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So long, and thanks for all the shoes

2007-11-19T15:05:00.000Z

As you'll have guessed, Betty is in a retired state, and is not scheduled to return. Please visit my newer blogs if you're in any way interested in the state of my head. They are, sadly, not mp3-heavy.

Come On Up To The House

Travels With My Pedometer

byeee

2007-06-09T17:46:00.000Z

You Can Call Me Betty goes on holiday this week, and probably next with its author. You can have a fun song this week:

Kanye West ft. Jamie Foxx - Golddigger

The world is not my home, I'm just a-passin' through

2007-05-31T12:43:00.000Z

Some artists do genre very well. AC/DC, for instance; Motorhead, these bands are rightly respected for sticking to type. Some artists are innovators, pushing things ahead that no-one had ever heard before.

Some people just are what they are, though. If I want to hear blues-metal, I may well turn to Back In Black. If I want to hear something innovative, I'll likely peruse the Warp or Leaf rosters. If I want to hear an old man sing gravelly blues spirituals, I'm learning to turn to Tom Waits. Because in all honesty, there's no-one really like Tom Waits.

I'm only learning now, mind. Why was this not something I had investigated before, I pondered to myself as I listened to Mule Variations. Particularly as some of the songs on there are stunningly lovely. I don't know. Who can fathom the hearts of men?

But learning I am, slowly. I'm taking a different approach to my recent, frankly quite scary, deep immersion in REM, this time I'm taking it one album at a time, quite gingerly. I'm beginning with Mule Variations, which was actually my first acquaintance of any sort with Waits - it was released on Epitaph in 1999, approximately the time I was running circles around my bedroom listening to NoFX and the Bouncing Souls, and Big In Japan found its way onto the Punk-o-rama vol 4 label sampler. This may have been the problem, given that it's possibly the weakest track on Mule Variations. Since then, people tried making me listen the likes of Swordfish Trombone and I just couldn't muster any interest.

Funny how things work out though. I was looking for something vaguely palatable on my mp3 player for office consumption (we have a fairly accepting office...) and happened across this, which I'd been leant a while back. It was a nice backdrop, these hymnal odes wafting across the late C20 open-plan stylings here, and soothed my troubled (at least, bored) soul.

It was the closing track that caught my attention. What a way to close an album. Come On Up To The House is in the spiritual vein, and it's an elegiac, hypnotically-repetitive song. It's all the better for the paucity of frequency coverage - it's really all about the voice. And what a voice! It's not the curling, sneering tone of the rest of the album, it's an entirely different beast: Waits can bellow. I mean really give it some welly like very few people can. I'm sure I've ranted about this before; it's all very well you mumbling into a microphone (I'm looking at you Gonzalez/Banhart etc.) but it's the ones who can really belt it out that are going to stick in the mind. Johnny Cash, Percy Sledge, you know the sort. Tom Waits absolutely hurls it out on this song and yet it remains beautiful, sweet and tender. What it means, who knows, but suffice to say this is a standout track on a very decent album, and is one of the most beautiful songs I've heard in quite some time.

I gave singing it a go this evening. Although I can apparently pull off a reasonably passable Waits, I could barely keep it up for one song, let alone a whole concert. The guy must tear up his throat, I bet he has those little nodule things.

Tom Waits - Come On Up To The House (Mule Variations, 1999)

I Coulda Been Somebody

2007-05-25T14:33:00.000Z

Those songs that get stuck in your head, them's cheeky little scamps. Usually it's something you don't want in there, and so it's proved this week. Reverend & The Makers have been getting somewhat overplayed on my radio station of choice recently, and of course it's become ingrained in this cranium of mine. It's a catchy tune you see, reminiscent (to me at least) of some sort of horrific corporate merger of Arctic Monkeys Co. and LCD Soundsystem Ltd. Very now, or so I'm told.

In this respect, Heavyweight Champion Of The World hits it's mark admirably. It has that roguishly charming quality in its vocals, which come across like a slightly less spotty Alex Turner, and there's that insistent groovy beat that reminds of LCD's Our House. In fact, it's a little too right in some respects, almost like it was tailor-made for that sort of halfway house audience. For evidence, Exhibit A is the almost-certainly-written-by-band-or-PR of their wiki, detailing the band's Monkeys connections, their celebrity-spangled Sheffield (of course) club night, and the blindingly obvious John Cooper Clarke connection. The more one delves, the more artificial it all sounds, John McClure (Reverend himself) seeming to be a scenester-hit-the-gold-mine type. Maybe I'm wrong, I really don't know. The terse section describing the dismissal of a former guitarist and the improvements in sound of his replacement is a little too editorial, even for Wikipedia.

Then there's that refrain, "be like everybody else." A cutting take on the make-do mentality of this generation, no doubt. It's a cautionary tale of not letting yourself get "caught in the rat race," the lyrics
describe the descent of individuals into suburban oblivion, the act of letting society get the better of you, of giving up your dreams. A brutal indictment, to be sure.

But let's look a little closer. Hardly subtle in its implementation, "I could have been a contender" is more Rocky than On The Waterfront. There's nothing at all new here, which makes me wonder what the point behind the exercise is if it's not a PR trip. Does Reverend offer any solutions as opposed to just ticking off those that have let themselves fall prey to this? Does he offer up any reasons why it's no good beyond the far from pithy sarcasm of the main refrain? Does he explain his point of view? No. He doesn't. If I wanted a warning not to let my dreams die, I'd probably go watch Joseph & His Technicolour Dreamcoat or something. Don't Let The Man Grind You Down has been said over, and over, and over again. It's the subject of Hollywood movies, and of pop-punk bands dressed up neat for the little girls. It's integrity for the pre-pubescent dressed up in a zeitgeist-y kind of sound.

On my mind this week has been Dostoevsky's "impudence of stupidity," from The Idiot.

"There is indeed, nothing more annoying than to be, for instance, wealthy, of good family, nice looking, fairly intelligent and even good natured, and yet to have no special faculty, no peculiarity even, not one idea of ones own, to be precisely 'like other people'... to have decent education but to have no idea what to make of it, to have intelligence, but no idea of ones own.

There is an extraordinary multitude of such people in the world, far more than appears. They may, like all other people, be divided into two classes: some of limited intelligence; others much cleverer. The first are happier, nothing is easier for 'ordinary' people of limited intelligence to imagine themselves exeptional and original and to revel in that delusion without the slightest misgiving.

Some men have only to feel the faintest stirring of some kindly and humanitarian emotion to persuade themselves that no one feels as they do. Some have only to meet with some idea by heresay or read some stray page to believe at once that is their own opinion and has sprung spontaneously from their own brain."

I work in an office. I take the tube each day to work and I sit at a desk, then I come home and make dinner. And you know what? I'm really happy with it.

Reverend & The Makers - Heavyweight Champion Of The World (single, 2007)

we are now fish and chips

2007-05-18T12:42:00.000Z

I freely confess, I rarely give the time of day to bands that are popular for whatever reason - what, I don't mean that in an elitist way. I phrased it badly. I mean that, unless there is some very specific reason, I'm just not going to listen to a band that loads of blogs talk about it. Why should I? In the nicest possible way, what do their recommendations mean to me? What is it about any blogger that means I should pay any heed to what they're recommending to me? My logic goes that given to the huge amount of new music most mp3 bloggers have to wade through to be able to post every day, they just can't immerse themselves as deeply into music as the music warrants. I'm certainly judging no-one; goodness, I had the exact same problem when I was updating this blog daily. One has to pile through a million boring emails about bands you don't care about each day, and get sent a huge number of future drinks coasters from internet-canny little labels.

Judging by my Sitemeter stats, most people had the same idea about reading blogs as I did. But anyway, I'm digressing fairly copiously. I was going to post about the Cold War Kids, you see, maybe the epitome of blog-buzz. There's been waves and backlashes for a good while regarding this band, but it's only finally they're coming to my ears. Radio is, apparently, not dead at all. In fact it's healthier than in a long way with the advent of DAB, which means that you can now listen to what you want, not worrying about tuning and crackle and that. So I can now listen to 6Music, the BBC's exceedingly worthy effort at giving DJ's the control. And we thusly have nice music to listen to. Super!

Cold War Kids' new single, Hospital Beds, has been getting a lot of air time. They're not a great band, it's true. I certainly wouldn't buy the album off the back of this single. But there's something that nags about Hospital Beds. a melody or something that sticks to your mind. Weird. They've a number of features which actively annoy me, predominantly the whiny, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah-styled yelpings of the singer, Nathan Willett. It's very American-Indie at the moment, which immediately writes off whole swathes of similar sounding bands, in the same way that anyone attempting the now-boring, twitchy angular rock that Franz Ferdinand did, and Maximo Park ripped off, has immediately stoked my already heightened disinterest.

I listen to other songs via the Hype Machine. They're not good. But Hospital Beds is ok, and I wouldn't turn off the radio when it came on. s'ok, I guess. Meh.

Cold War Kids - Hospital Beds (Robbers And Cowards, 2007)

A Joy

2007-05-04T18:10:00.000Z

Back after a Bank Holiday-based break...That Keiran Hebden, he's a wag isn't he? After (at least) three fantastic albums as Four Tet, one's which pushed the boundaries of accessibility to the very limits, he went and spaced out on us. Now, I consider Pause, Rounds and Everything Ecstatic to be the very epitome of what I want out of my electronica. Electronic music of any sort; could be house, techno, ambient... could be Dutch gabber for all I care, what I want out of it is the same approach hebden takes to his creations. They're insanely creative, chopping found sounds, samples and loops in all the most unexpected ways, but somehow manage to create the most catchy melodies you can imagine.

Of course, after Everything Ecstatic was in the bag, the former Fridgeman stepped out of the box a little, which I suppose is fair enough. Working with someone like Steve Reid must be a wonderful honour - for someone so clearly a jazz, funk and soul devotee as Hebden is, Reid is pretty much the Daddy of the percussion world. And yet the resultant albums (The Exchange Sessions I and II) were, while worthy, difficult. Is this a bad thing? Probably not. But the Keiran Hebden I'm used to can hang a tune on the slightest hook, and it seems as though the ardour of improvisation, such second nature to Reid, didn't come naturally, especially when allowed such lengthy freedom as these albums displayed.

Tongues though, from this year, is more tightly controlled, more structured, and for me at least, a step in the right direction. I'm well aware that I'm guilty of the same My Band faux pas that I've almost certainly castigated others for; but nonetheless Keiran Hebden had a rare talent for making fairly complex, 'difficult' music accessible, and that fell by the wayside a little on the Exchange Sessions. Tongues is still not perfect, and it still lacks the time so clearly poured into the likes of Rounds, but it's considerably more focussed and accurate, and benefits from that. Seeing Four Tet in the live setting shows what he can do given carefully-prepared source material, and Tongues is definitely more like that.

But it still doesn't come close to Four Tet. It's a shame, and I guess doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but for now I'm posting Four Tet rather than Hedben/Reid. It's possibly the pinnacle of Four Tet's output - his most focussed album, Rounds, and his most sublime track, She Moves She. It comes after the opening Hands, which introduces the listener to the Four Tet experience admirably, and it's big of beat, bold of interpretation, and beautiful of execution. This track sums up Rounds particularly for me, and Four Tet in general.

1. Open with drum loop.
2. Introduce Balinese-sounding tuned percussion and what sounds like a shamisen riff.
3. Do not over-egg.
4. Introduce a big schwack of out-of-place noise.
5. Listen as each element combines unbelievably finely.

Four Tet - She Moves She (Rounds, 2003)

D'you know?

2007-04-27T12:14:00.000Z

I'm sadly a little unplugged from the zeitgeist these days. I don't get a chance to listen to much/anything on the music blogs I read, and find myself less interested in doing so. It's a little sad in some ways, others not so much. I found that when I was doing the blog full-time before, I rarely had a chance to listen to albums for days on end and to revel in the new depths they revealed. Time out = good, and the little bit of writing I do these days is exactly right.

That said, today's artistes wouldn't have needed the extra time for me to know that their album was something special. The Twilight Sad release their first album next week, entitled Fourteen Autumns And Fifteen Winters. Sounds a little adolescent? Maybe so, but not without good reason. The standout track (actually that's a misnomer, most of the other songs are every bit as good. This one just happens to be the most... lyrically significant, I guess), Last Summer, At Home I Was The Invisible Boy extols the virtues of a stable upbringing with such depths of sadness that he could for all the world (bar his gruff-yet-tender Glaswegian drawl) be the fourteen year old he claims to be.

The sound is somewhere between Mogwai and what Hope Of The States were aiming for. Emotionally-charged, but not in the stripy-jumper, floppy haired kind of way. I've used all these comparisons before in my review, but they really do take the same sort of real-life grit and bit-back emotion of Arab Strap and inject into it some post-rock posturings. It's the best album I've heard this year, which is already saying something quite big.

I'm in something of a quandary now though; part of me wants to write on, eulogising the band with all sorts of hyperbolic, excessively gushing and fawning. Part of me however wants to just leave it at that and let the music speak for itself. Not out of laziness, but out of respect for a rather lovely piece of music, that oldest of artforms.

The Twilight Sad - That Summer, At Home I Was The Invisible Boy (Fourteen Autumns And Fifteen Winters (Fat Cat), 2007)

Thou Shalt Not Quote Me Happy

2007-04-20T19:50:00.000Z

Bit of a curveball this week, I had something else all lined up then I was forwarded a link to a certain MySpace and finally got round to checking it out. I'd heard of Scroobius Pip and Dan Le Sac via such esteemed internet agitators as Music Like Dirt and The Daily Growl (the best British music blogs out there, if you ask me). But it wasn't til today that I finally listened to Scroobius Pip vs. Dan Le Sac, a track that's just been released and is blowing up on shows like John Kennedy's and Rob Da Bank's. It's Thou Shalt Not Kill, basically a rant delivered by the bearded, be-capped Scroobius Pip in his Stanford-Le-Hope brogue, against the tackiness of modern life. It's devastatingly accurate to the point where as switched-in as you think you might be, you're bound to find yourself in there somewhere.

Thou shalt not take the names of Johnny Cash, Joe Strummer, Johnny Hartman, Desmond Decker, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix or Syd Barret in vain.

Thou shalt not read NME.

Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry.

Thou shalt not watch Hollyoaks.

Thou shalt not return to the same club or bar week in, week out just ’cause you once saw a girl there that you fancied but you’re never gonna talk to.

Thou shalt not put musicians and recording artists on ridiculous pedestals no matter how great they are or were.
The Pixies? Just a band.

When I say "he say, she say, we say, make some noise" - kill me.

Thou shalt think for yourselves.

Good grief yes.

And am I in there? Sigh, of course I am. I say "is it" all the time. This is a searing portrait of British life at the moment, even more accurately, of the elitist, smarter than thou indie scene. Not just that, but of anybody that thinks they're better than that. It's not railing at a scene, or scenesters, it's railing at everyone, pretension in general, and everyone's guilty of that.

Plus it rocks.

Some of it is so accurate - one line perfectly encapsulates what I've been thinking this week: Thou shalt give equal worth to tragedies that occur in non-English speaking countries as to those that occur in English speaking countries.
It's so true: look at all the coverage of the VA Tech shootings, horrific as they were: then compare TV minutes/column inches to the well over a hundred dead in Baghdad just a day or so later. Thirty die a day in Iraq, yet we skip over it with not a thought to it.

Listen to Scroobius Pip and learn about yourself a bit. Plus it rocks. I'm not going to post the track, go buy it you cheapskate, but watch the vid at least...

Buy it from here.

Sorry 'bout the mess

2007-04-12T12:34:00.000Z

Low's new album is different. There's no way around this fact. The Great Destroyer was break enough for most Low fans, the burst of sound at the opening of Monkey taking the band's devotees right out of their comfort zone.

Certainly we were used to a bit of heavy intensity in the music. Trust came before TGD and just listen to Canada. Things We Lost In The Fire had the brooding Whitetail (a revelation at last summer's Don't Look Back show, by the by). But nothing prepared us for the noisy interjections of Everybody's Song, or the maelstrom dynamics of When I Go Deaf. These threw us, those who had come to love Low as slowcore pioneers; for all the ridicule and justified scorn that that label attracts, at least we were safe.

But what do you know, I love The Great Destroyer. It's an astounding body of work, rich, organic, intense and with some of the band's finest songs. So what were we to expect from Drums & Guns? More of the same? Would Dave Fridmann have progressed to pastures new, would he have drawn them down the neo-psychedelic route that Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips once trod? Would he have vanished to allow a return to the stilted silence and breathing space of Low's earlier works? As it turns out, none of the above.

Pretty People is a statement of intent at the front of this new record, but it's not representative. Yes there's that noise there, but Drums & Guns is an album of beats, of percussion, of taking the band's wonderful vocal talents and juxtaposing them with an entirely new sound. Nothing on this album bar the singing sounds like Low. It's incredibly brave and more than a little foolhardy, but having listened to Drums & Guns through the pain barrier now, I'm falling into the camp of... it works.

I'm taking Always Fade as my case study. It's not Low, surely, you cry. It has an almost... funky... bassline. Almost. It has a beat built from strange blocks, reverb, echo, delay, fancy things. It shouldn't work. But its cohesion comes from the fact that this is still Low, it's still Sparhawk and Parker, there are always, but always going to be melodies you can hang your hat from, they're so hooky. There's one interval on "always fade..." that just lifts up your heart. It's melodies like this where I have to check myself if I'm out in public to avoid overly expressive eyebrow syndrome.
But my favourite part of the track, and maybe the album is about a minute and a half in, where the percussion loop topples over itself and ends up building up to cover every single semiquaver in the bar. This is taken even further later on when the delay and reverb shoot up and the sound almost collapses in on itself. It sounds like thunder.

It turns out that Drums & Guns is an album of hidden delights. Maybe you do have to work for them, but when you ifnd them it's Low: it's beautiful.

Low - Always Fade (Drums & Guns, 2007)

Staring At The Asphalt Wondering

2007-04-07T11:24:00.000Z

I'll tell you why I missed this blog. It was exactly for moments like this week. This week, being Easter week, has involved time away from the drudgery of the morning cattle-train to work, the repetitive strain-inducing numskullery of the modern workplace and the sardine-esque commute home. So opportunity was taken to visit somewhere Lovely, this week being Oxford.

As Oxford was approached, the Park & Ride bus was left and we disappeared into the covered market for lunch at the wonderful little upstairs of Georgina's. Recommended for the film posters all over the ceiling as well as the very summary of Oxford life that passes through it's little door. When we entered, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers were playing. This was soon passed up, thankfully, for the more cerebral and atmospheric tones of Ben Gibbard as The Postal Service. The album was Give Up, and it commenced with The District Sleeps Alone Tonight.

And that, that is the reason why I missed writing a blog. Because where else would I have the opportunity to wax lyrical about a song from several years ago now, for no reason other than because I can? Here is where.The Postal Service were in fact relatively unfamiliar territory; this song was about the depths of my knowledge of the twosome. Which is curious, given the number of similar sounding acts that have floated my boat in the last year. The District Sleeps Alone Tonight is the sound of an emo icon mixing with electronica, to not entirely unsuccesful effect: it has that wordy, breathy, upfront vocal. It has the apparently disconnected, almost nonsensical lyrics that you'll find in any good example of the emo genre, and the bizarre middle-of-sentence pauses that characterise the style of singing. Rangy, I might call it.

But it also has a cute, detached guitar part, and glitchtronica beats courtesy of Dntel's Jimmy Tamborello. What sets it apart from everybody else is the glorious chorus. It makes no sense, of course - "You seem so out of context in this gaudy apartment complex" - but it doesn't matter. It soars, it lifts above the clatter and chatter of Georgina's at lunchtime.

I said I couldn't really explain why it'd taken me this long to get round to getting into the Postal Service: after all, this song could probably slot fairly easily into the last album by my beloved Clue To Kalo, and has similarities to the minimalist beauty of Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. Emo buddies separated at birth, I have no idea. Lovely stuff the lot of it though.

The Postal Service - The District Sleeps Alone Tonight (Give Up, 2003)

Young Shields

2007-03-31T12:57:00.000Z

I admit it: I'm a total hog of the office stereo. It's caused fractions before: I'll never forget the bloody aftermath of a particularly heated Jimmy Cliff vs. Cher exchange with one unenlightened individual. I can be remarkably stubborn, and although my populist sensibilities take over if I'm putting an album on, putting my mp3 player on random is bound to cause some upset.

I recently filled it up. This means that I've had to start going through and deleting those promos to which I've never given the time of day (Our Brother The Native; Television Personalities; Plastic Constellations. I can't take the approach of many bloggers and listen and appraise everything, sorry), and to those albums I frankly just don't want on there any more (Arctic Monkeys, I'm looking at you). Which means I have an ever more streamlined approach to the shuffle button. Increasingly, everything on my Zen is fantastic, everything has its place, everything is important. Listening to my mp3 player on random some days is a near-religious experience, darting from one end of the experimental electronic atmosphere to the poppier side of Tropicalia, via some Undertones or some Tanya Donnelly or some Johnny Cash. It's really good, I promise.

Quite regularly though, there'll crop up songs which, for whatever reason, are just not appropriate for office consumption. Not for any lyrical content, but for sheer wilfull unlistenability. I know my limits, for the most part: I know that if I were to throw on Keiran Hebden's collaborations with Steve Reid I'd get many a scratched head: electronic free jazz is certainly an acquired taste. But occasionally something will come up that's a bit beyond most of my colleague's usual listening practice: the lengthy, spacious minimalism of Murcof perhaps, or the keyboard swathes of M83. What came on this week was a My Bloody Valentine remix of Mogwai Fear Satan.

This ticks many boxes for me. Firstly, the artists involved. In Mogwai you have one of my favourite acts ever, the mind-meltingly loud sonic terrorism of the band's early approach very much evident in the original of this track. Mogwai always cook up a winning formula, dynamic and abrasive and beautiful. Then you have a band which has been slotted into an increasingly rigid category, "shoegaze." My Bloody Valentine are more than that, in fact it could be argued that far from rigid, MBV are the most expansive band you could ever hope for. For while they fit themselves, just about, into pop song format, they create a sound that has never been equalled or approached, which veers so far off into skull-scraping monsters of noise that it cycles back round into beauty again.

Then you have the song, a 16 minute statement of future intent that closed Mogwai's debut, Young Team. The one occasion I've had the privilege of watching a Mogwai show was opened with this. If ever the expression Wall Of Sound was fitting, it wasn't for the blustery pop of Phil Spector or anything like that; it was made for the banked guitars or Mogwai Fear Satan, the just-when-you-think-it-can't-get-any-louder build-up. It says everything you need to know about Mogwai.

So: the tag team, the dream pairing of Mogwai and MBV. Some remixes work, some don't, this is well-established fact. This works because it takes a song barely on the edge of listenable and plunges headlong with it into realms of fear and fantasy - like Ian McKellen taking out the Balrog if you like.

And while it's not perhaps office stereo material, here you have a frightening, and frighteningly beautiful question being asked of each listener, of what is beautiful to them, of what they can understand and tolerate. It's cerebral and powerful.

Mogwai - Fear Satan (My Bloody Valentine Remix) (Kicking A Dead Pig, 2001)

Your Canned Philosoph

2007-03-20T13:03:00.000Z

There was a brief publishing phenomenon a little while back (probably loosely based on Sex & The City, as were most things at the time) in which self-help guides appeared explaining to women when to give up, i.e. when a man was Just Not That Into Her. Some of today's pop stars could do with a similarly frank treatment at times, don't you think? Someone could have done with sitting David Bowie down and saying: Tin Machine. No. Just as an example.

Which brings us on to Frank Black. General perception is that Charles Thompson's alter-ego's output has been in a slow, not-quite-graceful decline from the very start of his career, starting with some of his defining moments on Come On Pilgrim, through his progressive megalomania in the Pixies, via some decent solo albums, onto some mixed-bag albums with the Catholics and finally on some theoretically interesting, but ultimately dull new solo records. Well, that's not quite accurate, and there's a sting in the tail. So let's delve a little deeper shall we...

I'm suffering a fairly long-term Pixies burnout. I was obsessed for a while, venturing as far as an undergraduate dissertation. Oh yes. But I've since not really listened for a long while, and have been less than enthused by the former/current frontman's latest work. I'm one of those who'll argue the finer points of Come On Pilgrim as the Pixies' finest hour, although I also consider the rest of their releases indispensable. But as so often with this kind of arrangement, people (you know... people...) have a tendency to dismiss post-legendary work. Which is a shame, because FB's eponymous first solo album was fantastic, probably the equal of the Pixies' parting Trompe Le Monde, and it was followed by the wonderful Teenager Of The Year, a lengthy album filled with insanely inventive and catchy pop songs.

It was followed by the first dip in creativity the man had ever had, with the patchy (although often inspired) Cult Of Ray, the last solo effort for a while as after this, the Catholics were assembled for a series of straight-to-2-track rock'n'roll numbers. Here's where my opinion coincides with 'them', the proletariat: these are more patchy still. As always there are some great tracks, and are worth putting some time and energy into to appreciate, but it was almost like an overload of material, like a self-editing button had been switched off. The Catholics split after 2003's Show Me Your Tears (for me an upturn) and Frank went into creative overdrive starting with Honeycomb in 2005. For this he drafted in an incredible roster of seminal musicians: the likes of Steve Cropper, Billy Block, Dan Penn and Spooner Oldman all appeared, hosted by the production, um, talents of Jon Tiven. Many are of the impression that it was this self-proclaimed "polarising and controversial" individual, with his flat, lifeless production, that sucked the soul out these songs.

This was where the analogy at the start comes in: somebody needed to sit down with Frank Black and tell him that, while there's a place for smooth, confessional country-soul singers in this world, it's not the role Frank Black was born to fill. He's just not very good at it. His limited vocal range and timbre let him down at all the worst points, and it was shame to have to drag up the occasional time-change or non-standard key shift to try and justify the presence of the track.

Honeycomb was described by it's author at the time as his Blonde On Blonde, a divorce album and a sidestep in style. It's no Blonde On Blonde, let's get that straight, and the divorce elements vary between the bizarre duet with his ex-wife Jean on Strange Goodbye and the hideous saccharine of Violet, possibly the worst thing Black's ever put his name to.

The album was followed by more of the same (Fastman/Raiderman) and its scheduled follow up, Grand Duchy, is an album with gf Violet along similar lines. I'd never been less enthused about Frank Black until this last weekend, when details of another album pencilled in for June arrived. Now, I'm not going to post a track out of respect - maybe later - but this is different. It's stripped down. It's rock'n'roll. It's raw. The album will be called Bluefinger, and it's Frank Black hitting that magical mystery land between the punishing bite of the Pixies and the energising and fascinating pop of his early solo career. The bass is on the edge of completely cracking up, the drums pound, and Frank whoops and hollers like a dog on heat (possibly the theme of this album, if you catch my drift), the barely disguised innuendos flying past his lips in a maniacal scream. It's exciting stuff, and the album as a whole has an interesting balance to it: the rolling punk of Threshold Apprehension and Tight Black Rubber is balanced by the more expansive second half, Angels Come To Comfort You, or You Can't Break A Heart And Have It being prime examples.

Bluefinger is the first time I've been excited about a new Frank Black album for about 4 years, and it's motivated me to break out the older stuff. So I'm posting from Teenager Of The Year: wildly diverse as this album is (songs like Big Red contain more ideas than most bands have in a lifetime), I'm breaking out The Rock. It's difficult to pick out a highlight on this record, but I'll plump for Thallasocracy, a deceptively straightforward, head-down, riff based monster. Being Frank Black, it's far more complex than that, the lyrics combining Caesar, Inuit and Romanov with short, sharp pop-pop-pop sounds and huge E-string bass riffs. It's got Eric Drew Feldman's signature synths all over it, and Lyle Workmans' explosive lead guitar. It's a beaut. If this doesn't get you excited for Bluefinger, you're probably already dead.

Frank Black - Thallasocracy (Teenager Of The Year, 1994)

Here I Am, In Your Life

2007-03-15T14:43:00.000Z

Picking a favourite REM album is like picking a favourite child, or a favourite Jolly Rancher, for some people. It just can’t be done. Even the most ardent fan is a little cagey on the subject, usually muttering some sort of apology for not having a preference. There doesn’t seem to be a consensus even: some will never veer from their faith in Automatic For The People as the be-all and end-all of alternative rock, some will swear by earlier works like Murmur. New Adventures In Hi-Fi seems to cause some controversy, some fans bemoaning a lack of inspiration and a seeming apathy, some kneeling before the likes of E-Bow The Letter and Electrolite as (rightly) classic examples of the Georgians’ oeuvre.

Myself, I’m still learning. REM is quite the hot topic around YCCMB Towers, with much love up for grabs. So while I’ve heard a great deal of the music, I can’t claim a definitive opinion of any sort.

Not that that’s ever stopped me before. Green is my favourite REM. It’s living proof that major labels need not be the restrictive, binding influence they’re imagined to be, Warners' allowing REM to get away with some of their most goosebump-raising moments on this record. But REM were always accessible – their songs, while in no way lowbrow are impossible to resist, and certainly not difficult – on first listen at least. There’s great depths. There’s pop aplenty on Life’s Rich Pageant, for example, and plenty of solid, almost traditional songwriting on all their prior releases. That’s why they were so well-positioned to go on and become the World’s Biggest Band, for a while – accessible, yet credible enough for indie kids to fall in love with.

Green was the starting point, the move away from IRS that signalled that bigger things lay in store. It starts with the brash Pop Song 89 that, along with Stand, was the commercial draw that chances are were pushed as singles by Warner – Stand in particular draws some ire amongst diehards. But it’s the acoustic numbers that pull me in: starting at track 3 with arguably one of the band’s greatest ever songs. You Are The Everything is Peter Buck’s finest hour as a mandolin hero, and one of Michael Stipe’s as a singer and a poet. There’s undeniable emotion here, in the construction and rhythm of the words as well as Stipes’ delivery, cracking every now and then with held-in sighs.

World Leader Pretend, Orange Crush, The Wrong Child, I Remember California, these all pass by containing more moments of beauty in each one than some bands manage in their entire career. The latter, particularly, is for me the epitome of the wistful nostalgia that REM do so wonderfully (cf. E-Bow?), and The Wrong Child slays with one cry of “okay.” But I’ve been thinking about this post all week, and try as I might, I can’t put Hairshirt out of my head.

I’ve no idea what the song’s about. "I am not the kind of dog to keep you waiting, for no good reason at all. Run a carbon-black test on my jaw." Not the slightest, but I am convinced just from listening that it’s something vitally important, a bruising, savagely real take on something to remain nameless. I don’t know if it’s the suspended mandolin chords, or Stipe’s forceful grace notes on “here I am in your life,” but it really tugs. The phrasing is so unique, so REM, and it has but sparse accompaniment (on mandolin again), which is all that’s necessary: REM are not so much a band intent on the overblown, so quiet suffices when it’s time for quiet.

It quite genuinely caused some fraught decision-making to pick Hairshirt. After all, You Are The Everything is one of the classic indie pop songs of the last twenty years, I Remember California is so wonderful as well, but I think I've made the right choice, just about.

REM - Hairshirt (Green, 1988)

Black is back, all in, we're gonna win

2007-02-21T20:05:00.000Z

Two months is a long time hey? Apparently I am distracted easily: making podcasts is easily second-rated by real life, as well as blogging. But I've missed it, I've missed writing about the music that really moves me: writing about new music is great, and I've made some real discoveries, but what if I need to vent on about something I've dragged up from thirty years ago? Maybe if I aim for one post a week rather than once a day, magazine-stylee. Interesting...

I'm starting up again with Bob Marley. You say that probably enough has been written about Bob Marley, and you'd probably be right. But regardless, Bob Marley seems to be the one ubiquitous artist that retained his excellence in all things. For example, every genre has its icon with their millstone: the glorious, burning soul of 60's Stax have been brutally filtered until When A Man Loves A Woman and Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay are no longer people's introduction to the music but their entire knowledge. Pink Floyd's monstrous canon has been passed over in favour of Another Brick In The Wall. You get the idea.

But Bob Marley... Marley has maybe One Love as the only thing approaching a millstone, and that song even the clammy fingers of Magic FM dare not suck the soul out of. It's a joyous, celebratory song but unlike others on the same level, it's lost none of its original point, none of its optimism and charm. It's become an unofficial national anthem, it's soundtracked countless tourist board adverts and has kept its simplistic beauty.

But today I want to think about a song easily the equal in terms of uplift. From the Burnin' album of 1973, Hallelujah Time slots almost incongruously between the choppy, righteous call-to-arms of Get Up, Stand Up and the biting political comment of I Shot The Sheriff. It's gorgeously mellow, wonderfully positive and has the most beautiful chord progressions of any reggae song I know. Its springtime imagery conjures up not just gambolling lambs and bluebells,
but more importantly children - after all, Children Are The Future. It reminds me that spring in Jamaica is most likely far brighter and sunnier than over here, the dank gloom of March breaking just occasionally over London's hazy atmosphere, something that every now and then becomes really important. While I can happily indulge in Jamaican food to my hearts content over here, it's only for a couple of months in summer that it works best, outside, barbie'd up.

The song stands out for me on record packed with incredible songs: rather than the tightly packed, taut skanking of earlier releases, this sees the Wailers kicking back and allowing the songs room to breathe, and it has its companion piece in the classically laid-back Duppy Conqueror. The album goes to show the breadth of life that's present in this sort of music, and particular that of Mr Marley - from political polemic to social comment to religious moments. So break out some rum, grab some guava jelly, have a listen, unwind and cheer up, and appreciate the lovely, lilting tones of Bob Marley - for a man up there with Che Guevara in terms of student-based ubiquity, there's much to fall in love with.

Bob Marley - Hallelujah Time (Burnin', 1973)

Turn to face the strange...: podcast #5

2006-12-21T13:53:00.000Z

(photo by two years of travelling)

...Ch-ch-changes ahoy. As I sit here with a KitKat I wonder how to start. From today, You Can Call Me Betty is going podcast-only, so no longer will I be continuing with posting mp3s etc. I've come to the conclusion that actually I don't really have time to do this as well as I'd like, evidenced by the sparse posting patterns of the last few weeks. I have other things which occupy my time, so I'll be concentrating on writing reviews at NoRipcord and Don't Worry About The Government (when Tom pulls his finger out), and creating a better breed of podsafe, new-music-tastic podcasts for your listening enjoyment. You will find the podcasts posted here and, for a while at least, at yccmb.blogspot.com
I've very much enjoyed writing though, and hope to invest as much into the podcasts as I have into the blog, not least of which is some stonkingly ace music, as always. You should be able to tell that by the tracklisting below, so have a listen, then see ya later alligator.

So: blame work, blame having a life and stuff, but as you know it, this is the end of You Can Call Me Betty.

Ta ta!

The Music
Jeff Buckley - Last Goodbye

Podcast # 5: Chrimbo Dinbo

1) Absentee - We Should Never Have Children (from Schmotime, Memphis Industries, streamable from Absenteemusic.co.uk)
2) Kristin Hersh - Sno-Cat (from The Grotto, 4AD, download at throwingmusic.com)
3) Adem - These Are Your Friends (from Homesongs, Domino, stream at Domino Records)
4) Herbert - Moving Like A Train (from Scale, !K7, stream at matthewherbert.com)
5) TV On The Radio - Province (from Return To Cookie Mountain, 4AD, stream on MySpace)
6) Daedelus - Viva Vida (from Denies The Days Demise, Ninja Tune, stream on MySpace)
7) Harvey Girls vs. Feedle - Hazy Heat (Victor Scott remix) (SVC Records, download from victorscott.ca)
8) Max Tundra - Labial (from Mastered By Guy At The Exchange, Domino, stream on MySpace)

Cover me. I'm going in...#7

2006-12-17T16:20:00.000Z

(Saint Etienne live in 1993, by dexter_mixwith)

I could also put this post in a Charity Shoppin' style deal: Hampstead's Oxfam yielded up a goodly number of bargains yesterday. But I'll concentrate on the CD purchase which interested me most (because although Blur's Great Escape and the Commitments soundtrack are lovely and nostalgic, they're not much new to me), Saint Etienne's Too Young To Die, a singles collection collating 1990-1995 in the world of Stanley, Wiggs et al.

My first dalliance with Saint Etienne came around Christmas 1995 when I got the Hits 96 cassette compilation. You know the sort, a knock-off Now variation, it had (if I remember correctly) a fairly wide variety on it, from Robson & Jerome to Oasis to Cher to a comedy version of the Blind Date theme tune. It had one indie-ish side out of four, and that included He's On The Phone. This summed up Saint Etienne's pop-perfect bedsit tales, the indie-dance stylings combining with sumptuous female vocals leading me to more appreciate the next thing I heard by the band. This was Only Love Can Break Your Heart, just recently revealed to me to be a cover of After The Goldrush-era Neil Young. I stand ashamed. This, this was pop perfection, even more so than He's On The Phone and it slid in so nicely amongst the electro-lite stylings of Happy Mondays and New Order on The Greatest Album In The World... Ever, for the unfamiliar an interminable series of indie compilations.

Listening to the Young original now is strange, as I'm so used to the Moira Lambert-led cover, with its dreamy, hazy feel and sooo 1991 beats. The cover takes up Young's plaintive piano piece and adds a euphoric beauty, those vocals just kind of tucked in at the back. It's the sound of my adolescence, once again, which makes it all the more odd to me that I never pursued it any further. But, no time like the present. Only Love Can Break Your Heart, in all its dreamy prettiness, is track one on the singles comp.

The Music
Neil Young - Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Saint Etienne - Only Love Can Break Your Heart

Which brings me to track two, which took me by surprise. The Wratten/Hiscock credit didn't register. But of course, it's the Field Mice's classic in electro-pop format, and very lovely it is too. Saint Etienne is pop in the same wasy as, say, Cinerama was pop: knowing but loving, well-constructed in the pop vein but not intended to aim for the lowest common denominator that today's charts aim at. If you're not massively familiar with the original, the chorus will take you by surprise. But love it and cherish it, the song in all its forms, for its a beautiful. I post the music with a dedication to Colin, wherever he might be.

The Music
Field Mice - Let's Kiss & Make Up
Saint Etienne - Kiss & Make Up

The 'fo
Artist: Saint Etienne
Website: saintetienne.com
Recommended: Smash The System: Singles 1990-99
Label: Heavenly
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Dubstar - The Best Of
Tags: Saint Etienne; pop; electronica; Neil Young; Field Mice

The Rough Guide To Brazilian Electronica: Tejo-Instituto

2006-12-14T13:42:00.000Z

(photo by uncleweed)

The song Ohhh! isn't nearly as pornographic as it's title suggests. We looked briefly at Instituto before, and this is Rica Amabis and Tejo Damasceno working on their own material this time (as opposed to the previous remix). So let's have a look at this song and see why the erotic exhalation of the title has been applied, shall we?

On first listen, this is another of those tracks which this cd is all about, cool percussion, female vocals, a bit of a samba. But listen a bit deeper and it's all a lot more involved than that. From the computer voices to the jostling vocal samples, from the repetitive, muted guitar motif to the synthed-up brass melodies. It's consistently interesting in a way that little of these days' electronica is: lots going on, all sorts of crazy different things happening, but set to an accessible backbeat and, as always, immediately evocative of the artistes' homeland. On close inspection, I'd go so far as to label it a highlight here, and the slightly breathless female vocalist clearly agrees. While, as I said, it's not so vividly erotic as you might imagine, there's enough sensual indulgence here to appeal to the most sordid mind, as long as that sordid mind was also willing to dance sexy on the beach.

So, not perverted at all, but a little bit of a surreptitious thrill - isn't that what you look for in music? Not to have the senses as the main, let's see, thrust of the piece, but certainly have them tickled. There's enough going on here to appeal to the individual that's looking for a pop song to dance to, or an electronica beat to analyse, or a sultry song to get them in the mood. Good job Amabis & Damasceno.

The Music
Tejo-Instituto - Ohhh!

The 'fo
Artist: Rica Amabis
Recommended: Colecao Nacional
Label: Trama
Buy: Amazon; Rough Guide
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Rica Amabis - Sambadelic
Tags: Brazil; Rough Guide; Rica Amabis; Tejo Damasceno; Instituto; electronica

Top Whatevers

2006-12-12T23:52:00.000Z

Sorry about the couple of days delay: Christmas-related busying I suppose. Anyway, review of the year is to make up for it with a bunch of stuff you don't care about, rambling on for far too long. Enjoy!

Song Of The Year

(photo be joshc)

If I was going to pick a song that I've discovered this year as the soundtrack to my life, then it would certainly be Clue To Kalo's As Tommy Fixes Fights. But my life is nothing without arbitrary rules, and technically that song was released last year. So the award for 2006 goes to one of the more disappointing bands of the year, Band Of Horses. Most peoples' first encounter with BOH was via their single The Funeral, a frankly astonishingly great song, incendiary in the heights it soars to - Ben Bridwell's voice flies high over a dynamic backdrop that threatened to breathe new life into the somewhat lacklustre American indie-rock output of the year. But aside from The Funeral, Band Of Horses only scraped along for the rest of their releases, their patchy and occasionally annoying debut (Everything All The Time) exemplifying this, a particularly sad case in point.
In general chaps, must try harder, must write more songs that are as good as The Funeral.

The Music
Band Of Horses - The Funeral (mp3)
Band Of Horses - The Funeral (video)

The 'fo
Band Of Horses/buy

Guilty Pleasure Of The Year

(photo by rustovision)

I hadn't had a guilty pleasure all year, really, hence the hanging onto the last vestiges of the Natasha Bedingfield bandwagon, the shame only really starting to tell towards the end of this year. Apparently there's a yet younger Bedingfield in the pipeline, something to look forward to. Anyway, NB's place has been taken by the almost terrifyingly mental Amy Winehouse, a local girl (you can kind of tell, if you know Southgate - Amy looks very Southgate, maybe with all the characteristics exaggerated to charicature), with her - admittedly not as guilty as Natasha - song, Rehab.
All ba-woop horns and big band chorus, this is singalong, it's funky and it's great, and it'll get so firmly ensconced into your head that an army of claw hammers won't be able to prise it out from there.

The Music
Amy Winehouse - Rehab

The 'fo
Amy Winehouse/buy

Live Show Of The Year

(photo by distantbombs)

Every inch of my body is telling me to put Mogwai in this award, for their ICA residency in January. And they were mindblowing, incredibly loud and opening up all sorts of experiences I didn't know existed. Certainly the support for this show (Gruff Rhys) was better than that of the show I've actually picked (which was Bat For Lashes), but still... The winner is Low. I love Low almost as much as Mogwai, but I think the gig just pipped it. For fantastic as the 'gwai were, Low's extra special show at Koko playing back the whole of what is a contender for my favourite album of all time (Things We Lost In The Fire) held me awestruck. At the time I think I wrote that Low were one of the few bands that allowed their music the space so few bands dare to produce, and their show only amplified this feeling. I could stand and watch Alan Sparhawk wait and wait to play a chord for ages and ages, and it would always, always be exactly perfect, exactly on the button. The harmonies, oh, the rapturous harmonies, the songs, the playing. Yes, I have no qualms picking Low.

The Music
Low - (That's How You Sing) Amazing Grace

The 'fo
Low/buy

Label Of The Year

(photo by japanese_forms)

There's but one record company that's been at the top of my list this year, only one contender. Last year it would've been Leaf with their volley of big hitters, but this year no label has consistently impressed me so much as the revitalised 4AD. From celebrating their 25 th anniversary last year, they've gone on to have one of their strongest years in an age, releasing several big, big albums, and signing a slew of great acts that manage to fit in with the label ethic and style while retaining their own originality. They've got a good 2007 coming, with Kristin hersh pencilled in early on, but for 2006 how about some of the following:
TV On The Radio - having settled into the label for their first album, TVOTR's follow-up was one of the records of the year, a devastating and fascinating rock album.
M Ward - another contender for record of the year, Matt Ward's warm rock'n'roll acousticana impressed me much.
Beirut - beloved by blogs in general rather than by me, but at least an album of poise and individuality.
Add to that Scott Walker's dense The Drift, and great releases by Cocteau Twins, Johann Johannssen and Mountain Goats, that's a fancy roster right there.

The Music
TV On The Radio - Wolf Like Me (video)
M Ward - Chinese Translation (video)
Beirut - Postcards From Italy (mp3)

The 'fo
TV On The Radio/buy/M Ward/buy/Beirut/buy

Prospect Of The Year

(photo by l fletcher)

You know what I'm going to say, it's undoubtedly Kristin Hersh. Kristin's solo albums are invariably amazing, whether they're the incredibly sparse, almost bleak, snow-capped feel of The Grotto, or whether they're the fuller, luxurious arrangements of Sunny Border Blue. The woman is a genius, and not only that but hellbent on giving away as much of her music as she can for free, as evidenced by 50 Foot Wave's method of distribution. Learn How To Sing Like A Star is bound to be just ace, and may the first lady of heart-on-sleeve alt.rock ever reign supreme.

The Music
Kristin Hersh - Snake Oil
The 'fo
Kristin Hersh/buy

Artist Of The Year

(photo by Toni Blay)

Despite being pipped at the post for best live show, Mogwai still manage to capture the glory with best artist, simply because they are one of the best bands in the world. It sounds so passé to describe Mogwai as noise terrorists these days - that era was c.1997, with Young Team just out and audiences' ears being shredded by the likes of Like Herod and Tracy. But 2006 was the year when Mogwai set out to recapture The Rock from the dreamy, ethereal (if still excessively wonderful) stylings of Happy Songs For Happy People. Mr Beast was the Ronseal of Mogwai albums, it was exactly that: a hurtling, raging monster of a record with some of Mogwai's biggest riffs ever, and the occasional heart-stoppingly huge drumbeat. All that being said, Mr Beast sees the band distilling its expertise into some of their more accessible numbers - Friend Of The Night, Acid Food, Auto-Rock...
But then, of course, Mogwai released two records this year - taking a look a little down the line at the monstrous rock of Mr Beast, Stuart Braithwaite et al took the band's more eery, atmospheric side and made a soundtrack to the artisan film about the inimitable Zinedine Zidane. So whichever Mogwai you prefer you've been satisfied this year, whether it was kicking the year off with that ICA residency, or releasing a contender for best album of the year in January, or fostering their football side with a pet project commission. Good job dudes.

The Music
Mogwai - Glasgow Mega-Snake

The 'fo
Mogwai/buy

Albums Of The Year

This is it, the big rundown. If you've waded through the rest of it to reach this bloggers' staple, then thanks, and hope you enjoy the music.

10. Amy Millan - Honey From The Tombs

Loads of new music came to my ears this year, and I hadn't been familiar with Stars, or Amy Millan or any of the Arts & Crafts stable until this year. To be brutally honest, I'm still not, but this is an album worthy of inclusion on a top ten anyway, and I don't think I've seen it anywhere else yet. Honey From The Tombs is an album positively dripping with Millan's warm, sensuous yet comforting voice, the same one that made Stars so inviting. The songs are pretty much pop.alt.country in basis, but with a few more uptempo numbers, taking a similar sort of approach to the two as M Ward has this year. Not all of the songs are as memorable as Skinny Boy or Losin' You, but they are all a pleasant enough listen and really lower you into a calmed-down mode, so for that one can be ever thankful.

Amy Millan - Skinny Boy
Amy Millan/MySpace/buy

9. Arab Strap - Ten Years Of Tears

I kind of surprise myself with this inclusion, but the fact of the matter is that Arab Strap had more of an impact on my life this year than the vast majority of other bands and musicians that I heard. I discovered (sadly belatedly) that Arab Strap have a knack for creating music that's emotionally resonant but not sappy, heartbreaking but certainly not emo, indie but by no means stagnant. From the classic The First Big Weekend to the x-rated folk of Packs Of Three to the thrashy punk stomp of Islands, this breaks my rule of not including compilations because it's so lovingly compiled - it's not just hits (what hits?) but it's demos, alternate takes, songs that mean something to the band. Interesting things. It's a great document, and a great listen in itself quite aside from anything associative.

Arab Strap - Preface: Set The Scene
Arab Strap/buy

8. Casiotone For The Painfully Alone - Etiquette

One of the few albums from the earlier part of the year that has retained my attention, Owen Ashworth's one-man-band (minus drum on back and cymbals between knees) has got sophisticated. The days of extremely minimalist Casio-tickling have been replaced by bigger arrangements, and bigger songs to warrant them. That's not to say anything on this album has had the MTV treatment, it doesn't sound like Queen just yet, but these are songs which are crying out for a wider audience. Which is ironic given the extreme introspection and self-loathing going on throughout. Etiquette would certainly make any random emo kid's dreams come true, but would also introduce them to a world of quality and class that Panic At The Disco will never be able to give them. Plus, y'know, CFTPA has one extra word so he's obviously better.

Casiotone For The Painfully Alone - I Love Creedence
Casiotone For The Painfully Alone/buy

7. Daedelus - Denies The Day's Demise

Another one I ummed and aahed about, because this was a very late addition to the year's best. But I think it certainly warrants its place here - in a year where I spent a disproportionate amount of time listening to electronica, this was the pick. Herbert, Adem, Triosk, these were all excellent albums but they didn't grab me so immediately, nor move me in the same as Alfred Weisberg-Roberts' did. There was a real warmth about this record when I first listened, whether it's from the banks of synths on Like Clockwork Springs or the oboe on Viva Vida (a track which, on first listening, grabbed me gently by the throat and refused to let go), and if you add to that sultry samba beats and the odd blast of glitch-hop, this is a great record.

Daedelus - Samba Legrand
Daedelus/buy

6. Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out Of This Country

Camera Obscura were introduced, in a haze of blog buzz, as a band that sounded like Belle & Sebastian. As a new found devotee of those most literate of Scots indie-poppers, I thought great, and found another bunch of literate Scots indie-poppers, this time with the pretty, affecting, female vocals at the front. So yes, Camera Obscura don't really win any prizes for groundbreaking originality, but when you kick off an album with a heartbreaking ode to Lloyd Cole that's a serious contender for song of the year, who really cares? Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken is sad but sweet and gorgeous, and so is the majority of the rest of the album. In a year spent trying to be avant garde, this album feels like a step back for me, but really, what does that matter? Music's in the heart, not the head.

Camera Obscura - I Need All The Friends I Can Get
Camera Obscura/buy

5. Steve Adey - All Things Real

Out of the blue is how I'd describe this. I get so so many random, mostly awful, acts trying it on in MySpace World, that it really took me by surprise when I heard Adey's rich baritone fully nailing the beautiful Find The Way for the first time when Grand Harmonium Records sought me out. Mr Adey is a very talented man indeed and has created an album of warm, beautiful songsmithery to go with his wonderful voice. Great combination, great result.

Steve Adey - Tonight
Steve Adey/buy

4. Mogwai - Mr Beast

It's the top four that has been set almost as soon as I heard the records, but it's also given me a lot of trouble. Mogwai are, by default, the best band in the world (see above) and since Alan McGee's outburst that Mr Beast would be the best thing since Loveless, I was expecting monster things from Mr Beast. And in some ways, I got that. In some ways. Because where Mr Beast worked (Glasgow Mega-Snake, We're No Horses, Auto-Rock) it was beyond incredible, but there just wasn't the usual connection. Sure, there was plenty of Rock, and this is a good thing, but it didn't at the heartstrings as well like it's predecessor. I think maybe if Mogwai had combined elements of this record, the huge riffs, the unbelievable volume, with the tact, restraint and explorations of this year's other release, the Zidane soundtrack, then they would have had a hit on their hands. As it is, Mogwai are still top four material despite this not being their strongest record, which says a lot about them - although I'd love to put them top, I just wouldn't be being honest to myself, so. Number four.

Mogwai - I Chose Horses
Mogwai/buy

3. TV On The Radio - Return To Cookie Mountain

A record that keeps on getting better with every listen is an album that's worth listening to. And when you listen to Return To Cookie Mountain, you'll start to appreciate the delicacy and intricacies within such a complex, yet feral-sounding album. The band manage to fill every space with a rushing noise that's not really there, and for all the joy minimalism gives, this is extremely exciting. Live, the band are a sexy beast, and on record, they're no less so. Highlights like Province, Wolf Like Me and I Was A Lover sound like nothing that was released this, or any other year. A one off band.

TV On The Radio - I Was A Lover
TV On The Radio/buy

2. M Ward - Post-War

Our number two record is the most old-fashionedy on the list. Post-War revels in it's retrospectivity (a new word?), bringing to mind massive radios, big radio microphones, band's playing all at once to record, for a change, good ol' fashioned rock'n'roll. When Matt rocks it up, the sound is a joyous boogie, a record chockful of singalongs and 5th-6th chord progressions. But it's not just that, it's more diverse, with songs like Chinese Translation playing foil to Magic Trick's life-affirming groove. Maybe life-affirming would sum up the whole album pretty well actually - you certainly end up in a better mood at the end of it, having had great fun along the way. I don't suppose you can ask for much more out of an album than this.

M Ward - Magic Trick
M Ward/buy

1. Belle & Sebastian - The Life Pursuit

I've since come to realise that I did know one Belle & Sebastian track before I heard The Blues Are Still Blue on the radio, maybe even at the end of last year. The Boy With The Arab Strap is actually that nagging, familiar melody that's been at the back of my mind all year. But anyway, I was under the impression for the most part that despite B&S having been within my wider conciousness for maybe ten years, I didn't really know their material. In fact, I dismissed them as fey, twee, any weak adjective you care to mention.
But in the rare event of a single that makes you go and buy an album, The Blues Are Still Blue got stuck in my head. Then after that, Jeff goes and picks Sukie In The Graveyard as his perfect three-minute pop song on the Contrast Podcast and the wheels are set in motion. The album is purchased and the songs are absorbed, and blow me if I didn't know right then that it would have to take something incredibly special to knock this off it's best-of-the-year podium. And nothing was that special. I don't think 2006 was the greatest year for new music, to be honest, and although there was some good bands around there wasn't anything that came out of nowhere and rocked everybody's socks. So this little Scottish band, eleven years after their debut, and perceived to have their best days behind, proceed to put out an album that's potentially the best of their career. To me, it's more focused than If You're Feeling Sinister, less patchy than Tigermilk (obviously, I've gone on to explore the catalogue) - it's simply one of the best pop albums to have been released in a good few years. Nearly perfect in every way, it's witty, classy, extremely tight and immensely good fun. It's heart and head music, which ticks all my boxes.

Belle & Sebastian - Sukie In The Graveyard
Belle & Sebastian/buy

Remix Me. I'm Going In...#8: Radiohead

2006-12-08T14:25:00.000Z

(photo by o.brien)

Some of these posts I could probably write with my eyes closed. For example, I knew nothing whatsoever about Pole, and very little about Battles, but Radiohead were - like so many others - my first love. Sure, I'd heard music before, I'd even enjoyed it, but it wasn't til I found myself wrapped up in an evangelical fervour at the release of OK Computer that I knew I'd found my one and only.

We've been through some tough times, Radiohead and I. We don't seem to see eye to eye, and our paths and destinations sometimes cross at the wrong times. There was that initial flurry, that outburst of emotions in 1997 that led to such rapturous outpourings back then. I was 15 in those days, you see, and impressionable, but I think rightly so: there's not really been an album before or since that has fitted so perfectly with my frame of mind. I was a teenager, for crying out loud, with all the angst and naiveté that brings with it, but to find something so... intellectual, so stimulating that also cut me to my very heart, that was satisfying.

Course, by the time Kid A came round, I was 18, and listening to Wildhearts, to NoFX, to Rancid, to Therapy? I bought it on the day of release anyway, I managed to convince a little MVC man to root around in a box and find it. I was perplexed by it. My knowledge of electronica is still fairly limited, if ever growing, but then it was by and large non-existent. A gaping void. But even so, it didn't click like it should have, for a Radiohead record. It should have held my heart delicately in suspension and tickled my brain, but instead it focused on appealing to the psyche and my heart was completely untouched. There's some fine moments, for sure, and every so often I come back to it, but it's never an album which was I was encouraged to spend days and weeks. Amnesiac barely registered because of this, leaving aside Radiohead's typically lengthy gestation for a quick turnaround.

Then Radiohead headed back to rock at about the time I was looking for more out of my music - Hail To The Thief was a retrogressive step for Radiohead, and while (as I've probably mentioned before) there were dizzying highs, there were also some pretty low lows. This was the year, for example, in which Four Tet's mindblowingly awesome Rounds was released, and Mogwai's monumental Happy Songs For Happy People. Music for people who weren't looking for the return of Radiohead's accessible side with such enthusiasm, but had been entranced by the post-rock of Godspeed, or Sigur Ros, or Fridge. So Radiohead and I missed colliding again, they were heading backwards while I was heading forwards, if you like.

Maybe soon will be the day when Radiohead again become the most potent force in my musical life, where one or two great singles aren't the only reason to embrace an album. There was an advert for OK Computer at the time: Remember when albums where albums? Remember Radiohead? Remember?

For now though, I have nostalgia, and I have some great music from different stages of the band's trajectory. I have Radiohead still, they're just in a different part of me.

The Music
Radiohead - You Never Wash Up After Yourself
Radiohead - Lucky
Radiohead - Skttrbrn (Four Tet remix)

The 'fo
Artist: Radiohead
Website: radiohead.com
Recommended: OK Computer
Label: Parlophone
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Sigur Ros - Aegetis Byrjun
Tags: Radiohead; alternative; Four Tet; remix; electronica

The Sound Of Falling

2006-12-07T13:51:00.000Z

(photo by wanderingz)

Sometimes MySpace can be a real hassle. It's all fun and all, but I have a backlog of friend requests as long as my arm which I feel it's only fair to give a decent crack of the whip to. So I set aside some lunch hour to have a listen, starting from the oldest, and what do I find but a good'un straight off.

Ebb is a Swedish artist, which is very in these days, so good start, well done. What also helps is that he purveys a kind of easy-access glitch-pop, nothing too demanding, but very well-presented. Ebb's is a wintry sound, one that has space and room to swing a cat, and is filled with little sweeps ad flourishes, chorus-y vocals in his pleasing Swedish brogue, and looping little hops and glitches. These are becoming semi-ubiquitous these days- semi because obviously not every band incorporates electronic elements at all, but ubiquitous because it seems like every band/artist that has some of the same elements: muffled synth loop? Check. Off-kilter, unexpected beat pattern? Check. Occasional odd vocal effect? Check. Drum effects that make it sound like a loose connection with your headphones? Check.

It's not really a problem as such, but there's no way this sort of thing can be considered avant-garde any more. Fortunately, even when we're relegating this one revolutionary sound-styling to everyday pop, there's artists like Ebb, and songs like I'm All Made Of Music and Life Is On TV that elevate themselves above such criticism and carve out a necessary place for themselves. So good for him, Ebb comes recommended by Betty.

The Music
Ebb - Silent Lucy (requires Quicktime)

The 'fo
Artist: Ebb
Website: ebbmusic.com, MySpace
Recommended: Loona
Label: Gay Monkey
Buy: From Ebb
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
Tags: Ebb; Sweden; electronica

Remix Me. I'm Going In...#7: Boom Bip

2006-12-06T14:42:00.000Z

(photo by delarge)

Boom Bip is Echo Park resident (apparently - and disappointingly - nothing to do with Echo Beach, far away in time) Bryan Hollon. He submits a nice, spacious, airy reworking of No More Mosquitos for Four Tet's Remixed disc, and very pleasant it is too. Mr Hollon is more of a hip hop head in general, although this year's Blue Eyed In The Red Room seems to take a more varied, more eclectic approach - witness the MySpace tracks from the album to get a sense of that. Seems like Hollon actually comes from an altogether different base: before he got his first credit card c.1992 his passion was hardcore punk. We've all been there, I love me a bit of Good Riddance every now and then.

But the lure of the turntable was too strong and hence was born Boom Bip as we know him now. It's pretty varied, interesting stuff, usually with a strong emphasis on beat. This ends up coming off really, really well on some tracks, and kind of weakly club-anthem-ish on others, but where it does work it's pretty ace. I recommend Girl Toy, downloadable from MySpace and below. Check out also Hollon's other remix work, including Mogwai, Hot Hot Heat and M83.

Note on remixed track: No More Mosquitoes was the first Four Tet song I heard (available from the ever-(as was)-indispensable Epitonic, the related article of which hasn't been updated in over five years. Anyway, it's a wonderful song - one of the few Hebden creations to feature discernable vocals, it's got this fascinating intro. A mosquito buzzes around until the thwack which ends its existence, which in turn becomes the massive opening beat of the track and coincides with the big ol' bassline. Highly recommended.

The Music
Four Tet - No More Mosquitoes
Boom Bip - Girl Talk

The 'fo
Artist: Boom Bip
Website: boom-bip.com, MySpace
Recommended: Blue Eyed In The Red Room
Label: Lex
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Subtle - For Hero: For Fool
Tags: remix; Four Tet; electronica; Boom Bip; hip hop; mosquito

Rough Guide To Brazilian Electronica: Rica Amabis

2006-12-04T15:26:00.000Z

(photo by alexdecarvalho)

Not too many of the artists on this CD borrow heavily from the Tropicalia movement that marked Brazilian music out as not only cool, but aware, active and exciting. That was of course almost 40 years ago, but given that such Tropicalismo titans as Os Mutantes, Caetano Veloso and Tom Zé are still performing and are well respected, something can be said of the short-lived genre's lasting impact.

Rica Amabis, or at least his track on the Rough Guide CD (Mulata Assanhada), owes a lot to the movement without being unpleasantly derivative. There's the same samba/funk-based, highly eclectic backing with Amabis' slightly out-there vocal style cackling over the top, there's the sultry girl singer, the butt-shaking grooves so redolent of party time in Rio. Or how one would imagine it to be.

The song is taken from the 2000 album Sambadelic, apparently seen as something of a touchstone in modern Brazilian music. I have to confess to not having heard the album in it's entirety, but Amazon's handy pre-listen device can give you some sort of idea. It sounds a lot of fun, a real mixed bag of ideas, by no means operating entirely in an electronica field. Most of this album seems far too diverse to be considered in that category, but there are certainly moments which justify selecting Amabis to feature on the Rough Guide: Vozes De Seca is rough and beaty,

Elsewhere, Marcio Leonardo e Telmo features Brazilian soul legend Tim Maia, and A Falsa Baia is a classic MPB number from the late 60's. All in all, sounds worth investigating.

The Music
Rica Amabis - Mulata Assanhada

The 'fo
Artist: Rica Amabis
Website: Calabash
Recommended: Sambadelic
Label: Sterns
Buy: Amazon; Rough Guide
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Andrea Marquee - Zumbi
Tags: electronica; Brazil; Rica Amabis; Tropicalia

Remix Me. I'm Going In...#7: Pole

2006-12-01T17:20:00.000Z

Pole is brand new on me, a German DJ and producer who's carved out quite a niche for himself specialising in the brutally minimal. This is no bad thing obviously; for example, who doesn't love a little Murcof every once in a while. From my first impressions, Pole covers similar sort of territory- there's that familiar reverb distance - but where Fernando Corona's beats are sparse and exude space and agaraphobia, Stefan Betke's sound is claustrophobic and tight, nervy and uncomfortable. It seems to have evolved from a slightly different base as well: Pole incorporates the zoned-out basslines of dub to a far higher extent, giving an undeniable groove to what could be cold, detached electronics.

Pole's bio describes him as having a passion for distilling sounds: his DJ style used to be to use two turntables, two CD-players and his laptop to have four or five different pieces fighting for attention, which could be anything from avant-jazz to dub to contemporary club tracks to Steve Reich, which would then be mixed and resampled midset. I'd love to have heard that, I can't imagine a much more exciting way to listen to a DJ, but it appears that these days his yen is more to experimental hip hop and electronica. And who can blame him?

I wanted to quote his bio again, actually, I think this is fantastic. Pole works in a dub field, and what is this? "Computer-arranged sound design which, in the tweak of the tiniest loop, celebrates reduction right down to the essentials." That's cool. Celebrating reduction is something a lot more artists could do with. There's certainly dub motifs there, the very occasional skank, the stretches of time covered by beautiful repetition (obviously a nod not only to dub but to Steve Reich and his ilk), but just as much hip hop (featuring Fat John from time to time), experimentalism and pure electronica. It's a quite lovely blend.

The Music
Pole - Heim (Four Tet Remix)
Pole - Fahren

The 'fo
Artist: Pole
Website: scape-music.de, MySpace
Recommended: CD1/LP1
Label: Scape
Buy:Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Murcof - Remembranza
Tags: remix; Four Tet; Pole; Scape; dub; electronica

Remix Me. I'm Going In...#6: Battles

2006-11-30T13:33:00.000Z

(photo by gregoryperez)

A Joy, the opening track from Four Tet's last album (Everything Ecstatic) seems to be a popular choice for remixers, as evidenced by no less than four different versions on one disc. And so to today's choice, by popular beat combo, Battles. Battles are from New York and they have an excellent drummer. This is literally the level of my knowledge of the band. So, I dig.

It's kind of unusual to see a drummer credited first on a lineup, but it turns out that this is with good reason. John Stanier was a member of Helmet until their acrimonious split in 1998. He's currently a member of Battles alongside being in The Mark Of Cain and Tomahawk. Good going on the avant garde front, nice. Helmet, of course, rocked, like, hard. Wikipedia's always fun for these sorts of things, and states that despite having a drum corps background, he "never actually marched a summer season." Some things are so totally American to make absolutely no sense outside of the continent. I have heard great things about Battles live based solely on the drum skillz of John Stanier.

The rest of Battles is Ian Williams, formerly of math legends Don Caballero, Dave Konopka formerly of Lynx (now, I've no idea if this Lynx is the same as Fame Academy's David Grant; I somehow doubt it), and Tyondai Braxton, offspring of avant-jazz hippy Anthony Braxton. A fine pedigree then, and no doubt about it, some interesting music. Battles is occasionally glitchy (all good) but more often focuses on the sort of hyper-edited sampling that Four Tet often employs, creating a sound not far akin to what you might if you knew nothing of, say, a Stockhausen/Reich collaboration before hearing it.

Well, sometimes anyway. Battles seem a far more diverse proposition than a single comparison can suggest, running the gamut from hyper-kinetic electronica to mathy guitar rock. You can see their range just from the four tracks on MySpace, which I highly recommend you check out. I particularly like Dance - while the other tracks seem to have been given names from the Autechre school of song titles, Dance suggests dancing. yet the irony is that if you were to dance to Dance, you'd do yourself a serious injury, such is the spasmodic and continually shifting percussion and samples.

Battles are a band worth looking further into, and you can rest assured that at some point, I surely will. A good starting point would seem to be their Warp debut, EP C/B EP, which is a collation of their earlier, more obscure releases from the last couple of years. I've also posted a little Floridian hardcore, in the form of Page Hamilton's angry yelp, backed of course by M. Stanier's awesome drum battery. Rocking.

The Music
Four Tet - A Joy (Battles remix)
Battles - Dance
Helmet - In The Meantime

Teqnicolor presents: Battles in session

The 'fo
Artist: Battles
Website: bttls.com; MySpace
Recommended: EP C/B EP
Label: Warp
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Tomahawk - s/t
Tags: remix; Four Tet; Battles; Tomahawk; Helmet; John Stanier

Rough Guide To Brazilian Electronica: Luiz Macedo

2006-11-29T13:07:00.000Z

(photo be henrie)

The next track in this is another Suba monster, and while I could easily harp on about Senor Subotic, I've already eulogised the late Master Of Colours before, so I'll skip the excellent Samba Do Gringo Paulista for now. That brings us to...

Luiz Macedo. Again, little info around about this feller, but it would seem that rather than go down the smooth chillout route, or the intellectual drum'n'bass, or whatever, he's just gone for happy Brazilian electro-pop. Bossa Nova, Né, today's track is all about the the Casio demo button bassline, the sharp organ, and the synthesised handclap percussion - little variation, little innovation, but when it's this much fun, really, who cares?

To bulk things out, it's worth mentioning Macedo's stint with Karnak, a Brazilian act named after the temple complex on the Nile. Karnak have also members now in Funk Como Le Gusta (remember them?), Pato Fu and Bojo, and featured one Luiz Macedo on electric guitar between 1992 and 1996. This is from the ever-reliable Wikipedia, who also credit one member as Sândalo's dog (1992/1999). This information doesn't really relate to today's track at all, but you can have too much useless Brazilian music trivia, can you? Tell you what, I'll give you a bonus track to keep you interested.

The Music
Luiz Macedo - Bossa Nova, Né
BONUS:
Karnak - Martim Parangolá

The 'fo
Artist: Luiz Macedo
Website: nope
Recommended: Bossa Electramagnetica
Label: Juke
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Sergio Mendes
Tags: Rough Guide; Brazil; electronica; Luiz Macedo

PS - Betty fave Sergius Gregory has a new song up on MySpace, a typically gorgeous, sparse little number called No-One Gets Hurt. I recommend you try it on for size.

Remix Me. I'm Going In...#5: Bloc Party

2006-11-28T14:06:00.000Z

(photo by Shane Bee)

Bloc Party are big news these days. Their latest album has leaked around various blogs, and I'm sure if you knock up SoulSeek or the Hype Machine, you'll be able to find some tracks. I haven't listened myself. Silent Alarm is a good album, but certainly not flawless, and I'm not sure it warrants the excessive hype that surrounds it.

That said, the album captured what I think a lot of bands were going for a couple of years ago a lot better than most of those bands; when it gets it right, it's urgent, spiky, joyous; when it doesn't it grates horribly and leaves you wondering what all the fuss is about. I never expected Bloc Party to get quite as big as they are: why, when I first knew of them they were friends of a friend. Check me out, I saw one at a party once. If I bribe the right person, I could probably offer the guitarist's school shirt as a competition prize. But big they got, and fair play to them I suppose. At least they're aiming for a slightly higher intellectual level than most of their lowest-common-denominator peers, for which they have my respect.

You can tell a band is kind of pretentious when they release a remix album. For an indie band, at least. Silent Alarm Remixed came and went with, as usual, just a handful of decent versions. Four Tet's was (for me) the highlight, pouring on the gorgeous to a sublime rendering of So Here We Are, really the track that interested me about Bloc Party in the first place. I'll stick the original up here and another track from the remixes record, and another from the less frenetic facet of the Party, Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Nick Zinner's take on Compliments.

The Music
Bloc Party - So Here We Are
Bloc Party - Compliments (Shibuyaaka Remix by Nick Zinner)

The 'fo
Artist: Bloc Party
Website: blocparty.com
Recommended: Silent Alarm
Label: Wichita
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Editors - The Back Room
Tags: Bloc Party; remix; Four Tet; Nick Zinner; Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Clockwork Springs

2006-11-26T21:18:00.000Z

(photo by ultrahi)

Sometimes, it only takes one song, sometimes only one phrase to make you fall in love with an act. I have no idea if that's going to happen with Daedelus, but a melody from his most recent album has caught my ear tonight while I was listening to it as background music to some hardcore email checking. I've got no idea why; I've got no idea if it's a good song, yet, even. But something about Daedelus' Viva Vida grabbed me while I listened to it the first time, enough to make me want to go and listen to it over and over again.

There are not enough rock stars called Alfred. Not only is Daedelus' real name Alfred, but it's Alfred Weisberg-Roberts, which is just brilliant. I was first aware of this chappie through the lovely old Epitonic, which has now descended into a Flash-based hell, but used to be great (if infrequently updated). Anyway, I ended up with his bleepy-typey A Mashnote, from 2001's Freeways (a Dublab IDM special) which, I've since discovered, is not really representative. While it's not cold in itself, it's certainly kind of beard-scratchingly pseudy (in a good way of course, I love that sort of thing), whereas the rest of Daedelus' output is characterised by a warmth and human emotion reminiscent of my boy Clue To Kalo.

But then, maybe Alf's latest, Daedelus' latest ...Denies The Day's Demise (great title, btw...) isn't so representative either, because the bulk of D's output seems to be a more Ninja Tune/hip hop influenced style, some Shadow-y samples-based stuff, guest spots from Madlib, Anti-Pop Consortium et al. I have no problem with a changing sound though, especially when it works out this nicely: although DDTDD is going to take a little while to seep in, I'm all the more inclined to give it the time of day just based on the first few tracks, and especially Viva Vida. It's a mish-mash, if you will: oboe or bassoon opens things up, followed by an almost bossa beat. Then the French style accordion and Alf's low, slightly drunken vocals. It's a really pretty melody, and sets the tone for the rest of the album, which is cheery and sweet and cute and quirky, full of big banks of the most right-sounding, natural-sounding synths. Is nice.

The Music
Daedelus - Viva Vida
Daedelus - A Mashnote

The 'fo
Artist: Daedelus
Website: daedelusdarling.com
Recommended: Daedelus Denies The Day's Demise
Label: Ninja Tune
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws; epitonic
If you like this you might like: Clue To Kalo - One Way, It's Every Way
Tags: electronica; Daedelus, Ninja Tune

Snappy Birthday To Me

2006-11-25T11:51:00.000Z

(Photo by mira mira on the wall)

You know, if you've ever looked through the Betty Archives over on the right-hand-side there, you'll notice that today is the one year anniversary of this blog. It's been a busy month for that, I've noticed a few birthday specials (The Daily Growl, for example, who celebrated his birthday with a great Jeremy Warmsley/Absentee review). I didn't know really what to do today though, to celebrate, so I thought I'd better just post some great music.

It's tipping with rain outside. I've just heard the biggest thunderclap I've ever heard, and the skies opened. I thought the sky was falling on my head, by Toutatis. Some rain music then?

Kristin Hersh - Cold Water Coming (from Strange Angels)
Tanya Donelly - The Storm (from Beautysleep)

Kristin Hersh pretty much defines what good music is for me. Emotional; beautiful; subtle; uplifting; deep. But the more I think about it, there's no reason why her half-sister shouldn't be just as revered. I'm seeing Kristin live in January (very exciting indeed), I've seen her solo twice before (three times if you count Fifty Foot Wave), but I'd put Tanya Donelly at Bush Hall a couple of summers ago as possibly my favourite gig that I've ever attended. The two are quite different now: Kristin is more confessional, more heart-on-sleeve, more... fractured maybe. Tanya is easy-listening by comparison, but for all the lightness of the songs, there's genuine beauty and meaning there. The Storm for example - I first heard this song in acoustic form at that concert, and wow. Biggest goosebumps ever.

Hood - Still Rain Fell (from Outside Closer)

I haven't posted any Hood for a while. This is classic Hood, with the forefront acoustic guitars, the drawled, unison vocals, the pastoral feel. It kind of does feel rainy, it fits in well with today's overcast atmosphere and, I guess, the band's native Leeds, Yorkshire having something of a damp reputation. "Round here, the walks... the walks are so long..."

Ryan Adams - Damn Sam (I Love A Woman That Rains) (from Heartbreaker)

Mr Adams in introspective, poetic mode here. So much of me wants to look at Ryan Adams' Heartbreaker album and see Bright Eyes' acoustic emo, overwraught alt.country, but this short song sums up everything that's good. Adams can get away with "I'm as calm as a fruit stand in New York, and maybe as strange," because he sings it like he really means that. "I ain't never been much for sunny days." This is a future classic album, I have no doubt of it. It's so, so good.

Pixies - Stormy Weather (from Bossanova)

I've managed to select a few of my favourite artists here, and although these days I can't often listen to the Pixies (burnout maybe), there was a time when this band was everything to me. In my final year of university I worshipped the ground the Pixies walked on, and at the time, seeing their show at Brixton Academy for the first reunion tour was the most exciting thing ever. Like, ever. So, a nice track from Bossanova here, one of the more atmospheric in the band's canon, along with others like Havalina from the same album.

I could post loads more, but I'll refrain for yousendit's sake. I hope you enjoy not only listening to today's music, but also reading You Can Call Me Betty (almost) every day as I much as I enjoy writing it every day. Thanks for all your comments and to all the cool kids out there that have made blogging such a fun process, I thank thee all, and to all a goodnight.

Buy 'em all: Amazon

Bird Fruit Flower Fish

2006-11-24T14:39:00.000Z

This is a great game, this, and perfect for a rainy Friday afternoon. It's a distraction. Seeing as I'm not going to get around to submitting for next weeks Contrast Podcast, on the theme of chickens and other birds, I thought I might as well do a bird-fruit-flower-fish for today's post. And why not? It's an easy game to play, just pick a bunch of categories then a random letter and get 10 points for a unique answer, 5 points if shared with one of the other players.

Work is really productive at the moment.

Note to colleagues: we didn't actually play this. Today.

Bird

A Hawk & A Hacksaw - In The River

Resisting the urge to post either Charlie Parker (good) or They Might Be Giants (horrible), I find myself asking: why on earth I haven't posted about these so far? I've had the mp3 in my inbox from Leaf for weeks, so sorry about that. Anyway: A Hawk & A Hacksaw have been on the road with Beirut recently, a pairing that works pretty well. While Zach Condon's efforts have failed to impact my life in the way I'd hoped (though there's still time), his collaborators on Gulag Orkestar seem to have gone that little further in the Eastern Europea gypsy-folk-indie hybrid.

Jeremy Barnes was, of course, drummer in Neutral Milk Hotel, an extremely credible addition to any resumé. Aside from violinist Heather Trost, Barnes plays most of the instruments himself, creating something of a madcap one-man-band image, which can't fail to be great, despite lacking the traditional three-legged dog in support. Their latest record, The Way The Wind Blows, has been garnering much critical acclaim and automatically interests me given their position on one of my favourite labels, Leaf (who've been kind of quiet on my radar this year, unlike Beirut's UK label 4AD who've had a quite genuinely barnstorming annum). So please enjoy the offering, and investigate Leaf further. Please.

Fruit

Apples In Stereo? The Lemon Song? No... How about some Belafonte? Yes... Who doesn't love the soft lilt of calypso's biggest star, and the gentle Banana Boat Song is one of the most famous. It's a work song at heart, originally sung by Jamaican dock workers lifting crates of bananas onto the banana boat (duh...) at night, hence "daylight come, and me wan' go home."

Of course, such is the media-saturated modern mind that I can't listen to "Hide the deadly black tarantula!" without thinking of Ubiquitous Teen Movie Grown-Up Jeffrey Jones making like a possessed spider in Beetle Juice.

Harry Belafonte - Banana Boat Song

Flower

Public Image Ltd. - Flowers Of Romance (album version)

PiL were great. I mean really good, have a listen to Metal Box and tell me that's not innovative, fascinating music. In a cool tin. John Lydon is clearly a joke these days, and kind of was in the Sex Pistols. Being born well after the implosion myself, I find it hard to judge but my feeling is that I would have found it hard to take him seriously even then, certainly not the threat to society as envisaged at the time. But Pil, those inbetween years? Those are great. Even if you just know Rise, surely that's enough to tell you how great they were, a monster of a song with falls and rises, and Lydon's inimitable hectoring, his oblique railing at the world, or anyone who would listen.

Photo by s76fitz

Flowers Of Romance (from the album of the same name) is based on, or at least references the band of that name, featuring then-Pil guitar hero Keith Levene (who's sound defined Pil on a number of occasions) and one Simon Ritchie (Sid Vicious to his ma). It reached #24 in 1981.

Fish

If you were hoping I would post Fish or Phish, sorry, that's just not going to happen. Think it through. What I will post is Red Snapper. If you love you some fried fish (and who doesn't?) then red snapper is the route to go down. If you love you some dubbby, jazzy, breaky, millenial London beats then Red Snapper's for you. Free from the Matador website, Some Kind Of Kink is apt an introduction as you could hope to have to this often dizzying act, with it's large bassline and congas, and somewhat claustrophobic, unsettling fx.

Red Snapper - Some Kind Of Kink

The 'fo
Artists: A Hawk & A Hacksaw/Harry Belafonte/PiL/Red Snapper
Websites: brokenheartfoundation.org.uk/wikipedia/johnlydon.com/matador.com
Recommended: The Way The Wind Blows/The Essential.../Metal Box/Prince Blimey
Label: Leaf/RCA/Virgin/Warp & Matador
Buy: Amazon AH&AH/HB/PiL/RS
More: Hype Machine AH&AH/HB/PiL/RS; elbo.ws AH&AH/HB/PiL/RS
If you like this you might like: anything...
Tags: bird; fruit; flower; fish; A Hawk & A Hacksaw; Leaf; Beirut; Harry Belafonte; calypso; Jamaica; John Lydon; Public Image Limited; Red Snapper; Matador; Warp

Remix Me. I'm Going In...#4: Beth Orton

2006-11-23T15:26:00.000Z

( Photo by Neil Wykes)

A while ago I was given a duplicate Beth Orton album when my sister got married. I've listened to it once. In the background. At work, where blandness is appreciated. You see, Beth Orton kind of gives the impression that she's going to be as bland as, say, Dido, and while this may or may not be justified, I just don't see it's worth the effort.

It wasn't always like this, you know. In 1997, Trailer Park was a Mercury-nominated debut with big prospects. Being the Mercury Prize, Roni Size's fairly-decent drum'n'bass beat off competition from The Prodigy, the Spice Girls... oh yes, and a best-album-of-all-time contender in OK Computer. Anyway, also up there was Beth Orton's debut-proper, Trailer Park, an album of stark, country-tinged simplicity, vastly toning down the electronic leanings of her early work.

I was perhaps a bit hard on Dido earlier. Dido's first album is not that bad, and contains some of the electronica/pop crossover style that Orton does a bit better. Orton managed to retain her credibility a bit though, and although her latest stuff isn't really to my taste, it doesn't completely suck.

I've been babbling. What I wanted to talk about was She Cries Your Name. This was the song on the 1997 Mercury CD sampler, which has been hanging around my bedroom for, well, about 9 years. It's a cracker: a real twangy, slidey, atmospheric number with Orton's heartbreaking vocals. That's what makes this track: the way her voice cracks and swells with the song. It's resonant and beautiful; not cheery at all, but it suits the lyrics perfectly. Although it's really not what I usually listen to at all, this comes highly recommended.

Beth Orton's Carmella is remixed by Four Tet.

PS - check out some of my newer reviews, including:
Arab Strap - Ten Years Of Tears (9/10)
Band Of Horses - Everything All The Time (6/10)
Steve Adey - All Things Real (8/10)
and Four Tet live in this month's Record Collector.

The Music
Beth Orton - She Cries Your Name

The 'fo
Artist: Beth Orton
Website: bethorton.mu
Recommended: Trailer Park
Label: Heavenly
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Tanya Donnelly - Whiskey Tango Ghost
Tags: remix; Four Tet; Beth Orton; pop; country; Mercury prize

langsam und schmachtend

2006-11-22T22:06:00.000Z

Sometimes, one really lacks the motivation to do a proper post. Most of the time, pop music is great, but every so often it's totally inadequate. So something completely different: listen out for the unresolving phrasing, the completely unique chord voicings, the dramatic dynamic shifts, the soaring strings, the huge orchestra. It's my favourite piece of music outside of the pop oeuvre. Sometimes no words is much better than words.

The Music
Richard Wagner - Tristan und Isolde (Prelude and Liebestod)

This is a pretty decent recording, but I'd recommend getting hold of the Berlin Philharmonic version if you can, they're pretty much the greatest orchestra in the world. I only have it on vinyl.

Remix Me. I'm Going In...#3: Percee P

2006-11-21T14:33:00.000Z

(Percee P @ The Fire, 12/7/06, by Ryan Briggs)

Despite having written loads about hip hop fairly recently, I still have no idea what I'm talking about, for the most part. So it's with complete naiveté and my apologies that I present Percee P.
His rap over A Joy is one of the highlights of Four Tet's album, and it's been around a while - I think I first heard it on Comfort Music or Foewheel, and it's kind of stuck around in my head since then. He's apparently considered an old-skool rapper, which to my mind is a good thing: I had a great laugh doing the Message compilation, so it's all good. And listening to the few tracks I can find online, I guess I can only agree with that: Music.Download, my saviour a couple of times before, throws up a couple of songs, Bee Eye and Lung Collapsing Lyrics.

Now, the details: Percee P, while an old-skool artist has not actually released an album of his own to date, although it's on the way. According to this scarily comprehensive discography, John Percy Simon's recorded debut was back in 1988 and he's been known since for his wide range of collaborations which have kept him going, of which Four Tet is just the latest. Of the ones I'm familiar with, these include Jurassic 5, Kool Keith, Aesop Rock, Big Daddy Kane and DJ Shadow. Not bad going.

According to Cocaine Blunts: "aside from Big Daddy Kane, he’s the illest quote unquote fast rapper to ever touch the mic. But because he’s only recorded about 18 verses in as many years, not a lot of heads know what’s up." I can't really argue. It's kind of cool though, he seems to have made a living by selling homemade mixtapes outside a record shape in New York and doing MC battles and collaborations etc. Fair play to the fella. Now though, he's recording an album for Stones Throw (home of J Dilla, Madvillain, Koushik, Breakestra et al) recorded with Madlib, so maybe he'll get his dues yet.

Check out YCCMB podcasto numero trio for the Four Tet version. Also take a look at Smother Me from the other day - I've finally got hold of a copy of the Booth & The Bad Angel track for you.

The Music
Percee P - Lung Collapsing Lyrics ft. Pharaoh Monch
DJ Shadow - Napalm Brain/Scatter Brain
Edan - Torture Chamber ft. Percee P (Cut Chemist remix)

The 'fo
Artist: Percee P
Website: stonesthrow.com
Recommended: Now & Then
Label: Stones Throw
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Edan - Beauty & The Beat
Tags: Four Tet; electronica; remix; Percee P; hip hop; rap; Edan; Cut Chemist; Pharaoh Monch

Remix Me. I'm Going In...#2: Manitoba

2006-11-20T15:57:00.000Z

(photo by slowmotionlandscap_e)

Stupid computers. I just finished typing this wonderful long post and boom, Internet Explorer goes and closes itself. I know, I know, get a Mac, shut up. Don't wanna.

Anyhoo, today's post was themed upon the theme of Manitoba. This is nothing to do with the state (indeed our heroes emerged from Ontario), nothing to do with the Frank Black song (lovely thought it be), nor, contrary to opinion in some quarters, Handsome Dick Manitoba. I say in some quarters, I mean in Handsome Dick's quarters, as he sued our protagonist for infringing upon his surname. Yes, really. We are of course referring to Mr Dan Snaith, formerly Manitoba, now recording as Caribou. No word on whether the species is preparing a class action.

Why am I talking about Manitoba today then? Well, I thought I'd rashly plunge headlong into a new feature based on Saturday's Four Tet post. For contained within the shiny, white double-sleeve of Remixes/Remixed are the works of a veritable multitude of fine artists - some with whom I'm familiar, some not. I'm going to take a look at each and let you know the down low, and hopefully teach myself a thing or too also. True. I'm not going to post every track from the album though, sorry.

So Manitoba eh? They remix Hilarious Movie Of The 90's here - dream ticket, two of my favourite acts together at last. I tend to lump the two in together sometimes, but in reality they have their similarities, but also some significant differences. Where Four Tet is quite organic, Manitoba/Caribou is maybe the most natural sounding electronica you could hope for, with actual, traditional song structures, vocals, (almost) discernable lyrics, harmonies, everything.

In fact, there are some beautiful songs right here. Across Snaith's last two albums (2003's Manitoba offering Up In Flames, probably the best work he's done, and 2005's The Milk Of Human Kindness (as Caribou)), he's produced some wonderfully-warped pop music spilling out of the cracks between some huge beats and some dazed, muggy-sounding, dreamy vocals. It's all pretty accessible - for me a good thing, much as I normally tout a the-difficulter-the-betterer toeline. I like my out-there music to work a little bit in here as well *points to both head and heart*. M/C has something for the mind to get to grips with, the freewheeling trumpets, the complex beats, the delicious overall haziness. But it also touches the heart like a proper songster would, and like few beat-artists do, with actual, beautiful, often aching vocal touches. It doesn't matter that the words are indistinct, not in the slightest.

I'm going to post the tracks I put on my first podcast: from Up In Flames, maybe my favourite drum track in the world (Cherry Bomb), and from Caribou, maybe an archetypal Snaith moment on Pelican Narrows.

The Music

Manitoba - Cherry Bomb
Caribou - Pelican Narrows

The 'fo

Artist: Manitoba/Caribou

Website: caribou.fm

Recommended: Manitoba - Up In Flames

Label: Leaf

Buy: Amazon; Posteverything

More: Hype Machine M/C; elbo.ws M/C

If you like this you might like: Clue To Kalo - One Way, It's Every Way

Tags: Four Tet; electronica; remix; Manitoba; Caribou; Dan Snaith

Remix Me. I'm going in...#1

2006-11-18T20:40:00.000Z

(photo by mk30)

Alright, so it's not cover me, it's as good as.
I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when the remix that grabbed me most on Four Tet's remixes/remixed double album was by... Four Tet. There's some great acts on here: Manitoba and Koushik both remix Hilarious Movie Of The 90's, Battles do a great job on A Joy, and Boom Bip's No More Mosquitoes is also ace. This is only CD2 as well - disc 1 features Hebden remixing Radiohead, Bloc Party, Beth Orton, Madvillain, Aphex Twin... I'm sure those'll come up soon.

But yes, my favourite remix of a Four Tet song was by Keiran Hebden himself. He does As Serious As Your Life, and to be frank, it's wonderful. The original, if you'll recall, has that great, ever-so-slightly funky guitar riff that's chopped up at times with that gloriously sparse beat. As per Hebden, there's not only melodies that ebb and flow in and out, but also completely random interjectory bleeps and the odd drum freak out.

The remix retains the funky but goes for almost an inversion of the riff transmuted to a great, indistinct bass sound, making it one of the best melodies on the disc. At times remixes can veer so much into trying to impress the remixers own sound onto a track that all semblance of melody and listenability is thrown out of the window. Not here though, this is one of the catchiest tunes on here, which says a great deal for Hebden's original work. It can't be easy taking a sound so vastly innovative as Four Tet's and keeping it accessible, but I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the man's a genius.

Listen out also for the free jazz trumpets (reminiscent of some of Manitoba's Up In Flames actually; think maybe Cherry Bomb?), and a whole host of other things. This man's good.

The Music
Four Tet - As Serious As Your Life (Four Tet remix)

The 'fo
Artist: Four Tet
Website: fourtet.net
Recommended: Remixes
Label: Domino
Buy: Amazon; Domino
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Manitoba - Up In Flames
Tags: Four Tet; live; electronica; remix

Podcast 4

2006-11-17T15:43:00.000Z

(Photo by nuanc)

It's swung by quickly again, hasn't it? Time flies when you're having fun, I guess. Anyhoo, I'm happy to present podcast number four from You Can Call Me Betty, this time including the likes of Brightblack Morning Light, Daniel Johnston and the wonderful Steve Adey with an excellent Bob Dylan cover. Thanks to all artists and labels, especially Mr Adey and also Sergius Gregory.

All tracks are podsafe, i.e. are freely available to download, as a MySpace stream, or are used with permission.

Tracklisting:

1) Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out Of This Country (from Let's Get Out Of This Country, Merge/Elefant)
2) Daniel Johnston - Mountain Top (from Fear Yourself, Sketchbook)
3) Harvey Girls - Goodbye Horses feat. Victor Scott (from Our History Is Your Kitsch, free to download)
4) Devastations - Coal (from Coal, courtesy of Brassland/Beggars Banquet)
5) Holocene - Lookout! Mountain (unreleased, MySpace stream)
6) Brightblack Morning Light - Friend Of Time (from Brightblack Morning Light, courtesy of Matador/Beggars Banquet)
7) Sergius Gregory - Bed Of Sticks (unreleased, free to download on MySpace)
8) Steve Adey- Shelter From The Storm (from All Things Real, Grand Harmonium)

Remember: if you like the music, buy the record from Amazon, iTunes, or your local record shop. Anywhere but Currys, boycott them now.

Smother me with words

2006-11-16T19:25:00.000Z

I tend to appraoch deciding what I'm going to write about in a fairly roundabout manner. So today, when I heard the comment, when discussing Haruki Marukami (whose Kafka On The Shore I've just completed), that Marukami does what David Lynch does just not quite so well, my mind went reeling. I'm not sure I agree with that statement: I can't really call myself an expert on either, but from my experience Marukami's work - while retaining the looping, bizarre themes of Lynch's work - is much gentler, much less demanding, much less specifically art - not to say that Marukami doesn't write works of art of course, Kafka... was quite beautiful, but I think they're not so selfconsciously so.

I digress. I got to thinking of David Lynch, wondering if maybe I could post a soundtrack piece. Then having a look I came across the name Angelo Badalamenti, and aha! My inspiration was found. Angelo Badalamenti's an interesting character - I never knew, until Wikipedia generously helped me out - that he'd done quite so many interesting collaborations, and quite so diverse. One tends to associate the man with David Lynch alone, but this would be to fall short of the full breadth of Badalamenti's work.

He started working with Lynch right back on Blue Velvet in 1986, and has collaborated on a number of others, including Wild At Heart, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. He's also worked with a fairly dizzying spectrum of other musicians, including:
Pet Shop Boys
Anthrax
Marianne Faithfull
Dolores O'Riordan (of Cranberries fame)

And Tim Booth, which, to be honest, is how I know him best. Namely for one single, I Believe - yet another Evening Session classic - I must be going through a nostalgic period... I remember being asked at school once if I liked James. I responded, he's alright, he's a bit weird. And he was, James had many rumours following him around, and used to come into school having scratched his face up. He made home-produced horror movies. I wonder what's become of him... Of course, this wasn't the right answer, I was being asked if I liked James the band, of Laid, and more notably Sit Down fame. I probably also answered, s'alright.

Sit Down is a great song obviously, but is a bit ubiquitous - it's an overplayed number without a doubt. James were a decent, although for me not life-changing band, but Tim Booth was an excellent singer, you had to admit that. So it's kind of cool that he'd collaborate with Angelo Badalamenti - I wouldn't neccessarily equate James' style of indie/guitar-based pop with the dramatic and dark scores of a David Lynch film, but nonetheless: Booth & The Bad Angel were formed to at least a little bit of acclaim.

I Believe - now this is a classic song. This carried me through many mixtapes on long, silent country nights, and has been redownloaded and lost several times over, when I get a hankering for some slightly grand indie-pop. It's got Booth's soaring voice, like a less whiny Brett Anderson taking things seriously. Somewhere on the album it's even got Bernard Butler, although I don't think so on this track. It's got AB's big old scores and arrangements, and all in all, it's as good a mid-nineties indie song as you'll hear.

Which makes it all the more frustrating that I can't find it anywhere. If anyone can point me to a copy, I'd be the happiest man alive. Even Soulseek has failed me. But if you ever see it in a charity shop or a bargain bin, snap it up, you shan't regret it.

EDIT 22/11/06: I have it! This is starting to sound like the journal of a mad scientist bent on life, but this evening, by golly, I've got it! I'll post it.

The Music

Booth & The Bad Angel - I Believe

The 'fo

Artist: Booth & The Bad Angel

Website: bio

Recommended: s/t

Label: Fontana

Buy: Amazon

More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws

If you like this you might like: James - The Collection

Tags: Tim Booth; Angelo Badalamenti; David Lynch; Bad Angel; James

Rough Guide To Brazilian Electronica: Superagua

2006-11-15T16:03:00.000Z

(photo by hugo*)

What does the term 'surf movie' bring to mind? Blue Wednesday or Blue Crush? For me, depressingly enough, it's Point Break, The Busey's finest hour. For Pepé Cesar it's a chance to mix his loves of poetry, surfing and music into movie form, and soundtrack it with today's artists. Superagua's first record was released in 2002 as the soundtrack to Trocando as Bordas, and the group comprise DJ/producer Jonas Rocha and guitarist/composer Ulisses Cappelletti. Working with other notables - up-and-comers such as Sabrina Malheiros, stalwarts like Orlandivo - they've carried on past their original scope to become one of the more interesting acts on the Brazilian electronica scene these days. I mean check them out, they've got a myspace, most of the artists here would struggle to get out of bed on the right day given the amount of information I can find.

Anyway, they check all the boxes they claim to in their bio: funk for sure - there's some of the Sly Stone blissed-out kind of grooves in there; jazz - of course, Brazilian pop has jazz running through it irreversibly, from the ubiquitous funky acoustic guitar chords to the beautiful electric piano; and dub, the unusual one here. Dub is not really something I'd associate with the chilled-out, but still carefully crafted Brazilian electronica I've heard thus far. Dub is substance music; it's music for people who aren't so much interested in a careful craft so much as creating a vibration. But check, the monster bass is in there, the space-FX, it's all good.

At least, on the rest of Superagua's sound. Stylish itself is actually more of the chilled, cool, acoustica with that oh-so-Brazilian acoustic guitar. I kind of want to say that, well, it's quite similar to what the rest of the album is like, it doesn't feature enough of this dub influence that I want to hear. But the fact of the matter is it's really pretty, and another calming tune well worth listening to. So do so.

The Music
Superagua - Stylish

The 'fo
Artist: Superagua
Website: MySpace
Recommended: Superagua EP
Label: Reverberations
Buy: Amazon/The Rough Guide
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Fabio Fabuloso (2004)
Tags: Rough Guide; Brazil; Superagua; funk; jazz; dub

People tire so quickly of the glamorous

2006-11-14T15:43:00.000Z

(Photo by Iona Bateman)

I have to confess to being a SoulSeeker when I can't find the tracks I need. That's right, I illegally download music. Now, I consider that I do more to promote than to steal, all told, and I only do it when I have to, and that happened yesterday finding a Wildhearts B-side.

Because I was a fan of the Wildhearts sort of before my record-buying days. Or rather, during them, but when my good pal Nathan would sort me out with bundles of recorded tapes. One of these was a Wildhearts B-Sides, from whence came the rather wonderful Two Way Idiot Mirror (don't be deceived by the rather lacking-in-finesse title, it's a pretty song from a specifically ugly band). Another was Fishing For Luckies, and were it not for my misplacement of said tape, that album could still be on my All Time Top Five. It's generally recognised that the Wildhearts' wonderful thrash-punk debut, Earth Vs. The Wildhearts was their finest hour, with its blistering paeans to the seedy sides of everyday life, its inventive but monumental riffing, and it's overall Rawkness. But ace though it is, Fishing For Luckies - the band's third album, after the wider-scoped PHUQ - pips it for me. For a record which is essentially mid-nineties Britrock, at home with the Terrorvisions, the Ashs of this world, Fishing has such a grand vision, and although on first glance it has typical Wildhearts songs on there, wild, barrelling numbers like Red Light, Green Light or Moodswings & Roundabouts, they're slotted neatly and purposefully amongst the more far-reaching numbers like Soul Searching or Sky Babies.

The record kicks off with a song called Inglorious. In many ways, this one title sums up the whole band. While the Wildhearts put out at least three albums of an exceptionally high Rock quality, their internal affairs were, shall we say, complex at the least. When I was in sixth-form, I spent my free periods making an Angelfire website called the Wildhearts family tree, which taught me the basics of html and gave me an insight into the wacky world of Ginger and his cohorts. It got out of control. They say about The Fall that it could be Mark E Smith and his grandmother, it's still The Fall, and similarly the Wildhearts could have any line-up you like - if they've got David 'Ginger' Walls in the midst, that's the Wildhearts. A manic, hard-talking, hard-living frontman, he was the heart and soul of the group and although without Danny McCormack they'd be struggling, Ginger was the driving force. The songs were sleazy - dirty, grimy anthems about the squalor, the spit and drivel of everyday life forced through a Dogs D'Amour blender. By the band's final (pre-first-major-breakup) album, Endless Nameless, the sleaze had got to their heads and the record was an overdriven mess of speedballs and crack cocaine with nary a melody in site. But just before that, when the band dared to look over the garden wall into the wider world outside, when their breath was taken away by just how grand everything could be... that was Fishing For Luckies.

Inglorious. This week's Contrast Podcast is about songs which start off albums (I chose Bob Marley, mon), and Inglorious is maybe the least likely opening track you can imagine. A 9 minute assault on the senses and the sensibilities, it starts off like GnR fighting Metallica at their peaks, a picked riff slowly building the tense before the chugging drop-D makes itself known. Then comes maybe the definitive Wildhearts riff, rollicking and rolling, with juddering halts and frenetic startups, the syncopated Hendrix chords - all tastefully smothered by a battered distortion stompbox.

Ginger starts off, "someone out there really likes me," but it's sarcastic, it's grunted and snarled. The almost Pantera-like verse comes to an end with a disorientating "stop me, stop me" before the (now) glorious, melodic pre-chorus: "We could be anywhere, but you choose up there." The oi's, the punk heys, the epic harmonies. Then the chorus, "inglorious!" a chorus which isn't so much the climax of the verse as the means to get to the next verse, and the next.
It's a monster of a song, full of shifts and changes, dynamic, resourceful. It's starting to sound like a CV... Take the "middle eight," if you will... a phased, sweeping start degenerates into spat venom and curses before Ginger's guttural roar takes and the whole thing explodes.

"People tire so quickly of the glamorous," he says. It's true. And although in their own minds the Wildhearts were real rockstars, this is a day when real rockstars have to deal with the spectre of the anti-hero - Billy Corgan and Kurt Cobain have a lot to answer for, you know. But people don't tire, or at least I don't tire of something this grandiose, carried out with such conviction. Yeah it's nostalgic but it's also great.

The Music
The Wildhearts - Inglorious

The 'fo
Artist: The Wildhearts
Website: thewildhearts.com
Recommended: Fishing For Luckies (Japanese edition)
Label: Warner
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Yo-Yo's - Uppers & Downers
Tags: Wildhearts; Ginger; rock; prog; Fishing For Luckies

No sleep runs this deep

2006-11-13T15:53:00.000Z

(Vilnius University Bookshop, by Beny Shlevich)

Today's another day when I don't really know what to post about, but I'm bored at work. I've been waiting for the computer folks in Hull to sort everything out so that I can get on with my work, and now that they've done so I've completed the last couple of months' work in, ooh, an hour and a half. It will change, but for now, I'm Blogging At Work.
Being bored at work usually means I'll stick on my mp3 player and do a Random track, but it's broken. That's right, my life is now an empty void of nothingness. I'll have to take it to Curry's and bang a few heads to get some service out of them, because I'm going to die laughing like a madman after a few more tube journeys with no auditory accompaniment.

It also means I can't go through the tagged posts on Google Reader awaiting my listening, nor can I go through my MySpace friend requests because I have no headphones on me. Lame. So, what do I talk about?

I look around my desk for inspiration. Yes, Natasha Bedingfield thoroughly warrants the two pictures, but no, this is a music blog, and cute though her pop songs are I'm not going to sully this fine establishment. Hmm, do I know any songs about a water cup full of elastic bands? A penholder from Ghana? Jason's bot-bot wipes? No. I know: I'll discuss my lunchtime purposes.

I'm no Large-Hearted Boy. I am not that fast a reader, primarily because I don't make the time for it rather than being slow-witted (honest). I've been on Kafka On The Shore for an age already, although it's no chore, it's very enjoyable, but I keep buying books and my library's just growing much faster than I can read it. However, I'm a sucker for a 3-for-2, so I'll do music related to those books that I came out of the shop with.

I've never read any Umberto Eco, but he sounds like an interesting kind of fella so I thought I'd give it a shot. I ended up with The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loanna, so we'll see how that goes. From what I can understand, it's about a rare book collector who loses all autobiographical memory but has retained everything that he's read from his books. While the premise looks interesting in itself, the bit that appeals to me is the concept of rediscovering your life through photographs. It's a pleasant, simple idea, which I doubt works out that basic in the book, but has a nice sound to it at this stage anyway.
So: some classic advert music and one of my favourite Wildhearts tracks.

The Music
The Kinks - Picture Book
The Wildhearts - Two Way Idiot Mirror

Paul Auster - should be a success. New York Trilogy was pretty damn fine, and in many ways prompted me to look for more in a book than just a story. Brooklyn Follies looks certainly readable if nothing else, although its reputation is as one of Auster's more light-hearted affairs. Should be good. Two Brooklyn-orientated groups now, the Beasties' Kerry King-soundtracked ode to the borough, and some plaintive alt.country from the amazingly named Eef Barzelay.

The Music
Clem Snide - Grievance
Beastie Boys - No Sleep Til Brooklyn

Finally Mr Nick Cave, who I've posted on roughly a bazillion times. Still, the man's a genius so it's ok. I'm looking forward to reading ...And The Ass Saw The Angel; I think Cave was built to write Southern Gothic. I'm guessing this will be as dark and brutal as The Proposition, and as arcane and frightening as any of his songs. In tribute, I'm posting the track which ran a close second when choosing my song for the Entrance Music Contrast Podcast, Cave's own Tupelo. I love it's dark and stormy (literally) introduction and the fact that the pulsating beat rumbles on throughout the track just like the thunder it follows, and creates an entirely atmospheric piece which is one of Mr Cave's finest ever songs.

The Music
Nick Cave - Tupelo

I have to apologise for the lack of focus here - I much prefer writing about music, much as I enjoy reading - you can probably tell. Thanks for listening/reading/whichever.

The 'fo
Umberto Eco (buy)
Kinks (buy)
Wildhearts (buy)
Paul Auster (buy)
Clem Snide (buy)
Beastie Boys (buy)
Nick Cave (buy music/books)
Tags: books; music; Umberto Eco; Paul Auster; Nick Cave; Kinks; Wildhearts; Clem Snide; Beastie Boys

Intoxicated, oh so amazed

2006-11-12T20:27:00.000Z

(TV On The Radio @ Koko, 10/11/06, by q.crescente)

When is it, and when is it not appropriate to have a man-crush? Is it ok when the object is like a flailing David McAlmont in Rock Gear, dancing - as has been said - almost pornographically?

I'm still not sure, but I'm denying everything. TV On The Radio live, as a whole though, this is another matter. This is rock'n'roll, sure, but it's rock'n'roll sexier than any you'll see this year. It's not lurid, it's not crass, it's highly articulate and beautiful music, but hot damn, it's sexy. TV On The Radio manage to formulate an almighty groove while at the same time creating a wash of almost white noise out of nothing in the background - it's that which makes Return To Cookie Mountain maybe the most exciting album released this year. They manage to combine a laconic, ice-cool guitarist with the biggest hair in the world with an impossibly lithe frontman in Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe respectively and it's this duo that create the beautiful contrasts and glorious noise that is this reinvention of rock. Because TVOTR sound like no-one else. Or should I say, no-one else sounds like TVOTR, because their sound is properly Out There, an amalgamation of the most unlikely ingredients into the most delectable sonic soup. Witness the highlights.

The Music
TV On The Radio @ The Showbox, Seattle (video)

TV On The Radio - Province

I'm beginning to love Province. I loved it before, but now I'm beginning to love it. That cataclysmic shift of chord just before Tunde sings "hold your heart courageously as we walk into this dark place, stand, stare fast, erect and see that love is the province of the brave." Those beautiful falsettos. Man-crush time.

The 'fo
Artist: TV On The Radio
Website: tvontheradio.com
Recommended: Return To Cookie Mountain (metacritic 87)
Label: 4AD
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: The Sound Of McAlmont & Butler
Tags: TV On The Radio; 4AD; Return To Cookie Mountain; alternative; rock; soul; funk

Time And A Half

2006-11-11T11:18:00.000Z

(photo by pixelspin)

I thought I'd break from the Saturday norm this morning and post before the bacon roll action starts. Last night was a fairly traumatic double-leaving-do which resulted in a pretty late night culminating in getting home to find the door locked and the catch down, visions of still being there now having camped in the shelter of our wheelybin having passed by now. Someone else was in. I have the privilege of working in an office environment where everybody actual gets on, a real rarity, so the departure of four of my closest compadres in the last month or so cuts me deep, cuts me real deep. But I soldier on til my day comes, I bide my time, I wait for my moment and someday I will pounce and carpe diem, boys.

Much like Zinedine Zidane.

Without a hint of a joke, that must be the best link I, and probably anyone, has ever written. Anyway, it means I'm posting about what I'm listening to right now. For some reason I've been buying far more music than I can comfortably find time to listen to at the moment, which is why Mogwai's latest effort hasn't had sufficient aural privileges. They've composed a soundtrack to an artisan French film (which it kills me that I haven't seen yet) about the footballing superhero Zizou. The film follows ZZ around the pitch for the duration of one whole match, Real Madrid vs. Villareal, using 17 different cameras. The film is soundtracked by Mogwai in reserved, dramatic mode and if that doesn't sound like just the most amazing thing, then I don't know what does. At the time of writing, like right now, I'm listening to Half-Time, which I believe featured on the trailers. It's almost 7 minutes long and sounds like a good number of the brooding, menacing slow passages from Mr Beast. This is a Good Thing, of course, that album being one of the finest of the year. The track splits the soundtrack in two (fairly obviously), providing a fulcrum between the moodier first half, and the more dynamic second. It really is a game of two halves, Brian. There's none of the juddering, cataclysmic dynamic shifts of some of Mogwai's work here, but it's almost all the better for it - a beautiful tribute to a beautiful player.

Note on Mogwai: Mogwai are probably the best band ever. They have released a slew of apocalyptic, breathtaking records and have a (fully justified) reputation for a skull-scraping, mindblowing live show. Their music veers from hypnotic, delicate guitar riffs and piano passages to white noise that sounds like its trying to escape from inside your head with a hacksaw. Guitar riffs so monumental that the whole world sways when they're played, banks of noise that build up like a tower of Babel that keep going even when you think that to get louder is a physical and scientific impossibility. Unassuming, approaching-middle-aged Glaswegians with bald heads that produce the sound of the end of the world, presuming that the end of the world is not just catastrophic but incredibly beautiful. In short, there's no-one to touch them, none of their post-rock peers have managed to transcend a sound so completely to elevate to a singular platform, population: one. In short, the best band in the world.

The Music
Mogwai - Half-time
Mogwai - It Would Have Happened Anyway
Mogwai - Like Herod

The 'fo
Artist: Mogwai
Website: mogwai.co.uk
Recommended: Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait OST
Label: Pias
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Godspeed! You Black Emperor - Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennae to Heaven
Tags: Mogwai; Zidane; soundtrack; movie

Random Play All: Mezzanine Floor

2006-11-09T16:52:00.001Z

(photo by cmcentral)

So, am going to see TV On The Radio tomorrow. Pretty nice. I like the venue (Koko, aka Camden Palace), I like the band (obviously), it's all good. I don't know who's supporting them: on the band's US tour it was hype-magnets Grizzly Bear who I confess to having completely ignored up to now.

I'm not going to make any exception here, don't worry, despite the fact that I started writing this post without really knowing what I was going to talk about. Much akin to my everyday life where I often embark on ambitious and lengthy sentences without any clear conclusion in mind. It's fun to speculate and plan things better than others, in your mind, as there's no chance of having to deal with the conclusions. Therefore I'm automatically a better referee than any in the Premiership, I'm definitely a better editor than anyone at the NME, etc., etc., blah blah blah.

So what am I going to talk about today? How about a Random Play All? Sweet!

Today's random track is Mezzanine Floor by Delirious? Yes, that's with an intentional question mark, Therapy? style, and no, I couldn't tell you why. Delirious? are a Christian band from Brighton whose album I bought to try and impress a girl in sixth-form. Needless to say she broke my heart and chose another fella, probably after seeing that I'd stooped low enough trying to ingratiate myself to literally scrape my record-buying knuckles along the ground. The music itself, while it doesn't suck, isn't really to my tastes these days: seeing as the album was new in my upper sixth, it's a pre-millenial stadium-soft-rock kind of thing, lots of U2 kind of choruses, some fancy mild electronics, some lighter-waving acoustic anthems.

Actually, some of them are quite good. Having put the album on my mp3 player in a fit of nostalgia earlier this year, I will quite happily listen to It's OK - relatively speaking, the big single - even now. The band approached commercial success outside of the Christian market with this record, although I believe they've since gone on to even more: big in the States, apparently. I remember seeing the song on MTV in the canteen, so they can't have been too minimal, and it's become one of those from that era which make me think of this girl everytime I hear it. She clearly did a number on me, as one of the others is Robbie Williams...

I don't have many songs which remind me of girls, fortunately, my life isn't that Hornby-esque, and again fortunately today's actual song isn't one (not nearly so much as It's OK). It's a fairly upbeat but still kind of downbeat track (I can't really explain why that makes sense), and is one of the more religious on the album: "I'll get to heaven through the sinners' door." It's worth a listen if you like that big ballad American rock sort of thing, Dave Matthews, U2 and the like (yes, I know U2 are Irish, pedant, you know exactly what I mean). It has an interesting stop-start bit at the beginning (on which note: I was flicking through t'interweb for inspiration, and I heard it described, like so much music, as having a "stop-start dynamic." Scuse my ignorance, aren't dynamics volume-related rather than timing? Loud-silent dynamic would make sense...). It actually does have a stop-start section at the start of this track. The huge strings and Martin Smith's soaring near-falsetto come in later and make it a fairly typical-of-the-album song. I recommend downloading It's OK if you're only going to listen to one.

The Music
Delirious? - Mezzanine Floor
Delirious? - It's OK

The 'fo
Artist: Delirious?
Website: delirious.co.uk
Recommended: Mezzamorphis
Label: Furious?
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: U2 - All That You Can't Leave Behind
Tags: Random Play All; Delirious?; U2

Lots of hugging, lots of dancing etc. etc.

2006-11-08T14:59:00.000Z

(Arab Strap, by Tim Broddin)

Arab Strap have been following me around today, like night follows day, like I follow Natasha Bedingfield. Maybe not quite like that, but you get the idea. They were on Phil Jupitus' morning show on BBC6 this morning, a station that's rapidly solving my woes and worries with finding a broad-appeal-but-still-decent radio show to have on in the office. Arab Strap are splitting up, you see, or at least waving farewell, a fact which saddens me without my knowing quite why. For I never really knew much of their music, only the one song, another intrinsically linked to long hours spent dusting and emptying smelly bins back in the mid-nineties. But just from that song I associate wistful realism, the kind of frank dissection of days spent doing ordinary things with a hint of heartbreak, a soupçon, if you will, of regret.

The Last Big Weekend, from the accompanying debut album The Weekend Never Starts Around Here, is Life, with the capital L. Check the lyrics, they're as manly as you can get: not for Moffat and Middleton the macho posturing of Durst or Fiddy, though, but for the exact representation of how us menfolk will say everything we want to say, and everything that needs to be said, without needing to talk about our own feelings at all. The First Big Weekend is a little film, a little play that depicts the first big weekend of the summer in all it's highs and lows, with everything that happens muttered with pathos and concealed romance. It's lovely, sad, beautiful all in one.

Musically, it fills a hole for me between Mogwai's downtempo arpeggios (see their new Zidane soundtrack for example) and Belle & Sebastian's small-town pop character studies - verging much more on the slower pace of some of the 'gwai's earlier pieces (remember the aching guitar lines in Christmas Steps?), yet with the propulsive beat, and almost singalong chorus, it takes on an existence in an introvert hinterland of it's own.

I picked this all up from one song, and yet never explored any further. At the time when this was all over the Evening Session, I was but a whelp, and my mass record buying days were afar off. Not only that, but it's on listening to this again now that the subtleties and nuances come out of the duo's Falkirk brogue - then, it's just a nice, unusual song.

But as I said, Arab Strap are following me round - there was a slew of eulogies when the end was announced, plus the tie-in Best Of, now they're on the radio, then the ever-wonderful, and happily back in action To Die By Your Side goes and posts a Four Tet remix. Obviously going to make me excited, this is a different take on the track, and fun to listen to.

The Music
Arab Strap - The First Big Weekend
Arab Strap - The First Big Weekend (Four Tet remix)
Bonus:
Arab Strap - Who Named The Days
Arab Strap - Love Detective

The 'fo
Artist: Arab Strap
Website: arabstrap.co.uk
Recommended: Ten Years Of Tears
Label: Chemikal Underground
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Mogwai - Ten Rapid
Tags: Arab Strap; Scotland; Falkirk; acoustic; indie; Evening Session; Mogwai; Four Tet

Peace + Love + Empathy

2006-11-07T15:52:00.000Z

One of my many virtual internet buddies sent me a mix cd. I will be sending him one in return/retaliation shortly, but that's another matter. This cd contained some Minutemen, some Wilco, some Duke Ellington and also some Imperial Teen, three tracks of which. So I thought, Imperial Teen, never heard of them. And I hadn't, unless it's filed in the Impenetrable Archive Room in my brain, like the one we have at work.

The first track passed in a kind of, ooh, that's quite nice way, but the second track breezed in with a summery line of little harmonies like something from Glasgow circa 1996. And I knew it! I knew the track but didn't know why. It sparked off one of those nostalgia trips that I couldn't place - you know how if you smell a certain smell it reminds you of, say, your first student house, or if you hear a particular song you're immediately relocated to another location of your youth?

That's what happened with You're One by Imperial Teen. I came to the conclusion that it must have been a Steve Lamacq staple on the Evening Session those ten long years ago. My mind relocated to my evening job when I was 14, cleaning offices that were on the location of my dad's former pig farm. I have my fat, ropey walkman strapped in and I'm listening to Lamacq and Wiley - Bis have just finished, I've been listening to Ash, Cast are still to come, Delgados are live later...

I would have just started my GCSE studies, year ten. I was spotty, but not hideously so, although my dress sense left something to be desired. I dressed pretty much as I attended a recent 90s-themed party, jeans which tapered slightly in at the ankle, big big shirts, white trainers. This was 1996, bear that in mind. I probably looked like a slightly smaller version of Chandler, in fact. I would go to school on the ten-to-eight bus each morning and come home in the afternoon - by this time, I'd graduated from taking the bus straight from school to walking into town (often via Games Workshop) and getting the quarter-past-four, following an incident with a sesame seed biscuit. And another, involving a football sock being thrown out of the window. I'll get you Graham Drew, when you least expect it...

My evening would involve playing some Master System (or maybe I had the SNES by then), then tea at six and onto piano practice and homework. I'm naturallly a creature of habit in many respects, and I've taken that into adulthood, to some extent. I wish more, sometimes, but it's rarely to be. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings were for cleaning though, plus two lots on a Saturday. I raked in £35 per week at the height of my powers, a not insubstantial sum in those days, and at that age, most of which (that which wasn't manhandled by my parents into a savings account (for which I later became very grateful)) went on football stickers, miniatures and tiny pots of paint. I had quite the Space Marine collection, I'll have you know, as well as smatterings of all sorts of others.

The Evening Session was where it was at in those days. It had the first play of Paranoid Android, herald of the Album That Changed Music. It was the bastion of those cool enough to not be listening to PJ & Duncan, but not really cool enough to listen to John Peel. It was where I spent those mid-week evenings and was where my fledgling music taste was nurtured. For example, much as the concept and principle of Kula Shaker represent both the zenith of my personal horror and the nadir of all music ever, and would probably feature in my hypothetical Room 101, I can't help but tap my foot to Hey Dude.

Aaaaand... back to the present, where Mr Roddy Bottum has his Imperial Teen. That freaked me out when I heard it. Roddy Bottum did You're One? Are you serious? Roddy "Faith No More keyboards" Bottum? Goodness me, didn't see that one coming. I was just getting into The Rock when FNM split, so I was able to catch up on the full gory history in one go in the pages of Kerrang!. Roddy Bottum? Blimey.

The Music

Imperial Teen - You're One

Bonus:

Faith No More - Epic

Bis - Candy Pop

The 'Fo

Artist: Imperial Teen

Website: imperialteen.com

Recommended: Seasick

Label: London

Buy: Amazon

More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws

If you like this you might like: Bis - New Transistor Heroes/Faith No More - The Real Thing

Tags: Imperial Teen; Faith No More; Roddy Bottum; You're One; Bis; Evening Session; youth; nostalgia

A Quick One While He's Away

2006-11-06T23:04:00.000Z

Just a swift little late-night post, just to let you know that the highly excellent 'zine NoRipcord is now back up and running with a brand new site: NoRipcord.com

I've been priveleged to write for the Ripcord for, ooh, nigh on three years now and it's still one of my favourite webzines, with really knowledgable reviews of the best music and films. Check out the soon-to-come podcasts and forum as well.

I've done a couple of reviews recently:
Devastations - Coal
Steve Adey - All Things Real
Brightblack Morning Light - s/t

That is all.

That Fear Again

2006-11-06T16:28:00.000Z

(múm, Ferrara, 13/5/05 by r_mal)

You've got to love a band who (possibly) chose their name on the basis that the word looks like two elephants nodding. Or apparently, you haven't got to, as I've known little or nothing of múm upto know. And for why haven't I known? I don't know, I'm clearly a fool.

The nice men at Fat Cat sent me a copy of the band's latest disc, a short (= 4 track) Peel sessions compilation. Those two words, that sainted soubriquet still holds a certain sway, don't you think? Peel sessions. In plain English it doesn't make a great deal of sense, but to those in the know, it's a hallmark, more trusted than the Bank Of England, and more reliable than Gordon Banks driving a Volkswagen. It screams good taste, it cries pick me! for I was chosen by a wiser man than you!

So múm hey? What's that all about? Well technically both you and I should already know, seeing as the band will be celebrating their ten year anniversary next year. And given the music they purvey, I really should have got my head professionally screwed on some years ago, as this is very nice indeed. It's not aggressive in any way, but continues in the Icelandic tradition of being fairly oblique but not difficult to appreciate. It's pretty sparse in some ways, but not purposefully empty in the same way as, say, Murcof - the sound is filled out delicately and prettily between the enveloping high vocals and the glitchy, electronic beats with samples and backwards loops and all sorts of fun. It never gets excessive really though, it's very restrained and cute without being twee or throwaway.

So where should you start with múm then? I have to confess, I don't really know. This cd seems as good as anything, and I heartily recommend it for what it is, even on only initial listens. I couldn't possibly compare it to back catalogue though, although I'd love to hear suggestions.

The Music
múm - Scratched Bicycle/Smell Memory (Peel Session)

The 'fo
Artist: Múm
Website: randomsummer.com
Recommended: Peel Sessions
Label: Fat Cat
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Sigur Ros - Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do
Tags: Múm; John Peel; Iceland; electronica; glitch

Random Play All: Mais Feliz

2006-11-04T16:31:00.000Z

(Bebel Gilberto, Berlin 17/6/06 by akimowitsch )

Stupid blogger. I wrote a whole post earlier today then it got mysteriously lost in the ether and here's me having to rewrite something I've already written. I always get confused when I have to do this, although it's not really a rarity, and I get confused quite easily...

Today's Random Play All track is Bebel Gilberto's Mais Feliz from her 2000 album, Tanto Tempo. This album was purchased in a moment of pining for Brazil some time while I was writing a Brazilian Electronica post (as featured on Best Week Ever!), but it's not really an electronica song, or album. What it does have though, is the masterful touch of Mitar Subotic, or Suba, at the helm, both writing and producing. If you come out of reading the Rough Guide... posts with respect for just one person, or looking to buy just one album, make it Suba, and make it Sao Paulo Confessions, a masterfully subtle blend of traditional music, bossa nova, MPB and electronica, making it one of the most essential Brazilian releases since the heyday of Os Mutantes, a good thirty years previous.

Anyway, legend has it that Suba died while rescuing the tapes for Bebel Gilberto's Tanto Tempo album (from whence comes this track) from a studio fire, which only adds to his mystique. What he left behind is another masterfully subtle album, not of his usual eclectica but of more traditional new wave bossa nova, complete with Gilberto's earthy, sensual voice and just the lightest instrumental flourishes.

The album hinges on the balance between Gilberto herself and the gently swinging, sophisticated acoustic guitar, with a hint of brushed snare. This song (which Google translates as happyer, complete with bizarre spelling) is in this vain and has ever such a little bit of electro-trickery just to add a haze, a shimmer if you will. As always with Suba, it's certainly not overdone and does nothing but add to the atmosphere of the tune. So listen up, it's a great tune and a beautiful sound, and will have you scurrying for the Ipanema before you can say Obrigado Simone!

The Music
Bebel Gilberto - Mais Feliz

The 'fo
Artist: Bebel Gilberto
Website: bebelgilberto.com
Recommended: Tanto Tempo
Label: East West
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Celso Fonseca - Natural
Tags: Brazil; bossa nova; acoustic; samba; Bebel Gilberto; Suba

Dub no bass in my head man

2006-11-03T14:21:00.000Z

(photo by scumfrog (cc))

It's got really cold, really suddenly here. Since November struck, it went pretty much freezing overnight (literally, Tuesday was fine, Wednesday was bitter) - most of the country is basking in subzero night-times, while in London, with our fug of lovely haze, we're comparatively well-off with an average of +2C. So what better way to celebrate than with the sound of the islands?

Everybody loves reggae right? Like, everybody. I do. I love to throw on a Trojan boxset it work, it calms everybody down if they're stressed, it cheers them up if they're down, it gets them dancing. Which is all good, anyone can dance to some extent to a bit of reggae, whether they're professional skankers or not. For a small island, Jamaica has a pop-musical heritage like virtually nowhere else. Off the top of my head, I can't think of anywhere so small that's produced so much great music, with such an identifiable vibe. So: great! Think reggae, think the summer, think sitting on a beach, think a mixture of reggae titans and classic songs.

The Music

Skatalites - Guns Of Navarone

The Maytals - 54-46 That's My Number

Eric Donaldson - Cherry Oh Baby

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Stop The Train

Jimmy Cliff - You Can Get It If You Really Want It

The Slickers - Johnny Too Bad

Max Romeo - Mr Fix It

Augustus Pablo - Pablo In Red

Upsetters - Dub & Praise

Radiodread ft. Horace Andy - Airbag

The 'fo

Maytals - buy

Lee 'Scratch' Perry - buy

Trojan Records - recommended boxsets: Jamaican Hits + Producers + Originals + Dub Rarities
Tags: reggae; Jamaica; Skatalites; Maytals; Bob Marley; Jimmy Cliff; The Slickers; Max Romeo; Augustus Pablo; Lee 'Scratch' Perry; Upsetters; summer; winter

The Rough Guide To Brazilian Electronica: Rebeca Matta

2006-11-02T15:42:00.000Z

As promised, right? Today's offering is along different lines to both the chilled grooves and the more frenetic drum'n'bass we've looked at to date. The track is from Matta's 2000 album Garotas Boas Vão Pro Céu, Garotas Más Vão Pra Qualquer Lugar ("Good Girls go to Heaven, Bad Girls go Everywhere"), and is altogether more moody and tempestuous. You see? She looks like that bird from Evanescence.

Matta hails from the Tropicalia stronghold of Salvador, capital of Bahia, but there's little of the playful, chirpy psychedelia of the late 60's in this track. É Que A Vide É... kicks off with a brooding, disorientating sinewave kind of deal, before the loopy, high guitar riff kicks in. Then it's into the almost shouty chorus with it's big old guitars and crunch. It's still electronica really - it's a solo project for a start - but really, it's rooted in the nu-metal that was the thang back in those innocent days. Think System Of A Down influences maybe, think those acts that tried to incorporate tribal percussion in: Ill Nino, even some of Sepultura's efforts. It's pretty heavy at certain points, with the emphasis on an organic percussion style that's chopped up and processed. Much as distaste for nu-metal comes naturally these days, take it in context of 6 years ago and it's a decent track, well-produced and engaging, a lot more so than the fluff that it was competing with it at the time.

The Music

Rebeca Matta - É Que A Vide É...

BONUS: freebie mp3's from Lua Music's website:

Rebeca Matta - Garotas boas vão pro céu, garotas más vão pra qualquer lugar

Rebeca Matta - A mentira

Rebeca Matta - Na cadência do Samba

The 'fo

Artist: Rebeca Matta

Website: rebecamatta.com.br

Label: Lua Music

Buy: Amazon/The Rough Guide

More: Hype Machine elbo.ws

If you like this you might like: Ill Niño - Revolution Revolución

Tags: Rough Guide; Brazil; electronica; metal; nu-metal; Rebeca Matta

Cover Me, I'm Going In... #6

2006-11-01T15:05:00.000Z

(photo (cc) zebble)

I almost feel ashamed of myself today, in a kind of tacky, sold-out way. Last time I posted Radiohead, it was an older, very well-known track that most readers and passers-by will already have. This time though, it's a Neil Young cover and if you know anything about the Hype Machine generation will know that it's exactly this sort of thing that'll pull in the punters. Maybe I'll try and post some more obscure Brazilian electronica tomorrow.

But, I'm going to do it anyway. Because, I like the song. So there. It was provided for me by my internet buddy and all round ginge Toby, and many thanks to him. It's actually a good cover, Thom's voice works pretty well on a few of the parts, especially the middle eight there, where he collapses into a sneery shout reminiscent of the "you don't remember, you don't remember..." bit in Paranoid Android.

But I digress, I really didn't mean to talk much about this cover version. Cinnamon Girl was the first Neil Young song I knew and inspired me to get the accompanying album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. This is one of the contenders for his best, I guess, although for some reason I have this and Harvest, and that's it. As to why I've never invested further, answers on a postcard to the usual address, because I don't know. Everybody Knows... is an excellent record, full of some great songs: Down By The River is positively apocalyptic in it's epicosity, and the downtuned, muted guitars prefigure Young's coronation as the Godfather Of Grunge some years later. Cowgirl In The Sand is one of the most enduring songs of his career, and Running Dry has that evocative parentheses, Requiem For The Rockets, an epithet that reeks of a wistful space age nostalgia. But probably the best-known here is Cinnamon Girl, as straightahead a rocker as Young has ever penned.

It's identifiable from the very beginning, with the big ol' powerchord riff bleeding into the harmonised vocals. I love the track, and couldn't pick a favourite bit: would it be the walking-up guitar riff which fades into arpeggio after the chorus? Like Thom, would I pick the wailing middle eight? Or the infamous one-note solo? Maybe the ringing overdrive of the outro guitar? Difficult, but a fun game to play. The song's so classically-constructed that while the consituent components are ace in and of themselves, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

A question I never - but should - ask myself is why would a particular artist cover this particular artist/song. Last time, I felt that Steve Adey just must have had something happen in his life equally as traumatic and far-reaching as Bob Dylan had to be able to sing Shelter From The Storm with such conviction. This time, though, I'm just not sure. Why would someone feel enough of an affinity with Neil Young to cover this? I dunno, sorry. I guess Neil Young's work covers such a wide range that he's touched everybody somehow - whether your oeuvre is acoustic or alt.rock, metal or folk, Young has something in their you can appreciate, so: who am I to question?

The Music
Neil Young - Cinnamon Girl
Radiohead - Cinnamon Girl

The 'fo
Artist: Neil Young/Radiohead
Website: Neil's Garage/radiohead.com
Recommended: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere/OK Computer
Label: Warner/Parlophone
Buy: Amazon NY/R
More: Hype Machine NY/R; elbo.ws NY/R
If you like this you might like: Muse - Showbiz
Tags: Neil Young; Radiohead; Cinnamon Girl; alternative; indie; cover

AM Radio

2006-10-31T13:12:00.000Z

Some people have a quirky backstory in an annoying, forced way. Some people just have things happen to them, and so it seems with my subject today. Born in Pennsylvania, moved to a tunnel underneath Manhattan, relocated to a monastery on the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, studied postgrad in New York, moved to Hawaii... He now lives in Homer, Alaska and produces music from what seems along the lines of a garden shed.

Sergius Gregory. As you can see, he also has the kind of name that inspires enigma and speculation. Sergius Gregory from Alaska. I often wonder to what extent locale affects sound: does, for example, recording an album in Nashville infer a subconscious twang, or does recording in the desert add space and distance to a record? Does Alaska give an icy, spacious tone? Well, yes and no. The instrumentation on Gregory's music is as warm as you could wish for, while it's sparse at times, it's also comforting, fireside music - very simple, just minimal drums and picked acoustic guitar for the most part. It's his voice which is the defining factor. Rarely more than a hushed croon, it's high, pure and angelic and harmonises beautifully. Reminiscent of, ooh, Jacob Golden maybe rather than Sigur Ros, that's the angelic I'm trying to describe. The songs are quiet and beautiful, totally unassuming in some ways but timeless in construction and delivery and extremely... nice. I guess that's it. Gregory's songs are abstract little comments on things with an innocence, almost naiveté that's quite charming. I'm currently reading Haruki Marukami's Kafka On The Shore, and I imagine Gregory's life to be a little like that of Nakata's, where the stresses and strains of everyday worries don't really figure, where the present is not some philosophical context to be debated, but just the occasion to sing about.
I'm sure Mr Gregory is actually a perfectly straightforward guy, but these are the impressions I get from the music, and I like 'em.

Look, I've waffled again. Ignore me, please. Just have a listen and relax yourself a little - you can download some songs from MySpace, or stream at Garageband, a really nice idea. Or, you can download here:

The Music
Sergius Gregory - Our Holiday
Sergius Gregory - Bed Of Sticks

The 'fo
Artist: Sergius Gregory
Website: MySpace, Garageband
Recommended: no releases! Check MySpace for updates
Label: none
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Jacob Golden - Hallelujah World
Tags: Sergius Gregory; acoustic; Alaska

Cover Me, I'm Going In...#5

2006-10-30T14:12:00.000Z

(photo by eotiv (cc))

I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on the Pixies. It's either really cool, or really not, depending on who you ask. Anyway, my encyclopaedic knowledge of the musical backgrounds and influences (here, for the masochists) covered many genre reference points and was generally a lot of fun to put together. And meant listening to a lot of Pixies = a good thing. I put a quote from Black Francis/Frank Black/Charles Thompson at the front, along the lines of, I wish someone would do their doctorate thesis on the Pixies one day. I didn't, I did my undergrad thesis on them, but what he was actually referring to is his wish that someone would take the time to fully analyse the Pixies' often highly cryptic lyrics. A minefield of generous proportions, I'm sure you'll agree.

I mention this because if I ever considered that to be a task beyond anyone's abilities, then Bob Dylan is instant head-explode territory. Are these lyrics completely literal? Completely figurative? Somewhere in between? So many metaphors, analogies, similes, subtilties. They're beyond my comprehension, and unfortunately I can't claim to be a big enough devotee (or any sort of devotee) of Bobby Zee to be sufficiently interested. I didn't even realise the scary depths his fans go to until looking at the words to today's track and the matching comments. Dissections for Shelter From The Storm, from Blood On The Tracks, cover subjects such as religion (including Judaism, Christianity, paganism), war, drugs, divorce, prostitutes and Bakuu-Met, the one-eyed Persian God of death and dying. Riiiiight.

Anyway, it's an interesting song, and when you read the lyrics, ripe for debate. Typically apocalyptic, it's told like a story, each stanza ending in "'Come in', she said, 'I'll give you shelter from the storm.'" It's also a veritable cornucopia of evocative phraseology: "a world of steel-eyed death;" "Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn;" "the one-eyed undertaker, he blows a futile horn;" "I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn."
What seems like the preferred interpretation is that the song relates to Dylan's divorce from his wife Sara Lownds, and when taken as an overall theme it's poignant, even heartbreaking - something that, when compared to my own experience of Dylan, surprises me somewhat in it's heart-on-sleeve, confessional openness. I've always got the impression that Dylan plays on his arcane lyrics and obtuse statements, maybe political, maybe philosophical, but tends to avoid the personal. As the debate shows, the song could probably be taken to mean a lot of different things, but looked at in context, it seems like he's taken a break from polemic.

The cover I've chosen is not the well-known Manfred Mann one, but rather that by my new favourite singer/songwriter du jour, Steve Adey. It's more stark and upfront vocally than Dylan, unsurprisingly given Adey's wonderfully rich voice and Dylan's notoriously awful drawl. Adey manages to pull it off and it becomes bleak and beautiful in his hands, with less of the storytelling style of the original, and more of the personality and soul of the singer. Maybe Adey's had similar circumstances in his life that can be related to the lyrics here, we'll probably never know, but given that his debut album also contains a cover of Will Oldham's morbid classic I See A Darkness, it's probably safe to say he's no easygoing balladeer or crooner.

The Music
Bob Dylan - Shelter From The Storm
Steve Adey - Shelter From The Storm

The 'fo
Artist: Bob Dylan/Steve Adey
Website: bobdylan.com/steveadey.com
Recommended: Blood On The Tracks/All Things Real
Label: Columbia/Grand Harmonium
Buy: Amazon BD/SA
More: Hype Machine BD/SA; elbo.ws BD/SA
Tags: Bob Dylan; Blood On The Tracks; Steve Adey; Shelter From The Storm; cover; divorce

boom-chika-boom-chika-boom-chi-boom-boom

2006-10-28T17:54:00.000Z

(photo by mirandaceleste)

There's a book on my chest of drawers in my room, by the door so I see it frequently. It's V by Thomas Pynchon, a book that I need to devote more time than I have to - maybe a holiday, as it's difficult to get into in the short bursts that I have. Anyway, the press quote on the front, from Time magazine says "few books haunt the waking or sleeping mind, but this is one." Today's song isn't quite that, but it's certainly beginning to haunt me. I first heard it as SAS Radio's contribution to the Best Of The Year Contrast Podcast recently, and it's ingrained itself indelibly since then. What tipped me over the edge was hearing it on Swedish internet pop radio recently - this is obviously a song with potential to be a big hit.

Providing of course that the comically offensive intro is removed, this is the most catchy, and therefore chartworthy, song that I've heard in an age. Teddybears Sthlm are from Stockholm, Sweden, hence the soubriquet, and purvey a kind of party rap on this song. If that has you shivering, bear in mind that it's a savvy and intelligent mix, with a nice lot of bleeping and blipping, and a great turn from Swing Fly, so that it has a slightly aggressive feel as well, to go with the boom-chika-boom-chika-boom-chi-boom-boom bassline. I don't know what it is about it, but it'll fix itself in your mind like a limpet.

As usual I'm late to the party, so you'll be able to find loads about the band on other blogs, but if you haven't heard Hey Boy, take yourself a listen now.

The Music
Teddybears Sthlm - Hey Boy (feat. Swing Fly)

The 'fo
Artists: Teddybears Sthlm
Websites: teddybearssthlm.com
Recommended: Soft Machine
Label: Big Beat
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
Tags: Teddybears; Stockholm; Sweden; hip hop

The Call Of Khushbu

2006-10-26T13:37:00.000Z

(photo by Jeev)

On occasion I have the responsibility, nay, the privilege of venturing out from my safe North London bubble from where springs my work, my play, my habitude, and at times I am required to work on the borders of the City of London, the infamous Square Mile home to as many overweight market traders as can be fit in. It's the East border, which means I work within spitting distance of the lovely Brick Lane, an entire street of curry houses and Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi shops. Awesome Welles, basically, especially around lunchtime.

Indian food, for me, takes on a slightly elegiac, intangible greatness which cannot be matched by any other cuisine. I have yet to experience the full breadth of Carribean cooking, which follows hot on its heels, but I don't think it's possible to discover everything about the subcontinental food in one lifetime. Such a breadth of flavours, such aromas, such sweetness and delight. Mmm, food.

It's only fitting that for my two hundredth post I should take about this wonderful subject, as it's one of the few topics which I am as interested in as music. And yes, I will judge you if you are content to eat ready meals and McDonalds, just like I will judge you if you listen to the Kooks or, say, Panic! At The Disco. In both cases, you are either ignorant of the quality that's available, or you are aware and are apathetic and weak in your choices. In each case, I judge you, I look down on you. It's an art form.

I don't really know where I'm going with this post, though, or what music to supply. I guess an antidote to those who be pertinent, as I really don't have much Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi music I can give you. Or any. So how about I offer you those alternatives? If you are a fan of the Kooks, you are clearly a weak-minded, banal individual unencumbered with matters of taste or class, uninterested in finding out what the preferred alternative might be. In this case, you need a metaphysical slap around the face, delivered via the medium of blog. You need a short, sharp shock in an indie-pop format, you need to be gently reassured that Brighton does not just produced straw-hat-wearing desperate hipsters. Let 20 Jazz Funk Greats inform you far better than I can, or at least take some time to listen to the literate and articulate British Sea Power, a band quiet of late, but who have produced several memorable singles, each containing more imagination and flair in their first bar than the Kooks managed in a whole album. In Remember Me, they epitomised their sound, and a lovely noise it is.

The Music
British Sea Power - Remember Me

Emo is a toughie, no? Panic! At The Disco, My Chemical Romance, these are considered emo bands these days, like Blink 182 is considered punk, a musical template followed strictly yielding deeply sanitised and unsatisfactory results. When stripy-t-shirted 12-year-olds form the bulk of your audience, you're doing something wrong. Little Chris should not be your target market. Does this music have the emotion that it's genre title calls for? No, of course not. Emo's history stems from bands like Embrace (if you question Ian MacKaye's commitment and passion for anything you're deluding yourself); Jawbox, or anything with J Robbins; it's emotional hardcore, it's primal scream therapy. I don't listen to emo these days, I feel tainted by it, but when I did, I listened to Jets To Brazil. Or Planes Mistaken For Stars. Or Walt Mink.

The Music
Camber - Hollowed Out
Appleseed Cast - Marigold & Patchwork

The 'fo
Artist: British Sea Power/Camber/Appleseed Cast
Websites: britishseapower.co.uk/launch.yahoo.com/theappleseedcast.com
Recommended: The Decline Of British Sea Power/Deep Elm samplers
Label: Rough Trade/Deep Elm
Buy: Amazon BSP/C/AC
More: Hype Machine BSP/C/AC; elbo.ws BSP/C/AC
If you like this, you might like: Jawbreaker - 24 Hour Revenge Therapy
Tags: Curry; Indian food; London; British Sea Power; The Kooks; Panic! At The Disco; Camber; Appleseed Cast

My Insect Life

2006-10-25T21:03:00.000Z

(photo by annieA)

Suede. Ugh, right? People who were 18-20 when Dog Man Star came out eulogise the Butler/Anderson lineup and wet themselves when the Tears came out, despite their failing to live up to any expectations whatsoever. But Suede. Ugh. Suede was that band circa 1996 that had some OK singles, but when you bought the album (say, Coming Up) it was just rubbish. Brett Anderson's a whiny, annoying frontman, and the little bit that Bernard Butler did add soon vanished after his departure (partially recaptured in his interesting, if not utterly captivating solo work and with David McAlmont). The glam-tinged fuzz-indie of most of their sound was in actual fact considerably less interesting than they and the music press of the era believed it to be, leaving the band a failed dictatorship, in some ways.

And yet, every cloud. For this week's Contrast Podcast (subtitle: A Song You Love By A Band You Hate), I didn't contribute. If I had have, I would have picked Suede's Still Life, the closing track of the aforementioned Dog Man Star. It's one of those intensely ambitious, overwrought tracks that just shouldn't work from a mid-level, mid-nineties Britpop band. And yet it's so grandiose, so incredibly huge that by its own pomposity it pulls through to the other side, back to being beautiful.

Anderson's voice has never sounded so tender as when singing about his insect life over a full orchestra. The only other track in which I've ever heard that size of an orchestra work (outside of, y'know, Wagner, or Richard Strauss) is Mercury Rev's The Dark Is Rising, another symphonic, dynamic beauty. But Still Life sounds even more like an actual late Romantic symphony, even less like a string arrangement for a pop song. The timpanis, the tremendous bursts of the string section, wonderful. It's still Suede, but for a moment you forget that and move on, ignoring the fact that the rest of the band's output is woeful and irritating. You're caught in a moment, and it's worth putting aside preconceptions and bias, at least for the duration.

The Music
Suede - Still Life

The 'fo
Artists: Suede
Websites: essentialsuede.com
Recommended: Dog Man Star
Label: Nude
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this, you might like: Mercury Rev - All Is Dream
Tags: Suede; Contrast Podcast; Still Life; love; hate; symphony

You fly in thunderclouds

2006-10-23T15:31:00.000Z

(photo by morethanreal)

Sometimes all it takes is for someone, somewhere to mention a band and your ear is immediately transported to a particular song, a particular sound. For instance, the minute a colleague refers to Big Red, a pub up the road from my workplace, I instantly break into a doo-doo-doo rendition of Frank Black's song of that name. You'll understand, if you know it.

Today, all it took was a controversial Pitchfork review. Some bloggers have had a whinge because the 'fork have taken a potshot, others don't really care. I'm in the latter camp. But this is all immaterial - the point is, they reference Neutral Milk Hotel in the review, and immediately my mind's ear was cast upon the beautiful Ghost, from In The Aeroplane Over The Sea.

She goes and now she knows she'll never be afraid

One gets the impression that everybody who reads a blog like this on purpose owns a copy of this album. And they all love it, and they all have their favourite parts, and they all treat it like a child. I know I do. I was first aware of NMH some years ago, but paid little attention, what with being distracted by Incubus, A and the like. I can't explain it either. Since then my palate has refined and 2005's reissue saw the record fall neatly into my lap, opening up a world of glorious noise, and an emotional connection with a vocalist that is unfeasibly rare. On first listen it's easy to dismiss NMH - clearly, I did. There's a lot of American indie bands, both pre- and post- this band, that have that lo-fi, fuzzy acoustic, whiny singer thing going on. If I wanted lo-fi I could pick up some Sebadoh, for whiny singers I could raid Zach Braff's iPod, and so on.

A hole where no one can escape

But Neutral Milk Hotel have something beyond the ordinary. They have a DIY sensibility that's evidenced in acoustic battering and the occasional massive whallop of fuzz, that's a given. They have quirky, oblique songs that probably have deeper meaning than we can understand. They have Jeff Mangum, a singer so untutored that it's at times painful to listen to him. But if you do, you come to realise that its probably painful for him too, and the fact that it's painful isn't related to his wailing, off-kilter vocal tone, but that he's boring into your very soul.

I know that she will live for ever

Alright, that's kind of dramatic. Let's not get carried away. But the truth of the matter is that Mangum's words and voice carry on into your soul like few other singers have ever done, and for that NMH are worth listening. Of course, this would mean little, Mangum would be one of a million struggling singer-songwriters if he didn't have the music to back it up, but the Spillane/Koster/Barnes arsenal produced a noise like nothing else has ever matched. Mangum's guitar at the beginning of Ghost thrums purposefully. The bass, when it enters, has far more distortion than a basically should really have, according to the rulebook, then the vocals enter and tenderly, but brutally, Jeff sings apparent nonsense, sweet nothings to a girl that only he knows if she's even there or no; the drums enter, they perpetuate the propulsive, rhythm that drones and bores into your head, the third chord seeming just on the right side of relevance in creating this driving, head-nodding track where full major chords replace the expected power chords to clash and whine against each other, where harmonics are created quite by accident, plucked out of the ether as note collides with note and Mangum soars and cries above the whole glorious din, as the huge bass frequencies threaten to overtake your every waking thought, as Mangum trails off into a slew of meaningless sounds that contain more meaning in themselves than most bands manage in a career...

Ahem.

To a far too large number of people, a segue is something with big wheels you ride about on and don't fall off. In theory. In reality, it's become one of those words (along with 'eponymous') that make perfect sense but are only used by music critics. Here is a fine segue: Ghost into the untitled instrumental that follows, a song very different but I think equally influential - a melodium, an organ, a trombone, these are all good. Wonderful, bouncy, chirpy music, set so unbelievably well against the bleakly romantic beauty of Ghost that really you imagine them to have been written at the same time, as a foil for each other, a few words of Ghost here, a few bars of Untitled's melody there, a thwacked chord here, a smiley organ trill there. Listen to the two together, no, I insist.

You know I don't think either is my favourite track on the album. That would probably be the title track, destined to be a deal-breaker if I ever take up busking. Maybe the painfully stark closer, Two-Headed Boy Pt.II. But this is an album apart, I get to post like this.

The Music
Neutral Milk Hotel - Ghost
Neutral Milk Hotel - untitled

The 'fo
Artists: Neutral Milk Hotel
Websites: neutralmilkhotel.net
Recommended: In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
Label: Domino
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws; Stylus' commentary
If you like this, you might like: The Essex Green - Cannibal Sea
Tags: Neutral Milk Hotel; Ghost; Jeff Mangum; untitled; In The Aeroplane Over The Sea; segue; fuzz bass

Podcasto Numero Trio

2006-10-19T12:51:00.000Z

Yes kids, it's time for podcast numero three from Betty: use it wisely, this'll have to last you til after the weekend. Listen well, and if you need more fix, numbers one and two are still available, as are the Contrast Podcast and the best podcast out there, SAS Radio.

Download here

Subscribe here

Tracklisting:
1. Four Tet - A Joy (Percee P remix) (from Remixes)
2. Jamie Lidell - A Little Bit More (Luke Vibert Mix) (From Multiply Additions)
3. Justice vs. Simian - Never Be Alone (single)
4. The Knife - Heartbeats (from Deep Cuts)
5. Steve Adey - Find The Way (from All Things Real)
6. M. Ward - Magic Trick (from Post-War)
7. Triosk - Intensives Leben (from The Headlight Serenade)
8. Of Montreal - The Past Is A Grotesque Animal (advance)

Looks Could Kill

2006-10-18T22:20:00.000Z

(Camera Obscura @ Caberet Voltaire, Edinburgh by cryptdang)

At least two of Camera Obscura could have me in a fight. I didn't expect that. Reality check: probably the wee girl who sings could have me, I'm kind of a wimp, but I'm trying to make the point that Camera Obscura don't look as sensitive as they sound. In fact they're kind of glam, with pretty dresses and flat caps. Not glam as in The Sweet, obviously, but kind of dolled up anyway. They play a sweet, sensitive kind of music though, and seeing them at the Scala cemented that more than the humungous bass player could ever dent it.

I'll do a full review soon (probably for Don't Worry About The Government - how rock'n'roll am I, forgetting which site I'm writing for when picking up my ticket!), so hold your breath, but suffice to say it's a decent show. In the meantime, listen to some lovely music. Not just Camera Obscura even, but in what was surely a veiled nod to this very establishment, the band break into a chorus of Paul Simon's stone cold classic You Can Call Me Al at the end of Let's Get Out Of This Country. Download them both, play them back to back and try and spot the join.

The Music
Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out Of This Country
Paul Simon - You Can Call Me Al

The 'fo
Artists: Camera Obscura/Paul Simon
Websites: camera-obscura.net, MySpace, blog/paulsimon.com
Recommended: Let's Get Out Of This Country (meta75); Gracelands
Label: Merge/Rhino
Buy: Amazon, Simbiotic (recommended)/Paul Simon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws; FiL's live review
Tags: Camera Obscura; indie; Merge; live; Paul Simon; Gracelands

Dance With Me

2006-10-17T13:52:00.000Z

I've just been writing a diary entry on History Matters, where the idea is to get as many people as possible to document October 17th (chosen for it's distinct lack of association). I'm glad I don't write a blog which demands an epic of everyday life, quite literally every day. I don't think I'd be able to cope describing my life in specific detail: I like it, but on the face of it, it's pretty dull.

I did, however, finding myself lapsing into music, and once again it's a recommendation from Coxon le Woof. This morning on my trek to the Big Wide World Of Work I listened to Coal by Devastations. This is a Melbourne-derived band of whom I know little (nothing before the TDBYS post), and Coal is their second album after 03's eponymous debut, touted by none other than Karen O as the album of the year. Fairly high praise from a highly-respected figure this maybe, but do you trust rock stars' recommendations? Not me. Rock stars are fools, in the main.

The new album, Coal, has yet to garner such indie-credible celebrity backing yet, but it would be warranted every step of the way. It would be remiss of me (plus I'm sure the journalistic community would hunt me down for it) if I failed to compare Devastations to the Bad Seeds, and Conrad Standish's vocals to those of Nick Cave. But as appropriate as that may be, Devastations appear to take just a little of the sound, and a little of the ethic of Cave's troupe - it's dark, and romantic and occasionally somewhat Gothic in it's machinations, but it's not as arcane, or perverse as Cave: more apt are Stuart Staples resonant laments for Tindersticks. You could also look to Neil Hannon (my housemate did...) for a reference point.

But this sort of compare and categorise approach failed for me yesterday, and it falls short today. Many groups are derivative and it doesn't hurt them; not all can pull it off with the sort of flair and menacing panache that Devastations obtain. I heartily recommend Coal to you, as it's creeping it's way towards my years' top ten even as I write, and will no doubt benefit from further listening. If you are a fan of the Cave school of songwriting, the unconventionally romantic, the dark but beautiful, then Devastations might just tickle your fancy.

The Music

Devastations - Sex & Mayhem

Devastations - Coal

The 'fo

Artist: Devastations

Website: devastations.net, MySpace

Label: Beggars Banquet

Recommended: Devastations - Coal

Buy: Amazon

More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws

If you like this you might like: Tindersticks - Curtains

Tags: Devastations; Nick Cave; Australia; alternative; romance; Coal

Like a star blanket

2006-10-16T14:27:00.000Z

(Brightblack Morning Light @ SxSW by Damon Green)

I like to be overly-verbose for the most part. I think it's big and clever to confuse people with multi-syllabic words, also fun for alienating the large part of my readership who have visited while googling "extras are you having a laugh." I also enjoy over-categorisation, in training for a career in the journalistic arts; these things become a neccessary evil - comparison is, of course, the best way to describe the sound of an artiste or act to another person.

Which makes it all the more frustrating that I can't find the words I want to use to describe Brightblack Morning Light. I first heard a track on the ever-lovely To Die By Your Side, who put it thus: "Brightblack Morning Light are the sound of the sun rising. Over sand dunes. With a chill in the air. As flames from a dying fire fight for life. While you rest in a loving embrace."

Which is a lovely way of putting it, very pretty indeed. I struggle with the flowery language myself. I tend to get all art-school and arch, instead of just documenting the emotional impact of a record. But again, Brightblack Morning Light fall beyond my limited capabilities in this field, I just find it very hard to explain.

Brightblack Morning Light are not a band that fall snugly into a genre or even a subgenre. Sure, there's a jazzy edge to it, but it's not jazz. There's swamp blues, but it's not swamp blues. There's tickly high-hats, reverb-drenched electric piano swells, the most vague vocals you'll hear outside of a My Bloody Valentine album and these looping, hypnotic guitar riffs. Drums are not considered a neccessity throughout, although they are there; vocals are treated similarly - they're another instrument; the mood is captured in the lethargic, almost narcotic grace-notes.

As per Coxon, I can definitely see the sunrise aesthetic of Brightblack Morning Light, and I can just as readily see the chill in the air, the mist of said sunrise lifting very, very slowly. I lapse into my safety net of comparisons and pull out Tarentel or Triosk, but I am missing the point: Brightblack Morning Light is background music that's as important and interesting as music that's very much in your face, just in a completely different way. And for that, it's worth your listening. I can't tell you why, but I think you should listen now.

The Music
Brightblack Morning Light - Friend Of Time
Brightblack Morning Light - Everybody Daylight

The 'fo
Artist: Brightblack Morning Light
Website: thebrightblackmorninglight.com; MySpace
Label: Matador
Recommended: Brightblack Morning Light (metacritic 72)
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Opiate - While You Were Sleeping
Tags: Brightblack Morning Light; instrumental; jazz; blues; electric piano

Bang

2006-10-15T19:48:00.000Z

(Fireworks over East River, by Dramatic)

Let's get one thing straight: when I post on October 10th about Christmas, it's a joke. Early = bad. Early = not something Simone deals with well. This can be attested by anybody who's seen me before, say 10am any given day. So I look with disgust on those people firing off rockets and assorted crackly fireworks this evening. Why? Who knows.

It's not Diwali yet: this begins on 21st this year. Festival of Lights = good excuse for fireworks, but its not yet.
It's not Eid yet: this is scheduled for roughly 23rd, so there's a good week or so to go yet.
It's not Halloween: Halloween is a rubbish excuse for fireworks anyway, and it's certainly not 31st yet.
It's not Bonfire Night: how this translates to American I'm not sure, but celebrating somebody not blowing up politicians seems as perverse, and therefore as good, an excuse for pyrotechnical fun as any. Fire and fireworks, it's all good, but: it's not 5th November yet.
It's not Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, or any other made up greetings-card festival yet, so put your fireworks away, some people have to get up for work tomorrow.

A song with fireworks in.

The Music
Magnétophone - Rae & Suzette

The 'fo
Artist: Magnétophone
Website: magnetophone.co.uk
Label: 4AD
Recommended: The Man Who Ate The Man
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine
If you like this you might like: Cocteau Twins - Lullabies To Violaine
Tags: Magnetophone; fireworks; bonfire night; Guy Fawkes; Eid; Diwali; Halloween

Loveliest Girl That I Know

2006-10-12T14:07:00.000Z

(Mark Kozelek by Steve Rhodes)

Compilations. A tough one. Obviously, great way to discover some great music, also a great way to ignore some slow-burners. Enraptured with 4AD's 25th anniversary events last Autumn, I listened eagerly to the 1980 Forward album: just look at the tracklisting, you see how I could gloss over some of the less-known (to me) artists when there's Throwing Muses, Belly, Pixies, The Birthday Party, TV On The Radio, Cocteau Twins... Easily done. So praise be to the random play all of yesterday, for later on (well after the Bonnie Prince), the shuffle function threw up another overlooked gem.

Red House Painters released their more seminal early albums on 4AD back at the end of the 80's/beginning of the 90's, including Ocean Beach, from which the compilation cut, Summer Dress, is taken. Earlier material tended towards the slowcore of peers like, say, Galaxie 500, but the tone was far more personal - try the lyrics for Medicine Bottle, for example, a post-breakup streamofconsciousness notable for it's heartbreaking realism and brutal honesty, as well as it's as-the-thoughts-come structure. By the time Ocean Beach was released, the music was more conventional in some ways - an almost alt.country confessional style, and the deeply personal lyrics were refined into a more subtle, pastoral style. But the music's equally beautiful, and Summer Dress is very much a part of that - coming from Mark Kozelek's heart-on-sleeve background, this is a pretty love song which doesn't expand it's initial thoughts far, but benefits from just that.

summer dress makes you more beautiful than the rest

The more I look at the lyrics, the more I listen to the song, the more I'm convinced that this is how a love song should be written. It's not glossy or sanitized, but raw and delicate. It's not schlocky in the slightest, it's sweet and nice. It's not Hollywood romance, it's tinged with sadnesses and regrets, it's wistful, it makes you want to purse your lips together, half-smile and nod in sympathy.

PS - did I mention this week's Contrast Podcast? I don't think I did. Listen. I contributed White Lines to the Happy Happy Joy Joy theme. I'm so perverse sometimes, mmm cocaine.

The Music
Red House Painters - Summer Dress

The 'fo
Artist: Red House Painters
Website: sunkilmoon.com
Recommended: Red House Painters - Ocean Beach; Various - 1980 Forward
Label: 4AD
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker
Tags: Red House Painters; Sun Kil Moon; Mark Kozelek; Ocean Beach; acoustic

Random Play All: I See A Darkness

2006-10-11T15:19:00.000Z

(Darkness by Toni Blay)

Random play all. Even 5 years ago these words would have had little of the meaning they have today. I don't know what an iPod says in this situation, but on my mp3 player, random play all signifies listening-to-loads-of-songs-you-don't-normally-listen-to, and today, I'm going to write a post about that.

Basically because I'm at work but have run out of things to do to occupy myself.

So, the first track that comes up when I shuffle my mp3's is Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's I See A Darkness, from the album of the same name. I first got a hold of this album when I went through a spate of listening to the darker, more morbid side of things - we're not talking Venom, or Spear Of Destiny, or whatever, but the album is pretty bleak. Song titles like Death To Everyone, Black, and A Minor Place don't tend to suggest flowers and kittens; don't expect any covers of Happy Talk, or anything. But don't death and it's related subjects make the best subjects for art? The only room at the Tate Modern where I felt I could actually understand all the exhibits was the Memento Mori room, aka DEATH HOUSE (my subtitle). And isn't every murder ballad automatically a classic? From Johnny Cash's (of whom more later) Folsom Prison Blues to Nick Caves Where The Wild Roses Grow, from Le Moz's darkly romantic There Is A Light... to the evergreen Hey Joe (find a more extensive list here), death is, undeniably, a great subject.

Whether I See A Darkness is about The End is debatable. In my mind it's more than likely that Mr Oldham wasn't thinking about frogspawn and chicken eggs when he wrote "then I see a darkness." It's not as explicit as some of his tracks, but as a statement of intent - as the title track of an album should be - it's extremely suitable. There's an undercurrent in the song, that out there somewhere is hope and gladness and redemption, but it's tempered by a savage realism suggesting the song's protagonist ain't going to find it all that easily.

I was expecting the album to entrench itself very deeply, before I bought it. I purchase it on the strength of the title track and A Minor Place, and yes, I do like it very much - I certainly have no other records quite like it. But it hasn't really settled in my mind as much as some other, perhaps less expected records, have - I can recall some, but certainly not all tracks. There's some classic, wonderful, awesome moments (I See A Darkness, Death To Everyone) but apparently I've missed what everybody else has found. Perhaps it needs more time, maybe one day I'll give it what it deserves. It's still obviously a fantastic record, but not - for me at least - life-changing. It hasn't, for example, caused me to seek out the rest of Oldham/Palace/Billy's vast and varied catalogue.

I See A Darkness the song, however, is another matter. It isn't bitter, it isn't overly morbid, it has hope and balance, it has subtility of lyric and music, it has everything a classic song needs, making it a classic. Not to mention it's more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts emotional resonance, something which causes it to stand up as one of the greatest songs of the last ten years. It's become something more than it was now due to the exposure as covered (in duet) by one John R Cash on American Recordings III. That rendition lifted both the profile of the song, and the credibility/respect awarded to Johnny Cash by a country mile and has become maybe the finest and best-loved of his wonderful covers. Cash's late-era covers didn't always work, but a good few of them exceeded the original (Hurt comes to mind). I See A Darkness didn't necessarily better Oldham's original, but it's still a phenomenal and beautiful piece. I think you should go and listen to both versions now.

The Music
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - I See A Darkness
Johnny Cash (feat. Will Oldham) - I See A Darkness

The 'fo
Artist: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy/Johnny Cash
Website: bonnieprincebilly.com/johnnycash.com
Recommended: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - I See A Darkness/Johnny Cash - Solitary Man: American III
Label: Domino/Sony
Buy: Amazon BPB/JC
More: Hype Machine BPB/JC; elbo.ws BPB/JC
If you like this you might like: Steve Adey - All Things Real
Tags: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy; Will Oldham; Palace; Johnny Cash; death; darkness; cover

I wish it could be October 10th, every daaaaay...

2006-10-10T12:09:00.000Z

You know what's soon? Christmas. Christmas is soon. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know. All I know is that Ikea now stock straw goats, possibly trying to appeal to both the Christmas=hideous-tat brigade, and the Christmas-as-extension-of-pagan-festivities brigade. I think I fall more in the former rather than the latter, but even so I'm not a massive fan of hideous tat. Although, the glowing, dangling gnomes are quite ace...

So because there's no better way to prepare for the season by doing it unfeasibly early, let me be the first to wish you a Happy Christmas, with all the related meaningless greetings and accoutrements. Break out the egg nog, settle down in front of some Capra-originated feelgood schlock and waste some money on sending bits of card to people you see every day, in the words of a wise man, It's Chriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiistmas!!!!!!

At least in 75 days.

In other news, I left my mobile phone at home today, and it was strangely liberating. I recommend trying it. Also, check out RadioBetty, the Hype Machine RealAudio stream of all tracks I've posted on here in (I think) the last 75 days. Kind of fun. It's on the right hand side under my profile. Celebrate with some bloggers' favourites, and then some, and watch my Hype Machine traffic shoot through the roof.

The Music
Low - Little Drummer Boy
Casiotone For The Painfully Alone - Cold White Christmas

Louis Armstrong - 'Zat You, Santa Claus?

John Fahey - O Come, O Come Emmanuel

Pedro The Lion - O Come, O Come Emmanuel

Sufjan Stevens - O Come, O Come Emmanuel

Bright Eyes - Away In A Manger

The fo'

Artists: Low/Casiotone For The Painfully Alone/Sufjan Stevens/Louis Armstrong/John Fahey/Pedro The Lion/Bright Eyes

Website: chairkickers.com/cftpa.org/sufjan.com/johnfahey.com/pedrothelion.com/saddle-creek.com
Recommended: Low - Christmas/CFTPA - Etiquette/Sufjan - Michigan/Verve present Christmas Jazz/I Am The Resurrection - John Fahey tribute/Pedro The Lion - It's Hard To Find A Friend/Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake It's Morning
Label: Rough Trade/Tomlab/Asthmatic Kitty/Verve/Vanguard/Jade Tree/Saddle Creek
Buy: Low/CFTPA/Sufjan/Satchmo/John Fahey/Pedro The Lion/Bright Eyes
More: Hype Machine Low/CFTPA/SS/LA/JF/PtL/BE; elbo.ws Low/CFTPA/SS/LA/JF/PtL/BE
If you like this you might like: Slade - Crackers
Tags: Christmas; Low; Casiotone For The Painfully Alone; Sufjan Stevens; Louis Armstrong; John Fahey; Pedro The Lion; Bright Eyes; carols

Here's your orange Herrrrrberrrrt

2006-10-09T15:44:00.000Z

(Photo by minirobot (cc))

Electronica artists don't tend to have a sense of humour. So when I saw that Matthew Herbert, a seriously hip name to drop yet whose music had never actually passed my ear drums, had contributed to Jamie Lidell's remix album, I was curious to check it out. The remix of A Little Bit More is suitably remix-y, paring the original back to a tribal beat and occasional splashes of the outlandish. But I listened to the bonus track, Herbert's Hoedown Bump Instrumental version of Mutliply and we're entering a different world. The clue is in the title, it's barndancetronica in all it's finery, and while it's not the most cerebral, chin-strokingly intellectual version on the cd, it is a whole barrel of fun. And given the immensely funky, party atmosphere of Multiply, it's not remotely out of place.

I mention this upon finally hearing Herbert's Scale, by all accounts his most successful album yet. Here's a fellow who's been working since the early 90's, flitting between abstract noise-creation and big band-style avant-jazz. On the way, he's remixed artists as diverse as REM, Yoko Ono, John Cale, Moloko and Perry Farrell, and collaborated with many more (Lidell himself, Arto Lindsay and his long-time muse and now wife, Dani Siciliano). A few weeks ago I posted an intriguing cover of Jeff Buckley's Everybody Here Wants you by Herbert and Siciliano, and that might have given you a small taste, but you really need to experience an entire album to take in the diversity of sound - on Scale it runs the full gamut, from glitchy electronica, to hard r'n'b, to old school funk and disco, to sultry swing. It's fairly dizzying at times, but has provided today's soundtrack admirably - consistently interesting, wilfully different yet within frameworks still acceptable to the less-refined palate. Like Multiply before it, this is a record which, if it doesn't cross over into wide audience, has suffered a serious injustice.

Fact of the day: the album's liner notes claims use of 635 instruments on this album, from the standard and expected (violins, pianos) to the less so (breakfast cereal, coffins).

The Music

Jamie Lidell - Multiply (Herbert's Hoedown Bump Instrumental)

Herbert - The Movers & The Shakers

Herbert - Movie Star

The 'fo

Artist: Herbert

Website: matthewherbert.net

Recommended: Herbert - Scale (metacritic 80)

Label: !k7

Buy: Amazon

More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws; lyrics

If you like this you might like: Jamie Lidell - Multiply

Tags: Matthew Herbert; Scale; remix; electronica

Woo hoo all the way

2006-10-08T19:24:00.000Z

(photo by Tub Gurnard)

This week's forthcoming HappyHappyJoyJoy-themed Contrast Podcast is very appropriate, in many ways. I am happy, right now (in a turn-up for the books), for a number of reasons.

1) I have tomorrow off work, the first day I've been allowed to take since July.
2) I get to go to Ikea and possibly imbibe many meatballs
3) We've finally sorted out getting a new flatmate in, just a week after the fairly gross Australian departed. Just as we were starting to get worried, the nicest one out of everyone that's seen the room said yes, and we breathed a big sigh of relief.
4) We have now an official excuse for the slightly weird ones who haven't said either way yet, and for the completely weird Scot who also came this arvo.
5) Tomorrow = lie-in
6) Friday coming means a Freelance Hellraiser set at the Academy, which in turn means lots of comedy mashups, innit. Fun times ahead.
7) From this week, work will be minimal for a good month or two.

Many reasons to be happy. I'm up and down like a yo-yo, me.

To celebrate: an alternate choice for the coming CP, and another excuse to post Four Tet. Happy Happy Joy! Joy!

The Music
Four Tet - Smile Around The Face

The 'fo
Artist: Four Tet
Website: fourtet.net
Recommended: Everything Ecstatic
Label: Domino
Buy: Amazon; Domino
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Autechre - Chiastic Slide
Tags: Four Tet; electronica; happy; joy; Freelance Hellraiser

Come on all you good rats

2006-10-07T11:04:00.000Z

(Dropkick Murphys, Milan 23/4/06, photo by stardumbs)

Film review? You're having a laugh. Post inspired by film seen? That's more like it. I saw The Departed last night, breaking my habit of just not bothering going to the cinema. I liked it, tis a good film, and as usual with Scorsese, very evocative of it's locale, in this case, Bwaaawston. A change from his usual NYC, I guess, but just down the road in global terms, Scorsese looking at Boston is kind of similar in some respects to Scorsese looking at New York (the underbelly rather than, um, the overbelly), but then different in other respects (I'm so used to Italian mob movies with De Niro or Pacino in, it makes a nice change to focus on the Boston Irish).

In America, apparently, no-one's American. You might be 6th generation Irish, or your descendents might have moved over from the Old Country 150 years ago, but people cling onto their heritage. It's not something the British ever get used to, even in London (one generation is fine, but don't milk it...). The enjoyable thing about The Departed was the soundtrack - alongside Scorsese's usual Rolling Stones quotient and Van The Man covering Pink Floyd, there was a couple of Dropkick Murphys tracks on there.

Ah, what visions of delight when I heard the familiar ranks of bagpipes backed with humungous walls of overdriven guitar. It's nothing if not perfect for playing loud in a cinema, and fit in superbly with the boisterous Irish gangs of the film. Of course, I would say that, if I hear Dropkick Murphys in a film, I'm going to say it's great whatever. Accompanying a couple of driving scenes, the songs barrel along at full tilt, the pipes creating a sense of scale that few punk bands can carry off.

The Irish thing is certainly the Dropkick Murphys USP, and from my point of view, they carry it off with a lot more panache than contenders like Flogging Molly, or even Swingin' Utters to an extent. The cover of their 2000 album Sing Loud, Sing Proud! (released on Rancid's Hellcat label) features a green and white mural painted onto a wall, replete with shamrocks, and the reverse pictures the band with Guiness' raised, busy falling out of a pub. Their heritage is at the forefront of tracks like The Rocky Road to Dublin and The Legend Of Finn MacCumhail, and the sound is just unmistakably gaelic throughout. I find it hard to complain about people hanging onto their heritage when it's this much fun.

So turn it up loud and blast this out at top notch, shout along with it, it's the only way. For Boston is the intro track to Sing Loud, Sing Proud! and you must know The Wild Rover...

The Music
Dropkick Murphys - For Boston
Dropkick Murphys - The Wild Rover

The 'fo
Artist: Dropkick Murphys
Website: dropkickmurphys.com
Recommended: Sing Loud, Sing Proud!
Label: Hellcat
Buy: Amazon; The Departed OST
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Bouncing Souls - How We Spent Our Summer Vacation
Tags: Dropkick Murphys; punk; Irish; The Departed; Boston; Hellcat

Hebden Rocks Back And Forth

2006-10-05T12:18:00.000Z

(Four Tet live, 2006 by Tim Broddin)

It's difficult to know how to behave at a Four Tet concert, and so careful observation reveals different factions amongst the illuminati smart enough to attend said concert. For the average indie-rock fan who's graduated to electronica more recently, there is much head-nodding, and the kind of half-dancing you get when you go to see the easier to swallow Go! Team, or someone similar. Then there's the tech-heads, the ones that stand literally inches from Keiran Hebden's face, so much so that they have to blow their smoke away to avoid choking the poor man. The goons with long necks and intent faces, that stare at Hebden's flying fingers. Then there's the pillheads, not so much causing trouble as actually having fun by dancing, albeit in the extremely limited space of Plastic People, a wee basement under Curtain Road, lined with chipboard and with a spotlight held by a bloke. I kid you not.

The spotlight was actually quite a feature of last night's concert, at least for me. When that's your solitary lighting, it becomes important, if nothing else to light the camera that was either filming the set, or snaking through the crowd conga-fashion, for no discernable reason. Of course though, the spotlight was not the primary interest here. Here was me, seeing a man I consider one of the most talented, interesting characters in music at the moment, just a few feet away in a tiny club, performing some of his greatest hits. I was happy.

I'm not really au fait with how to behave at this sort of event. Is it a gig? Is it a club? Is it something else? Something else, I'd go with. In an ideal world, there would be more space at a thing like this, to get your dancing shoes on, because to deny the foot-tapping, knee-wobbling good vibes of Four Tet is to do yourself a disservice, or else to prove that you are dead inside. But the room crowded around this wild- and sunken-eyed little man to get a glimpse of... nothing really. A whiteboy afro hunched maniacally over a console, moving a mouse every now and then, the rest of the time twiddling knobs and making buttons flash red. But when you look more closely, his fingers really are dancing - he's moving the beat along, he's manipulating the samples. Some clever Trevor behind kept saying, wouldn't it be funny, I bet it's all pre-recorded, guffaw. The fool! Can he not see?! Well, maybe he couldn't. But the many lights disproved this man's theory.

I'm not really any better informed now on correct protocol, but I don't mind. I have no desire to join the reserved head-nodding of the cooler-than-thou, neither do I wish to go nuts dancing unless I can dedicate a whole night to it. So I'm in the middle and that's fine. The bonus is that I've got out of it a wonderful, beautiful, rocking concert from one of my favourite acts, playing a bunch of my favourite songs, nice and loud, with sufficient improvisation and twists and turns to keep even the rock-hardened newbie happy. Beautiful people, we are.

The Music
Four Tet - Pockets

Four Tet - A Joy

Bloc Party - So Here We Are (Four Tet remix)

The 'fo
Artist: Four Tet
Website: fourtet.net

Recommended: Rounds

Label: Domino

Buy: Amazon; Domino

More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws

If you like this you might like: Manitoba - Up In Flames

Tags: Four Tet; live; Plastic People; Old Street; electronica