Great to hear a young Brighton group not born when Stone Roses put out their best records but determined to put out their own take on that all these years later.
Friday, September 7, 2018
Thursday, September 6, 2018
Songs About People # 694 Fyodor Dostoyevsky
One for Fyodor from Black Thought. Full of Crime & Punishment references.
Song of the Day # 1,691 Radio Orwell
From March this years though I've only just come upon it, Ipswich's Radio Orwell and a song called Stolen Sense of Wonder. The band take their name from Ipswich Town's 1985-86 relegation team and a defunct local radio station. They have the evocative feel of the best Independent music of that time; The Go-Betweens, The Chills, The Railway Children, Sarah Records. Quite magical!
Wednesday, September 5, 2018
Songs Heard on the Radio # 268 Thom Yorke
New from Thom Yorke and really rather lovely. From the forthcoming Suspiria soundtrack.
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 319 Camera Obscura
I've posted this before but it's one of my very, very favourite things and I'm delighted to see it's appeared on the Rosie's jukebox.
Song of the Day # 1,690 Gooch Palms
From Melbourne to Newcastle, Australia. To my knowledge the first band from that city to be featured on here.
Tuesday, September 4, 2018
Songs About People # 692 Sandy Koufax
One for Brooklyn and LA Dodgers pitcher and all-American icon Sandy Koufax from early-millennium punksters Weed Patch.
Song of the Day # 1,689 School Damage
More Melbourne, Australians, in the apparently endless tide of bands from that city. School Damage have a simple Post-Punk sound. Young Marble Giants come to mind as a reference point on their straight ahead latest album A to X.
Monday, September 3, 2018
Song(s) of the Day # 1,688 Say Hi
Seattle's Say Hi, the long term project of Eric Ebogen are back with a new album Caterpillar, Centipede on Friday. Ahead of it are these two, the first a New Wave chugger, in the vein of The Cars, the second sounding something like an outtake from Nevermind.
Sunday, September 2, 2018
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 318 Unknown Mortal Orchestra
The choice of young Sean the barman last night from Unknown Mortal Orchestra's latest last night. And after a couple of plays I like it.
Kelley Stoltz - Natural Causes
Kelley Stoltz has a new album out, just over a year after his last Que Aura. Made up of nine tracks recorded just after that album was made, it's a relatively low profile released on a Spanish label. It's a highly likeable record evoking all kinds of wonderful Eighties records, from Felt to the Bunnymen, The Smiths, The Teardrop Expodes and OMD. Stoltz is a master of mixing up this medicine and coming up with something utterly fresh, even as it reminds you of other things. Natural Causes is a wonderful addition to his considerably classy portfolio.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,687 Luscious Jackson
Two from Luscious Jackson 1994 debut album Natural Ingredients.
Saturday, September 1, 2018
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 317 The Teardrop Explodes
Having greatly enjoyed listening to the new Kelley Stoltz record, (review coming), yesterday, I was minded of great moments of Eighties pop. Such as this. So it went on the jukebox at Rosie's last night.
Bill Ryder-Jones - Mither
A very welcome return today from Bill Ryder-Jones an old friend of this blog. Back in 2015 his West Kirby County Primary was one of my album of the year. A sad but almost profound state of the nation record, documenting wet, wind-swept winter days in the more derelict parts of Birkenhead with a graceful, quiet dignity. I saw him play in a small club in Newcastle supporting the record. It was a fine evening and he signed my copy of West Kirby at the end of the night.
And now he's back, with a new song Mither, and accompanying promo shot in a furnishing factory in Keighley, Bradford, with an album, Yawn, to follow in November. It's essentially melancholic, that's Ryder-Jones essential stance, but there's bruised determination and beauty ingrained in the melancholy. He's a talent, that's for sure. Mither often seems as if nothing in particular is happening but it's a highly engaging nothingness and when the guitars start massing like crashing waves as the song progresses it makes me glad he's back. I look forward greatly to the new album.
Songs About People # 690 Tangerine Dream
More elegaic stuff from Davey Woodward & the Winter Orphans, veering from Forster here to his formative influence, Dylan.
Song of the Day # 1,686 Davey Woodward & the Winter Orphans
Echoes of Robert Forster on the opening track from Davey Woodward, (formerly of The Brilliant Corners), & the Winter Orphans recently released eponymous album.
Friday, August 31, 2018
It Starts With a Birthstone - Albums for August
Lots of interesting albums released on the last day of August but as I haven't had time to process them, they'll have to wait for September and the leaves turning brown. In the meantime...
Song(s) of the Day # 1,685 Watoo Watoo
Bordeaux duo Watoo Watoo released their fifth, and apparently last album, Modern Express, earlier on this year. It's a compact and infectious record, easy to pigeon-hole as Indie and equally easy to like. Squaring the circle between Stereolab, Broadcast, St. Etienne, Felt and Francoise Hardy it's full of neat and beautifully written pop songs.
This stuff will never entirely go out of style though it's been round the rails in different guises many times before. Watoo Watoo have been together for over twenty years and so qualify as craftsmen. It's to their credit that the songs sound so fresh, like a long married couple who have never fallen out of love. Modern Express parks itself behind Say Sue Me's Where We Were Together and alongside Plastic Shoelaces' eponymous debut as the favourite old school Indie record I've heard this year.
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 316 The Woodentops
The Woodentops Giant has appeared on the jukebox at Rosie's. And that is a...
Song(s) of the Day # 1,684 The Just Joans
'Cult Scottish Miserabilists' according to their own media. Back for the first time in a decade with an album forthcoming.
Wednesday, August 29, 2018
Songs About People # 689 Mary Todd
Psychedelicists Honey Radar, (in the Brian Jonestown school of things), appear to be paying tribute to Abraham Lincoln's wife Mary Todd, who was said to have held seances in The White House during her time there.
Song of the Day # 1,683 Jess Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter
Seattle's Jesse Sykes has a quite astonishing voice, something like Hope Sandoval cast utterly free from all restraints and taking flight. She's backed by loose, languid Psychedelia. It's been described, not inaccurately elsewhere as 'Spectral Folk Rock'. The overall effect is not too dissimilar from Tim Buckley's Blue Afternoon with a female lead. This is just out and quite gorgeous, you'd have assumed ahead of a new album, seven years since their last.
Tuesday, August 28, 2018
Song(s) of the Day # 1,682 The Sopwith Camel
The first San Francisco Psychedelic band to have an American Top 40 hit. Here's that and the second song from their debut album in '67.
Monday, August 27, 2018
Songs About People # 685 Tina Weymouth
Tribute to Tina from an also-ran New York band who preferred to be called 'The Shoits' and played CBGB's at the same point in time as she did.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,681 Smokescreens
Los Angeles Smokescreens have a playlist at the foot of their Spotify page. On it they lay down the recipe for what they cook up on their records, ingredient by ingredient. You get The Clean. You get the Chills. Close Lobsters, Television Personalities, The Wake, Monochrome Set, Orange Juice, New Order, Go-Betweens, Pastels, Servants. Pretty much every set of pale white boys who picked up a set of guitars and strummed them earnestly since the early Eighties.
It has to be said that sometimes on their second album Used to Yesterday they follow the template laid down by this tradition a little too slavishly.But in moments on the record when they hit their rhythm they're capable of an effective jangling momentum.
Sunday, August 26, 2018
Song(s) of the Day # 1,680 Ethers
There seems to have been a lot of interesting music coming out of Chicago and catching my attention of late. A good album from Clearance and a great one from Cafe Racer to name just two. And now this, a fine eponymous debut offering from Ethers, something of an Indie supergroup composed of members of a number of local bands.
With a sound driven by that swirling organ sound that the Velvets pretty much stamped a trademark on for their '69 Live album and which first turned The Modern Lovers radio on and supplemented by frantic, urgent playing and singing that brings to mind Flying Nun legends The Clean and The Chills,(and elsewhere Television and The Feelies), this is a smart little record.
Very much stripped of pretension but constantly inventive within the constraints of the melodic American alternative Rock and Roll tradition of the last fifty years, Ethers doesn't rip up any rule books but slots neatly in with much stuff that you may already cherish. The kind of band you'd be thrilled to chance upon on a Saturday night on the town.
Most of all Ethers themselves seem to be having a wail of a time, all you can really ask of this stuff. It's all thoughtfully streamlined and beautifully concise. Twelve driving songs of between two and four minutes and not a duffer among them.
Saturday, August 25, 2018
The Goon Sax
The third taster from The Goon Sax ahead of their second album We're Not Talking which is just three weeks away now. It's difficult to describe just how good they are right at the minute. I'll try to when that record arrives.
Song of the Day # 1,679 Kurt Vile
Ahead, we can only hope, of a new album, (his first 2015), here is Kurt Vile, back and in magnificent form. An odd kind of counterculture anthem, sticking it to the man for slackers everywhere. 'I park for free...'
Friday, August 24, 2018
Song of the Day # 1,678 Superfine Dandelion
West Coast '67 band from their sole album, sounding somewhere between Buffalo Springfield and The Youngbloods. Recently revived on the first episode of Hap & Leonard.
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