Shonen Knife, who I'm looking forward to catching live in a few weeks, and one of their early songs. Really about the perils of blue oyster poisoning rather than Blue Oyster Cult, but its title wins it a spot here.
Friday, June 21, 2019
Songs About People # 878 Blue Oyster Cult
Shonen Knife, who I'm looking forward to catching live in a few weeks, and one of their early songs. Really about the perils of blue oyster poisoning rather than Blue Oyster Cult, but its title wins it a spot here.
Fruit Bats - Gold Past Life
Nostalgia it seems is making a comeback. Though of course it's never really been away. As the tagline on this blog from Nick Cave suggests, memory is utterly fundamental to us all. The prism through which we interact with and exist within the world.
If the point isn't clear, here comes Fruit Bats Gold Past Life to drive it home once and for all. As with similar albums of recent months, Weyes Blood's magnificent Titanic Rising and Drugdealer's slightly more workaday Raw Honey, it inhabits the early Seventies, almost suggesting it to be a lost golden age.
Which it's not of course. But for the duration of Gold Past Life Eric D. Johnson, (ostensibly the man behind the project) makes the illusion last. In order to do so he most obviously owes a huge debt to Harry Nilsson without whom it's difficult to imagine the album existing at all. The man's yearning, wistful spirit leaves fingerprints all over the scene of the crime.
Nilsson himself of course was also a shameless nostalgist. Johnson honours his memory. Most importantly, some of the songs on here are very good. So while never hitting the heights of Titanic Rising, Gold Past Life is a half hour well spent. Whether memories are made of this may be quite another question, but I like it, and if pressed would give it seven.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,978 Sachet
In 2017 Sydney, Australia band Sachet (who emerged from the ashes of Day Ravies), released a fabulous but very low profile album called Portion Control. Now they're back with a new single called Nets which at least made it onto YouTube and it heralds another LP in September. It's just great anyhow. Busy, tuneful guitar sounds and sweet harmonies that kind of invite the label Post Punk but are definitely on the more melodic side of that equation. Not a million miles away from compatriots Terry, The Stroppies and Parsnip. Fine, fine band.
Thursday, June 20, 2019
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 400 13th Floor Elevators
Big evening for one reason or another at Rosie's. I played this from the second album by the 13th Floor Elevators which I think is generally better than their first.
Songs About People # 877 Albert Camus
The first of a couple from Titus Andronicus on this series. They have a new record out tomorrow produced by Bob Mould. here's one of theirs from a few years back for the cool existentialist.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,977 Quelle Chris
One of the most interesting Hip Hop albums I've heard for a long time, Quelle Chris Guns, (released a few months back), is a record that examines American gun culture without glorifying it for a single momemt, enough to rarify it in itself. The conclusions it comes to are pretty depressing but the music itself isn't for a moment.
Satirising the music culture that monetises this stuff, the vicious circles that drive the American car down its long highway, as well as the society and politics that perpetuate all the mindless and brutal and often quite unecessary and avoidable violence.
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Songs About People # 876 Simon Le Bon
You thought Simon Le Bon was annoying. Just wait 'til you hear The Sunshine's tribute to them.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,976 Senalada
Feather light guitar driven indie pop music from Spain that skirts the edges of sounds and atmospheres conjured up in the past by the likes of Prefab Sprout, The Railway Children and The Shins.
Luz y Delirios is Senalada's third album in all. They have a nice way of melody and momentum about them.
Tuesday, June 18, 2019
Monday, June 17, 2019
Mattiel - Satis Factory
Satis Factory the second album from the Atlanta singer-songwriter Mattiel and her band. A weak joke but a strong record. She made some waves with her eponymous debut a couple of years back and this consolidates things nicely.
Essentially their schtick seems to be that they're a Nuggets Garage Rock band with Loretta Lynn with a modern sensibility at the mic. Because Mattiel has no mean set of lungs on her and no lack of personality to back them up.
This is no mere period exercise though I have little doubt that Mattiel and her compadres have wonderful record collections. All in all, this certainly sounds like a 2019 record. It has a contemporary sheen.
Coming out on a Friday in June which also boasted new records from Springsteen, Madonna and Bill Callahan among other notables this might be one that might be in danger of disappearing back into the pack but it's a far worthier record than that.
Over the course of the album the early Velvets and The Girl Group Sound all make welcome appearances. The record made my smile wider as each track succeeded the last. Perhaps a couple of fillers stop it being as good as it might be but very few of the original Garage Bands produced absolutely classic albums. This will more than do for now. Currently working with Heavenly Records in Europe which should help them broaden their public profile further. Another fine record comes down the pike.
Sunday, June 16, 2019
Jeanines - Jeanines
Brooklyn's Jeanines kick off their eponymous debut album, released on Friday on Slumberland Records, as if they can't decide which Housemartins riff they want to play, Happy Hour or Sheep. Then the female vocalist cuts in and they locate themselves utterly. As C-86, Sarah Records revivalists.
From this point onwards, they never deviate once from that script. Remarkably, there are sixteen tracks in all here but the whole album lasts just twenty six minutes. Perhaps they could have given The Ramones lessons in brevity.
Anyhow, this is certainly a model lesson of sorts. In knowing what you like and doing it, obviously leaning on your record collection, they're clearly Indie completists, but doing it with sufficient vim, vigour and sheer melodic nous to make a record with sufficient qualities to deserve to nestle in record collections, rubbing sleeves with those of your heroes.
Essentially a duo. Jeanines will make many new friends with this album. From people who know all too well where they're coming from but like where they've gone. Jeanines, far from the most original album released this year but one worthy of note anyhow.
Songs About People # 874 Jochen Rindt
One of the oddest things you'll ever hear. A song in honour of Jochen Rindt who also drove the Lotus, in his case to the Grand Prix drivers championship in 1970 which was awarded posthumously following his death in Monza.
Song of the Day # 1,973 Ze Roberto
Wonderful early Seventies Brazilian pop in celebration of the revolutionary Lotus Grand Prix car that Emerson Fittipaldi drove to glory at that time.
Saturday, June 15, 2019
Bill Callahan - Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest
Bill Callahan strikes me as an artist who only seems to get better with time. While other musicians strive to stay relevant with the passing of the years, he only becomes more so. He refines and hones what he does to a point of clarity precious few others achieve or can even aspire too.
His latest album Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest, just out, is his first for six years, and is quite worth the wait. In the meantime Callahan has got married, had a son, and found domestic calm, leading him to question whether he should even be creating and recording music anymore, as it no longer has the driving centrality it had previously in a career moving towards its fourth decade.
We can only be grateful that he chose to return. The record is a double, and a feast to relish, dive into and immerse yourself within at repeated sittings. Twenty songs, imbued with the vedic calm and warm, rich irony but also chiselled profundity that has come to be his modus operandi.
The songs come across almost as diary entries. Minimalist, poetic and beautifully self-aware. Opening up like beautifully judged and lovingly wrapped gifts, the perfect things to listen to late at night before surrendering to sleep.
There's a well earned and hard won contentment to the record and you can't help but feel really pleased for the man. Full of lines so perfectly judged and rendered that you want to press pause and write them down. 'I woke up on a 747. Flying through some stock footage of heaven.' To quote just one. He makes it all seem utterly effortless when it's perfectly plain that it's anything but. Otherwise countless others would be doing it too.
Honouring the ghosts of Cohen, Reed and Buckley, Callahan has matured to the degree when the light is utterly his, despite inevitable reminders of his inspirations. Musically his arrangements skirt the borderlines between Folk and Country. Everything is slowed to Callahan's inimitable pace. Frankly it's something of a masterpiece. A book to give pride of place on your shelf and return to whenever you have need of its sustenance.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,972 Institute
Austin Texas Thrash Punks consistently take Route One on their new album, Readjusting the Locks their third in all by my reckoning..The approach serves them fine and a mighty fine time is had by all over the course of its thirteen tracks.
The band has taken notes from plenty of old school Punks along the way. I hear Saints, Magazine, Dead Kennedys, Fugazi and The Damned bobbing up at various points. Punks not dead, apparently.
Whether or not they're really angry I couldn't tell you but there's plenty of vim and fizz in their armoury. I like the cut of their jib!
Bob Dylan & Sharon Stone
Apparently a fake picture and part of a fake story bound up to the Martin Scorsese film about Dylan's 1976 tour Rolling Thunder Review.
Friday, June 14, 2019
Songs About People # 873 Will Oldham
The wonderful Jeffrey Lewis plays great tribute to Will Oldham and examines his myth.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,971 Jakes Xerxes Fussell
North Carolina's Jakes Xerxes Fussell doesn't play originals. Instead he unearths little known American Country and Folk songs brushes down and restores them with a true craftsman's touch. His latest album Out of Sight is an object of wonder, ten songs that you've probably never heard before, recast, varnished and held up to the light.
This time round, (it's his third album in all), Fussell is complemented by his band. Pedal steel, violin and organ flesh out the sound, each track unfolds at its own leisurely pace, like a ticking clock or a rocking chair. Fussell's voice meanwhile, somewhere in the territory between Dylan, Zevon and Robertson is the glue. Highly recommended.
Thursday, June 13, 2019
Things Found on My Local's Jukebox # 398 Patsy Cline
Released posthumously after Cline's death in 1963. Used in a quite inspired way by the Coen brothers in Blood Simple.
Songs About People # 872 Jeffrey Lee Pierce
Keith Morris, original singer of Black Flag, pays appropriate shouty tribute to Jeffrey Lee with his band OFF!
Song(s) of the Day # 1,970 Damon Locks Black Monument Ensemble
Looking back to keep moving forward. Where Future Unfolds the new album from Chicago-base improvisational artist Damon Locks and his ensemble of musicians is immediately evocative and stamped with a remarkably vivid consciousness and stark if mystical clarity. It made me think of so many of the great Black American musics and musicians of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies; of Nina Simone, John and Alice Coltrane, Aretha Franlin, Charles Mingus, Mahalia Jackson, Gil Scott Heron, The Last Poets Sun Ra, Curtis Mayfield. And so on. add your own names, I'm sure you get the idea.
It may not always sound like these artists but the record carries the unmistakable stamp of their work and takes forward the torch they first lit. It stirs together Gospel, Soul and Cosmic Jazz remarkably, (plenty of Hip Hop sensibility too), and then makes its own statement fully fluently It's as good a record to summon forth the turbulent spirit of the age we're living through as you'll hear this year. Soothing and empowering music for deeply troubled times. A strange brew but on first hearing I'd imagine one that promises to be a heady and highly addictive.
The album casts a spell of spoken word, chanted vocals and thick hypnotic musical rhythms. It's perfectly clear that this is a call to political engagement and activism. It's wonderful to see the response of these musicians, among a growing sea of voices to the reactionary wave of politics we're currently experiencing. Fight the power indeed.
This is a defiant and declamatory album. It doesn't offer easy answers but does make a stirring, celebratory and remarkable stand. I can only advise you to get with its programme.
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
Songs Heard on the Radio # 317 Nikki Sudden
Listened to the fine Luke Haines afternoon show on Radio Boogaloo today. He's never dull company. He certainly has a fondness for Nikki Sudden. Here's one of Sudden's tales of growing up in the Midlands in the Seventies.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,969 Palehound
I know I write about him a fair bit on here but there was something quite unique about Elliott Smith. Although you could tell that he'd listened to a fair bit to The Beatles and Big Star, he did something quite new with their inspiration. He found a way of twisting their source melodies into fresh shapes and taking the listener to a place where you could feel the emotional anguish that he was expressing. As much as any musician I can think of. Such is the gift of the true artist.
Tragically, he's no longer with us. But he has no lack of spiritual heirs. I hear artists and bands all the time and think, 'oh they've been listening to Elliott.' Such was the case yesterday when I made my way through Palehound's new record Black Friday.
Palehound is essentially a vehicle for Boston based singer-songwriter Ellen Kempner. She shares Smith's ingrained introversion, his insecurity, the conviction that the glass is general half empty but every so occasionally half full. There's plenty of wry wit here but also some essentially inadvisable but utterly human wallowing that occasionally achieves real beauty.
It doesn't all work. I'm not really interested that she's 'due for a shitty tattoo,' as she confides on Stick N Poke, but mostly she's pretty good company, like your slightly morose friend, who you realise is self-indulgent but still has the knack of expressing the slivers of acute intelligence you don't really get elsewhere. A lot of damn fine songs on here. I sense that Smith himself might approve.
Tuesday, June 11, 2019
Songs About People # 871 Francois Truffaut
Not the tribute to the great auteur that you might expect. From a band that sound like the German Green Day.
Song(s) of the Day # 1,968 Sparrow Steeple
If you're going to be in a band you might as well push the boat out a bit. Such at least seems to be the maxim of Sparrow Steeple. They push their own personal boat to a very odd part of the lake on their third album Tin Top Sorcerer where the Bryan Ferry of very early Roxy appears to be fronting a band of shambolic astral pixies, not a million miles away from Tyrannosaurus Rex or The Incredible String Band.
It's a very odd conceit and makes for rather mixed results. When they hit the spot it proves very interesting listening indeed. how you'd categorise it is another matter altogether, it's either a music from the distant past or somewhere off in the future.
If you've ever enjoyed anything by the three bands I mentioned above, there might be something for you here. If anything, the fusion of such apparently contradictory inspirational sources make Sparrow Steeple stranger and further out there than all three.
Monday, June 10, 2019
Pip Blom - Boat
Dutch musician and band Pim Blom have been bobbing along on Indie radars for two or three years now. Regulars on Marc Riley evening sessions and the European club circuit, they've generally gathered up a set of favourable if not blazing set of reviews.
So, mid 2019, they finally come to launch their Boat. their debut album in the bigger pond. It's a sprightly but not outstanding product, distinctly Indie, with rattling, chiming guitars and spirited slightly childlike vocals and an overall sound most obviously recalling The Breeders and compatriots Betty Serveert. It's the kind of thing that would appeal to stalwart British radio DJ Steve Lamacq, and that's not altogether a compliment.
This is perhaps the Post-Fifty cynic in me. But I have been listening to music for a while. I was around for The Last Splash and Elastica first time round and though this is a highly spirited version of those records, it still is a version of it just the same.
The album certainly had its moments and is good company for its thirty five minutes span. I tapped my toes with no little enthusiasm for the songs I liked best, most of the ones that I posted here. It's not one I'll be going back to that often. One for evening radio listening rather than my record player methinks.
Songs About People # 870 Barry Goldwater
From the latest School of Language album, 45 which holds up the Trump phenomenon to the light and naturally finds him wanting, During the course of the record they evoke The Goldwater Rule, named after Barry Goldwater who ran for President in 1964.
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