avenues and England's dreaming. Here's a paragraph from The Quietus review;
'This is a great rock & roll record. Ian Button may be "haunted by the insects in his dark imaginings", as he intones on opener 'The Ghost Of Something Small', but outside that buzzing hook-laden head of his, it's a leisurely ride through glittering neon, the fluorescence that illuminates rock's shadowy nighttime world. The lights that feel like they're never gonna end whilst terminating all too quickly – there's 12 songs in 30 minutes here. But no matter, press play again and we're back amidst the exiled warriors on Electric Main Street. Just as one would never fault T. Rex for being derivative, so here the nods to rock's past – The Stones, Bolan himself, The Replacements, Kinks, and Mary Chain – are simply the lineage continuing itself. All sung in that sweet sinister voice a la Jim Reid, with just as sharp an ear for melody.'
Ian Button was previously in Death In Vegas and Eighties under achievers Thrashing Doves. The record sounds like someone who's done a long, studious apprenticeship and is now coming into his own. He knows his stuff, and has a small, beautifully formed vision. He's listened to a few records in his time. The album is drenched in influences but nothing is slavishly aped and he makes something quite his own of it.
The record contains more golden moments then many feted Creation bands achieved over the course of entire careers. Each song is beautifully and lovingly crafted. The lyrics are wry, observant and consistently witty. A memory of a childhood world that is gone now but still there in the streets, the sounds and smells that remain. Anybody who loves guitar music, has a certain record collection and a few years in the tank will respond to what the album is saying. The band is still a small, independent, cottage industry concern on the wonderfully named Gare du Nord label. They deserve to outsell the increasingly ludicrous Noel Gallagher but of course will not. The world is wrong. Do yourself a favour and track it down.
Thirty Independent Record Labels # 2 Gare Du Nord
So only fit to move onto the record label. Gare Du Nord, one of my favourite things at the moment. Clearly run on a budget but that in itself is a considerable attraction. They have Papernut Cambridge, they have Cold Spells, Joss Cope and District Repair Depot. They also have American and German artists and name themselves after a large station in Paris but they are nevertheless beautifully English, even if it is just English people on their way to France for a break. They have a compilation album called Ebbsfleet International to illustrate this. What more could you want? Everything they release is of interest in some way.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,544 District Repair Depot
Whimsical. That's the name of the game with District Repair Depot's eponymous album, released recently on Gare Du Nord Records. It's a train of thought and songwriting first set in motion by Ray Davies and set in stone the moment Syd Barrett decided to sing, 'I've got a bike, you can ride it if you like..' A train of thought that's kept English bands and artists like Robyn Hitchcock, XTC, Television Personalities, Julian Cope, Bevis Frond and Cleaners From Venus more than happy ever since. The sound of wet England, rainy afternoons, second hand shops, libraries, and railway station waiting rooms.
And District Repair Depot do this tradition very proud. It's a slightly variable record in terms of quality but it essentially sticks to the established tradition described above and cast a small spell over the course of its eleven tracks. Don't expect to be desperately surprised but if you know and like this stuff you should at least be charmed.
A core kernel of this school of thought is a wilful, yet oddly determined sense of under achievement, a key feature of the British character. So if the record really doesn't merit more than seven out of ten you can't help but suspect that this is the mark it is secretly hoping for. And anyhow, opening track Barry Jones is something of a classic in itself. District Train Depot paint a world that is forever England.
Wednesday, April 11, 2018
Thirty Independent Record Labels # 1 Sub Pop
Time to flex my muscles with a new series. Focusing on current Independent Record Labels and starting with one of the most enduring of all. Originally the home of Grunge of course and long associated with that sound, it now has a far broader remit and a fine roster; Beach House, Father John Misty, Frankie Cosmos, Goat, Jesca Hoop, Low, Mark Lanegan, The Notwist, Shabazz Palace and Sleater-Kinney are on the label among numerous other notables. Including Melbourne's splendid Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever who have just released this blistering preview of their debut album Hope Downs, out in June. The song is called Talking Straight.
Songs About People # 586 Vida Blue
Funky like a train. 1971 single by Albert Jones in honour of the then Oakland Athletics, when that was a very cool thing to be. They went on to win the World Series from 1972 to 1974 with Vida Blue often on the mound.
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Song(s) of the Day # 1,543 Delsbo Beach Club
Swedish bands tend to do that C-86, Sarah Records, fey and carefree thang very well, while maintaining a Scandinavian feel to proceedings. Delsbo Beach Club, from the here and now, illustrate that point. These are their opening statements, delivered in confidence and with touching yodelling vocals and shimmering guitar, bass and drum backing which promise much for the future.
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 287 Lauryn Hill
This song still sounded pretty special and turned some heads in Rosie's last night.
Monday, April 9, 2018
Song(s) of the Day # 1,542 The Shacks
April comes. Easter goes. And with it this wonderful bolt of retro-kitschadelia arrives out of the blue. At least new to me, but I haven't been paying attention. The Shacks have actually been around for a while despite their tender youth. New Yorkers, just short of or barely into their twenties but already having made a mark for themselves with their cover of Ray Davies' This Strange Effect, (written originally for Dave Berry, it's been a Song of the Day on here), which became an iPhone commercial starring Shacks vocalist Shannon Wise. They've now followed that up with debut album, Haze, and it's a sure sign that Spring is finally here.
It's an absolute pearl of a record. Not dissimilar in feel and mood to Whyte Horses second album, Empty Words, which came out last month. Or the wonderful Olden Yolk eponymous record from the month before. Like both of these, it's record collection pop music of the highest order, recalling at various points Os Mutantes, Astrud Gilberto, Sixties Girl Bands, Psychedelic and Bubblegum Pop, Soul, soft Velvet Underground, Dee Lite and De La Soul. Oh and the beach, with the sea lapping on the shore on a gorgeous, sunny day. That will give you the vaguest idea of its beauty but its best to just listen for yourself. It touches quite gorgeous heights at points.
Most of all it seems like a golden dream of sixties kitsch. One run through the record was more than enough to convince me. Thirteen tracks of crafted invention, wonderful songwriting, beautifully recorded echo-chamber gems, remarkable for ones so young. Given that the band have no small profile already it seems sure that Haze will do very well. It's a record with a hip quotient but also a realisation that Pop is sometimes the coolest place of all to be. Something of an instant classic!
Songs About People # 584 Astrid Kirchherr
Took Stuart Sutcliffe from The Beatles, gave them haircuts and acted as something of an early muse. A song for her with appropriate video. Though let's face it, they're not The Beatles.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,541 Francoise Hardy
Not given an enormous fanfare, as far as I can tell, though I imagine it was in her native France, but a new Francoise Hardy album, (her first in six years), was released last Friday. Entitled, Personne D'Autre,(No-One Else), from its opening notes, it's full of the plaintive, distinctive melody that has made her such a distinctive artist since the Sixties. Featuring ten originals and two covers, it's a deeply affecting release, mapping the passing of time sung in French with You're My Home a sole venture into English. It reminded me of everything that I've loved about Hardy's work, while being very much its own thing, a record just as much about what's here and now as what has been and gone.
Hardy has lived a remarkable life. Contemporary of the Stones and Dylan in her heyday, and married to Jacques Dutronc, now aged 74, Personne D'Autre is a remarkable testament to her enduring talent. The specific qualities of her voice and delivery are still in evidence, and the record showcases a strong set of songs, clearly focused on the processes of age, memory, loss, and the search for peace and love . It's elegaic and quite beautiful, perhaps the bookend to a superlative career and body of work though we hope not. She's an icon, in an era where we have far too few of them with us. Appropriate in its year of release, where so many of the records that have jumped out at me thus far have been driven by female artists, she still shows quite effortlessly how it needs to be done.
Sunday, April 8, 2018
Songs About People # 583 Dylan & Caitlin Thomas
The Manic Street Preachers have just returned with a new album Resistance Is Futile. And from it comes this, their tribute to Welsh Poet Dylan Thoms and his wife and muse Caitlin. It's an effective piece of music and lyricism, harkening back to one of their golden records, Everything Must Go in terms of its orchestral scope and sadness, a constant with this particular band. With James Dean Bradfield duetting with compatriot The Anchoress, it sounds like a gutsier Beautiful South with the Manics trademark guitar heroism and poignancy added to the mix. I'll have to give the rest of the record a listen as it's clear they still have something to say. On this promo, you get the lyrics, which deserve an onscreen feed and some lovely shots of Welsh countryside and coastline.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,540 Mien
Two tracks from the fine, eponymous debut album from Mien, just out. Powered by Can influenced rhythms, the band are an indie super group of sorts, made up of members of Black Horrors, Earlies, The Horrors and Elephant Stone, the record is an ambient and atmospheric treat.
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Songs About People # 582 Robert Redford
Birmingham band Distophia, and that appears to be Birmingham, the Midlands, rather than Birmingham, Alabama, (according to my research), sing for the Sundance man in Husker Du, Superchunk and Buffalo Tom tones.
Hinds - I Don't Run
Spanish group Hind's second album, I Don't Run, just out, is a more mature update on their first, Leave Me Alone, from a couple of years back. If you liked that, you'll probably like this, and the opposite also applies. The guitars have conversations, in a similar way as the girls' harmonies and vocal rejoinders do, in that determinedly babyish way that people in their teens and twenties sometimes have, (a grumpy middle-aged man speaks), of their determination not to grow up until they decide to. They rattle away throughout with consistent vim and vigour, a girl band in the mode of the early Libertines or Kings Of Leon, their boy-band equivalents.
This is probably my own personal issue with the record and the band. The melodies and twists and turns are fine but the irritation factor, for those not in their age bracket, is certainly always there. It's rather like an evening out on the town with people thirty years younger than you, invigorating and energetic but liable to descend into a series of downed group shots at the bar or someone putting four consecutive Spice Girls on the pub jukebox.
So while I'm glad to have Hinds around as they have better taste than that and would never go for the second option, I'd still be concerned that one of them might throw up at some point in the evening, and being on the edge of an ongoing conversations about young peoples' romantic entanglements is never quite as involving for you as for them, as you have a lot less hormones and are probably concerned about the state you'll be in at work tomorrow. A seven out of ten record from me, but of course it's plainly evident as I suggested myself, that these are the words of a fifty two year old man. If I was still twenty, it would probably get nine. But I suspect the band have yet to write their killer song, (I Feel Cold But I Feel More, posted here, is the closest they get), or make the album they are capable of. I hope both will come further along the line. meanwhile, back to my cocoa!
Song(s) of the Day # 1,539 Cavern Of Anti-Matter
Two tracks of instrumental funkiness from Tim Gane's post-Stereolab project. Very much continuing in the same vein with perhaps a slightly tougher edge, these come from their new album, Hormone Lemonade, and are frankly state of the art.
Friday, April 6, 2018
Song(s) of the Day # 1,538 Hop Along
Being original is necessarily a concern for any guitar band wanting to put out music in 2018. Sixty years plus down the road pretty much everything has been done before in some shape or form. Philadelphia's Hop Along seem to realise this. Their approach to this conundrum often seems to be to start each song in the middle of nowhere rather than conforming to conventional expectations of song structure such as guitar intro, verse, stroke, verse, chorus and so on.
This approach tends to harvest somewhat mixed results on their third album Bark Your Head Off, Dog, just out. Undoubtedly led, by singer Frances Quinlan's questing, wayward vocals, each song heads off on a trip into some kind of unknown like a set of journeys without maps. As their audience you can't help but admire their sense of adventure even if you sometimes wonder where exactly they are trying to take you. By the end of each of these small treks you're often none the wiser and are left puzzling whether you'll ever get to know these songs even on repeated listenings, so determined are the band to avoid conventional terrain.
So I was left puzzled by my first encounter with Bark Your Head Off, Dog. By the end of it I couldn't really pick out a favourite song as each of the nine available followed a similar, apparently plotless route. Though melody is definitely a preoccupation here it's melody of the sort that Mary Margaret O'Hara used to favour, so we're left to watch a band set on determining their own time and space rather than doing things the way for example The Beatles suggested, for most of their recording career anyhow, (if you don't count the likes of Revolution 9).
Whether I'll return to the album on a regular basis, I'm not sure. I was looking forward to hearing the record but said my farewells to it after the first run through with somewhat mixed feelings. I admired the bands resolve without having a clear idea of what exactly they were setting out to do. Only time will tell whether it unwraps gifts to the listener over time that aren't immediately apparent. I'll have to get back to you on that one.
Thursday, April 5, 2018
Holy Wave - Adult Fear
Holy Wave are a West Coast American Psychedelic guitar band who can be and inevitably will be slotted into a broad category along with a number of other West Coast American guitar bands; Cool Ghouls, Fresh & Onlys, Allah Las and Las Rosas come immediately to mind.
Their latest album Adult Fear draws its inspiration from the great mid-Sixties Haight Ashbury adventure without ever really sounding like a Sixties record. Somewhat misty in terms of focus, though this is clearly very much wants to be, it's full of imprecise, meandering tracks that don't frustrate because this band are very good at what they do. Turn off your mind, relax and um... you know what to do...
Song(s) of the Day # 1,537 Halo Maud
Halo Maud is a French artist who occasionally reminds the listener of the otherworldly airiness of Bjork but certainly has her own thing going on. Her music exists somewhere between Psychedelia, Prog and Ambient categories and has a wonderful haunting quality. She's already released a number of tracks on Heavenly Records this year, sung in turn in French and English, ahead of a debut album which should be worth waiting for.
Wednesday, April 4, 2018
Songs About People # 580 Peter Knowles
'God's footballer. Hears the voices of angels above the choir of Molineaux.'
A first for this series in that the name of the subject of the song is not mentioned by name in the title or indeed in the lyrics. But the song is quite definitely about Peter Knowles, a skilful, (if petulant) footballer, who played for Wolverhampton Wanderers in the sixties, was on the fringes of the England squad, but gave up the game at the height of his career to become a Jehovah's Witness. Billy Bragg plays poetic tribute.
Song of the Day # 1,536 Those Unfortunates
Those Unfortunates are an English indie band in the traditional, old fashioned sense. They are on the Gare Du Nord record label which specialises in this sensibility. They sing songs about such British concerns as buses, tea, books and eccentric people. Here is their latest song about a man called for John Cronin who presumably isn't the Scottish habitual criminal and sex-pest. It rattles along in exactly the way that we want such songs to do.
Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Song(s) of the Day # 1,535 Baloji
Born in Congo in 1978, Baloji moved to Ostend, Belgium when he was three and his music is a fascinating fusion of the influences of his native continent and his adopted one. Wonderfully showcased on his new record 137 Avenue Kaniama, (released on Bella Union), a brilliantly shifting coat of many colours moving from Afrobeat and Soul, to Rap and Ragga and wherever else his muse takes him, the album is pure spiritual joy.
Monday, April 2, 2018
Songs Heard on the Radio # 250 Saint Etienne
How wonderful this sounds on headphones right now. There's something quite magical about Saint Etienne's first album Fox Base Alpha.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,534 Queen Of Jeans
My new favourite band, Part blah,blah,blah....
You can hardly escape influence when you're trying to create stuff, certainly not if you choose to be in a young guitar band in 2018 drawing on the Rock and Roll idiom. What you really want to to do if you can is draw on a rich range of sources and mix up your ingredients to such a degree, chucking in the necessary inspiration and energy of your own of course so you keep your audience guessing, and listening on intrigued.
Such is very much the case with Philadelphia's Queen Of Jeans and their debut album, Dig Yourself, which came out last Friday. It's a fascinating and enigmatic record, minding me at points of The Breeders, David Lynch sountracks and Madder Rose as well as more contemporary artists Lana Del Ray, Warpaint, Rat Boys, Big Thief and Hop Along. While all the while charting its own course and seeking its own voice, something its on their way to without fully taking ownership of by the time the records end. But there's certainly much to praise here and wish to return to to explore at greater depth at a later date.
Dig Yourself changes pace and direction on a regular basis during its relatively brief nine-track duration. But as with its title, it generally maintains a positive, meditative, if slightly haunted glow. What its lyrical concerns might be elude me as they're generally lost in the mix. But the melody and hook count is consistently high and the record seems sure to make the band a lot of new friends.
Where they're going next is anyone's guess, for now this spirited set of howls at the moon will more than do. Queen Of Jeans, remember that name. Because they seem sure to me to be going places and judging by this it will be a highly interesting journey.
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