Listen

Andy Bell has just released an EP of covers, three of which were already out earlier this year and posted here along the way. The songs make up some of the influences on Andy's solo album Flicker, released at the start of 2022. His cover of Arthur Russell's Our Last Night Together is a wonderful, small hours piece of music, so gently frazzled it almost falls to pieces while it's being played. I've posted the cover of Pentangle's Light Flight already. The third is a cover of The Kinks' The Way Love Used To Be. The fourth part of the jigsaw came out yesterday, Andy's cover of Yoko Ono's Listen, The Snow Is Falling...

How good is that? 

Very good. 

You can buy the Untitled Film Stills EP here. Worth every penny.

Yoko's original, what she calls 'the first pop song I wrote' came out in 1971, the B-side to John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band's Christmas single Happy Xmas (War Is Over). The band was an all star/ John's friends affair- Lennon plays guitar, Klaus Voormann bass, Nicky Hopkins is on organ and Jim Keltner on drums and bells. Anyone who is a Yoko naysayer, should listen to this. 

Listen, The Snow Is Falling

In Love With Life

Some optimism for Monday morning, a quality in short supply. In 2017 Hifi Sean released an album called Ft. , every song featuring a different vocalist or collaborator. Sean was once the singer and leader of The Soup Dragons. After the band ended he became a DJ, living and playing in New York in the mid- 90s and then based in London in the 00s. The album has a range of musical partners, from Norman Blake from his Bellshill guitar band days to Billie Ray Martin, Alan Vega and Bootsy Collins but nowhere does it sound better than on this song with Yoko Ono. 

In Love With Life

The chunky drums and sweeping synth strings are lovely and Yoko's spoken word vocal tops it off beautifully. There's a nice animated video too. 

Yoko Ono is a much maligned figure for various reasons, some of them unpleasant 'isms' I think. I haven't seen Get Back but reviews suggest it's gone some way towards painting her in 1969/ 70 a little differently from the woman who split up the world's favourite pop group. 

When All This Is Over

A new Bagging Area mix for Sunday, an optimistic sounding one now that the days are getting longer and the summer seems to be just round the corner. A lot of these songs have been posted here recently individually but they sounded good together. I'm not sure there's a huge amount of cause for optimism with the continuing, ceaseless flow of bad news, bad government and virus rates increasing but maybe it's best to turn the news channel off for a while and unplug. It's at Mixcloud, it won't embed but you can find it here. 

As the voice says in the opening Coyote song, 'when all this is over.... I plan to go north...' 

• Coyote: Café Con Leche
• Private Agenda: Malanai Ascending (Seahawks Remix)
• Chris Coco: Rainy Season
• Reinhard Vanbergen and Charlotte Carulaerts: Julien
• Primal Scream: Inner Flight
• Justin Deighton and Leo Zero: I Feel Edit
• Cantoma: The Mountain (Lexx Remix)
• HiFi Sean Ft. Yoko Ono: In Love With Life
• A Certain Ratio: Berlin (album version)
• Coyote: Feedback Valley
• Future Beat Alliance: Birth (Claude Young Remix)