Christopher Walken probably has more songs named after him than almost anyone else. He's that kind of iconic figure. Here's one.
Saturday, October 12, 2019
Friday, October 11, 2019
Songs About People # 959 Mary Quant
Mary Quant eulogised by enigmatic Laurent Voulzy. Who comes across here as the French Ray Davies.
Allah-Las - LAHS
Allah-Las settle back into the saddle and make their way out into the desert once more on their horses with no name with their new record, LAHS their fourth in all since their eponymous debut came out in 2012. That horse metaphor frankly is exactly what the record sounds like, if nothing else this band are subscribers to the 'if it ain't broke don't fix it', school of thought.
In their case you can't really blame them because they came up with such a cool metier from the off. That laidback sound that was minted first time round by bands based in LA and San Francisco between 1965 and 1967; we're talking Beau Brummels, Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Doors, Love, Moby Grape, Monkees, Grateful Dead and so on and so forth here. Nothing on LAHS strays from that essential formula and fans of the band will not be disappointed, even if less committed listeners might wonder if they could have pushed the boat out to a greater degree this time round.
Personally I'd say it would be churlish to be over-critical. Allah-Las are quite upfront about what they like and want to do. Made up of a set of four guys who used to work in record shops, they embody that idea, the 'have you heard this?' one. Music obsessives, but not snotty ones, there's a generosity and positive vibe to absolutely everything they've ever done. Stoked by the inspiration of the bands listed above as well as myriad other artists who you've never heard of, (that's record store wisdom for you), they've mastered the contours of a sound and sensibility that is quite effortlessly cool.
So if LAHS doesn't find the band arriving at their creative apogee, (I'd say this probably isn't quite as good as their previous two albums, Calico Review and Worship The Sun), such calls are necessarily marginal because Allah-Las do exactly what you'd expect them to do here and they do it very well. If bands are going to tread water all, you can really hope for is that they'll do so as smoothly as on here.
So, if I found my attention wandering slightly as the album moved deep into its second side, I can't bring myself to be too critical. I just love the altar of cool that fuels Allah-Las engines, so if this feels sometimes like the most shapeless season of a top rate long running programme at least it's clear why the whole thing has proved so successful. Allah Las are as good at what they do as any band in the world. And they know it.
n.b. It should also be noted that they sign off on the record with one of the best songs of their entire career, the imperious ride of Pleasure, which imagines Kraftwerk singing in Spanish not German, in stetsons, ponchos and four day stubble. An instant classic.
Song of the Day # 2,090 Brix & the Extricated
Never entirely sure of where I stand on Brix & the Extricated. But this new one has the feel of a small classic.
Thursday, October 10, 2019
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 422 The Chills
The Chills magisterial Pink Frost finds its way to the jukebox at The Newcastle Arms. Thanks to me it has to be said.
Song(s) of the Day # 2,089 Worn-Tin
I'm not really on top of this one. This record Cycles by Californian odd bod Worn-Tin came out in February. Never mind, it still sounds fresh to me. Full of that idiosyncratic otherness that marked out Barrett, Bowie, Bolan and Beck in turn as singular talents. Not that I'm saying that it's destined to change the world as they all did to one degree or other. Still, it's a very notable record.
Altogether a queasy take on familiar pop forms. It's not clear if Worn-Tin, (real name Warner Hiatt), is entirely well. According to a recent Facebook post he likes drawing on the wall with crayons. You're not sure if this is all rather contrived, (not that there's anything wrong with that of course, see the people listed above), but the man certainly has a rare pop instinct and sensibility that deserves attention.
The production is sparse and the California sun shines relentlessly down. It's not a flawless record by any means. Some of the songs just don't gel, while others just go out too far, like a badly advised and incoherent drug trip. But the good songs are really good! Although this is offbeat, at heart it also has the purest love for the very best pop records.
Something of the missing link between Donovan, Nilsson, Head- era Monkees and the Flaming Lips, you may feel like you've had a sugar rush if you listen through to Cycles at one sitting. But I'd suggest you'll probably go back to it at a later date just to check that you heard what you thought you heard. Respect where it's due.
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Songs About People # 958 Eddie Merckx
'The Cannibal' gets an odd C & W tribute. Merckx is not actually mentioned by name but a bicycle is heavily featured.
Wilco - Ode To Joy
In a fascinating and revealing interview in the latest copy of Uncut Magazine, Wilco leader Jeff Tweedy makes a remarkable point. 'Nobody needs more Wilco music'. Interesting, given that the interview is designed for nothing at all except to promote and discuss just that, Ode To Joy, the band's eleventh in all since their first in 1995.
It's a frank and dignified admission. Nevertheless, Wilco are something of an institution among American Rock groups. Possibly not many people's favourite band, they still occupy a special place in the scheme of things. Offering an ongoing model lesson about how to age with grace and intelligence. Ode To Joy puts forward further testimony to that fact if it's necessary. I've been living with it over the last few days since its release. Its a beautiful and nuanced record. Though given that this is Wilco why would anybody expect anything else?
They're master craftsmen. With a back catalogue that's a rich and textured narrative of nothing less than the journey through life. Compiling a best of would be an almost impossible task, (it has actually been done of course), as their best known songs are by no means necessarily their best. Each album they've released is studded with jewels. The copy of Uncut that houses the interview also offers a giveaway CD compilation of their songs, covered by an extraordinary range of artists from Handsome Family to Cate Le Bon, Parquet Courts, Courtney Barnett, Low, Kurt Vile and Twin Peaks and many more. It's almost as if they're all queuing up just to pay their respects.
Ode To Joy is a quiet record, except for its drums which take centre stage along with Tweedy's voice and clearly iterated lyrics throughout. It was almost the first thing I noticed about it when I started listening to opening track Bright Leaves. 'These drums are a bit obtrusive' I thought to myself, 'Thudding. Not sure that I like this.'
The interview goes some way to explaining why this might be the case. The record was recorded in Chicago, where the band are originally from but where only Tweedy and percussionist Glenn Kotche still live. Subsequently, the album was initially pieced together by the two of them before the other four core band members became involved and so the drums, martial and thudding, like a heartbeat, (or else a funereal one), are at the core of proceedings throughout.
If this marginalises other players to some degree, most notably lead guitarist Nels Cline, one of the world's finest this is quite understandable. Wilco are at a point of their career where there is a pressing need for them to make things interesting for themselves first and foremost. It seems they must have done so, because the record is a rich and many splendored thing. It may well rank with their very finest although the band are probably past the stage where it is likely to be recognised as such.
Ode To Joy wrestles and itches with the contradictions of being middle aged. In the here and now in this difficult point of human history, watching the madness ebb and flow on the daily news, all the while given over to your own private fears and woes, anxieties for your nearest and dearest, guilt about enjoying and revelling in those tiny moments of levity and beauty that life throws at you on a daily basis. Constant wondering about life.
I love this record. It's content to be small and subsequently makes a big statement. There are eleven songs here and they're all worth getting to know, making your own. Each and every one of them concerned with life and the thought of death. It offers consolation and hope, yes and joy though the latter it has to be said is joy of a tired and fragile middle aged kind. I'm rather a tired and fragile middle aged bloke so in many ways it feels as if it were made for me. When it comes to a close with An Empty Corner you might feel like shedding a tear at its quiet, certain, hard-won profundity. I can only thank Wilco for making it.
Song(s) of the Day # 2,088 Carla dal Forno
One of the oddest of a set of very interesting albums released last Friday. Look Up Sharp by Australian Carla dal Forno, which kicks off like an Antipodean cousin to Jane Weaver before mutating into something altogether more strange.
What it seems to want to do is breathe new life into one of the most leftfield of all musical phases and instincts. That moment in Britain in the late Seventies and early Eighties when any number of arty, independent operators; Durutti Column, Eyeless in Gaza, Monochrome Set, David Sylvian, Virginia Astley, Wire, The Cure, Young Marble Giants and countless more decided to use their talents to open up a perspective that highlighted the essential alienated separation of human existence.
Look Up Sharp is a pretty lonely sounding album. It's also a rather good one. Hardly designed to set cash tills ringing it should nevertheless find the small set of people who will appreciate it. It may remind you of someone you were attracted to as a teenager but never really got to know. Not a record that necessarily wants you to like it. But all the better for that.
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Song of the Day # 2,087 Inverted Jenny
Orange, California band with great name, (taken from that of a super rare stamp), and neat opening gambit.
Monday, October 7, 2019
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 421 The Mojo Men
Pre Haight San Francisco band. Probably best known for their version of Buffalo Springfield's Sit Down I Think I Love You, their biggest hit. This sounded pretty good coming out of the jukebox on Saturday afternoon too though.
Song(s) of the Day # 2,086 Wives
If there's one thing I'm always hungry for it's a proper New York Punk album the way they used to make them. There seems to have been no shortage of these lately. Mystery Lights, who I witnessed playing a blistering set last Thursday night at Cluny 2 in Newcastle, an experience I'll have to write about soon. But also Beechwood, Parquet Courts, Bodega and umpteen others. Punks not dead. Even now apparently.
And now Wives, from Queens arrive at the party with So Removed, their debut album, a record brimful of 'attitood' that is both instantly familiar and invitingly fresh, an indication that these ingredients still have plenty to offer. The wall of sound guitar assault, pounding drums, the full on relentless attack, waves of massed, desperate vocals, all present and correct. None of what's on show here will come as a surprise to anyone who has ever bought a Heartbreakers, Suicide, Ramones or Voidoids record but that's not to say those who have won't welcome this record with open arms.
Wives calling card is hardly originality but there's plenty of conviction and spark on show. With a sound that encompasses the first CBGBs wave of bands but also sprinkles Velvet Underground, Jim Carroll, Sonic Youth, Pixies, Band of Susans and many more of the usual suspects liberally into the mix. The whole record is played out in the wired drama of the Manhattan night, steam rising from the manholes and no lack of menace and dread on show. Pure New York.
The pace is pretty much relentless. You may feel you need to come up for air on occasion. All in all though So Removed is a pretty much an unqualified success. Its just fabulous to see so many bands seeking to breath new life into this golden chapter of musical history and succeeding with such abandon, swagger and fire.
Sunday, October 6, 2019
Songs About People # 956 Billy Corgan
Epic instrumental tribute to the deeply talented but slightly silly Smashing Pumpkin frontman.
Kacy & Clayton - Carrying On
Canadian Folk / Country duo Kacy & Clayton are prolific to say the least. And consistent. Consistently damned good that is. Carrying On, is their third album in four years, and their third since 2016's brilliant, Strange Country, which landed up sixth in the It Starts With a Birthstone end of year Album of the Year list.
Carrying On is a case of, 'if a thing ain't broke why fix it', not that anybody who has ever enjoyed any previous Kacy & Clayton record will be complaining about that. Short, sweet tunes with an Appalachian twinge. vocals shared between Kacy Anderson and Clayton Linthicum, (though she takes the lion's share), loving crafted and embroidered like a top of the range buckskin jacket.
Anderson has a rich nuanced voice reminiscent of Loretta Lynn, Emmylou or Margo Timmins. The musical setting is exquisitely rendered. Carrying On carries on in the best possible way. Another quite immaculate offering.
Song(s) of the Day # 2,085 Good Morning
It was early yesterday morning that I first listened to Melbourne's Good Morning. Their new album Basketball Breakups to be precise. They made my morning good. Eight laconic, spontaneous sounding but utterly thought through meditations on the strangeness of life in the style of Ray Davies, Jonathan Richman, Stephen Malkmus, Evan Dando, Courtney Barnett and Jeffrey Lewis. It all has an immediate and winning charm.
It's so great to come upon a record as instant and appealing as this in dark times such as these. A reminder that life at its most basic can just be a breeze, a Saturday wiling away the hours with best friends. Basketball Breakups is a reminder of the best moments of your teenage years, all served up on a platter of buoyant melodies.
You kind of know who the staples of the boys from Good Morning's record collection are. The artists listed above for the most part and Mr. Davies most of all. Frankly you could hardly want for young musicians to have better guiding mentors. Each and every one of these knew exactly how to go about writing a tune that broke down life's complexities and put it back together again from the outsider's perspective to give the loneliest adolescent something to grasp onto; a side to root for, as he or she makes their way through those strangest, most difficult of years.
Basketball Breakups is a dappled and sunlit record. Brief, but also profound in the way Catcher in the Rye is. Troubled at times, but also aware of the community of family and friends and the consolation that will always provide. A reminder that however bad it gets we are never and never will be fully alone. Make your morning a Good Morning!
Saturday, October 5, 2019
DIIV - Deceiver
On a week where there were any number of other exciting new records released, (which I'll be writing and posting my thoughts about on here over the coming days), DIIV's new album Deceiver was probably always going to be up against it. Still, I gave it a listen and here are my thoughts.
This is a band that have garnered no little attention, never mind notoriety over the last few years. The notoriety has mostly been nothing to do with their music. Drug related heroin chic instead, which will always impress some but frankly doesn't me on any level. The interest they've attracted in relation to the music they've put out is another matter entirely. Three decent albums and several worthwhile singles, over the last seven years.
Given what they went through during the making of last record, 2016's double Is The Is Are?, it's probably a bit surprising they're still with us at all. So for that we should be grateful as they're certainly not a bad band. But what does Deceiver have to offer? A series of peaks and flatlands really, difficult to review completely impartially for someone of my age.
That's because DIIV's is a deeply referential and indebted sound. Most obviously to the early Nineties Shoegaze scene, and most particularly indebted to My Bloody Valentine, Pale Saints and Ride, but also near contemporaries Smashing Pumpkins. I saw and listened to most of those first time round and can still recall the thrill of doing so echoing down the years all this time later.
Deceiver rarely if ever departs from this template. As a result it generally depends on the strength of the individual song as to whether it all comes off or not. Some tracks do cut the mustard, notably on Between Tides recent single Blankenship and epic closer Aceron. When they do hit their stride, DIIV can blow up something of a storm. I suppose it's hardly the bands fault that they've got the likes of me standing at the back of the auditorium, arms folded thinking ' Hang on, didn't I hear this in 1990?' Meanwhile the front few rows will be full of teenagers or twenty somethings experiencing this for the first time and being thrilled by the experience.
What does seem to be lacking is an ability to really engage the uncommitted listener. The lyrics are often buried in the mix and when they are discernible are abstract at best, what this often results in is piecemeal mix and match assemblies tailored almost entirely from the offcuts of Isn't Anything, Nowhere and Siamese Dream. Perfectly presentable. But quite lacking in terms of qualities of its own.
So while I drifted willingly along to Deceiver as I listened through to it from start to finish this morning, I was never either fully engaged or fully convinced. It's a record that deserves 7 out of 10 at most and despite the occasional palpable thrills it does serve up, you can't help thinking that DIIV, musically at least, are coasting somewhat, and slightly cynically at that, and could certainly do better.
Song(s) of the Day # 2,084 Lightning Dust
On the first Friday of October, a morning that proved to be full of interesting, new releases, this particular one, Spectre, the latest from Lightning Dust, hit me like a bolt from the blue, if you'll forgive the pun.
In the same way as Mega Bog's wondrous Dolphine turned up, a few months back, this is a record that arrives with little or no fanfare, but appears fully formed, crammed with arresting melodies and a commanding narrative thread, demanding that you investigate further and get acquainted with the artists proffering the gift before you.
Lightning Dust are Vancouver based Amber Webb and Joshua Wells who formed the band in the mid 2000's to provide them with an outlet for their other musical project, the distinctly heavier Rock concern Black Mountain. This has proved to be an altogether more ethereal affair, driven by a brooding, electronic pulse.
Although the tunes here are accessible, the lyrical themes are less so, but bear rich promise of a record to truly immerse yourself in over the darkening winter months of 2019. Spectre appropriately is a haunted record, like the glossy surface of a deep forbidding lake, rich with the gifts of memory, loss and sensual experience.
A few immediate comparison points that struck me. Sharon Van Etten's similarly stark and brilliant Remind Me Tomorrow, Arcade Fire's austere hysteria, though I'd have to say that Lightning Dust have trumped that band in my affections already. Also, and most strikingly, the record's dignified bearing minded me of Patti Smith at her declarative peak, (Redondo Beach and the album Wave immediately came to mind), almost as high a compliment as you could wish to bestow on an artist.
Spectre richly deserves these plaudits I assure you. On first play its up there with the very best records I've heard this year. Or many a year for that matter A magisterial, assured album. One that grabs your attention from its opening notes and holds you rapt like a classic Hollywood thriller until its final reel. Quite majestic!
Friday, October 4, 2019
Thursday, October 3, 2019
Alasdair Roberts - The Fiery Margin
Scotsman Alasdair Roberts continues to plow a determined, crooked furrow. Almost twenty years into his career now, he puts out records and plays live shows that reach out to a particular audience and are deeply appreciated by that constituency.
On latest album The Fiery Margin he adds more grist to his particular mill. Baroque, honed Folk enquiries, carved out with loving attention, one foot in the past, the other planted firmly in the present.
An excellent review on the Folk Radio site, far more informed of Roberts lyrical concerns than I am, details the specific focus of scrutiny of the tracks of The Fiery Margin. Roberts has a historian's eye for detail, and a musician's gift for channelling them, chiselling out tunes that stand on their own merits if you don't wish to investigate the lyrical subject matter further.
With an assembled band of musicians and backing vocalists deeply tuned to his mission statements, the record is best experienced at a single sitting. With all the intimate warmth of a Postgate / Fermin soundtrack, but as with all the best children's fare the constant sense that deeper themes are being explored and ancient wisdom unearthed.
It's a shame that Roberts work is unlikely ever to reach out to a broader audience than it currently commands. He's too far into a career to expect to suddenly bask in the spotlight recently shone on the likes of Richard Dawson.
Mainstream audiences perhaps are unready for songs written from the perspective of a gargoyle to the mason that created it, (as with Common Clay here). This is music designed for a select and selective congregation but not precious in terms of its endeavour. Roberts is the genuine article. A gift giver.
Song of the Day # 2,082 The Springfields
Not Dusty and co. but a mid to late Eighties American concern who distilled the essence of C-86.
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
Tuesday, October 1, 2019
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