Saturday, October 23, 2021
Albums of the Year # 64 My Morning Jacket - My Morning Jacket
Louisville, Kentucky's My Morning Jacket's eponynous new album takes a strange departure points. It is, it seems 1972. America's Horse with No Name is Number One in the Singles Charts.My Morning Jacket have just embarked on a cross country tour with Stillwater, the fictional namd from Almost Famous and all is very much right with that world.
There's nothing wrong with this approach and attitude to life. I like nothing better than sitting back on Saturday night to immerse myself in a well realised vision of the past, whether it be Withnail & I, Almost Famous or Dazed ^& Confused. Like them , I believe in yesterday.
My Morning Jacket is certainly a well realised vision of the past. Quite a triumphat one actually if that's your thing. Every solo is note perfect. Every lyrical croon spot on, hitting the missing link between Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Grateful Dead.
I really enjoyed listening through to this record although I did find myself wandering sometimes exactly why I was listening to it when I might have been listening to Zuma or American Beauty instead. Still, it's a set of beautifully registered songs of eternal yearning. Here's a band that very much know exactly what they want to do and My Morning Jacket fids them doing just that.
The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 443 Super Furry Animals
'prodigiously talented and intelligent Welshmen.'
Song of the Day # 2,827 Ritt Momney
I can tell you nothing about Ritt Momeny except that this song lives up to its name and is a sunny start to a Saturday morning.
Friday, October 22, 2021
Albums of the Year # 65 Guided By Voices - Earth Man Blues
Needed to write about this. A chance hearing of a track from Earth Man Blues, the latest from Guided by Voices on the radio last night, made me wonder why I hadn't listened to it. The answer to this of course is plain and clear. Guided by Voices release and have released so many albums over the years that it's frankly almost impossible to listen to them all unless you're particularly determined in this respect.
Anyhow, I'm pleased to report that Earth Man Blues is excellent. Probably in the way that most Guided by Voices are excellent I imagine. It sounds just like them. It has everything you might expect of a GBV record. All those Who powerchords, The Who always strike me as their formative influence. The reminders of Wire, if Wire had chosed to play it a little bit straighter and just churned out songs that could have been hit singles as I imagine they might have done if they hadn't been so Art School. The vague hints of Seventies Gabriel in Pollard's voice. Probably just about the time he decided to leave Genesis. Oh and R.E.M. Round about Document, when Scott Litt seemed to be treating Michael's vocals and Michael himself seemed in danger of losing it.
Oh, and of course it sounds like Guided by Voices. They've been around long enough and have more than a rich enough legacy to be regarded on their own terms. Especially when they're putting out records as good as this. Really they're remarkable. They're leftfield of course. Eccentric as you could possibly be in many ways; the song titles, the lyrics, the twists and turns within virtually every song. But GBV, more than any band I can think of, make the leftfireld accessible, through their evident love of melody and memories of fiddling with the radio dial way back in the youth.You can hear the Cheap Trick, The Cars, Grand Funk Railroad, Aerosmith. Still.
So I've no idea where this fits in in terms of the Guided by Voices catalogue. Hey, I have to post a song every day on here, I haven't got time to listen to everything they ever did regardless of how good it is. It's another wonderful GBV album. Why is that not a surpise? They really have no right at all to still be this good, this far down the line.
Thursday, October 21, 2021
Songs of the Year # 66 Kira Skov
More Kira and a choice selection from the record. Her duet with Mark Lanegan, Idea of Love.
Albums of the Year # 66 Kira Skov - Spirit Tree
The delightfully named Kira Skov is new to me. Something of a Danish Patti J. Harvey, she's been a spectre on the scene in her native Denmark for the best part of three decades now without making much of a splash elsewhere, save for those in the know.
Her latest record Spirit Tree should bring her to the attention of a wider audience. Largely because it's made up of duets with the likes of Mark Lanegan, Bonnie Prince Billy, Bill Callahan, John Parish and Lenny Kaye, but also because it's really good, pure and simple.
This largely sticks to a formula that we're familiar with by now. The elfin siren, with a tall brooding man hovering somewhere at the edge of the frame simmering with dark intent. Murder Ballads essentially. We've seen this before with Lee & Nancy, Nick & Kylie, Mark & Isobel, this particular road is a well known and trodden one.
For the most part Skov sticks to this script and it's probably where the record is at its most successful. Occasionally she comes across as a little more whacky as on Dusty Kate where she starts warbling 'Do your Kate Bush thing for me ..' repeatedly and it doesn't really work. It's important somehow to play it totally straight in this particular sub-genre. That's how to extract the black comedy from this sort of heightened melodrama.
There's much here that does work however. Skov has a truly spectral voice and she and her partners in song combine eerily on several occasions. Idea of Song her duet with Lanegan, and Love is a Force, where Callahan joins the fray, are particularly effective, probably the record's highlights.
I'm a sucker for this dark seance schtik, and have been since I first heard Dancing Barefoot and Some Velvet Morning back in the Eighties, round about the time I got used to and began to love how Nico sounded on Velvet Underground records.
Not all of this comes off. As I've hinted Skov, is prone to occasional barmy, leftfield turns which break the spell somewhat. Perhaps it's slightly overlong and might have benfitted from some judicious pruning. But there's much here that should appeal to the crowd that likes to dress in black.
The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 441 D'Angelo
'all singing, all istrument-playing, dope-smoking, rap-quoting, Black Adonis...'
Song of the Day # 2,825 Jordana & TV Girl
Excellent selection from popy new album in Avalanches vein.
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Songs About People # 1,307 Michael Ironside
Michael F****** Irinside according to the song title but we'll keep things clean. Song for an actor with an incredible CV.
Albums of the Year # 67 Teenage Fanclub - Endless Arcade
TF come good again...
Teenage Fanclub are one of those bands that you're glad are there. Or at least I am. I've been with them pretty much from the start. From the moment I first heard Everything Flows back in 1990 and bought the single. They have a sound that draws openly on a grand tradition wherein they invest their own emotions and experiences to forge an experience that's both familiar and comforting. They have an honesty and sincerity that many bands would kill for but which cannot be bought. This is why they've lasted.
So where does 2021 find them. Endless Arcade, their eleventh, (by my calculations), finds them in the same, but slightly different place where they've been for much of their career. Working on the same Pop and Rock seams, (Fanclub crucially do both). Big Star, The Byrds, The Beatles, Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young & Crazy Horse and their own rich legacy. Rolling riffs, easy melodies, guitars, honest, open lyrical addresses.
I listened to Endless Arcade a week ago on the day of its release and it made little impression. I was even slightly disappointed. Now, a week later, I'm listening to it again and it makes much more sense. Unlike Dinosaur Jr. their most obvious surviving contemporaries and comparison point, Teenage Fanclub are plainly experiencing middle age here and doubt and pain are creeping in to their habitually upbeat demeanor. But their basic DNA is still in place and continuing to come up with the goods.
It's not difficult for fans of Teenage Fanclub, and there are many, to identify reasons for the molecular shift going on in this record. Firstly, Gerry Love, one of the band's three song writers has departed, all this time down the road, to concentrate on his own project Lightships. He's inevitably a considerable loss. Love's songs have always been a fundamental component of the band's appeal. Meanwhile Norman Blake, probably the band's nominal leader to all effect and purposes has also been going through well documented marital separation.
But Teenage Fanclub and the values they represent are still here, I'm pleased to report. Euros Childs, formerly of Gorky's Zygotic Mynci has joined the core, pretty much as a replacement for Love, it has to be said, and he contributed something to their sound, the ethereal wistfulness he's known for. Meanwhile Blake and Raymond McGinley keep working away on what they're known for too. Rich, heartfelt melodicism.
So if there's sadness here, there's also renewal. I'm glad I've come round to this massively on my second listen to this and look forward to playing it a lot more over coming weeks and months. Teenage Fanclub's recipe has always been a simple one. Here they add something fresh to the mix. Unlikely to make fresh converts, Endless Arcade should satisfy devotees who have been prone to this band's specific charms from the start, As ever, looking backwards but moving forwards. Check out the sleeve. I think I'm onto something.
Song(s) of the Day # 2,824 Buffalo Nichols
Oxford, Mississippi's legendary Fat Possum Records issues a genuinely Blues grounded record, the finally honed eponymous debut from Buffalo Nichols. A beautifully, lived in record that harnesses the vast legacy of this great tradition to modern production values to wonderful effect.
Allied not unnaturally on contemporary political concerns, Buffalo Nichols simmers with a quiet rage, reminiscent at times of the work of Ben Harper, it's altogether a beautifully realised recprd.
Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Waiting For the Sun by Barney Hoskyns # 2 Ricky Nelson
Doo Wop, R& B Lieber and Stoller and then the white Pop conveyer belt that came to define LA in the early Sixties. Ricky Nelson, Eddie Cochran and the odd cast of characters who would find their place in the sun in the coming years; Sonny Bono, Jack Nitszche, Kim Fowley, Lee Hazlewood and Phil Spector.
Albums of the Year # 68 The Catenary Wires - Birling Gap
It's odd but strangely delightful to witness major players on the Twee Indie scene of the late Eighties mature into middle age more than thirty years on like a fine wine. Such is the case here with The Catenary Wires latest album Birling Gap.
Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey once figured in spindly Indie outfits such as Tallulah Gosh, Heavenly and Tender Trap. But it's interesting to see where their journey has taken them. This is a record that has a much in common with Sandy Denny as it does with Orange Juice and that's just as it should be.
The sleeve of the album is an immediate giveaway to the record's intentions. It's a photograph of steep chalk cliffs and the waves crashing into a pebbled beach. An incredibly English image and this is an incredibly English sounding record, owing something to The Kinks and The Zombies as well as Tracy Thorn.
On Mirrorball Fletcher and Pursey reminicise about where it all started in an Eighties disco on the cusp of adulthood. It's all incredibly sweet and not for a moment the bitter variety.The past is where it should be, a happy and incredibly distant memory, not the stuff of anguish and regret. Birling Gap is like leafing through a treasured photo album but its feet are very much mired in the here and now.
The album gallops along. In its own words, 'as English as the weather.' Safe and warm, comfortable in its own skin. Fletcher and Pursey have learned enough over the years not to make their harmonies pitch perfect. It's the slightly off key nature of proceedings that provide the essential charm to this project.
A home counties Nancy and Lee but with incisive political awareness to boot, cuttingly critical of the much evident English intolerance of these times . Birling Gap is a treat, like a well stirred pot and plate of scones and jam in a village tea room on a sunny afternoon.
Song of the Day # 2,823 Furrows
Nicely honed singer song writing from Balitmore based Furrows. Definitely in the Elliott Smith school of thinking. Opening track from latest album Fisher King.
Monday, October 18, 2021
Albums of the Year # 69 Lord Huron - Long Lost
A rich, thick slice of Nostalgia. Sungs from the Lost Highway. For the time when Roy Orbison, Dion, The Everly Brothers and Del Shannon were in their prime and vaguely overwrought but utterly sincere melodrama was the norm. Los Angeles Lord Huron came to my notice a couple of days ago even though they've been round the block a few times, latest album Long Lost is their fourth in all since their debut almost ten years back.
This is classically tasteful stuff, with its heart, soul and stetsons stuck in the mud of 1964. Though it's actually looking back from there to Hank, Marty Robbins, Roy Rogers and Shane. Perhaps best heard in short bursts just as Orbison and Shannon were singles artists essentially.
It's slightly difficult to maintain this level of cool intensity and not dabble in corn occasionally. In some ways a record that sounds like this has no earthly justification for existing in these cynical times. Lord Huron know just what they're doing mind and shift the angle and tempo of attack sufficiently to maintain the listener's interest for the most part.
Also they have a handful of absolute peaches on here. Most notably the title track, which is one of the best things I've heard this year, even though it doesn't really sound like it comes from this year and that's precisely what makes it work. Roy or Del would have killed to take a shot at this one and the drama and yearning are milked to perfection.
It's difficult to know exactly who the market for this record and band are. It's perhaps a bit too conservative by nature to really appeal to the cool set. I'd say though it's a much, much better record than many that are being highly vaunted right now, made by artists making a far greater effort to be seen in the right company and strike the right poses. Long Lost makes its case modestly but with state of the art precision, leaving a mellow and pleasurable afterglow.
Bob Stanley & Pete Wiggs Present State of the Union - The American Dream in Crisis - # 18 Louis Armstrong & His Friends
Fabulous, unexpected, if slightly overlong, cover of Give Peace a Chance.
The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 438 TLC
'The best song Prince Rogers Nelson never wrote.'
Song of the Day # 2,822 Sam Fender
Same Fender is a proper 'local hero' where I live. A young, smart, poiltically committed bloke from North Shield with real commercial wallop. Much of his stuff is a little too mainstream for my tstes but I can get behind this. Something of a Geordie Springsteen.
Sunday, October 17, 2021
Albums of the Year # 70 Constant Follower - Neither is, Nor Ever Was
A Pessimist is Never Disappointed, the site listed at the right hand side of the page, which has directed me towards so much wonderful music over the years, which otherwise I might have missed out on, seems to have done it again.
This time their review of Neither Is Or Ever Was... the debut album from Scotland's Constant Follower. It's a sparse and spacious record. Someone between Folk and Indie and one that appeal to fans of Frightened Rabbit and John Martyn to give two basic signposts.
It's immediately obvious that this is a Scottish record, something that's immediately is quite clear as soon as the male and female singers within the band start to sing. This may lead you to visualise yourself being transported across the Scottish Highlands as you listen. As good a way as any of experiencing this gorgeous and reflective record.
It isn't necessarily an album with an enormous variation in terms of tone. It's more intent on establishing a mood and maintaining it, something it does to utterly gorgeous effect over the course of its ten track
run.
Rather a wonderful listening experience once you've finished for the week and are winding down to the weekend. This is how I first listened to it yesterday afternoon. This immediately demanded a place in my end of year countdown which I'm currently running through. It might be a while until I post this there again.
The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 437 Supergrass
'Yet anothier in the list of Classic Number 2's...'
Song(s) of the Day # 2,821 Church Girls
Surface, the first track of Philidelphia's Church Girls latest album Still Blooms has all the desperate last stand anguish of a classic New Wave from The Clash, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers or errm, Kim Wilde.
The record continues in the same vein. Ten missives from the barricades. This kind of stuff always thickens the blood evern if it not unnaturally sounds very old hat by now. It's a very solid record anyhow/
Saturday, October 16, 2021
Waiting For the Sun by Barney Hoskyns # 1 Esther Mae Jones
My sister has always bought and still buys me the best birthday and Christmas presents. She understands my tastes and obsessions culture wise better than anybody and always chooses the greatest gifts. I sometimes take a while in playing the records, watching the films and reading the books she gives me but I always get there in the end. This is a book she gave me for Christmas in 1997 and I'm just getting round to reading it now.
It's Barney Hoskyn's lavish and wonderfully written musical history of LA. Hoskyns is an excellent writer. Skirting the realms of academia in terms of his research and depth but always remaining thoroughly entertaining as well as readable at one and the same time. The first twenty five pages of Waiting For the Sun detail the LA of the Forties and Fifties focusing mainly on the Golden Ages of Jazz and R&B.
The Jazz pages are a roll call of cool. Miles, Bird, Art Pepper, Chet Baker, Ornette and the like. But Hoskins finds time to highlight the inherent contradictions of LA the main theme of his book. The light and the darkness, the sun and the night. The fact that it's a city grounded in racism, white supremacy, fear and hatred. Nat King Cole, who lived there had burning crosses planted on his lawn. Instead of Nat though, we'll start with Esther Mae Jones.
Dare!
Dare! is forty years old today. One of the finest British Pop records ever made bar none. Put it on and dance around your living room.
Covers # 185 Dean Wareham
More from Dean. Duchess by Scott. Dean doesn't have Scott's voice. He wouldn't claim to. But he does a beautiful job on a quite exquisite song.
Songs About People # 1,306 Anthony Kiedis
One thing the world might not need is a song called Anthony Kiedis. But this is actually rather nice,
Albums of the Year # 71 Blue Orchids - Speed The Day
Got complimented on this review by the band themselves which is always nice. Another fine record from them:
In the absence of any new Fall albums, devotees in need of a Northern fix could do worse than turn to the latest Blue Orchids album Speed The Day. Martin Bramah, one of the guitarists in the original line up soldiers on to wonderful effect here. Recorded in three days with no overdubs last July. It's a feast.
Bramah is a specific talent, indicating a direction that The Fall might have pursued had he and Una Baines not split after a couple of records to do their own thing. In the words of John Robb 'monochromatic psychedelia'. Their debut album, The Greatest Hit, from 1982, is still a go to record for me, almost forty years on from its initial release. Fuelled by a more melodic and dreamy vision than that which drove Mark E.onward but with plenty of the same grit and vigour.
Speed The Day takes its inspiration from the great American Garage bands of the Sixties. In many ways it sounds more akin to The Stranglers than The Fall but I'm not going to complain about that. Bramah's vocals still have the same yearning quality they ever did and the swirling organ that underpinned the greatest moments of The Doors and The Seeds grounds everything. Urban dreaming. The same kind of fire the early opium eaters had in their bellies.
The early Fall were very much ingesters of paperbacks, mushrooms and wonderful obscure records. Very much more more obscure then than they are today. Bramah still draws from this well and it clearly hasn't run dry just yet. Anyone who ever enjoyed The Teardrop Explodes Kilimanjaro, The Fall's Live at the Witch Trials and Dragnet, The Stranglers Black & White or early Felt or Bunnymen should find much to detain them here.
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