Listened to the fine Luke Haines afternoon show on Radio Boogaloo today. He's never dull company. He certainly has a fondness for Nikki Sudden. Here's one of Sudden's tales of growing up in the Midlands in the Seventies.
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
Song(s) of the Day # 1,969 Palehound
I know I write about him a fair bit on here but there was something quite unique about Elliott Smith. Although you could tell that he'd listened to a fair bit to The Beatles and Big Star, he did something quite new with their inspiration. He found a way of twisting their source melodies into fresh shapes and taking the listener to a place where you could feel the emotional anguish that he was expressing. As much as any musician I can think of. Such is the gift of the true artist.
Tragically, he's no longer with us. But he has no lack of spiritual heirs. I hear artists and bands all the time and think, 'oh they've been listening to Elliott.' Such was the case yesterday when I made my way through Palehound's new record Black Friday.
Palehound is essentially a vehicle for Boston based singer-songwriter Ellen Kempner. She shares Smith's ingrained introversion, his insecurity, the conviction that the glass is general half empty but every so occasionally half full. There's plenty of wry wit here but also some essentially inadvisable but utterly human wallowing that occasionally achieves real beauty.
It doesn't all work. I'm not really interested that she's 'due for a shitty tattoo,' as she confides on Stick N Poke, but mostly she's pretty good company, like your slightly morose friend, who you realise is self-indulgent but still has the knack of expressing the slivers of acute intelligence you don't really get elsewhere. A lot of damn fine songs on here. I sense that Smith himself might approve.
Tuesday, June 11, 2019
Songs About People # 871 Francois Truffaut
Not the tribute to the great auteur that you might expect. From a band that sound like the German Green Day.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,968 Sparrow Steeple
If you're going to be in a band you might as well push the boat out a bit. Such at least seems to be the maxim of Sparrow Steeple. They push their own personal boat to a very odd part of the lake on their third album Tin Top Sorcerer where the Bryan Ferry of very early Roxy appears to be fronting a band of shambolic astral pixies, not a million miles away from Tyrannosaurus Rex or The Incredible String Band.
It's a very odd conceit and makes for rather mixed results. When they hit the spot it proves very interesting listening indeed. how you'd categorise it is another matter altogether, it's either a music from the distant past or somewhere off in the future.
If you've ever enjoyed anything by the three bands I mentioned above, there might be something for you here. If anything, the fusion of such apparently contradictory inspirational sources make Sparrow Steeple stranger and further out there than all three.
Monday, June 10, 2019
Pip Blom - Boat
Dutch musician and band Pim Blom have been bobbing along on Indie radars for two or three years now. Regulars on Marc Riley evening sessions and the European club circuit, they've generally gathered up a set of favourable if not blazing set of reviews.
So, mid 2019, they finally come to launch their Boat. their debut album in the bigger pond. It's a sprightly but not outstanding product, distinctly Indie, with rattling, chiming guitars and spirited slightly childlike vocals and an overall sound most obviously recalling The Breeders and compatriots Betty Serveert. It's the kind of thing that would appeal to stalwart British radio DJ Steve Lamacq, and that's not altogether a compliment.
This is perhaps the Post-Fifty cynic in me. But I have been listening to music for a while. I was around for The Last Splash and Elastica first time round and though this is a highly spirited version of those records, it still is a version of it just the same.
The album certainly had its moments and is good company for its thirty five minutes span. I tapped my toes with no little enthusiasm for the songs I liked best, most of the ones that I posted here. It's not one I'll be going back to that often. One for evening radio listening rather than my record player methinks.
Songs About People # 870 Barry Goldwater
From the latest School of Language album, 45 which holds up the Trump phenomenon to the light and naturally finds him wanting, During the course of the record they evoke The Goldwater Rule, named after Barry Goldwater who ran for President in 1964.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,967 Jackie Cohen
LA musician Jackie Cohen's debut album Zagg is a very odd but intriguing thing. Sounding like something of a union between Rickie Lee Jones, The Shangri-Las, Loretta Lynn, Cyndi Lauper and Patti Smith if you can imagine such a thing, it certainly stamps out a specific individuality for itself over the course of its eleven songs.
Cohen's husband is Jonathan Rado, half of Foxygen, and like him she sees the musical past as an opportunity for shameless, brazen larceny. But while Foxygen have lost me completely with their recent releases, Zagg is far more interesting, largely down to the sheer quality of the songs and arrangements on display here. Cohen has a bruised romanticism about her. This may be one for those who remember Be My Baby as still one of the greatest records ever made.
While this is certainly an Indie record, maintaining a small, perfectly honed vision rather than breaking out into full widescreen Hollywood mode like say Lana del Ray, Cohen maintains her charm offensive to the finishing tape. She has a definite songwriting gift which is more than matched by her delivery. Should be one to watch.
Sunday, June 9, 2019
Songs Heard on the Radio # 316 Sturgill Simpson
Thought it was Waylon for a minute. Sounded great on a sunny Sunday morning anyhow.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,966 Mariee Sioux
Mariee Sioux's third album Grief in Exile came out last Friday. It's the first I've heard of her, but it took only a few seconds of the opening track Black Snakes playing for it to have me in its grip. Sioux's Native American heritage is enough for the listener to make immediate associations. With Buffy Saint Marie or Black Belt Eagle Scout. But Alela Diane, Karen Dalton, Vashti Bunyan or Sybelle Baier are also summoned forth as the record plays on.
Sioux has a haunting spectral voice, and it floats above her band's folkish accompaniment. what's immediately obvious is that Grief in Exile is a beautiful, decorative record. She casts her spell and it's maintained over the course of the record. What the lyrical concerns are is not immediately obvious but the immediate sense that's invoked is one of redemption and healing and of ancestral memory.
There's a fetching simplicity and minimalism here that's much akin to the best records of Diane, Dalton and Bunyan a good record to turn to when you want to drain yourself of the cares of your world. A superlative record and a great way to start June.
Saturday, June 8, 2019
Important Gigs in My Life # 11 The Flamin' Groovies - 6/6/19
A couple of days before I was due to see the Flamin' Groovies, the band published an announcement on the Facebook page for the gig:
"Please be advised that it is with great sadness and concern that the Flamin' Groovies must announce that Roy Loney took a bad fall at the airport in San Francisco on his way to join the European tour, and sustained a head injury for which he was hospitalized.
Roy's condition is presently not stable, and he is unable to travel. While we all hold hope for Roy's speedy recovery, it is unlikely that he will join the Flamin' Groovies' tour.
The tour will start as planned, with the band performing a set including much of the "Teenage Head" album.
The tour will start as planned, with the band performing a set including much of the "Teenage Head" album.
We greatly appreciate the cooperation of the concert promoters, fans, and everyone in dealing with this unfortunate situation, and would like to assure that the band will put on a great show that will not disappoint."
They did not as it transpired but the announcement did. The opportunity to see Loney playing with Cyril Jordan had been one of the reasons I had been looking forward to seeing them play. Both founding members and probably the two most important figures in the long and illustrious career of the band, two men who had only recently started playing again decades after Loney's departure from the Groovies in 1972.
I was particularly interested in seeing Loney as he had been a major player on their two fabulous early albums Flamingo and Teenage Head. Mick Jagger had said at the time that the latter was a better record than Sticky Fingers. High praise indeed but Teenage Head certainly deserves it. It's one of the most underrated albums in the whole rock canon. Loney had left shortly afterwards after apparent musical differences with Jordan, the former seeming to favour the Stones road while Jordan preferred to follow the Byrds and Beatles route.
Anyhow, I took the taxi to Newcastle's Cluny with somewhat mixed feelings as I was going to see a band who had clearly had to rethink how they were going to play things in a couple of days. it might be rather messy. I shouldn't have doubted them.
By contrast with most of their immediate contemporaries the Groovies favoured a stripped down Rock and Roll approach which harked back to the Fifties and the British Invasion bands of the mid-Sixties. They had marginal commercial success but in many respects were ahead of their time, looking forward to the more direct approach of Punk. In many respects their true contemporaries were The MC5, The Stooges, The Velvet Underground and later the Dolls and The Modern Lovers.
By the time Punk finally came along the Groovies were again slightly out of time, their approach too trad and their playing frankly too good to fit. Famously The Ramones supported them at their first UK gig at The Roundhouse in '76 and nobody talks about the headliners when remembering that gig nowadays. A few years on down the line the lack of recognition along with the rigours of touring and escalating drug issues within the band ground them down. That it seemed was that.
Decades on as often happens the band reconvened with a mixture of old and new members. they even put out an album of new material in 2017. Reconciliation with Loney appeared to be the icing on the cake. But his fall and withdrawal from the tour seemed to call that into question.
The band arrived promptly onstage at nine and after some initial mic problems kicked off. Into Shake Some Action. It was some statement. Probably the band's best known track and I'd say one of the best songs ever written, kicking off with it was some act of confidence. As if to say, 'We can play this first. We have plenty more up our sleeves.'
Next, a cover of The Byrds 'Feel a Whole Lot Better'. Again, an interesting thing to do. 'This is our heritage. This is where we come from.' As the evening proceeded I wondered where they were going to go. To The Stones or The Beatles. In the end they covered both territories consummately. They were a band who utterly knew exactly what they were doing.
The younger players in the band slotted in just wonderfully. The Groovies have had so many members down the years that the central question seemed to be not who you are but do you understand and fit in with the ethos. All five players evidently did. The drummer and support guitarist took turns with Loney's songs and though neither of them could match him voice wise the songs themselves sounded just fine. Altogether it was a wonderful evening. A celebration of the sheer joy and power of music. Appropriate on the night that Dr.John died though we didn't know it at the time.
The crowd were hugely appreciative. Of a certain age naturally and including a number of people I knew personally. It was a wonderful Newcastle night. A party in a city which I've learned over the ten years that I've lived here, really knows how to throw them.
The set was short but frankly it didn't matter. Everybody who was there got more than their moneys worth. They played one song for their encore and it was inevitably Slow Death. One of their finest and most blazing statements. I'm so glad that I was there to see them the evening seemed to be represent everything that the band stand for. They didn't mention Loney once. Not because they didn't care. They clearly care all to much. But they understood the thing to do was get out there and play and give their audience a night to remember. They did that utterly in spades. It was a joy.
Songs About People # 868 Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen
Plenty of songs around about these two. Here's one.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,965 Vanishing Twin
The comparison points for Vanishing Point's rightly hailed new album The Age of Immunology are immediately and plainly apparent. Broadcast and Stereolab. Stereolab and Broadcast. That's not a particularly surprising place of reference nowadays. These two bands seem to have a much greater profile in terms of their influence nowadays than they did when they were putting out records and touring.
Not that The Age of Immunology deserves to be confined solely to that particular box. It's a fascinating and rewarding listen. Taking forward the groundwork laid by these two bands into wonderful new vistas in a similar way to what Jane Weaver has done with her last two albums, this an utterly blissful record.
Of course neither Broadcast nor Stereolab were working in a vacuum. They themselves had a very clear set of influences and inspirations from Dada and Surrealism to Science Fiction and Exotica which Vanishing Twin explore and twist into new shapes with admirable relish.
So while the territory is familiar, the execution is quite brilliant. The comparisons made by the Rough Trade review of the record are apt, 'sultry songs for musicians', 'library music from a parallel universe'. we're entering into the realm of cliche here but frankly The Age of Immunology invites them. Look at the record sleeve or read the song titles; Cryonic Suspension May Save Your Life, Planete Sauvage, Language is a City (Let me Out). The whole package is a demonstration of the most refined literary and cultural taste of a certain sort and Vanishing Twin are utterly fluent in the language.
No surprise then that this is also top of the list for new releases of the week on the Rough Trade site. Vanishing Twin are just made for the hipper than thou set. No criticism intended. I started to fall in love with this halfway through my first listen and I'm not altogether certain I won't have to go out and buy it, even though I've already got more than enough records as it is. One to listen to in your polo neck and carpet slippers. The Age of Immunology is as good a record of its kind as you are likely to hear all year. The most glorious form of escapism imaginable.
P.S. Here's a press release from the band which describes their philosophy :
'To Vanishing Twin, one of the most exciting young groups in England at the moment, the term is used in dismay on living through a period where borders are being hardened, walls are being built and new boundaries being needlessly imposed. Band members may come from Belgium, Japan, Italy, France and America but they have all made England their home and, on this album, they are heralds of the much better future that is being rapidly dismantled as we speak. The Age Of Immunology - which is sung in all the primary languages of the musicians who made it as well as English - is the soundtrack for those who still believe in the pluralist dream, where the other is embraced and learned from, not isolated and destroyed.'
Friday, June 7, 2019
Thursday, June 6, 2019
Song(s) of the Day # 1,963 Paper Wings
This truly seems like a golden age for great American roots albums
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Song(s) of the Day # 1,962 The Slow Summits
The Slow Summits need only to get ten seconds into The Spirit of the Lyrics the first song from their debut EP Languid Belles for the listener to reach one inevitable conclusion. Ye Gods! It's Edwyn Collins. Reincarnated as a toothsome frontman for a band from Linkoping, Sweden.
The resemblance borders on ludicrous. Anders Nyberg, for the toothsome Swede is he, has sold his soul to come back as Edwynsson and his band met at the crossroads at midnight and drew up a pact with the rest of Orange Juice so as not to feel left out. With Amelia Fletcher on backing vocals to give it proper Indie credentials, this is a quite astonishing note for note twelve minute sacrifice at the altar of Postcard's finest.
Frankly it's a rather astonishing listen. Nyberg is Collins down the last chortle, shrug of his shoulders and winsome grin. Slow Summits, Orange Juice to the final jingle jangle.When in the EP closer the band whip themselves in a frenzy with cries of 'balderdash!' and a final languid plea. 'Give us some meaning nothing less. Or give us your home address...' You have to wonder exactly why they are doing this but being slightly glad that they are. Highly odd.
Tuesday, June 4, 2019
Songs About People # 864 Maria Schneider
From Deus, one of the favourite bands of a late friend. The late Maria Schneider.
Covers # 105 The Weather Prophets
The Weather Prophets do a fine job on Tim Hardin's utterly wonderful You Upset the Grace of Living When You Lie.The B Side of She Comes from the Rain.
Monday, June 3, 2019
Songs About People # 863 Nat King Cole
From Adam Green who is returning to the musical fray shortly.
Sunday, June 2, 2019
Doug Tuttle - Dream Road
American musician Doug Tuttle once of Mmoss has long specialised in the kind of thing he unveils on his latest album Dream Road. Yearning, jangling, occasionally ever so slightly psychedelic guitar driven pop music. Rooted in Big Star, Teenage Fanclub, Byrds and '65 and '66 period Beatles.
On Dream Road he does it again but perhaps better than he's ever done it before. This is mining from a classic seam and Tuttle knows exactly how to go about his craft, exactly what he's after and he doesn't let devotees of this stuff down for a moment. Songs don't outstay their welcome for a moment, most of the tracks here see no need to go beyond the three minute mark. Just as it should be.
So, if you treasure your copies of 5D, Rubber Soul, #1 Record or Grand Prix, then there's plenty here which should take your fancy. Dream Road never sounds derivative though because though Tuttle's sources of inspiration are clear he understands the mechanics of this stuff innately and captures the essence. Every song made me marvel at his ability to make the familiar sound so fresh. The essential secret is that he's a damned good songwriter pure and simple.
Ten songs that sound as if a heart is breaking, just the way it did when you were eighteen, Tuttle never puts a foot wrong. Lennon, McCartney, Chilton and Blake would surely doff their caps to Dream Road's achievement. A golden, and quite lovely guitar record.
Songs About People # 862 Franklin D. Roosevelt
And another song from the same record. A not altogether flattering portrait of FDR.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,959 Kishi Bashi
Penny Rabbit and Summer Bear the opening track of Seattle, Washington musician's new record Omoiyari is a quite beautifully graceful song. Occupying a space somewhere between Nilsson, The Shins and John Grant's similarly titled TC & Honey Bear, it lays down an impressive marker for the rest of the album to live up to.
It proceeds to do just that. A concept record with real orchestral sweep about the Japanese internment camps in the States in World War II, Omoiyari proceeds with stately poise. The influence of James Mercer and Sufjan Stevens in particular on Bashi's songwriting seemed evident to me but they're excellent points of origin, both being artists who specialise in the realm of memory and its poignancy and resonance, there are ten tracks here and they all share a delicacy and wonder that is altogether compelling. Bashi embroiders his songs with a beauty that is utterly stark when set against the unerringly tough subject matter of its lyrical content.
A Japanese American, Bashi stitches together a haunting and evocative memorial to a moment long gone that need not be forgotten. Least of all in the political space we find ourselves in right now. Love and tenderness are the most abiding emotional sentiments here, how personal experience and the budding and blossoming of relationships come to establish a stark resonance when set against the harrowing and irrational boot print of world events.
There's a narrative here should you wish to piece it together. That's not always necessary with music though. Omoiyari's tale is clear as day. Well worth experiencing at a single sitting, Omoiyari is a moving and powerful document indeed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)