Saturday, October 22, 2022
Song(s) of the Day # 3,188 Burial
Burial remain enigmatic. A couple of acclaimed albums way back in 2006 and 2007. Very intermittent EPs since. Now one entitled Streetlands EP. Three tracks. Lots of space.. Like twenty minutes in a modern art installation on a Saturday morning to start the weekend.
Friday, October 21, 2022
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 541 Minutemen
Minutemen;s Nickels on the Dime.A record I love, but don't know very well. Time to get to know it better. It's imported now at The Telegraph, I started with the obvious candidate.
Beware The Bull - The Enigmatic Genius of Jake Thackray # 4 Georges Brassens
Jake graduates and becomes a teacher in France and Algeria where he develops his fundamental formative influence.
Albums of the Year # 65 Kids on a Crime Spree - Fall In Love, Not in Line
Now this is tremendous. From it's opening notes where it announces in no clear terms exactly what is going to do. It's Fall in Love, Not in Line, the wonderfully named album from Kids on a Crime Spree, on Slumberland Record which seem to specialise in this kind of treat.
The statement they make immediately and continue to make is that they are here to celebrate one essential moment. The one when you turn 15, have a great set of like-minded friends who dress like you, love the same things that you do, namely The Ronettes, The Ramones and The Jesus & Mary Chain and are ready to rush, full throttle towards the greatest years of your life.
Fall in Love, Not in Line does this with undisguised glee for the course of its ten tracks, none of which breach the dreaded three minute. Its complete hommage start to finish. Never pretends to be anything else. But the test with this kind of thing is, are the songs up to scratch and in this case the answer is a definitive yes.
Great to see the riffs from the Velvet's What Goes On and The Who's I Can't Explain thrown in for good measure at various points though generally they stick with rigid discipline to the JAMC, Ramones and Spector formula. And why not? Terrific fun!
Albums of the Year # 66 Mild Orange - Looking For Space
Missed out on this rundown yesterday, so you get two today.
Sometimes I surprise myself. On Saturday morning, flipping through new album releases, I chanced upon Looking For Space, the third album from Aoeteroa, New Zealand guitar band Mild Orange and almost instantly fell under its spell.
I liked it, even though it reminded me of things I don't particularly care for. Coldplay for one. Snow Patrol. The Edge's guitar sound. But despite all that I found it quite captivating from the off.
Mild Orange add something of their own that made the record appeal to me. How I'd describe this 'something' is a sense of their own homeland and what makes it so special. Of light and space and wonder in a quite beautiful, apparemtly infinite landscape.
Not every song quite worked in the same way for me. There's can be an essential emptiness to this kind of thing if it's not done properly, the sense that it's music made for vast stadiums, for people to hold their lighters aloft to. The kind of thing which make the attention wander for the likes of me who prefer music that seems to be aimed to be heard in small, underground clubs, where Jonathan Richman, Robert Forster and Tom Verlaine are the male patron saints rather than Chris Martin or Bono.
Nevertheless, when it hits it hits. Mild Orange seem to understand the essence of what makes this kind of thing work. Hailing from one of the most remote spots on Earth might be the key to why this appeals for me while so much of the music it reminds me of doesn't. The band have genuine heart and sincerity. Soul. I like Looking For Space very much and will return to it.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,187 Girls in Synthesis
The sound of my youth. I turned 15 in 1980 and Girls in Synthesis' debut album The Rest is Distraction. sounds like much of the dread that was so prevalent in that year;. Killing Joke, Joy Division, Pop Group, Ruts. Frankly it sounds nothing like 2022, no matter how hard it tries but it's alright.
Thursday, October 20, 2022
Song(s) of the Day # 3,186 Dungen
Anyhow the album is charming even if occasionally it sounds like a cross between The Strawbs and Gilbert O'Sullivan after a crash course in Swedish. I'm pleased to be able to report that this is a better prospect than you might anticipate
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
Beware The Bull - The Enigmatic Genius of Jake Thackray # 2 The Brigadier
School sharpens Jake's wit. He rejects the priesthood and instead makes his way to Durham University.
Albums of the Year # 67 Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - Endless Rooms
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have a sound that immediately appeals to me. A crystalline gleaming guitar sound, three of them no less, intertwining and heading forward. Reminiscent of all time favourites of mine. Go Betweens, Television and The Chills. A lyrical approach most obviously indebted to The Go Betweens again, both Forster and McLennan.
I've written about them plenty in the past, yet I haven't posted my thoughts about their newest album, Endless Rooms,(their third in all), even though it came out several weeks ago. Why is that? It's probably because as much as I like their ingredients, a certain saminess has crept into their sound.
When Courtney Barnett first emerged, I wondered whether she'd ever top Avant Gardener an early highlight which announced her arrival as one to watch. Down the years she has topped it, or at least equalled it on numerous occasions. She's more than fulfilled her early bright promise. And more.
RBCF face a similar dilemma. On the 2017 their wonderful early EP French Press, and particularly its title track, set the bar pretty high for themselves.
They've put out consistently good records since but not notably great ones. It seems Endless Rooms is another to pile on that stack. It sometimes feels like they're running while standing still at one and the same time.
The guitar sound is quite gorgeous as always here. Lyrical concerns are more difficult to gauge. This is another fine, thoughtful alternative pop record without immediately striking me as an essential one. I'll give it a couple more plays over the weekend before deciding whether to go and see them live next week, where they're playing just around the corner from me.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,185 Julianna Riolino
A rather lovely album, out of Canada, as so much great stuff seems to be these days. Toronto's Julianna Riolino knows her Dolly and her Emmylou, but there are also delightful reminders of The Sundays Harriet Wheeler on debut LP All Blue.
Tuesday, October 18, 2022
Beware The Bull - The Enigmatic Genius of Jake Thackray #1 Beware of the Bull
When I was growing up in the UK, there was a Television programme on the mid Evening BBC that was a fixture for most British family's standard routines, (including mine), called That's Life. It was essentially a consumer rights and investigative programme, but in between the serious stuff there was time for more standard family fun. Dogs that could do tricks, vegetables that resembled private bodily parts. A comic called Cyril Fletcher, who could go cross eyed at will and a Folk singer called Jake Thackray whose material was also essentially comic but clearly had a great deal that was evidently driven by much more serious concerns which were way beyond my ken.
As the years have past I've become more and more fascinated by Thackray. A songwriter in the tradition of Brassens and Brel, his songs decried social hypocrisy and abuse of power. In many ways he's a much more politically driven musician than Britain characteristically produced at a time when musical hall tended towards less challenging entertainment. This biography by Paul Thompson and John Wattterson has pretty much everything a Thackray devotee could possibly want.
The early pages not unnaturally detail Thackray's childhood and upbringing. In a harsh and fairly unpleasant part of Leeds, raised by an incommunicative and drunken father and a mother who was a devoted Catholic mother who instilled much of the narrative skill that served Thackray so well.
Albums of the Year # 68 Alena Diane - Looking Glass
Alena Diane remains one of our most treasurable and special musical artists. I first came across her in 2009, shortly after I moved to Newcastle where I've now been for almost fifteen years. The record I chanced upon was her third album and the one that broke her on signing to Rough Trade, To Be Still.
I saw her round about that time in London at a theatre type venue, sat behind Geoff Travis and it was a spectral evening.
All these years later Diane remains a special artist. In the Folk tradition essentially. Beautifully arranged, Romantic songs, built primarily on Diane's own tumbling acoustic guitar patterns that seem to be set in weather beaten, Autumnal American landscapes. Songs naturally inclined to beauty most of all.
The sleeve of Latest album Looking Glass is graced by a Pre-Raphaelite shot of Diane. Almost Millais' Ophelia. Fitting really. Diane is something of a Pre-Raphaelite in how she frames herself and her music.
She has plenty of Romantic turbulence of her own to mine as material. A near death experience for the birth of her own daughter in 2017. Marital breakdown, memories of parental split. Windstorms in her Pacific Northwest, the Lockdown experience.
It all adds up to a wonderful, calming and at the risk of repeating myself, quite beautiful record.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,184 Skullcrusher
Not what you might expect from an artist called Skullcrusher. Meditative, reflective pieces from Helen Ballantine from Mount Vernon, New York on debut album Quiet Room.
Monday, October 17, 2022
Albums of the Year # 69 The Chesterfields -New Modern Homes
In the quite music wonderful film High Fidelity, which nails so much of the obsessive and generally male disposition of lifelong obsessives, the pitiless Rock jester in the film, Jack Black character comes in to hear his colleagues, Rock romantic John Cusack and Rock Dweeb, Todd Luiso enjoying the new Belle & Sebastian record. Naturally he doesn't put up with this state of affairs for long blasting out Walking On Sunshine.
This might be me in an alternative life and this morning I'd be enjoying The Chesterfield's New Modern Homes. It's a truly wonderful record. The Chesterfields first came together in 1984 and came to greater prominence by 1986 as part of the same year's C-86 movement. They inhabited a particular wing of it, the melodic old school side of that scene, notably by the likes of The Loft, The June Brides and The Wedding Present. They perhaps didn't get the attention they deserved first time round.
I hope they get a bit of notice with this one, because it's a wonderful one altogether. Lively, tuneful songs with fabulous lyrics, hit singles in an alternative universe, which values The Velvet Underground and The Smiths more highly than X-Factor. It's an album just made for people who went to All Tomorrow's Parties and listen to 6 Music evening sessions from Mark Riley and Gideon Coe.
The Chesterfields rock in that cool, slightly straitlaced Indie manner. They pick up the baton from the lighter end of The Velvets, the second MC-5 record and early Television and transcribe it to Yeovil where they hail from. They released three albums first time round, all worth hearing and this is a glorious comeback.
Song of the Day # 3,183 Maripool
The kind of thing that's generally called bedroom or dream pop from Portuguese born but London based artist.
Sunday, October 16, 2022
Miki Berenyi - Finger's Crossed # 14 Lush
The dark finale that anyone who knows Lush, knew what was coming. Chris Acland's suicide. It feels like a punch in the gut. Miki ties all the loose ends in the final pages of the book. A truly beautiful and highly memorable memoir. As much about life as music.
Albums of the Year # 70 CMAT - If My Wife New I'd Be Dead
Those young people. They are good for some things. I'm grateful to my friend Molly, who's one of those, who put me onto this, a couple of days ago.
'This' is CMAT, another young woman. One from Dublin called Ciara Mary Alice Thompson which she's shortened conveniently. Her debut album, 'If My Wife New I'd Be Dead.' which I unaccountably missed when first released in the Spring.
The title takes liberties with spelling. The record meanwhile takes liberties with Country & Western, but you'll forgive it when you hear it. It's the best Country & Western meets Pop music record I've heard in some time, but then, you don't really hear so many of those.
Ciara says that she wants to make music that sounds like 'The Nolans, making that record with Glen Campbell which would go on to be covered by Paris Hilton.'
A laudable ambition and 'If My Wife...' makes an excellent stab at it. It has a beautiful, self-defacing wit and melodic charm that made me very happy. It's like Wet Leg with a better sense of humour and much better songs.
Occasionally it runs the risk of getting slightly samey, but generally it's a definite thumbs up from me. I've also seen that she's playing a small venue in my hometown next April. The same place where I saw wonderful gigs with Courtney Barnett and Aldous Harding in previous years. Will try to get tickets today. Thanks Molly!
Song(s) of the Day # 3,182 Cozy Slippers
A rather lovely debut album from the well named Seattle band Cozy Slippers. All creamy harmonies and jangly, sunny guitars. A reminder of simpler times.
Also a reminder of the likes of Belly, Bangles, Adult Net or Blake Babies. Indie operators with a realisation of just how great Pop Music at its purest can be and ambition to produce some of their own.
Some great songs on here. Very simple in terms of its construction and execution. Cozy Slippers is one to cuddle up to and appreciate the good things in life.
Saturday, October 15, 2022
Songs Heard on the Radio # 429 John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman
You can't beat Jazz singing like this. Coltrane's OK too I suppose.
Bill Callahan - Reality
Bill Callahan occupies a certain space these days, having worked and refined his persona in a particular direction down the years. He's determinedly old school, and latest record Reality speaks from a similar place to previous albums down the years in seeming to have more in common with classic Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen records than much that is being released in 2022 although his records never entirely seem to fit in the Sixties or Seventies either, maintaining a mordant, ironic, and (apologies), post-modern quality.
I've been very much taken taken with everything I've heard down the years either under his own name or for his first decade as a recording artist when he recorded under the Smog moniker. He's always had a specific, spartan talent, allowing the listener to disengage from their external reality and fully feel and experience the space in his songs.
Reality comes late in the year, but I imagine it will feature prominently in end of year run downs. It certainly will do in mine. It makes a strong claim for classic status on first play. Callahan operates on a much higher level than most musicians are capable of.
It's classic Callahan. Twelve minimal, moody American Folk and Country streams of consciousness that have an almost Old Testament feel to them. If everyone could do this, they probably would but he's in very specific company these days. Nick Cave, Bonnie Prince Charlie otherwise, my mind goes blank. Of younger artists, Big Thief and Kevin Morby come to mind.
The specific quality Callahan brings to the table is a dry, biting wit that you could cut bread with. Reality is another fine addition to his quite masterful body of work. He's truly a craftsman. One to get to know better over the winter months.
Miki Berenyi - Finger's Crossed # 13 Lush
Onto the whole Brit Pop experience which Miki is certainly no fan of, given the rampant ego and laddism. Still, Lush do have a hit.
Albums of the Year # 71 The Monochrome Set - Allhallow Tide
Monochrome Set and particularly lead singer Bid's vision remains a singular one decades after their initial conception. On latest album, Allhallow Tide they continue to stir the Sixties inspired brew they've been trading on since the late Seventies.
Never ones to follow the prevailing trends, they weren't really Punks when they first emerged, at a time when it was almost a prescribed obligation to be a Punk. Instead, they've followed their own wonky, winding road and devotees of what they do will not be disappointed with what's on show here. Nor it need be said are they likely to convert any previous cynics.
In many ways Bid's true contemporaries are Robyn Hitchcock and Andy Partridge. All three have specifically English visions inspired most obviously by their Sixties childhood and the Golden Age of British Psychedelia circa 1965-68.
Bid's songs always make me think of Cult TV programmes from the period like The Prisoner, Magic Roundabout and Thunderbirds and impossible, surrealist artwork by the likes of Magritte and Escher. His songs are labaryinthine creations that are always self-indulgent but highly enjoyable at one and the same time.
I've always enjoyed Monochrome Set records without being entirely inclined to listen to all of them. They're responsible for one of the finest singles of the Post Punk era, (though it might not be entirely correct to label the band themselves that), in Eine Symphonie Des Grauens and one of its strongest debut albums in Strange Boutique. But there's only so much time you can spend playing with the records of your childhood, which generally seems to be their thing. Always in Wonderland. So they're an occasional pleasure for me but one that I enjoy whenever I indulge it.
Nevertheless Allhallow Tide is another fine addition to their catalogue. I thoroughly enjoyed the half hour I spent in its company and will spin it again. They're something of a British Independent institution. It's good to have them still among us.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,181 Babe Rainbow
Blond and tanned and hairyand Aryan to an almost cliched degree, psychedelic Australian surfer band Babe Rainbow are back. Flowing nicely in the slipstream of King Gizzard, latest record The Organic Album is fully deserving of the appellation 'Groovy'.
Determinedly predicated on good times in the sun and nothing else, it's spiritually situated in 1973. Not perhaps a record you'll need to revisit much but one to give a spin when you're in need of some sun.
Friday, October 14, 2022
Miki Berenyi - Finger's Crossed # 12 - Lush
The once in a lifetime Lollapalooza comes to an end and Lush knuckle down to the more mundane task of album Number Two.
Albums of the Year # 72 Regina Spektor - Home, Before & After
The opening track on Regina Spektor's new album Home, before & after, sum up her and her appeal and charms, better possibly than any track she's ever put out.
Becoming All Alone, comes with a disclaimer. It is cute. Extremely cute. It finds Spektor having a conversation with God walking home one New York morning. He invites her for a beer and they discuss what this life thing is all about and why things can seem so ridiculously unfair. That's what you get. This is Regina Spektor.
Well Spektor is cute but also fiendishly ambitious. It'is something that you have to accept and embrace about her. This is as much West End Musical as it is Pop or Rock record. She was always a talent apart.
I don't have problems with any of this. Since I discovered her a few years back, she's become one of my favourite living artists. But she's probably not for everyone. You have to have a sense of wonder and a special place in your heart for childhood to really have your head fully turned by her.
Emerging with the wave of wonderful talent that exploded so unexpectedly with The Strokes at the turn of the millenium she has ripened and matured since, an astonishing, classically trained talent sat at her piano at the side of stage, one part Carole King, one part Disney or Pixar heroine.
Home, before & after rather overplays the cute card. I don't like it quite as much as 2016's Remember Us To Life, the astonishing record that really made me truly fall in love with her.
She's a little too much ingenue here. She flutters her eyelids one too many times. Nevertheelss it also contains some of her very best songs. It's still a good record, Spektor is such a good artist that I'd say she's incapable of making a totally bad LP. But I have to say I'm slightly disappointed with some of this..
Despite a few quite spectacular tracks here, there's just a bit too much saccharine elsewhere for my taste. I'll play it some more and am hopening it will win me over. But I'll probaly return to Remember Us To Life as my go to Spektor.
Song of the Day # 3,180 Shake Chain
Perhaps the terminal station of this Post Punk. A young woman apparently going mad in song about the internet.
Thursday, October 13, 2022
Songs Heard on the Radio # 428 Sister Wives
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 540 The Verlaines
'It's a great record, Two self-absorbed aesthetes wander the streets if Dunedin, indulgently imagining they are the protagonists in a psychodrama of their own making, drenched in the perfumed insolence of the French symbolists.' Stewart Lee. Stewart knows.
Miki Berenyi - Finger's Crossed # 11 Lush
Lush. A British Indie band of medium profile have the fabulous experience of performing on a Lolapalooza Festival touring bill with Jane's Addiction, Pearl Jam, Ice Cube, Soundgarden and Jesus & Mary Chain. A wild time is had by all.
The Orielles - Tableau
Bands have always need to transition to survive. At least if you're not planning to become Status Quo. Halifax's finest, Orielles clearly know this. Having set off at a ludicrously young age, and made a name for themselves on the Indie circuit with a sparky live show and records, they've gone for a markedly different approach with fourth album Tableau.
A double album that manages to be somehow spacey and minimal at one and the same time, Tableau is certainly brave in that the one thing it's clearly not looking to do is break the band into the mainstream and get daytime Radio 1 or 6 Music radio play. Much of it feels like a set of demos, with the trio working things out while we listen in and it's certainly none the worse for that. There's so much light and shade here. So much invention.
From the start, Stereolab have been Orielles guiding stars. Nowt wrong with that. This remains the case here. But Orielles have always been more eclectic in their tastes, referencing Krautrock, disco and the likes of Marquee Moon, Jane Weaver, St. Etienne, Vanishing Twin and Exotica and Jazz in their playlists, interviews and records. This seems the territory they wish to occupy.
Tableau is a bold move in this direction. A record I'll certainly come back to. It strikes me as a marker that Orielles are determined to be in this for the long run. On this evidence they have a very good shot. It's a splendid record.
Albums of the Year # 73 Best Bets - On an Unhistoric Night
Crunchy, glad to be alive from New Zealand band Best Bets know exactly what they're doing .Debut album On An Unhistoric Night has been a long time coming with the band drip feeding songs for over four years now but is well worth the wait.
In love with the sound of the guitar, there's an immediate, frantic, punky wonder to every song here. Something of Black Lips nous transposed to the Antipodes. Fabulous record.
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