'Mod suits with baseball boots.'
Sunday, September 6, 2020
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 36 Elvis Costello & The Attractions
'A murder mystery sung by geeks.'
Song(s) of the Day # 2,426 The Umbrellas
Following my post on Venetian Blinds yesterday, we'll continue in a similar vein taking taking the 350 mile road trip from The Blinds LA to The Umbrellas San Francisco.
Taking their lead from the chiming Byrds rather than the chugging Velvets, otherwise Umbrellas draw from the same well as The Blinds. Namely C-86, early Creation, bands like Razorcuts.
Male / female vocals, utterly formulaic dot to dot stuff. Still, the likes of Jeaninnes, Alvvays and Pains of Being Pure at Heart have shown there's a ready audience and always will be for this stuff. After all there's always a generation experiencing 16 to 22 for the first time. Never mind those who have long since waved those days goodbye but still yearn to relive them one more time.
Umbrellas push the boat out too far with Dance, the final track of five on their debut Maritime EP. Here they strip the flesh off the bones off Strawberry Switchblades Since Yesterday without a hint of shame. It's daylight robbery and shouldn't be encouraged or applauded. Otherwise it's promising stuff for those who venerate this Peter Pan way of being.
Saturday, September 5, 2020
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 470 Icehouse
A long discontinued series for obvious reasons. I have been in pubs and The Newcastle Arms has the jukebox on again but mostly it just hasn't felt the same. Last night was fun though, with a couple of the best regulars and a long session of A-Z Jukebox.
Songs About People # 1,166 Charlie Kaufman
'I'm living in a Charlie Kaufman scene.' Song for a man with a specific mind.
Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 30 The Rezillos - Can't Stand The Rezillos
'It's important to know that at the time there were a bunch of punk affiliates who were just silly. Not stupid, with all of the dumb insolence that implies. Nope, just plain silly.'
Song(s) of the Day # 2,425 Venetian Blinds
I have to say I find it slightly hilarious in 2020 listening to so many Indie inclined bands from Los Angeles and San Francisco pretending to be Bobby and Amelia circa 1988. After all, what were they doing except pretending to be Lou and Nico circa 1966.
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That's not to say there's not plenty of fun to be gleaned from the records of these Californian scamps. Because they do it so very, very well. Take LA's Ventian Blinds for example. Their debut album Secret Music is a riot of teenage ennui, slightly exaggerated musical and vocal amateurism and bashful shambling.
As someone who lived through the whole C-86 experience first time round I find the note for note reassembly of its sensibility and sound slightly baffling but certainly enjoyable. Venetian Blinds have a male and female vocalist who bill and coo and bah bah to charming effect throughout the course of the record. The fellow sounds as if he was traumatised by hearing a Pastels record in his teenage years. The girl as if she's more than happy to be his mirror, reflect who he is.
The effect of all of this has been to take me back to the mid-Eighties and make me rather nostalgic for my hair which is now long gone. Secret Music is not a great album really, but it's a perfect one for those who understand, appreciate and enjoy its code and either have their original 7 inch singles of Crystal Crescent / Velocity Girl or are desperately trying to track down a copy that they can afford.
Friday, September 4, 2020
Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 29 The Rolling Stones - Some Girls
Perhaps the Rolling Bones last great album. Their response to Punk.
Song of the Day # 2,424 Hannah Georgas
Perfectly presentable Pop from Indie stalwart. Lead track from her latest All That Emotion.
Thursday, September 3, 2020
Songs Heard on the Radio # 379 The Go Betweens
Great to hear The Go Betweens coming straight out of the news.
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Songs About People # 1,165 John Cale
Wonderful one and a half minute thesis that John Cale is better than Lou Reed. I'm not getting involved.
50 Days of Glam # 31 Suzi Quatro
Suzi and her biker schtick. Her first here but not her last. Chapman and Chinn.
Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 27 Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance
From one wing of Punk to another. Just as angry. You could argue far more inventive though it was never likely to have the same widespread impact. I certainly play Dance a lot more than Bollocks. But then again it was made with the likes of me in mind.
Song of the Day # 2,422 Arab Strap
Aeab Strap are back after an age away. Clearly not mellowing even remotely into middle age, this is accompanied by a bad taste Schlock Horror promo for fans of the genre.
Tuesday, September 1, 2020
Song(s) of the Day # 2,421 Kelly Lee Owens
Really like this record. Perhaps my Jane Weaver album of the year album in the absence of anything from Jane this year. Inner Song the second from Kelly Lee Owens. Percolating electronic music, groovy, syncopated and slightly other worldly.
Plucked from the shelf totally at random on a Bank Holiday Monday when I was looking for something new to listen to and strangely thinking about The Human League, as I was just about to start an immersion in their back catalogue with Temporary Fandoms, the Facebook group I'm a member of.
I had no expectations at all of this as I'd never heard of Owens but very glad I took a chance on it because it's fantastic. Owens is a DJ, hailing from Wales and here is a wonderful case in point of an artist finding their voice.
This is both experimental and accessible. It certainly has the Human League and Seventies electronic dance and Krautrock adventurism in its DNA. I was also reminded of Leftfield's fantastic Leftism sometimes. Occasionally, just occasionally it gets ever so slightly saccharine, (I skipped a track halfway through) but for the most part Owens gets things just right.
Then suddenly, four tracks from the finishing tape comes the record's greatest and most welcome surprise. On Corner of the Sky, Owens compatriot John Cale guests. Magisterial and inimitable in tone, for the seven minutes the track lasts the album is dragged into another realm altogether. Especially when Cale slips into Welsh. The track has a wonderful mythic quality, like a great Ted Hughes poem. It's one of the best things I've heard all year.
Inner Song has much else to recommend it. It's an album to discover and go back to and get to know some more. An hour in a flotation tank free of life's cares and woes. What more could you want.
Monday, August 31, 2020
Songs About People # 1,163 Anya Phillips
One of those mythical Punk people, not as a musician, but as a face of the movement and representative of its essential values. Find her story here. Good that she has a song.
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 29 David Bowie
Remarkably only got to # 24 in the UK singles charts at the time.
Song(s) of the Day # 2,420 Stuart Moxham & Louis Philippe
Marie-Agnes Halle who writes the Piggledy Pop blog listed to the right hand side of this page contacted me a while back to say how much she likes my own humble efforts. I'm more than happy to reciprocate the appreciation. Marie-Agnes's writes Piggledy Pop in French and sometimes the Google translation leaves something to be desired, but she generally focused on things that are very much to my own taste and this post is a case in point of something great that I'm grateful she's directed me towards.
Stuart Moxham was once in Young Marble Giants a group reponsible for one of the greatest one off leftfield musical statements of all in Colossal Youth. YMG produced a number of great singles and sessions too but really as a statement Colossal Youth simply can't be beaten. A definitive statement of what you can do with primitive synths, a cool voice and no end of imagination.
This record does not sound like YMG. It's forty years on from there after all and it would be rather odd to find Moxham still retracing the same minimal keyboard patterns all this time down the line. The Devil Laughs, the record we're concerned with here finds him working with Louis Philippe, French singer- songwriter and gloriously football journalist.
The result is a charming, reflective record, like an afternoon spent wandering round an old and picturesque English village. No attempt is made to be cutting edge. These are quaint meandering melodic songs. Thoughtful moments in time.
Apparently this album has been around for five years or more and is only just being released. I've no idea why because The Devil Laughs has much to recommend it. Thanks again to Marie-Agnes for bringing this to my attention.
Sunday, August 30, 2020
50 Days of Glam # 34 Be Bop Deluxe
Definitely inspired by Bowie and Bolan Boogie. But with charms of it own.
Song(s) of the Day # 2,419 Gum Country
Something of a revelation when I chanced upon it on Friday evening. Canadian duo Gum Country's debut album Somewhere. Locating the soft spot between Stereolab's 'loopy grooves' and Breeders leftfield charge, the record has a lot to recommend it.
Almost the very definition of lo-fi, the record is choc full of delightful and surprising moments and sounds. An indie pick and mix.You may never be quite sure where it's coming from but you might be really glad that is.
Full of eccentric, melodic twists and turns, at twelve tracks Somewhere probably outstays its welcome slightly, but there's plenty of highly diverting underground dissonance on show here.
Many of these songs sound like hits from an alternative and better adjusted musical planet. It Thurston Moore ruled the world, (and sometimes you can only wish he did), this would be the prescribed global diet.
Gum Country in the noble traditions of much of the best Rock and Roll, 'Don't want to grow up. There's too much contradiction.' Who can blame them when they're clearly having so much fun. Scuzzy Indie album of the year.
Saturday, August 29, 2020
Jeremy Tuplin - Violet Waves
Way back in February, only six months ago but it seems like a lifetime away, I went to see Jeremy Tuplin and his band playing at the Cobalt Studios in Newcastle. I'd been incredibly impressed by his second album Pink Mirror from last year and written a glowing review which I'd send to Jeremy. He in turn had liked it and posted it on his Facebook page.
When I saw they were playing my hometown I send him a message asking whether he'd have time for a chat before they played. Very graciously he agreed and on the evening of the gig I spent a good hour talking with him and his band. Mostly about music obviously. I was very aware of not coming across as a starstuck, imposing fan but they never gave me that impression and were simply very chatty and accommodating bunch of people. The gig was terrific too.
That was the last time I've been to a concert in close company of others. Three weeks later the Lockdown curtain fell and we were all herded into this alternative reality that we've been in ever since. A few weeks ago Jeremy's (sorry for the familiarity, but I have met the guy), latest album Violet Waves came out.
It's a companion piece to Pink Mirror, not vastly dissimilar to its predecessor either in terms of its sound or its lyrical concerns. But it's no mere retread either. Put simply its just bloody good work. What struck me most about Pink Mirror is that a persona is adopted in the great English Pop tradition, going back to Ray Davies and including and encompassing Marc Bolan, Kevin Ayers, David Bowie,Bryan Ferry, Morrissey, Jarvis Cocker, Brett Anderson and Luke Haines.
Noble tradition for sure, but there aren't many who attempt it nowadays. Nor is it a conceit that's particularly easy to pull off. But Tuplin, (OK, perhaps I am being over familiar, I only met him for a couple of hours), does so quite effortlessly over the course of Violet Waves. He's louche, he's detached, his eyebrow is permanently arched. He's ironic but you know he'd deadly serious at the same time. This is English outsider Pop at it's very best and its great to see it achieved with such flair and aplomb.
Tuplin's a solo artist, but he's ably supported by a sympathetic band who clearly know their Velvet Underground from their Roxy Music. Violet Waves is another outstanding album and I can only hope that they're allowed out soon to play it to appreciative audiences soon. Hope they get the chance to come to Newcastle again so I can pester them once more, though I realise that might be pushing it!
Songs About People # 1,161 Rick Astley
Not the kindest sentiment perhaps but in the Eighties Stock, Aitken and Waterman were a lot to put up with.
Song(s) of the Day # 2,418 Jenny O
Reminder to self that I should listen to more evening radio in my quest to find new things to enjoy and write about here. A week or so ago doing so helped me chance upon Billy Nomates and her wonderful debut album. Now, listening to Marc Riley's evening show a couple of days back has helped me discover New Truth, the altogether wondrous third album by Jenny O.
Druggy, happy, dreamy and melancholic by turns, it's a record that drags you imperceptibly and effortlessly into its headspace, an incredibly soothing place to be . In this respect it works in a similar manner to Ora Cogan's latest Bells In The Ruins, which I wrote about on here a while back this conjures up and maintains a particular haunting, spectral ambience. By he end of its twelve track run I was utterly won over. Under its spell. So started listening again from the beginning. Only the best records do that.
Jenny O was born on Long Island but is now based in California. This seems appropriate, given the stoned, immaculate qualities of New Truth. The record is rooted in old school songwriting craftsmanship pure and simple. Laurel Canyon meets Harry Nilsson, meets Nick Drake meets Weyes Blood. Somewhere in the early Seventies.
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The album was born from the saddest of circumstances. Jenny contracting a rare condition leading to complete and permanent deafness in one ear. But this is by no means a self pitying record. Nor a one mood one either, this shifts in the most subtle and effecting manner from track to track like sunlight playing across a dappled landscape.
It's difficult to pick highlights here, because every track contributes something to the mood. A truly lovely record. Familiar but strangely fresh. An album I anticipate playing to death over the coming weeks and months.
Friday, August 28, 2020
Widowspeak - Plum
A few years ago I was very much taken by an album called All Yours by Pacific Northwest duo Widowspeak. So much so that I bought it as a Christmas present for a nephew. I suspect he barely played it.
Now they're back with a new record Plum, and I'm rather partial to this too. Nine groovy, shuffling laidback songs that seem purpose built to improve the listeners mood. Somewhere between Stevie Nicks and Mazzy Star if you need reference points. Dreamy, soft psych that is not so much verse chorus verse as evocative, creating and sustaining a rather lovely ambience.
There's also a pleasing simplicity, a modesty about the record that makes it very easy on the ear. Not a record that's likely to shake your world as one that's likely to settle it, and one that's extremely good company for its thirty five minute run.
Songs About People # 1,160 Peregrine Worsthorne
McCarthy were one of the more interesting and individual groups on the C-86 scene.Essentially coming on like a poetic, Marxist Byrds. Here they nod to Peregrine Worsthorne, the kind of know it all toff who seemed to plague the airwaves in the Seventies and Eighties. This shows how much this marginal strain of music was capable of as an expression of artistic discontent with genuine reach. Quite excellent.
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