Tuesday, July 7, 2020
50 Days of R.E.M. # 27 (Don't Go Back to) Rockville
This was the song that was less immediately familiar to me when I first heard Reckoning, though it's tune and glorious chorus harmonies were not difficult to love. But I wasn't versed in the sentimental C&W this was clearly sourced in and wouldn't be for a while. Apparently written for the most part by Mike Mills about a girl he knew going away to live and work in Rockville, Maryland. There's an element of melancholy to the refrain but really it's just fun isn't it? Pure and simple.
The World's Worst Record Show - Kenny Everett # 1 Jimmy Cross
So from the sublime, (Nuggets), to the ridiculous, this. In the late Seventies Kenny Everett, DJ and general UK media celebrity, hosted a series of four radio shows highlighting some of the worst records ever made. Each of them are funny in their own way. Generally entirely unintentionally. Here we go!
Song of the Day # 2,365 The Altons
Old scholl Southern Soul on Penrose a subsiduary of Daptone Records.
Monday, July 6, 2020
50 Days of R.E.M. # 28 The Flowers of Guatemala
Quite the gentlest song ever to open any side of an R.E.M. album. On one of the saddest subjects. The disappearance of dissidents in Guatemala. An act supported by the US government at the time. Also has the rarest of all things in the middle section. A Peter Buck guitar solo.
Sunday, July 5, 2020
Holy Wave - Interloper
El Paso's Holy Wave have been around for quite a while and have pretty much marked out their territory now and on Interloper, their fifth album in all they don't make radical changes. This is sun drenched, awestruck Shoegaze Psychedelic wonder. Waves of guitar, hypnotic trippy, melodic sea of sound. Think Rain Parade, Felt, Ride, Pale Saints, Spiritualized, Sterolab, Allah Las, Cool Ghouls.
So if Holy Wave have plenty of fellow travellers, and never quite break free from the pack over the course of this record, there are plenty of highly enjoyable moments when they mount and maintain some druggy plateaus. No classic, but the sound of five people hitting giddy, hypnotic grooves.
I didn't like every song on the album but I did go for several big time. The ones I've posted. A good album to listen to inside on a beautifully sunny, Sunday morning looking through a window and imagine the world you're being tentatively but actively encouraged to go out and enjoy. Holy Wave are well named. They surf their own to great effect on occasions here.
Lawn - Blood On The Tracks
So here's my re-post of Lawn's Blood on the Tracks, which landed up as my 6th favourite album in 2018. Still sounds just as good. Listening through to it now.
This is surely destined to be one of my favourite records of the year. Blood On The Tracks, the debut album from New Orleans duo Lawn released a couple of weeks back. I'm sorry that I can only post one track here, opener 2000 Boy, because given a chance I assure you I'd post the whole damned thing.
It's full of instant pop inspiration and small moments of genius. Taking The Kinks as a starting point, then leaping forward fifteen years to bands like Wire, Gang of Four, Pylon, Minutemen, The Clean and The Bats, on from there to Fugazi and Deerhunter and fast forward to the present to like-minded contemporaries Hoops, Warehouse and Omni.
But Lawn deserve a lawn or even perhaps a small field all to themselves because Blood On The Tracks is a remarkably accomplished record. Nothing to do with the Dylan classic as far as I can tell. Lawn's, two partners Mac Folger and Rui De Magalahes trade songs back and forth and the mood shifts magically from track to track. Each song wrestles to tear your love away from the last. It's melodic, concise, considered and cool, reminiscent of things you love but carving its own space in the scheme of things. And that's no mean feat!
Twelve songs of restless vigour and invention, just like my favourite album of all, R.E.M's Murmur which changed my life way back in 1983, Lawn's Blood On The Tracks deserves a sizeable, appreciative audience because it's an altogether wonderful statement. Discover its glorious thirty eight minute burst for yourselves and I hope to return to it in my end of year Album List, be able to post more from it for you, and where it seems utterly sure to figure very high in the Top Ten.
Lawn - Nighttime Creatures
A couple of years back, New Orleans, Louisiana Lawn's debut album Blood on the Tracks was one of my favourite obscure discoveries for a long time. Mapping out fresh tangents from familiar sources, R.E.M., Pavement, Guided By Voices and The Clean, it was both incredibly promising and self-contained achievement. Then nothing.
Now they're back, building on the melodic, enigmatic beauty of Blood on the Tracks. The band's second album, Johnny is out in early September. Can't wait!
50 Days of R.E.M. # 29 Maps & Legends
Silky, elegant and restrained, Maps & Legends, the second track of Fables, showed just how far the band and come and how comfortable they were in their skins by now. Exploring the mythology of the part of the Southern tradition, With more impenetrable, found lyrics, slightly more discernible in the mix than previously, this also boasts one of their finest melodies. The song is a tribute to Reverend Howard Finster, who collaborated with the band in their early days, producing the sleeve picture for Reckoning among other things.About interpretation, and whether it's worth it.
Song of the Day # 2,364 Silverbacks
Young Dublin band, there's a scene that's building up a head of steam. They have a debut album, Fad coming in a couple of weeks which should be worth a listen judging by this.
Saturday, July 4, 2020
50 Days of R.E.M. # 30 Finest Worksong
In 1987 I went with my brother, sister and a friend of her's to see R.E.M. at The Hammersmith Odeon just before the release of Document. They opened with this, which almost nobody in the venue had heard before. It was a blinding moment.
Friday, July 3, 2020
50 Days of R.E.M. # 31 These Days
Fully turbocharged second track on Pageant. Definitely shifting up a gear here.
Nuggets - Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era # 23 Sagittarius
Gary Usher, a notable producer, with credits from The Byrds, Gene Clark and The Peanut Butter Experience makes his baroque, flower power statement.
Song of the Day # 2,362 Too Much
Ian Svenonius takes funky, less guitar generated direction with latest Too Much album.
Thursday, July 2, 2020
50 Days of R.E.M. # 32 Can't Get There From Here
R.E.M. doing something they had never quite done before and wouldn't do afterwards. First there are the horns. It's funky, as in Stax funky. Not exactly one you can dance to except perhaps if you're Michael Stipe. Like everything on Fables of the Reconstruction it's Southern. Full of that particular part of the world's particular Gothic logic. Michael singing 'Can't get there from here,' while Bill and Mike chant, 'I've been there, I know the way.' The band gave a wonderful performance of the song on The Tube in Autumn 1985 on a bill they shared with Tom Waits. Michael as bleach haired Southern preacher. Here are both songs they played that evening. Driver 8 then Can't.
Song(s) of the Day # 2,361 Snarls
Highly generic but nevertheless likeable indie jangle from Columbus, Ohio band. Reminded me of Waxahatchee and The Sundays. Not much wrong with either of these though. Both these selections from an album called Burst from earlier on in 2020.
Wednesday, July 1, 2020
Nuggets - Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era # 21 The Mojo Men
Cover of a Stephen Stills song.
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
It Starts With a Birthstone - Albums for June
Here it is. Music coming back to life! Some great stuff here.
It Starts With a Birthstone - Songs for June
Short list of songs for this month. Longer list of great albums coming up.
50 Days of R.E.M. # 34 It's The End Of The World
They feel fine and I'm fine with this, even after massive media overplay through the years. R.E.M. do Monkees. Trump adopted it sadly but it's rightfully theirs.
Monday, June 29, 2020
50 Days of R.E.M. # 35 Get Up
So much about R.E.M from their name onwards was dream life. This one more than any other song in their back catalogue represented that preoccupation. Always found this quite Beatles. Doesn't hang around.
Song(s) of the Day # 2,358 Ray LaMontagne
There are some new albums which come out that you've heard every single, note and sentiment expressed therein before a hundred times perhaps more. These albums can go either way. You might want to never ever hear them again. Or else you might be happy to listen to them many times because they explore such classic tropes in such an inspired way.
Ray LaMontagene's latest album Monovision slots nicely into the latter category. Trust me, you don't need to hear this album. You've heard every note and experienced every sentiment expressed on here. But then again you might like to listen to it. Simply because it expresses these eternal sentiments so clearly and beautifully. It's the third great new record that I've heard in the last few days, following the Banangun and Nadine Shah albums and I'm very happy about that because I was finding things rather slow in this the second phase of UK Lockdown.
Monovision is a lesser record in terms of its achievement than those other two but that doesn't make it any less lovely. LaMontagne is a long in the tooth journeyman in this respect, he's well versed in this kind of thing. This is neither his masterpiece nor his end station, he clearly has plenty more in the tank. Fans of his will welcome it with open arms and with luck it may make some new converts.
So followers of Cat Stevens, Van the Man, Creedence, Joni, Neil, Nick, Tim and even John Denver might like to bend an ear to this. No wheels are reinvented here, nothing to see really but a craftsman at work. That should be more than enough. May not top many end of year lists but should be somewhere in the rundown.
Sunday, June 28, 2020
Nadine Shah - Kitchen Sink
Nadine Shah is truly someone who's coming completely into her own right now. I mean she was always good, of course she was, but right now she's shedding the shadow of her clear and evident influences and forbears and producing quite magnificent, resplendent records.
Kitchen Sink, her latest album, just out, is the most recent, and uttely convincing evidence of this. It's Shah, with her peacock's tail on display, cocksure and strutting, with something important to say and utterly sure of how to go about saying it.
Shah is something of a cusp artist at the minute. She was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize last time around but didn't win it though perhaps she should have done. This sounds to me like the one that might push her over the edge to mass acceptance, it's certainly a record of uncanny power and depth.
Dealing with gender issues. Dealing with suburban claustrophobia. Dealing with being told what to do all the time when you really don't want to and think it's just not the best thing to do. Shah, doesn't pull her punches for a moment and is utterly magnificent, from start to finish of Kitchen Sink.
This is one of the records of the year. It's already been given a five star review in Mojo which very rarely happens and it deserves it. If it's not in my own Top Ten when I come to my own countdown in December, I'll eat my hat. Hear it.
50 Days of R.E.M. # 36 Green Grow The Rushes
'The amber waves of gain...'
It's a huge tribute to the glory of R.E.M.'s third album Fables of the Reconstruction that this is not a lot higher on this rundown. Because it's a thing of rare beauty. But I've got a lot more to pack in from that record yet before I'm done. Green Grow The Rushes, is testament, not only to the band's fluid mastery of their art at this point in their career, Peter Buck's guitar work here is particularly worthy of note, but also their resolve, their sheer confidence in what they were doing.
Another political song, focusing on the plight of Mexican guest workers in the US and drawing paralells with America's colonial past. It's Southern in the way everything, on Fables particularly is Southern. Like so much of the band's early work it drew me in pretty quickly and also made me want to learn more.
Nuggets - Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era # 19 The Amboy Dukes
The Amboy Dukes, most widely remembered for featuring a young Ted Nugent.
Marooned - The Next Generation of Desert Island Discs # 8 Miles Davis - Bitches' Brew - Chosen by Greg Tate
'Miles once said that the only way to achieve anything new in music was to take the best musicians around and get them to play beyond what they know.'
Song(s) of the Day # 2,357 Pottery
It seems slightly strange that Montreal band Pottery are only now putting out their debut album Welcome to Bobby's Motel as they seem to have been around for a long time already. They're certainly not a band lacking in ideas, but they won't be to everyone's taste as they tend to have a kitchen sink approach to the songwriting, an don't tend to draft and upgrade their product as much as they might do.
Most immediately they remind me of Arcade Fire, (and explicitly their chanelling of Talking Heads), and Parquet Courts. As with these bands, it's nie on impossible not to hear their influences popping through their songs as they are quite upfront about them, I'd be reasonably sure in Pottery's case that they've listened to a lot of early Eighties Post Punk and Independent guitar classics in their time. Particularly those which involved white boys getting funky. A Certain Ratio, Higsons, Pigbag, Josef K and The Clash of Overpowered by Funk, come to mind.
The songs are almost all cluttered, and this means they have a high hit and miss factor, things that sound closer to Pelican West that Fear of Music. It's good to hear alternative bands that are not just trying to sound like Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine or Slowdive, but this record both overwhelmed and underwhelmed me on first listen and I think I'll go back to The True Story of Bananagun, (which I reviewed here yesterday) for a more impressive lesson on how to go about messing with the past.
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