I had really fancied this gig.
From the records and the clips I’d seen I was expecting a full on, all out funky soul, sold out treat. And it was. There was no support but the dj’s delivered some furious funk and the Yardbird is just a good place to be anyway.
Eight Dap-Kings squeeze onto the small low stage. Suited and booted to various degrees of dapperness and exuding bar band nonchalance.
They’re all great players and look like they could probably play their instruments with one hand and use the other to skin you at poker. Except for the conga player who looks like he’s only a costume change away from a part in ‘Allo ‘Allo.
I felt I’d had my moneys worth even before Sharon Jones took to the stage.
MC and guitarist Binky Griptite led the band into a couple of warm up numbers and instrumentals. It was just so good to be standing so close to a band who had so completely captured the sound of classic soul. Northern and Southern, Country and Western. Sacred and profane and all points in-between. They had a handle on it and they were turning it. On!
Trumpet, 2 saxes, 2 guitars, congas and the effortless funky shuffle of the peerless Homer Funky Foot Steinweiss using the world’s smallest kit with no toms. (Or gongs. It didn’t levitate or explode into flames either!)
Bosco Bass Mann’s shades were straight from Starsky and Hutch and his bass lines were straight from all the best Rare Groove records. No complaints on either count then.
Binky Griptite’s stage patter is a delight. It’s 70’s dj/George Clinton meets Hendrix. In his world the merchandise stand isn’t a trestle table with some t shirts and cds. It’s a "Supersoul Superstore"
Sharon Jones is an Etta James style soul belter, with a sideline in the Tina Turner strut on unfeasible heels. (She probably didn’t wear them when she was a warder at Rikers Island. At least not on the days when she’d have to run after someone.)
Her act includes lots of chatting to the audience and she explains how she tackled the pitfalls of being a big woman dancing in a little dress. “I’ve got my shorts on!”
She does like to get people on stage though. One by one they’re dragged up to be danced at/with and sung to. The classic moment though was in a song called Be Easy.
She pulled a fresh faced fellow onto the stage and explained how this song was going to be an education to him and would help him in matters of love.
She asked if he was here with his girlfriend. She asked if he was here with a woman. “Are you here with a lady tonight?”
“Er I’m with my mum”....which was true. And his dad too. A family outing. Mum got dragged on stage as well. His dad plays drums in Ramones covers band Havana A Go Go. The Havana A Go Go hero was beaming “That’s my boy”.
The songs capture the sounds of all the best years of classic 60’s and 70’s Soul. Aint Nobody’s Baby opens out into a soaring Staple Singers type chorus and Mean Man positively shakes it’s tail feather.
Songs are stretched out or shortened with nods and glances between the band. So it feels as if the material is being moulded to the mood of the evening. They could have rehearsed being spontaneous though!
They finish with a covers of It’s a Mans World and There Was A Time. (Both Jones and her childhood hero Brown were born in Augusta Georgia).
A great gig then.
As on the records they’re not out do anything new or clever, just capture the sounds and feeling of classic era Soul. And they do it impeccably. It's more than just revivalism though. Jones herself has said “Maybe it’s coming back for others but I’ve lived through segregation and Stax and Otis dying. I’ve lived this part of history and now I’m singing it”.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Bettye Lavette
Bettye LaVette's album The Scene Of The Crime is her 4th album since 2001.
The 62-year-old Soul veteran released her first single aged 16, but despite a string of singles, the debut album she recorded the following decade, (yes.... I do mean 10 years later!) got shelved and it took another another 10 years for an album came out on Motown. And then nothing, until now and her comparative commercial frenzy!
Her story is a classic case of bad luck and management that veered between criminal and pragmatic.
She didn't write her own material and saw herself as an interpreter of songs. Her best work is where she actually gets right inside the song and method acts the part.
Dave Godin, the influential Soul journalist understood that music isn't just something to dance to but there is life, meaning and a social context to how music is made and listened to and that the best singers could sing that life alive.
He saw it in Bettye LaVette and wrote that "Few can match the flawless totality of conveyed experience that Bettye LaVette never fails to achieve. She is the consummate artist who can relate on every level.
“Take Bettye LaVette away from Soul music's history and there is a gap which no other person I can think of could have filled."
Growing up in Detroit she went to school with many of the up and coming Motown acts. Her best friend knew Johnnie Mae Matthews who ran her own Northern label. She released her first single My Man He's A Loving Man in 1962 which was picked up by Atlantic.
LaVette remembers Matthews as "A big, mean woman with cuts on her face, who beat me up and cheated the Temptations and everybody else out of their money," The song was an R&B hit and she promoted it with a tour that included Clyde McPhatter, Ben E King, Barbara Lynn and Otis Redding. Not a bad start!
After a less successful second single You'll Never Change, Atlantic dropped her and Matthews passed her management contract on to Robert West (who had owned the studio where LaVette had first recorded). West released her 3rd single Witchcraft In The Air on his own Lupine label. He then got shot with his own gun while "negotiating" a deal for Mary Wells.
Let Me Down Easy is her defining song. Part Tango, part Dance Of The Sugar Plum fairy with its stop start rhythm and plucked strings. The vocal is hoarse and anguished, picking up from where despair leaves off. A desperate realisation that Love is walking out of the door.
She can see it and you can hear it!
A towering performance and an absolute Soul treasure. It was released in 1965 on Calla. LaVette certainly could pick 'em. Not only was she dropped after another couple of singles but the label was owned by Nate McCalla.... a gangland enforcer who would eventually disappear ...with his murdered body not turning up until years later.
LaVette has said wryly that "It was a great concern with record companies that I sounded more like Wilson Pickett than Diana Ross, It was only later that I realized that I sound different from other people, and I have to work with what I've got."
There were further releases on Big Wheel Records and Karen but still no hits and no money!
She did a version of the Kenny Rogers hit What Condition My Condition Is In. The young silver fox loved it and it led to a string of singles on his brother Lelan's Nashville based label Silver Fox. This is my favourite period of her career. It was gathered together on a Charly album Nearer To You that came out in the mid 80's.
Since then the compilation has come out on different labels, different track ordering and there is currently an import version called Piece Of My Heart. Essentially though, It's essential.
I think those Silver Fox singles are amongst the best things to come out of that whole Country Soul period. Where Black and White musicians were mixing and blending their respective styles and cooking up music that was both about the South and yet also nostalgic. Hard times, good lovin', home cooking.
The single He Made A Woman Out Of Me is a swampy country grind with a stinging guitar. It sounds as filthy as it's subject matter. I also like the way the story is set out, tying it together geographically and socially. "I was born on a levee. A little bit south of Montgomery. Mama worked at the big house and daddy worked for the county."
Outside of karaoke night it is actually quite hard to do a bad version of Piece Of My Heart. It's a song of universal experience that manages to push all the emotional buttons. Bettye LaVette's version released on SSS (yes another move!) sits between the supple, yet restrained version by Erma Franklin and the full flail and wail of Janis Joplin.
For my money, LaVette's version is the better.
She recorded a full album at Muscle Shoals, for Atlantic in 1972. It was shelved, although it was eventually released as Souvenirs in 2000 on the French label Art and Soul. There's a beefed up version around now with the obligatory extra tracks called Child Of The 70's.
It's often referred to as her great lost album. Although I don't think it deserves the full legendary status, there is some good stuff on it. It hasn't got the grit of the Silver Fox singles.There's a poppier feel to it, almost as if while Dusty Springfield and Petula Clarke et al were heading to Memphis, Betty was heading the other way.
It includes a cover of Neil Young's Heart Of Gold, It Aint Easy (the Ron Davies song that Bowie covered on Ziggy Stardust), The Stealer by Free and a terrific version of Joe Simon's Your Turn To Cry.
Turning her back on the music business she spent the next 7 years touring with the musical Bubbling Brown sugar.
There's a good interview at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djuQJDlGpbk.
She recalls her manager Jim Lewis telling her "You're really not that good. You're cute and your voice is powerful, but you gotta learn what to do with it. You can't just depend on the records. They may never sell. Learn how to do your show. Learn how to sing a song."
She says that if he hadn't said that then "I wouldn't have been able to hold on for these 45 years without a record unless I knew how to do a show."
A couple of singles came out during this period including the Soul Children style Thank You For Loving Me. It's sensuous and lush while it's follow up You're A Man Of Words I'm A Woman Of Action was thoroughly business like. In a good way.
Surprise disco anthem Doing the Best That I Can from 78 has the great lyric "Doin' the best that I can to get out of my head what got out of my hands" but I never warmed to it. A disco step too far. LaVette apparently hated it too.
Finally her debut album Tell Me A Lie came out on Motown in 1982. A mere 20 years after her first single. It's a bit slick for my tastes but the title track is really good and the album cover is worth a mention for it's picture of the slow dancing couple with the bloke slipping off his wedding ring behind the woman's back. Nice.
The resurgence started with a live album in 2001 and the album A Woman Like Me from 2004. It's a modern Blues record, with producer Dennis Walker supplying most of the songs. He previously worked with Robert Cray. And it shows.
I've Got My Own Hell To Raise from 2005 is a collection of songs all written by women, including Dolly Parton, Lucinda Williams, Sinead O'Connor, Roseanne Cash and Aimee Mann. It's a really good album. LaVette is on top form and while the songs styles are from outside the Soul genre, the album has got Soul by the bucket load.
Last years album The Scene Of The Crime is an intriguing concept and also the best album she's actually made. (Not including the Silver Fox/SSS singles compilation.... which I would count amongst the best albums that anyone has made!)
It was recorded at FAME studios by Patterson Hood and his band Drive By Truckers. Patterson Hood's father, David Hood, not only plays bass on the latest Bettye LaVette album (he also played on the 1972 sessions) but he played on pretty much every great record to come out of Muscle Shoals during the '60s and '70s. And the good ones he didn't play on probably had Spooner Oldham on keyboards instead. And look! He crops up on this album too.
So the album has already got more than it's fair share of Soul icons, but the twist is that the Drive By Truckers are a self-styled greasy Southern Rock n Roll band. It's a great sound.
No horns (in itself a break from the Southern Soul sound) instead it's got the pad of electric piano, a really good dry drum sound and guitar lines that hang distorted and crumpled like yesterdays socks. At the centre of it all though is Bettye LaVette's raw voice and the life she wrings out of the songs.
There's a great moment on Choices where she slides the lines into each other "At an early age I found. I like drinking. I never turned one down"
LaVette had never written a song before, but she gets a co-writers credit as Patterson Hood used the stories and phrases she used around the studio. (Much as Steve Cropper had done with In The Midnight Hour for Wilson Pickett).
Before The Money Came (The Battle Of Bettye LaVette) has lines like "I knew David Ruffin when he was sober sleeping on my floor before he crossed over" sitting on a spiky Stones riff that could have sat happily on the end of Exile On Main Street.
On the Eddie Hinton song I Still Want To Be Your Baby the 2 tone strident guitar blares like an R&B ambulance while LaVette delivers a lyric of unrepentant, if not downright celebratory stubbornness.
It's great to hear her singing again, and unlike many comeback albums this is much more than an album trading on past glories and the goodwill of fans.
The esteemed Martin Longley (The Stirrer's Jazz wibble correspondent) saw her last year. (see link here)
She's playing again at the Jazz cafe Camden 13 April. I think it'll be a corker.
The 62-year-old Soul veteran released her first single aged 16, but despite a string of singles, the debut album she recorded the following decade, (yes.... I do mean 10 years later!) got shelved and it took another another 10 years for an album came out on Motown. And then nothing, until now and her comparative commercial frenzy!
Her story is a classic case of bad luck and management that veered between criminal and pragmatic.
She didn't write her own material and saw herself as an interpreter of songs. Her best work is where she actually gets right inside the song and method acts the part.
Dave Godin, the influential Soul journalist understood that music isn't just something to dance to but there is life, meaning and a social context to how music is made and listened to and that the best singers could sing that life alive.
He saw it in Bettye LaVette and wrote that "Few can match the flawless totality of conveyed experience that Bettye LaVette never fails to achieve. She is the consummate artist who can relate on every level.
“Take Bettye LaVette away from Soul music's history and there is a gap which no other person I can think of could have filled."
Growing up in Detroit she went to school with many of the up and coming Motown acts. Her best friend knew Johnnie Mae Matthews who ran her own Northern label. She released her first single My Man He's A Loving Man in 1962 which was picked up by Atlantic.
LaVette remembers Matthews as "A big, mean woman with cuts on her face, who beat me up and cheated the Temptations and everybody else out of their money," The song was an R&B hit and she promoted it with a tour that included Clyde McPhatter, Ben E King, Barbara Lynn and Otis Redding. Not a bad start!
After a less successful second single You'll Never Change, Atlantic dropped her and Matthews passed her management contract on to Robert West (who had owned the studio where LaVette had first recorded). West released her 3rd single Witchcraft In The Air on his own Lupine label. He then got shot with his own gun while "negotiating" a deal for Mary Wells.
Let Me Down Easy is her defining song. Part Tango, part Dance Of The Sugar Plum fairy with its stop start rhythm and plucked strings. The vocal is hoarse and anguished, picking up from where despair leaves off. A desperate realisation that Love is walking out of the door.
She can see it and you can hear it!
A towering performance and an absolute Soul treasure. It was released in 1965 on Calla. LaVette certainly could pick 'em. Not only was she dropped after another couple of singles but the label was owned by Nate McCalla.... a gangland enforcer who would eventually disappear ...with his murdered body not turning up until years later.
LaVette has said wryly that "It was a great concern with record companies that I sounded more like Wilson Pickett than Diana Ross, It was only later that I realized that I sound different from other people, and I have to work with what I've got."
There were further releases on Big Wheel Records and Karen but still no hits and no money!
She did a version of the Kenny Rogers hit What Condition My Condition Is In. The young silver fox loved it and it led to a string of singles on his brother Lelan's Nashville based label Silver Fox. This is my favourite period of her career. It was gathered together on a Charly album Nearer To You that came out in the mid 80's.
Since then the compilation has come out on different labels, different track ordering and there is currently an import version called Piece Of My Heart. Essentially though, It's essential.
I think those Silver Fox singles are amongst the best things to come out of that whole Country Soul period. Where Black and White musicians were mixing and blending their respective styles and cooking up music that was both about the South and yet also nostalgic. Hard times, good lovin', home cooking.
The single He Made A Woman Out Of Me is a swampy country grind with a stinging guitar. It sounds as filthy as it's subject matter. I also like the way the story is set out, tying it together geographically and socially. "I was born on a levee. A little bit south of Montgomery. Mama worked at the big house and daddy worked for the county."
Outside of karaoke night it is actually quite hard to do a bad version of Piece Of My Heart. It's a song of universal experience that manages to push all the emotional buttons. Bettye LaVette's version released on SSS (yes another move!) sits between the supple, yet restrained version by Erma Franklin and the full flail and wail of Janis Joplin.
For my money, LaVette's version is the better.
She recorded a full album at Muscle Shoals, for Atlantic in 1972. It was shelved, although it was eventually released as Souvenirs in 2000 on the French label Art and Soul. There's a beefed up version around now with the obligatory extra tracks called Child Of The 70's.
It's often referred to as her great lost album. Although I don't think it deserves the full legendary status, there is some good stuff on it. It hasn't got the grit of the Silver Fox singles.There's a poppier feel to it, almost as if while Dusty Springfield and Petula Clarke et al were heading to Memphis, Betty was heading the other way.
It includes a cover of Neil Young's Heart Of Gold, It Aint Easy (the Ron Davies song that Bowie covered on Ziggy Stardust), The Stealer by Free and a terrific version of Joe Simon's Your Turn To Cry.
Turning her back on the music business she spent the next 7 years touring with the musical Bubbling Brown sugar.
There's a good interview at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djuQJDlGpbk.
She recalls her manager Jim Lewis telling her "You're really not that good. You're cute and your voice is powerful, but you gotta learn what to do with it. You can't just depend on the records. They may never sell. Learn how to do your show. Learn how to sing a song."
She says that if he hadn't said that then "I wouldn't have been able to hold on for these 45 years without a record unless I knew how to do a show."
A couple of singles came out during this period including the Soul Children style Thank You For Loving Me. It's sensuous and lush while it's follow up You're A Man Of Words I'm A Woman Of Action was thoroughly business like. In a good way.
Surprise disco anthem Doing the Best That I Can from 78 has the great lyric "Doin' the best that I can to get out of my head what got out of my hands" but I never warmed to it. A disco step too far. LaVette apparently hated it too.
Finally her debut album Tell Me A Lie came out on Motown in 1982. A mere 20 years after her first single. It's a bit slick for my tastes but the title track is really good and the album cover is worth a mention for it's picture of the slow dancing couple with the bloke slipping off his wedding ring behind the woman's back. Nice.
The resurgence started with a live album in 2001 and the album A Woman Like Me from 2004. It's a modern Blues record, with producer Dennis Walker supplying most of the songs. He previously worked with Robert Cray. And it shows.
I've Got My Own Hell To Raise from 2005 is a collection of songs all written by women, including Dolly Parton, Lucinda Williams, Sinead O'Connor, Roseanne Cash and Aimee Mann. It's a really good album. LaVette is on top form and while the songs styles are from outside the Soul genre, the album has got Soul by the bucket load.
Last years album The Scene Of The Crime is an intriguing concept and also the best album she's actually made. (Not including the Silver Fox/SSS singles compilation.... which I would count amongst the best albums that anyone has made!)
It was recorded at FAME studios by Patterson Hood and his band Drive By Truckers. Patterson Hood's father, David Hood, not only plays bass on the latest Bettye LaVette album (he also played on the 1972 sessions) but he played on pretty much every great record to come out of Muscle Shoals during the '60s and '70s. And the good ones he didn't play on probably had Spooner Oldham on keyboards instead. And look! He crops up on this album too.
So the album has already got more than it's fair share of Soul icons, but the twist is that the Drive By Truckers are a self-styled greasy Southern Rock n Roll band. It's a great sound.
No horns (in itself a break from the Southern Soul sound) instead it's got the pad of electric piano, a really good dry drum sound and guitar lines that hang distorted and crumpled like yesterdays socks. At the centre of it all though is Bettye LaVette's raw voice and the life she wrings out of the songs.
There's a great moment on Choices where she slides the lines into each other "At an early age I found. I like drinking. I never turned one down"
LaVette had never written a song before, but she gets a co-writers credit as Patterson Hood used the stories and phrases she used around the studio. (Much as Steve Cropper had done with In The Midnight Hour for Wilson Pickett).
Before The Money Came (The Battle Of Bettye LaVette) has lines like "I knew David Ruffin when he was sober sleeping on my floor before he crossed over" sitting on a spiky Stones riff that could have sat happily on the end of Exile On Main Street.
On the Eddie Hinton song I Still Want To Be Your Baby the 2 tone strident guitar blares like an R&B ambulance while LaVette delivers a lyric of unrepentant, if not downright celebratory stubbornness.
It's great to hear her singing again, and unlike many comeback albums this is much more than an album trading on past glories and the goodwill of fans.
The esteemed Martin Longley (The Stirrer's Jazz wibble correspondent) saw her last year. (see link here)
She's playing again at the Jazz cafe Camden 13 April. I think it'll be a corker.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings don't do anything new. And they're all the better for it. They're a full on Soul Revue style band, all clattering drums and horn powered. A stage full of musicians and a singer with the vocal ticks and tricks of Mavis Staples or Irma Thomas. I like them a lot. And I do like a big band. A lean, mean, hungry power trio is all very well but I like to see a band who can kick start a local economy.
All their songs sound like they could have been recorded between 1966 and 1974. If there was such a thing as a Golden Age in Soul, then those are the years that count. (Actually that's not in doubt. It's scientifically proven and my stereo proves it on a nightly basis).
They're not so much a tribute act, more like a band who have been lifted straight from one era into another. Like an Austin Soul Powers. Or as if King Arthur and The Knights of the Round table were actually a Soul act who were waiting under the Harlem Apollo (rather than a Welsh Hillside) ready for when they were needed.
Well Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings are needed right now. Amy Winehouse certainly needed them. The Dap-Kings powered much of Amy Winehouse's Back To Black album and made it a very different (and much better album) than her debut. They also do important work on the (thankless) task of rehabilitating Coldplay on Mark Ronson's covers album Version.
Sharon Jones was born in 1956 Augusta Georgia (as was James Brown) but grew up in Brooklyn. She combined singing in Wedding bands and anonymous session work with stints as a security guard for Welles Fargo and at Rikers Island. It was all a long way from the Golden Age of Soul to which her voice and style belonged.
Old School style Soul did maintain a foothold through the Rare Groove scene of the 80's and the Northern Soul underground. Desco was a small Independent specialising in vinyl only releases catering for old Soul fans. Sharon Jones started recording vocal sessions for them in 1996 alongside the likes of Lee Fields.
When Desco folded, the house band The Soul Providers regrouped as The Dap-Kings featuring the former Desco label co- owner Bosco Bass Mann on bass and 17 year old Homer "Funkyfoot" Steinweiss on drums.
Dap Dipping with Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings was recorded on 8 track in a make shift basement studio in a Kung Fu dojo. It's a funky affair, much more influenced by the likes of James Brown than the Stax and Motown influenced albums that Sharon Jones released later.
MC and guitarist Binky Griptite (pay attention to the names) starts to describe an epidemic that's is (apparently) sweeping the nation. "It's called the Dap Dip and they say you get it in your pants." In true Soul revue style Sharon shouts back "Hell Binky, that's no epidemic. It's a brand new dance". It's a monstrous 4 note descending bass line. And there are foot by foot illustrations on the album sleeve for doing the dance to!
The band have thought out the packaging (the effort didn't just go on the names!), the sleeve notes, the graphics and the complete absences of dates mean you can almost believe this record was made 35 years ago.
All the required soul clichés are in place. Love is sweet. Men are mean. Often they are also no good. Make It Good To Me has the excellent line "It's half past making up time and a quarter to affection"
The second album Naturally was recorded on a 16 track in the studio below the Daptone offices in Brooklyn. It's actually a much better record, with a wider range of styles, but still sounding like it was recorded very much in the Golden Age of Soul.
From the bubbling Funk of How Do I Le t A Good Man Down to the Jean Knight/Betty Wright feel of Natural Born Lover where the guitars and horns do a call and response. And Soul cliché lovers and indeed lovers will be relieved to hear that the Natural Born Lover is dependable "He takes care of business".
Stranded In Your Love starts with a knock at the door as the disgraced ex lover pleads to be let back because he's had his car stolen and he can't sleep at his brothers house. It's great boy/girl soap opera duet, with both sides hamming it up as the sex with the ex saga unfolds.
And because the male voice is Lee Fields it means we get to hear Sharon say the immortal line "Now Lee I've told you. Is this romance or circumstance"? It's firmly in the tradition of the Otis Redding and Carla Thomas duets rather than Mills and Boon.
You're Gonna Get It is a Laura Lee/ Millie Jackson style, talking to the ladies about men. "Some love makes you do right. Some love makes you do wrong".
There's a clever Soul powered version of Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land which treats it like It's A Mans World, while Your Thing Is A Drag is a mix of Marva Whitney's It's My Thing and Papa's Got A brand new Bag by James Brown. And I mean it's a mix both in the name checking title and the song itself!
100 days 100 Nights came out last year. It's another step up terms of quality and diversity. It's still all old Soul though! When The Other Foot Drops, Uncle starts off with the guitar arpeggios and horns of Try A Little Tenderness but as the song gathers momentum it becomes more like Mr Big Stuff by Jean Knight. Two great records in one. Result!
Sharon Jones vocal on Ain't Nobody's Baby qualifies as a great bit of soul wailing and the guitar gives a cheeky nod to What A Man by Linda Lyndell (and redone by Salt N Pepa and En Vogue).
Be Easy and Let Them Knock both have a New Orleans/Alan Toussaint feel to them. Let Them Knock is Soul filth. The rasping Sax is fruity and positively licentious. "Let them knock upon my door til their hands are black and blue. I'm not answering for no one until my man and I are through".
There's a good live version of Let Them Knock at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0iGhFwZx6c
Best of all though is Humble Me. Built on the chassis of Otis Redding's Pain In My Heart, complete with Steve Cropper style riffs, bar room piano, a lazy bass line that plays just behind the beat and a terrific vocal performance.
The key to Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings is to not treat them as revivalists, or like a Blues brothers act who think they are rejuvenating an era. It's better to treat them as if it's the audience who've gone back in time. After all, they do the kind of show that you'd have loved to see in 1970.
The whole thing just sounds right and completely authentic. You're not going to get a session guitarist with an inappropriate effects pedal or a drummer who's desperate to use his new gong. They just sound like a band who are at the height of their powers and are supremely confident that they are playing great gigs and writing great new songs. Which they are! They're the best new band of 1970. It's just the audience who've got this ridiculous notion that it's 2008.
All their songs sound like they could have been recorded between 1966 and 1974. If there was such a thing as a Golden Age in Soul, then those are the years that count. (Actually that's not in doubt. It's scientifically proven and my stereo proves it on a nightly basis).
They're not so much a tribute act, more like a band who have been lifted straight from one era into another. Like an Austin Soul Powers. Or as if King Arthur and The Knights of the Round table were actually a Soul act who were waiting under the Harlem Apollo (rather than a Welsh Hillside) ready for when they were needed.
Well Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings are needed right now. Amy Winehouse certainly needed them. The Dap-Kings powered much of Amy Winehouse's Back To Black album and made it a very different (and much better album) than her debut. They also do important work on the (thankless) task of rehabilitating Coldplay on Mark Ronson's covers album Version.
Sharon Jones was born in 1956 Augusta Georgia (as was James Brown) but grew up in Brooklyn. She combined singing in Wedding bands and anonymous session work with stints as a security guard for Welles Fargo and at Rikers Island. It was all a long way from the Golden Age of Soul to which her voice and style belonged.
Old School style Soul did maintain a foothold through the Rare Groove scene of the 80's and the Northern Soul underground. Desco was a small Independent specialising in vinyl only releases catering for old Soul fans. Sharon Jones started recording vocal sessions for them in 1996 alongside the likes of Lee Fields.
When Desco folded, the house band The Soul Providers regrouped as The Dap-Kings featuring the former Desco label co- owner Bosco Bass Mann on bass and 17 year old Homer "Funkyfoot" Steinweiss on drums.
Dap Dipping with Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings was recorded on 8 track in a make shift basement studio in a Kung Fu dojo. It's a funky affair, much more influenced by the likes of James Brown than the Stax and Motown influenced albums that Sharon Jones released later.
MC and guitarist Binky Griptite (pay attention to the names) starts to describe an epidemic that's is (apparently) sweeping the nation. "It's called the Dap Dip and they say you get it in your pants." In true Soul revue style Sharon shouts back "Hell Binky, that's no epidemic. It's a brand new dance". It's a monstrous 4 note descending bass line. And there are foot by foot illustrations on the album sleeve for doing the dance to!
The band have thought out the packaging (the effort didn't just go on the names!), the sleeve notes, the graphics and the complete absences of dates mean you can almost believe this record was made 35 years ago.
All the required soul clichés are in place. Love is sweet. Men are mean. Often they are also no good. Make It Good To Me has the excellent line "It's half past making up time and a quarter to affection"
The second album Naturally was recorded on a 16 track in the studio below the Daptone offices in Brooklyn. It's actually a much better record, with a wider range of styles, but still sounding like it was recorded very much in the Golden Age of Soul.
From the bubbling Funk of How Do I Le t A Good Man Down to the Jean Knight/Betty Wright feel of Natural Born Lover where the guitars and horns do a call and response. And Soul cliché lovers and indeed lovers will be relieved to hear that the Natural Born Lover is dependable "He takes care of business".
Stranded In Your Love starts with a knock at the door as the disgraced ex lover pleads to be let back because he's had his car stolen and he can't sleep at his brothers house. It's great boy/girl soap opera duet, with both sides hamming it up as the sex with the ex saga unfolds.
And because the male voice is Lee Fields it means we get to hear Sharon say the immortal line "Now Lee I've told you. Is this romance or circumstance"? It's firmly in the tradition of the Otis Redding and Carla Thomas duets rather than Mills and Boon.
You're Gonna Get It is a Laura Lee/ Millie Jackson style, talking to the ladies about men. "Some love makes you do right. Some love makes you do wrong".
There's a clever Soul powered version of Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land which treats it like It's A Mans World, while Your Thing Is A Drag is a mix of Marva Whitney's It's My Thing and Papa's Got A brand new Bag by James Brown. And I mean it's a mix both in the name checking title and the song itself!
100 days 100 Nights came out last year. It's another step up terms of quality and diversity. It's still all old Soul though! When The Other Foot Drops, Uncle starts off with the guitar arpeggios and horns of Try A Little Tenderness but as the song gathers momentum it becomes more like Mr Big Stuff by Jean Knight. Two great records in one. Result!
Sharon Jones vocal on Ain't Nobody's Baby qualifies as a great bit of soul wailing and the guitar gives a cheeky nod to What A Man by Linda Lyndell (and redone by Salt N Pepa and En Vogue).
Be Easy and Let Them Knock both have a New Orleans/Alan Toussaint feel to them. Let Them Knock is Soul filth. The rasping Sax is fruity and positively licentious. "Let them knock upon my door til their hands are black and blue. I'm not answering for no one until my man and I are through".
There's a good live version of Let Them Knock at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0iGhFwZx6c
Best of all though is Humble Me. Built on the chassis of Otis Redding's Pain In My Heart, complete with Steve Cropper style riffs, bar room piano, a lazy bass line that plays just behind the beat and a terrific vocal performance.
The key to Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings is to not treat them as revivalists, or like a Blues brothers act who think they are rejuvenating an era. It's better to treat them as if it's the audience who've gone back in time. After all, they do the kind of show that you'd have loved to see in 1970.
The whole thing just sounds right and completely authentic. You're not going to get a session guitarist with an inappropriate effects pedal or a drummer who's desperate to use his new gong. They just sound like a band who are at the height of their powers and are supremely confident that they are playing great gigs and writing great new songs. Which they are! They're the best new band of 1970. It's just the audience who've got this ridiculous notion that it's 2008.
Friday, February 08, 2008
We Are Scientists
We Are Scientists dish out brash poppy punk tunes at the Maximo Park or Kaiser Chiefs end of the spectrum. After meeting at college in California in 2000, they relocated to New York. They had released a couple of independent singles and albums but it was British audiences who took to them first thanks to tours with Maximo Park and The Arctic Monkeys. America may want them back soon!
DJ Steve Lamacq was an early and enthusiastic evangelist for them. Their major label debut With Love And Squalor came out in 2005.
It’s a good album, going from the jerkiness of the likes of The Arctic Monkeys or Franz Ferdinand to the out and out Green Day cartoon Punkiness on a track like Callbacks. They remind me a lot of The Wannadies. The guitar sounds go from clipped riffage to that stratospheric echoing sound that bands like Bloc Party have been trying to reclaim from U2 or The Chameleons. Drummer Michael Tapper left the band at the end of last year. The drumming really motors along; it’s busy without being overly fussy. They haven’t announced a replacement yet.
One of the reason s people warm to the band is the humour around their interviews, website and videos. And if your girlfriend likes Owen Wilson then she’ll probably like singer Keith Murray. Oh Great!
The video for The Great Escape http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21-TCoFRgy0 has the trio getting out of bed (in a Morecambe and Wise and Young Friend style) and then carrying out their daily tasks like Siamese triplets. It’s been covered by Art Brut who are definitely travelling along the same road. Both bands have also embraced the ‘tache during their career
The video for This Scene Is dead is actually very short on action. It’s just the band standing pretty much stock still on an enclosed pedestrian bridge, while the occasional passer buy walks past. It’s actually quite disconcerting though as the accompanying song is going hell for leather. There is a flurry of activity when one of the band polishes his glasses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt3wHxxACDo&feature=related
My other favourite glasses related video, (although I haven’t really put a great deal of research into this, so it’s not much of a list) is the bit in The Happy Mondays video for Step On where Sean Ryder takes off his sunglasses, waves them around while he adjusts his parting (serious curtainage) and then puts them back on. I think Bez is involved with some goggles at one point as well. A video masterclass! O
Bassist Chris Cain answers a Jo Wiley question with a terse “I had my heart broken once, sure. It's a story as old as civilization: I loved her, was blind to her flaws, trusted her implicitly; she robbed my apartment and pawned my stuff to buy a car that she and some other guy drove off to God knows where, running over my father on the way out of town, taking with her my passport and credit cards and birth certificate which she sold to a criminal; I subsequently spent time in jail for what this criminal did under the guise of my identity. Hard time -- I lost a kidney. Eight years before my attorney got me out. Family all dead by then. Everybody I knew had moved away. No jobs to be had. Then the lean years: near-starvation, living on the streets, no human affection to speak of. And yes, I have forgiven her. I learned a ton.”
The new single Afterhours is less electric than previous material and is built round a winding circular riff. There’s a bit of a They Might Be Giants feel to it.
Chris Cain described it as “About that time of night when every instinct says you should not have one last drink, should not linger any longer at the pub, should not continue to talk to this clearly-troublesome yet troublingly-attractive stranger who keeps slurring as she holds eye contact for uninstinctively long periods of time -- what you should do instead is go home.”
Of course none of the of the other stuff, the humour, the videos, the facial hair, matters if the music isn’t any good. Well I like the music… and I really like their band name!
DJ Steve Lamacq was an early and enthusiastic evangelist for them. Their major label debut With Love And Squalor came out in 2005.
It’s a good album, going from the jerkiness of the likes of The Arctic Monkeys or Franz Ferdinand to the out and out Green Day cartoon Punkiness on a track like Callbacks. They remind me a lot of The Wannadies. The guitar sounds go from clipped riffage to that stratospheric echoing sound that bands like Bloc Party have been trying to reclaim from U2 or The Chameleons. Drummer Michael Tapper left the band at the end of last year. The drumming really motors along; it’s busy without being overly fussy. They haven’t announced a replacement yet.
One of the reason s people warm to the band is the humour around their interviews, website and videos. And if your girlfriend likes Owen Wilson then she’ll probably like singer Keith Murray. Oh Great!
The video for The Great Escape http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21-TCoFRgy0 has the trio getting out of bed (in a Morecambe and Wise and Young Friend style) and then carrying out their daily tasks like Siamese triplets. It’s been covered by Art Brut who are definitely travelling along the same road. Both bands have also embraced the ‘tache during their career
The video for This Scene Is dead is actually very short on action. It’s just the band standing pretty much stock still on an enclosed pedestrian bridge, while the occasional passer buy walks past. It’s actually quite disconcerting though as the accompanying song is going hell for leather. There is a flurry of activity when one of the band polishes his glasses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt3wHxxACDo&feature=related
My other favourite glasses related video, (although I haven’t really put a great deal of research into this, so it’s not much of a list) is the bit in The Happy Mondays video for Step On where Sean Ryder takes off his sunglasses, waves them around while he adjusts his parting (serious curtainage) and then puts them back on. I think Bez is involved with some goggles at one point as well. A video masterclass! O
Bassist Chris Cain answers a Jo Wiley question with a terse “I had my heart broken once, sure. It's a story as old as civilization: I loved her, was blind to her flaws, trusted her implicitly; she robbed my apartment and pawned my stuff to buy a car that she and some other guy drove off to God knows where, running over my father on the way out of town, taking with her my passport and credit cards and birth certificate which she sold to a criminal; I subsequently spent time in jail for what this criminal did under the guise of my identity. Hard time -- I lost a kidney. Eight years before my attorney got me out. Family all dead by then. Everybody I knew had moved away. No jobs to be had. Then the lean years: near-starvation, living on the streets, no human affection to speak of. And yes, I have forgiven her. I learned a ton.”
The new single Afterhours is less electric than previous material and is built round a winding circular riff. There’s a bit of a They Might Be Giants feel to it.
Chris Cain described it as “About that time of night when every instinct says you should not have one last drink, should not linger any longer at the pub, should not continue to talk to this clearly-troublesome yet troublingly-attractive stranger who keeps slurring as she holds eye contact for uninstinctively long periods of time -- what you should do instead is go home.”
Of course none of the of the other stuff, the humour, the videos, the facial hair, matters if the music isn’t any good. Well I like the music… and I really like their band name!
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Nick Cave
Nick Cave is instantly recognisable, but also easy to pastiche. He’s a scowley stickman with a Basil Fawlty walk, all hubba hubba heh he heugh vocals sung into his collars like a death obsessed Harry Hill. I think he’s just got better over the years though as he’s moved from the confrontational howl of the Birthday Party and embraced his inner Johnny Cash.
The Birthday Party are one of those bands that I really regret not seeing live, (although I did have a ticket for a gig in 82. I can’t remember the holiday I was on, but I bet I’d remember the gig I missed to go on it) The band’s gigs teetered on the edge of onstage and offstage violence and the band themselves were just such an odd looking spectacle. There was Cave, flailing and writhing, baiting the audience and kicking out at stray heads while Tracy Pew, the static Gay bar cowboy thug (big hat, bigger 'tache), knocked out bass lines that could knock down buildings.
The thing is though, I don’t listen to the Birthday Party very often now. And if I do it’s the songs like Release The Bats, which is funny, cod Goth rockabilly horror (“Bite sex vampire bite" and it’s Elvis impersonating "Baby’s a cool machine").... The band hated it and resented the fact that their joke song became their biggest song. Nick The Stripper has a predatory strut and it could have come straight from the Buffalo Bill scenes in Silence Of The Lambs). It's got the catchy refrain of “Hideous to the eye”. (Now doesn’t that make you want to sing along?)
While there was undeniably a fierce sense of humour about the band, there was also just fierceness, and the nasty undercurrents of misogyny. It’s probably 20 years since I listened to a Birthday Party album all the way through. It was hard work then. And I don’t feel like that anymore. Either the hard work or the hatred. The band split in 1984 but I did get to see him at the Powerhouse with Sonic Youth supporting around 1985. And he did kick up a thrilling and unholy racket.
The forthcoming album Dig Lazarus Dig will be his fourteenth and over time the scratchy swampy blues of the earlier albums have become a more streamlined kind of rocking and his ballads have become less hammy. He's operating outside the normal rock n roll influences though. His lyrics are ripe with biblical imagery and lyrics that sound like screenplays for unmade films, or Jim Thompson short stories. Sometimes they're just funny. There She Goes My Beautiful World has the great line "John Wilmot penned his poetry riddled with the pox and Nabakov wrote on index cards at a lectern in his socks"
The major influence on Cave though is Johnny Cash. As well he should be. After all most books could be usefully replaced with a copy of Cash's autobiography. It would certainly simplify library shelving.
On his second album The First Born is Dead he covered Wanted Man by Johnny Cash. (Well actually written by Dylan but made his own by Cash.) It’s a really good cover, repaid in kind when Cash covered the electric chair song The Mercy Seat, stripping it of the hysteria of Cave’s original and replacing it with tense resignation. Interestingly enough though the piano on Cash’s version plays the hysterical role instead. Cash and Cave dueted on I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry on Cash's American IV album.
Cave and Shane MacGowan released a single Wonderful World in 1992 and Cave does a masterful version of rainy Night in Soho by The Pogues. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoLRIXtAuxk
The spectacularly unflattering photos on his album sleeves over the years and his well-documented heroin use may have held him back from winning Handsome Man awards. But it could have been worse. While Dorian Gray had a picture in the attic, Nick Cave kept a guitarist on stage. Blixa Bargeld spent twenty years as a Bad Seed and still holds the distinction of the illest looking man in Pop
The duet with Kylie on Where The Wild Roses Grow was not only a hit in 1996 but it had a nation in up arms once they realised it’s murderous subject. You can’t kill Kylie! A Peoples Army of 40 year old blokes was raised to defend her. Some of them were straight!
The Boatman's Call from 1997 has the achingly beautiful Into My arms.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3-VZxkmmtI It's just piano and bass and has a hymn like stateliness but also a real delicacy. It also sets itself apart from most love songs by having the opening line "I don't believe in an interventionist God". Nick Cave sang it at the funeral of Michael Hutchence.
The album also has People Aint No Good, which crops up on Shrek 2. Another beautiful song. Sumptuous and perkily miserable. And just when you think, “Actually shouldn't Nick really be out there scaring the kids parents?” the closing track Green Eyes delivers the line
"Slip your frigid hands beneath my shirt. This useless old fucker with his twinkling cunt. Doesn't care if he gets hurt"
I'm not quite sure what he means.... but I'm fairly sure the song is not in Shrek The Third.
After establishing himself as the ultimate creepy crooner last years Grinderman project was an excuse for him to play filthy garage rock and play with a rocking pervy preacher persona. Grinderman features long time collaborators Warren Ellis and Jim Sclavunos and a fine array of lady scaring beards. No Pussy Blues from the Jools Holland show is tightly reined in chaos. Loud and layered, with wave after wave of guitar and feedback crashing in then holding back. It's what the Birthday Party used to do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuDP7c3Zd8I
So even though I don't think I can listen to the Birthday party anymore I found that one of my favourite albums from last year was Grinderman with Nick Cave using some of his old tricks
The Birthday Party are one of those bands that I really regret not seeing live, (although I did have a ticket for a gig in 82. I can’t remember the holiday I was on, but I bet I’d remember the gig I missed to go on it) The band’s gigs teetered on the edge of onstage and offstage violence and the band themselves were just such an odd looking spectacle. There was Cave, flailing and writhing, baiting the audience and kicking out at stray heads while Tracy Pew, the static Gay bar cowboy thug (big hat, bigger 'tache), knocked out bass lines that could knock down buildings.
The thing is though, I don’t listen to the Birthday Party very often now. And if I do it’s the songs like Release The Bats, which is funny, cod Goth rockabilly horror (“Bite sex vampire bite" and it’s Elvis impersonating "Baby’s a cool machine").... The band hated it and resented the fact that their joke song became their biggest song. Nick The Stripper has a predatory strut and it could have come straight from the Buffalo Bill scenes in Silence Of The Lambs). It's got the catchy refrain of “Hideous to the eye”. (Now doesn’t that make you want to sing along?)
While there was undeniably a fierce sense of humour about the band, there was also just fierceness, and the nasty undercurrents of misogyny. It’s probably 20 years since I listened to a Birthday Party album all the way through. It was hard work then. And I don’t feel like that anymore. Either the hard work or the hatred. The band split in 1984 but I did get to see him at the Powerhouse with Sonic Youth supporting around 1985. And he did kick up a thrilling and unholy racket.
The forthcoming album Dig Lazarus Dig will be his fourteenth and over time the scratchy swampy blues of the earlier albums have become a more streamlined kind of rocking and his ballads have become less hammy. He's operating outside the normal rock n roll influences though. His lyrics are ripe with biblical imagery and lyrics that sound like screenplays for unmade films, or Jim Thompson short stories. Sometimes they're just funny. There She Goes My Beautiful World has the great line "John Wilmot penned his poetry riddled with the pox and Nabakov wrote on index cards at a lectern in his socks"
The major influence on Cave though is Johnny Cash. As well he should be. After all most books could be usefully replaced with a copy of Cash's autobiography. It would certainly simplify library shelving.
On his second album The First Born is Dead he covered Wanted Man by Johnny Cash. (Well actually written by Dylan but made his own by Cash.) It’s a really good cover, repaid in kind when Cash covered the electric chair song The Mercy Seat, stripping it of the hysteria of Cave’s original and replacing it with tense resignation. Interestingly enough though the piano on Cash’s version plays the hysterical role instead. Cash and Cave dueted on I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry on Cash's American IV album.
Cave and Shane MacGowan released a single Wonderful World in 1992 and Cave does a masterful version of rainy Night in Soho by The Pogues. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoLRIXtAuxk
The spectacularly unflattering photos on his album sleeves over the years and his well-documented heroin use may have held him back from winning Handsome Man awards. But it could have been worse. While Dorian Gray had a picture in the attic, Nick Cave kept a guitarist on stage. Blixa Bargeld spent twenty years as a Bad Seed and still holds the distinction of the illest looking man in Pop
The duet with Kylie on Where The Wild Roses Grow was not only a hit in 1996 but it had a nation in up arms once they realised it’s murderous subject. You can’t kill Kylie! A Peoples Army of 40 year old blokes was raised to defend her. Some of them were straight!
The Boatman's Call from 1997 has the achingly beautiful Into My arms.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3-VZxkmmtI It's just piano and bass and has a hymn like stateliness but also a real delicacy. It also sets itself apart from most love songs by having the opening line "I don't believe in an interventionist God". Nick Cave sang it at the funeral of Michael Hutchence.
The album also has People Aint No Good, which crops up on Shrek 2. Another beautiful song. Sumptuous and perkily miserable. And just when you think, “Actually shouldn't Nick really be out there scaring the kids parents?” the closing track Green Eyes delivers the line
"Slip your frigid hands beneath my shirt. This useless old fucker with his twinkling cunt. Doesn't care if he gets hurt"
I'm not quite sure what he means.... but I'm fairly sure the song is not in Shrek The Third.
After establishing himself as the ultimate creepy crooner last years Grinderman project was an excuse for him to play filthy garage rock and play with a rocking pervy preacher persona. Grinderman features long time collaborators Warren Ellis and Jim Sclavunos and a fine array of lady scaring beards. No Pussy Blues from the Jools Holland show is tightly reined in chaos. Loud and layered, with wave after wave of guitar and feedback crashing in then holding back. It's what the Birthday Party used to do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuDP7c3Zd8I
So even though I don't think I can listen to the Birthday party anymore I found that one of my favourite albums from last year was Grinderman with Nick Cave using some of his old tricks
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Duffy
I wouldn’t expect to go a bundle on the runner up of Welsh Pop Idol and I’m also a bit suspicious of singers who can only manage one name, Brazilian footballer style. (Mind you that would be quite a line up...Madonna, Kylie, Gabrielle, Adele ...Sonia).
I’m also a bit suspicious because the hype machine does seem to be gearing up behind Duffy. She came second (behind Adele...again) in a 6 Music “Singers most likely to” poll. (Possibly not the pervier “Most likely to...." poll that I’ve been running). I’m ready to suspend the scepticism though because she’s aiming to do exactly the kind of cinematic 60’s soul pop that I’m partial to. Dusty Springfield. Nancy Sinatra etc.
The video for debut single Rockferry made me think of my holidays and Julie Christie in Billy Liar. Sold!
Filmed around Porthmadog (Duffy grew up on the Llyn peninsular), it's a leaving town/leaving you kind of song, with lots of shots of railway lines, tea drinking, waiting on platforms, railings being aimlessly pinged and the whole thing is as 60's as the Prisoner style piping on her jacket.
It's also got a shot of Cob Records with Duffy walking past with a suitcase. Is the girl leaving town or going record shopping?
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zlcRRnbqS8Y
New single Mercy uses all the stock soul phrases. And just how many songs have talked about begging for mercy, release me etc and have expressed bafflement at the power and quality of the good loving that is on offer? Loads, but there's always room for one more.
Duffy's version of it has the line "I don't know what you do but you do it well. You've got me under your spell." Bingo. Another soul cliche. It's all done with a lot of love though and the video features Dusty style hand waving and Northern Soul dancing. So yes it's retro! But yes I like it a lot.
The only concession to a more modern sound is the elastic band twang of the intro and the spoken words that you can just hear under both the intro and the middle 8 which is the kind of thing All Saints would have done.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KE2orthS3TQ&feature=user
There's some footage of Warwick Avenue from Jools Holland last year, which has a bit more of a Gladys Knight style soulful sweep and the really good line "You think you're lovin' but you don’t love me".
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=MkkmQNA_aRs
The album is due out in March. I'm hoping that the fact that Duffy is managed by Jeanette Lee from Rough Trade (former “non musical member” of Public Image) and that Bernard Butler has been involved in some of the song writing is going to stop it from being (admittedly) top class karaoke.
Because she does sound great and looks the part but the songs are (to my ears) very close to their source material. After all what made Bernard Butler and David McAlmont’s Glam plastic soul records so interesting was that they shuffled their sources better.
The trick is to make a modern record that invokes the spirit of an older style. And you don’t need to be coy about it. You do need great big hits! There’s a quote from Stax songwriter Dave Porter along the lines of “Don’t talk to me about the records that didn’t sell. Talk to me about Soul Man.”
Although I'm naturally drawn to the obscure b-side, there have been some fantastic modern records that have used an obvious and infectious love of those old soul records. Songs like TLC’s Waterfalls (uses an Al Green /Teenie Hodges guitar style), Bouncy Beyonce’s Crazy In Love (partly Chi-lites but mostly big hair and hot pants) or Crazy by Gnarls Berkley.
On a similar old meets new there’s Candie Payne’s terrific single One More Chance. Image wise she’s giving it the full Audrey Hepburn, and there's a Mark Ronson remix too. It's Sandie Shaw, Beach Boys and bells and it's a modern re-creation of a sound rather than a copy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE7RBl2YfOg&feature=related
One of the things that made Amy Winehouse interesting was the arrangements that Mark Ronson brought to her second album. The Motown feel to tracks like Tears Dry On Their Own or Addicted. Or the girl group doomed romanticism of tracks like Back to Black.
So while the strings gave it a Shangri-Las feel, there were also the Hip Hop shuffling drums and the fact that Winehouse wasn’t singing about the 60’s girl group staple of running away with a a bad boy on a motorbike who is also a bit of a rebel. (Apparently the parents don't understand). All powered by the brass section from Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings. A bona fide proper soul revue style band fronted by a 50 year old ex Rikers Island prison warder.
Thankfully 23 year old Duffy is more River Island than Rikers Island
I’m also a bit suspicious because the hype machine does seem to be gearing up behind Duffy. She came second (behind Adele...again) in a 6 Music “Singers most likely to” poll. (Possibly not the pervier “Most likely to...." poll that I’ve been running). I’m ready to suspend the scepticism though because she’s aiming to do exactly the kind of cinematic 60’s soul pop that I’m partial to. Dusty Springfield. Nancy Sinatra etc.
The video for debut single Rockferry made me think of my holidays and Julie Christie in Billy Liar. Sold!
Filmed around Porthmadog (Duffy grew up on the Llyn peninsular), it's a leaving town/leaving you kind of song, with lots of shots of railway lines, tea drinking, waiting on platforms, railings being aimlessly pinged and the whole thing is as 60's as the Prisoner style piping on her jacket.
It's also got a shot of Cob Records with Duffy walking past with a suitcase. Is the girl leaving town or going record shopping?
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zlcRRnbqS8Y
New single Mercy uses all the stock soul phrases. And just how many songs have talked about begging for mercy, release me etc and have expressed bafflement at the power and quality of the good loving that is on offer? Loads, but there's always room for one more.
Duffy's version of it has the line "I don't know what you do but you do it well. You've got me under your spell." Bingo. Another soul cliche. It's all done with a lot of love though and the video features Dusty style hand waving and Northern Soul dancing. So yes it's retro! But yes I like it a lot.
The only concession to a more modern sound is the elastic band twang of the intro and the spoken words that you can just hear under both the intro and the middle 8 which is the kind of thing All Saints would have done.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KE2orthS3TQ&feature=user
There's some footage of Warwick Avenue from Jools Holland last year, which has a bit more of a Gladys Knight style soulful sweep and the really good line "You think you're lovin' but you don’t love me".
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=MkkmQNA_aRs
The album is due out in March. I'm hoping that the fact that Duffy is managed by Jeanette Lee from Rough Trade (former “non musical member” of Public Image) and that Bernard Butler has been involved in some of the song writing is going to stop it from being (admittedly) top class karaoke.
Because she does sound great and looks the part but the songs are (to my ears) very close to their source material. After all what made Bernard Butler and David McAlmont’s Glam plastic soul records so interesting was that they shuffled their sources better.
The trick is to make a modern record that invokes the spirit of an older style. And you don’t need to be coy about it. You do need great big hits! There’s a quote from Stax songwriter Dave Porter along the lines of “Don’t talk to me about the records that didn’t sell. Talk to me about Soul Man.”
Although I'm naturally drawn to the obscure b-side, there have been some fantastic modern records that have used an obvious and infectious love of those old soul records. Songs like TLC’s Waterfalls (uses an Al Green /Teenie Hodges guitar style), Bouncy Beyonce’s Crazy In Love (partly Chi-lites but mostly big hair and hot pants) or Crazy by Gnarls Berkley.
On a similar old meets new there’s Candie Payne’s terrific single One More Chance. Image wise she’s giving it the full Audrey Hepburn, and there's a Mark Ronson remix too. It's Sandie Shaw, Beach Boys and bells and it's a modern re-creation of a sound rather than a copy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE7RBl2YfOg&feature=related
One of the things that made Amy Winehouse interesting was the arrangements that Mark Ronson brought to her second album. The Motown feel to tracks like Tears Dry On Their Own or Addicted. Or the girl group doomed romanticism of tracks like Back to Black.
So while the strings gave it a Shangri-Las feel, there were also the Hip Hop shuffling drums and the fact that Winehouse wasn’t singing about the 60’s girl group staple of running away with a a bad boy on a motorbike who is also a bit of a rebel. (Apparently the parents don't understand). All powered by the brass section from Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings. A bona fide proper soul revue style band fronted by a 50 year old ex Rikers Island prison warder.
Thankfully 23 year old Duffy is more River Island than Rikers Island
John Cooper Clarke
He's spent the last 30 years wearing the same clothes, often reading the same poems and his biggest supporting role has been to the Honey Monster in the 1990's Sugar Puffs adverts. John Cooper Clarke is still a one off though. He's been acknowledged as a major influence by Alex Turner from Arctic Monkeys. You can definitely hear the JCC influence in Turner's scabrous sneer and interest in society's crusty white underbelly.
The rapid fire delivery came from trying to grab an audience's attention when he did support gigs for the Punk acts. The poems themselves are funny, clever and musical, even without the music. You get the sense that he could probably quote Baudelaire by chapter and verse, but is more likely to write about the clap clinic.
He's argued that "Poetry has always been and always will be a very different way of writing, a minority interest. It's language with its best suit on." The live show has always been a mixture of poetry and the jokes that he uses to cover the gaps while he's trying to find the next poem. That helped keep the audience interested in the early days, but he could also handle a heckler.
"I can't hear you mate... your mouths full of shit".
Like Mark E Smith that other Salford bladdered balladeer it's partly the sound of his voice that drags you in, those extra syllables aah. Words that you can chew on. Delivered in a voice that could strip paint and would melt the ear wax of any unfortunate ear that found itself on the receiving end of his whispered sweet nothings.
First single the Psycle Sluts ep came out on Manchester label Rabid records and debut album Disguise In Love came out on CBS in 1978. His records were often criticised by people who'd seen him live who thought that the music got in the way of the words. The music was supplied by the Invisible Girls a rag bag assembly including Buzzcock Pete Shelley, producer Martin Hannett and Karl Burns from The Fall.
You can hear echoes of what Hannett was also working on at the time. Evidently Chickentown from 1980's album Snap Crackle and Bop has a snippet of reverbed drums that fade in and out of the mix but sound like they came from a Joy Division session.
There was a live album Walking Back To Happiness that came out in 1979. It covers the full range of the entertainment spectrum. From poems about Flashers "Gabardine Angus, open your coat" to the package holiday hell of Majorca "I got drunk with another fella who'd just brought up a previous paella" and "where the Double Diamond flowed like sick". This being 79, it got the full gimmicky vinyl treatment. Walking Back To Happiness was released as a 10 inch clear vinyl album.
It's accompanying single Twat. (I'd loved to have been in the CBS office when the plans for the new single were announced….'so what's it called then John?'), came out on a double grooved single.
Which meant you had a 50/50 chance of either playing the full frank and foul version "Like a nightclub in the morning you're the bitter end, like a recently disinfected shithouse, you're clean round the bend" or it's edited, more refined cousin Splat. On the Splat version the expletives are drowned out by comedy sound effects.
The other single Gimmix came in triangular orange vinyl version. It's a roll call of past gimmicks from "The balmy days of the hula hoop craze to the skateboard panic of today." You can hear the contempt in his voice on the line "Teasmades, cushions that fart. The Lord of the Rings." It's like the Punk version of Peter Kaye's "Garlic Bread" line.
Although you should really buy them all, Snap Crackle and Bop is the best of his studio albums. Evidently Chickentown feels like late 70's Manchester when the whole city centre seemed to collapse into it's failing Victorian sewers. Like Venice without the views. Or the Gondolas. But with the pigeons. "The bloody pubs are bloody dull, the bloody clubs are bloody dull, of bloody girls and bloody guys with bloody murder in their eyes" and where "The bloody weed is bloody turf; the bloody speed is bloody surf."
Beasley Street's account of where Thatcherism descends into Dickensian squalor should be taught in schools. And there aren't many lines more chilling than "Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies in a box on Beasley Street." JCC's pronunciation of the words "Beasley Street" has more E's in it than Brian Harvey and takes about 6 months for him to say.
Everyone needs a prison song. 36 Hours is a jail guitar door clanging blues. Where if the regime of "Shit, shave shower and a shoe shine, That's it. Sack time" doesn't put you on the straight and narrow then the threat that "Everyone looks like Earnest Borgnine" surely will. There's a guitar line that that sounds like Pete Shelley reused it from ESP by Buzzcocks.
Zip Style Method came out in 1982. Musically it's the weakest of them, with the more polished synths and treatments actually making it sound more dated than the murky backing tracks used on the first 2 studio albums.
But you do know exactly what he's talking about on The Midnight Shift when he describes somebody's face being "Like a long abandoned baseball boot with the tongue hanging out"
So those are the records then. Due to his own self confessed disorganisation and possibly a result of living with Nico (wouldn't have thought their shopping list contributed much to their 5 daily portions of fruit and veg), the records dried up and promised books and novels didn't appear.
I saw him at Birmingham University at in 1985, ironically on the same bill as John Hegley's band The Popticians. John Hegley not only writes funny, clever poetry, but is also more likely to get the phone call when Radio 4 need a poet. On that night JCC just seemed dazed and disinterested. He rattled through the poems and then rattled home. No jokes, banter or interest. On a good night though he's unstoppable.
He was on stage for over 2 hours at a comedy night at Moseley Rugby Club in 1999. I saw the last 20 minutes when he supported the Only Ones in Wolverhampton earlier this year. A storming effort, with new material and quality jokes. He's pushing 60 but still got the shades and hedgecombed hairstyle and probably wears winklepicker slippers at home. And he's still following his key artistic principle. "I always try and talk in tune"
The rapid fire delivery came from trying to grab an audience's attention when he did support gigs for the Punk acts. The poems themselves are funny, clever and musical, even without the music. You get the sense that he could probably quote Baudelaire by chapter and verse, but is more likely to write about the clap clinic.
He's argued that "Poetry has always been and always will be a very different way of writing, a minority interest. It's language with its best suit on." The live show has always been a mixture of poetry and the jokes that he uses to cover the gaps while he's trying to find the next poem. That helped keep the audience interested in the early days, but he could also handle a heckler.
"I can't hear you mate... your mouths full of shit".
Like Mark E Smith that other Salford bladdered balladeer it's partly the sound of his voice that drags you in, those extra syllables aah. Words that you can chew on. Delivered in a voice that could strip paint and would melt the ear wax of any unfortunate ear that found itself on the receiving end of his whispered sweet nothings.
First single the Psycle Sluts ep came out on Manchester label Rabid records and debut album Disguise In Love came out on CBS in 1978. His records were often criticised by people who'd seen him live who thought that the music got in the way of the words. The music was supplied by the Invisible Girls a rag bag assembly including Buzzcock Pete Shelley, producer Martin Hannett and Karl Burns from The Fall.
You can hear echoes of what Hannett was also working on at the time. Evidently Chickentown from 1980's album Snap Crackle and Bop has a snippet of reverbed drums that fade in and out of the mix but sound like they came from a Joy Division session.
There was a live album Walking Back To Happiness that came out in 1979. It covers the full range of the entertainment spectrum. From poems about Flashers "Gabardine Angus, open your coat" to the package holiday hell of Majorca "I got drunk with another fella who'd just brought up a previous paella" and "where the Double Diamond flowed like sick". This being 79, it got the full gimmicky vinyl treatment. Walking Back To Happiness was released as a 10 inch clear vinyl album.
It's accompanying single Twat. (I'd loved to have been in the CBS office when the plans for the new single were announced….'so what's it called then John?'), came out on a double grooved single.
Which meant you had a 50/50 chance of either playing the full frank and foul version "Like a nightclub in the morning you're the bitter end, like a recently disinfected shithouse, you're clean round the bend" or it's edited, more refined cousin Splat. On the Splat version the expletives are drowned out by comedy sound effects.
The other single Gimmix came in triangular orange vinyl version. It's a roll call of past gimmicks from "The balmy days of the hula hoop craze to the skateboard panic of today." You can hear the contempt in his voice on the line "Teasmades, cushions that fart. The Lord of the Rings." It's like the Punk version of Peter Kaye's "Garlic Bread" line.
Although you should really buy them all, Snap Crackle and Bop is the best of his studio albums. Evidently Chickentown feels like late 70's Manchester when the whole city centre seemed to collapse into it's failing Victorian sewers. Like Venice without the views. Or the Gondolas. But with the pigeons. "The bloody pubs are bloody dull, the bloody clubs are bloody dull, of bloody girls and bloody guys with bloody murder in their eyes" and where "The bloody weed is bloody turf; the bloody speed is bloody surf."
Beasley Street's account of where Thatcherism descends into Dickensian squalor should be taught in schools. And there aren't many lines more chilling than "Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies in a box on Beasley Street." JCC's pronunciation of the words "Beasley Street" has more E's in it than Brian Harvey and takes about 6 months for him to say.
Everyone needs a prison song. 36 Hours is a jail guitar door clanging blues. Where if the regime of "Shit, shave shower and a shoe shine, That's it. Sack time" doesn't put you on the straight and narrow then the threat that "Everyone looks like Earnest Borgnine" surely will. There's a guitar line that that sounds like Pete Shelley reused it from ESP by Buzzcocks.
Zip Style Method came out in 1982. Musically it's the weakest of them, with the more polished synths and treatments actually making it sound more dated than the murky backing tracks used on the first 2 studio albums.
But you do know exactly what he's talking about on The Midnight Shift when he describes somebody's face being "Like a long abandoned baseball boot with the tongue hanging out"
So those are the records then. Due to his own self confessed disorganisation and possibly a result of living with Nico (wouldn't have thought their shopping list contributed much to their 5 daily portions of fruit and veg), the records dried up and promised books and novels didn't appear.
I saw him at Birmingham University at in 1985, ironically on the same bill as John Hegley's band The Popticians. John Hegley not only writes funny, clever poetry, but is also more likely to get the phone call when Radio 4 need a poet. On that night JCC just seemed dazed and disinterested. He rattled through the poems and then rattled home. No jokes, banter or interest. On a good night though he's unstoppable.
He was on stage for over 2 hours at a comedy night at Moseley Rugby Club in 1999. I saw the last 20 minutes when he supported the Only Ones in Wolverhampton earlier this year. A storming effort, with new material and quality jokes. He's pushing 60 but still got the shades and hedgecombed hairstyle and probably wears winklepicker slippers at home. And he's still following his key artistic principle. "I always try and talk in tune"
Friday, December 14, 2007
Eels
For most bands whose first hit was their big hit (and that was 11 years ago) their PR and promotions options are restricted to punching a celebrity or marrying a stripper. However Mark Everett from Eels has been able to make a documentary, screened last week on BBC4 about his physicist dad who developed a theory of parallel universes in 1957.
Well it's definitely worked as PR, because I've gone straight to the Eels back catalogue. I haven't made it to the Quantum Mechanics section of the bookshelf yet.
I think there's always been an atmosphere of suspicion around Eels. A sense that they were corporate. When their debut album came out on DreamWorks, 2 years after Kurt Cobain died it all just seemed too calculated. The mix of grunge flavoured relentless chord sequences, Hip Hop's funky drummer beats, quiet loud, stop start song structures, samples and lyrics that dealt with the full emotional range. From unhappy to miserable.
In the same way that Morrissey was always (wrongly) written off as humourless and miserable, E (as the abbreviated Mark Oliver Everett likes to be known) presents an easy target. It's worth digging past those easy prejudices though as there is plenty to love in the Eels back catalogue.
Debut album Beautiful Freak came out in 1996 and it's first track Novocaine For The Soul was the first single and their biggest hit. With it's opening lines "Life is hard and so am I. You'd better give me something before I die", it's a mix of strings, music box plinkiness and a hoarse Cobain style vocal.
Susan's House is another stop start song structure with a sung chorus and spoken verse detailing a grim urban walk past a shooting, drug deals and teenage mothers. The hook is a piano part that used to really irritate me because I never liked Bruce Hornsby or his Range….and this sounds just like it should be them. It's actually a sample from Gladys Knights song from 1975 Love Will Find It's Own Way.
The title track with it's line "You're such a beautiful freak. I wish there were more like you. You're not like all of the others. That is why I love you"
Now to my jaded ears this sounds like the sort of thing that a sulky adolescent wants to hear when they want to feel special. With it's strings and piano it's a celebration of the eternal outsider and is part lullaby, part nursery rhyme. Disturbingly E was actually 33 when he wrote it. A man still in touch with his inner adolescent. And still in his teenage bedroom if the lyrics of Not Ready Yet are anything to go by. It has more quiet/loud and hoarse Cobainisms as he sings "So if I leave my room. Don't you tell me to lighten up."
My Beloved Monster crops up on Shrek (that would be the DreamWorks connection then) and it sounds like the ogre version of Elvis Costello's version of I Don't Know What To Do With Myself. The guitar collisions and squalls are splendid.
Guest List is another of his outsider songs while Mental has the "They say I'm mental but I'm just confused. They say I'm mental but I've been abused. They say I'm mental but I'm not amused by it all". It's a quiet/loud structure. Amazingly the closing track Manchild starts with a sample of a woman's voice saying "I'm not having any fun." Just in case you hadn't noticed!
1988's Electro Shock Blues is a far superior album. Michael Simpson from the Dust Brothers had collaborated on many of the tracks and there is a hefty Beck influence throughout
The subject matter is still unrelentingly grim and autobiographical, covering his sister's overdose and his mother's death from cancer. "My name is Elizabeth. My life is shit and piss." It's not pretty and neither is the image from Elizabeth On The Bathroom Floor, with the woman lying there unable to get up while the cat licks her face.
Going To Your Funeral (part 1) isn't much jollier either but it does sound fantastic. E does his full vocal range from B to C (Beck to Cobain), falsetto vocals over a boomy rasp of a bass line. The vocals sound dislocated, there are biscuit tin drums, Eels trademark music box keyboards and best of all a slide guitar line that sounds like it's probably made up from 2 tracks, one played forwards and one backwards.
Cancer For The Cure sounds like a Beck's Devils Haircut, with the drums from She's Lost Control by Joy Division and Sly Stone keyboards.
My Descent Into Madness has a string sample that sounds like The Stones She's A Rainbow, sixties soul keyboards and yet astonishingly manages to remind me of Going To Barbados by Typically Tropical.
3 Speed does manage to sound sweet and nostalgic though, with it's images of riding a 3 speed bike with a banana seat, leaning back on the sissy bar" Although, being Eels, the chorus is "You think I've got it all going my way then why am I such a fucking mess."
After trawling through the first 2 albums, the listener's got to ask themselves just how much can you take of someone else's grief, and introspection? Especially when you know there's 6 albums worth of this stuff. Amazingly the advance copies of Shootenany included a 5 page press release with a song by song breakdown of the albums themes. This was more succinctly dealt with by the slide projection on the tour that simply read "29 transient members. One deeply troubled permanent member".
By album number 4 the murderously sounding Soul Jacker he's hooked up with John Parish from PJ Harvey's band. The result is an evil Blues Glam stomp that goes from serial killer (Soul Jacker) to high school shootings to the pyscho at the bus stop. Dog Faced Boy has the great line "Mama won't shave me, Jesus won't save me"
Blinking Lights is his post 9/11 album where the E's personal family death toll extended to his cousin and her husband who were killed in the plane that hit the Pentagon. He's been quoted as saying" For me I've had to treat my family like an art project. It's really my only means of relating to it all"
He's determined to make you work at it though. Blinking Lights is a double album, 33 tracks, part orchestral, and part piano ballads with most of the better songs appearing on the second disc. There's touches of Tom Waits (well more than a touch...he actually appears on it) and the final track has one of those odd uplifting moments that are all the more surprising to be coming from E. It comes after you've worked through the line in Old Shit/New Shit about "The psychic pain of living in the world"
And the uplifting bit? Well it's on the closing track Things The Grandchildren Should Know where he sings "But if I had to do it all again, well it's something I'd like to do." And then the song fades out over an instrumental section. Now there's 2 ways of looking at this kind of fade. You could say that the band has run out of ideas and either don't know how to end it, or are incapable of ending it. (eg The first Stooges album where all the tracks fade out because the band just couldn't stop playing). There is a however a more positive view, and in the case of Things The Grandchildren Should Know that's the view I'm plumping for.
The fade out here sounds like he's made up his mind, dealt with what's happened and is now setting off down a new road. I get a similar feeling from the last minute of Cheap is How I Feel by The Cowboy Junkies, with it's extended pedal steel section. There's an air of resignation to it, tempered with a feeling of "Let's just get on with it" It's a great way to end the album
I do actually like Eels. Hard work though it may be. I really like the story around the film though. It was made after a tape was unearthed where his dad Hugh is discussing his theory on Quantum Mechanics while his son Everett Jr can be heard playing drums in the background.
Now I'm not a scientist (but I do know how to wear a white coat) but Quantum Mechanics tries to explain some of the odd ways that sub atomic particles behave. They can appear to be in 2 places at once. Conventional theory argued that they stopped doing that as soon as you tried to measure it (which itself is quite a thought...just imagine if that worked for crime, corruption and philandering.)
Everett Senior argued that at the instant where Quantum Theory puts a particle in 2 places at once then the universe splits into a parallel universe. Thus allowing the particle to also exist in the same place, but in that other universe. It's Sci fi. It's parallel worlds. And it raises the possibility that while in this world E is a grumpy Kurt Cobain with a major case of unhappy bunny syndrome, in another parallel universe he could be as upbeat as The Polyphonic Spree singing S Club.
Everett Sr's theory didn't gain support though so he concentrated on drinking and being a distant, aloof father figure to provide source material for his son's future career as a miserable autobiographical songwriter. I'm still impressed though because he'd come up with his theory at the age of 24. At that age I was researching crisps and savoury snack products.
Well it's definitely worked as PR, because I've gone straight to the Eels back catalogue. I haven't made it to the Quantum Mechanics section of the bookshelf yet.
I think there's always been an atmosphere of suspicion around Eels. A sense that they were corporate. When their debut album came out on DreamWorks, 2 years after Kurt Cobain died it all just seemed too calculated. The mix of grunge flavoured relentless chord sequences, Hip Hop's funky drummer beats, quiet loud, stop start song structures, samples and lyrics that dealt with the full emotional range. From unhappy to miserable.
In the same way that Morrissey was always (wrongly) written off as humourless and miserable, E (as the abbreviated Mark Oliver Everett likes to be known) presents an easy target. It's worth digging past those easy prejudices though as there is plenty to love in the Eels back catalogue.
Debut album Beautiful Freak came out in 1996 and it's first track Novocaine For The Soul was the first single and their biggest hit. With it's opening lines "Life is hard and so am I. You'd better give me something before I die", it's a mix of strings, music box plinkiness and a hoarse Cobain style vocal.
Susan's House is another stop start song structure with a sung chorus and spoken verse detailing a grim urban walk past a shooting, drug deals and teenage mothers. The hook is a piano part that used to really irritate me because I never liked Bruce Hornsby or his Range….and this sounds just like it should be them. It's actually a sample from Gladys Knights song from 1975 Love Will Find It's Own Way.
The title track with it's line "You're such a beautiful freak. I wish there were more like you. You're not like all of the others. That is why I love you"
Now to my jaded ears this sounds like the sort of thing that a sulky adolescent wants to hear when they want to feel special. With it's strings and piano it's a celebration of the eternal outsider and is part lullaby, part nursery rhyme. Disturbingly E was actually 33 when he wrote it. A man still in touch with his inner adolescent. And still in his teenage bedroom if the lyrics of Not Ready Yet are anything to go by. It has more quiet/loud and hoarse Cobainisms as he sings "So if I leave my room. Don't you tell me to lighten up."
My Beloved Monster crops up on Shrek (that would be the DreamWorks connection then) and it sounds like the ogre version of Elvis Costello's version of I Don't Know What To Do With Myself. The guitar collisions and squalls are splendid.
Guest List is another of his outsider songs while Mental has the "They say I'm mental but I'm just confused. They say I'm mental but I've been abused. They say I'm mental but I'm not amused by it all". It's a quiet/loud structure. Amazingly the closing track Manchild starts with a sample of a woman's voice saying "I'm not having any fun." Just in case you hadn't noticed!
1988's Electro Shock Blues is a far superior album. Michael Simpson from the Dust Brothers had collaborated on many of the tracks and there is a hefty Beck influence throughout
The subject matter is still unrelentingly grim and autobiographical, covering his sister's overdose and his mother's death from cancer. "My name is Elizabeth. My life is shit and piss." It's not pretty and neither is the image from Elizabeth On The Bathroom Floor, with the woman lying there unable to get up while the cat licks her face.
Going To Your Funeral (part 1) isn't much jollier either but it does sound fantastic. E does his full vocal range from B to C (Beck to Cobain), falsetto vocals over a boomy rasp of a bass line. The vocals sound dislocated, there are biscuit tin drums, Eels trademark music box keyboards and best of all a slide guitar line that sounds like it's probably made up from 2 tracks, one played forwards and one backwards.
Cancer For The Cure sounds like a Beck's Devils Haircut, with the drums from She's Lost Control by Joy Division and Sly Stone keyboards.
My Descent Into Madness has a string sample that sounds like The Stones She's A Rainbow, sixties soul keyboards and yet astonishingly manages to remind me of Going To Barbados by Typically Tropical.
3 Speed does manage to sound sweet and nostalgic though, with it's images of riding a 3 speed bike with a banana seat, leaning back on the sissy bar" Although, being Eels, the chorus is "You think I've got it all going my way then why am I such a fucking mess."
After trawling through the first 2 albums, the listener's got to ask themselves just how much can you take of someone else's grief, and introspection? Especially when you know there's 6 albums worth of this stuff. Amazingly the advance copies of Shootenany included a 5 page press release with a song by song breakdown of the albums themes. This was more succinctly dealt with by the slide projection on the tour that simply read "29 transient members. One deeply troubled permanent member".
By album number 4 the murderously sounding Soul Jacker he's hooked up with John Parish from PJ Harvey's band. The result is an evil Blues Glam stomp that goes from serial killer (Soul Jacker) to high school shootings to the pyscho at the bus stop. Dog Faced Boy has the great line "Mama won't shave me, Jesus won't save me"
Blinking Lights is his post 9/11 album where the E's personal family death toll extended to his cousin and her husband who were killed in the plane that hit the Pentagon. He's been quoted as saying" For me I've had to treat my family like an art project. It's really my only means of relating to it all"
He's determined to make you work at it though. Blinking Lights is a double album, 33 tracks, part orchestral, and part piano ballads with most of the better songs appearing on the second disc. There's touches of Tom Waits (well more than a touch...he actually appears on it) and the final track has one of those odd uplifting moments that are all the more surprising to be coming from E. It comes after you've worked through the line in Old Shit/New Shit about "The psychic pain of living in the world"
And the uplifting bit? Well it's on the closing track Things The Grandchildren Should Know where he sings "But if I had to do it all again, well it's something I'd like to do." And then the song fades out over an instrumental section. Now there's 2 ways of looking at this kind of fade. You could say that the band has run out of ideas and either don't know how to end it, or are incapable of ending it. (eg The first Stooges album where all the tracks fade out because the band just couldn't stop playing). There is a however a more positive view, and in the case of Things The Grandchildren Should Know that's the view I'm plumping for.
The fade out here sounds like he's made up his mind, dealt with what's happened and is now setting off down a new road. I get a similar feeling from the last minute of Cheap is How I Feel by The Cowboy Junkies, with it's extended pedal steel section. There's an air of resignation to it, tempered with a feeling of "Let's just get on with it" It's a great way to end the album
I do actually like Eels. Hard work though it may be. I really like the story around the film though. It was made after a tape was unearthed where his dad Hugh is discussing his theory on Quantum Mechanics while his son Everett Jr can be heard playing drums in the background.
Now I'm not a scientist (but I do know how to wear a white coat) but Quantum Mechanics tries to explain some of the odd ways that sub atomic particles behave. They can appear to be in 2 places at once. Conventional theory argued that they stopped doing that as soon as you tried to measure it (which itself is quite a thought...just imagine if that worked for crime, corruption and philandering.)
Everett Senior argued that at the instant where Quantum Theory puts a particle in 2 places at once then the universe splits into a parallel universe. Thus allowing the particle to also exist in the same place, but in that other universe. It's Sci fi. It's parallel worlds. And it raises the possibility that while in this world E is a grumpy Kurt Cobain with a major case of unhappy bunny syndrome, in another parallel universe he could be as upbeat as The Polyphonic Spree singing S Club.
Everett Sr's theory didn't gain support though so he concentrated on drinking and being a distant, aloof father figure to provide source material for his son's future career as a miserable autobiographical songwriter. I'm still impressed though because he'd come up with his theory at the age of 24. At that age I was researching crisps and savoury snack products.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Raveonettes
Not many bands aren't improved by sticking a six foot blonde in front and The Jesus and Mary Chain would benefit more than most. They may have reformed (one of this years biggest Indie surprises).... but they're still the same messy haired, shade wearing squabbling Reid brothers.
On the other hand there are The Raveonettes.
Danish duo Sharin Foo and Sune Rose Wagner have taken the Jesus And Mary Chain template of fuzz guitar, feedback, mixed it with girl group melodies and added Suicide, Buddy Holly and surf guitar.
Usually all in the same song.
Add in a B move poster aesthetic (all good girls going bad and bad boys going worse) and a willingness to embrace the gimmick. A stand up drummer (not Bobby Gillespie). Add a dash more Mary Chain.
Ok the result may not be original and you can easily spot where they've got every one of their moves from (er would that be the Jesus and Mary Chain?), but it's still a bag of fun. And Sharin Foo doesn't look like either of the sulky Scottish Reid brothers. Result!
First album Whip It On is an 8 song dash through Garage Surf titles like Cops On Our Tail, Bowels Of The Beast and Beat City. The boast is that all the tracks are written in B flat minor and are no more than 3 minutes long. No more than 3 chords, no hi-hat and no cymbals. Whoever said Rock 'n' Roll was about no rules?
2003's follow up Chain Gang Of Love proudly screams from it's film poster style sleeve that this time it's written and recorded in B flat major. There is a difference. It's also produced by Richard Gottherer who produced the first Blondie records, co wrote My Boyfriend's Back by The Angels and co founded Sire. Put in those terms he pretty much built New York!
Chain Gang Of Love is an altogether shinier album. It plays with the idea of the innocence of 50's rock n roll and recognises that dumb lyrics are often the right lyrics. Sometimes a well placed "Yeah" can say more than 1000 other words.
In an interview on www.noripcord.com Foo describes their approach as "Both a homage and a little bit of satire. We're not totally romantically infatuated with American culture. On Chain Gang of Love in particular though, there's a real sentimental, nostalgic feeling in the lyrics and the music. There's a bunch of references to Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers, and the kind of melodies from back then; good old-fashioned song-writing"
Lets Rave On has an impossibly fast racing pulse of a drum machine. It's just bass drum, but if it was an episode of Casualty, then trolleys would be crashing through doors and they'd be a lot of shouting.
The lyrics not only echo Buddy Holly, but are for those moments when you think you watch films at the drive in rather than from Blockbusters: "Lets rave on cos I know that you want to. Lets make out cos I know that you want to. Lets go down where the hearts are broken. Fix them all in time"
The Love Gang has a lyric about "Two delinquents in love". As a phrase it's pure 50's imagery. West Side Story and James Dean. Nostalgia for when it was Grease rather than Grecian 2000 and it was all fields and juvenile delinquents round here.
The band's lyrics are one of the pleasures. How about this gem from The Love Gang? "Chains black leather and sex. Yeah it's not that complex." Sounds like a quiet night in to me, but as a lyric it made me giggle a like a loon.
Of course the band think they're doing more than just providing me with giggly entertainment.
Foo told Noripcord that ""We kinda like the contradictions in the music. It's interesting for us to have the opposites - the really sweet, subtle, mellow vocals; poppy and a bit naïve - and then a fuzzy background that's very guitar and bass-driven and pretty intense.
"And to have a melody that sounds innocent, but with lyrics that are really decadent. It creates an interesting tension we think."
Little Animal has the opening line "My girl is a little animal. She always wants to fuck. I can't find the reason why, I guess it's just my luck." I'd keep quiet about that…everyone will want one! The opening chords are standard Mary Chain issue and there's a great fuzz bass sound.
The lyrics to the title track break one of the oldest rules of pop in an interesting way. All bands need to have a prison song and the cast iron law is that you are always a prisoner of your baby's love. The singer is always powerless and can never stop loving his baby.
That's the language of Pop. Sentences are served and rules are obeyed.
However on Chain gang of Love amidst all the "Huh" and "Yeahs" that echo round the song and root it to the original chain gang of Sam Cooke etc there is this lyric. "I'm just a prisoner of love. I'm serving time for something I can't do. They call it a crime, cos I'm not in love with you."
Could be Sune Wagner be the only man in Pop prison who doesn't love his baby?
Best track on the album though is The Great Love Sound. I don't want to harp on about The Mary Chain but it starts like You Trip Me Up and the (excellent) line "So I walk right up to you and you walk all over me" couldn't be more like JAMC if it was wearing shades and punching it's brother.
Love Can Destroy You is a White Stripes style country song. Woozy and disorientating like wind up jewellery box. The guitars overlap from each speaker and there's a regular chime that helps to keep the beat, which actually sounds like a squeaky hamster wheel.
By their 2005 album and Pretty In Pink they were able to call in favours from Ronnie Spector who sings on Ode To LA and there are also appearances from Suicide's Martin Rev and Mo Tucker from the Velvet Underground.
New album Lust Lust Lust is released this week on Fierce Panda. There are 3 d glasses to go with it and more importantly a terrific single, Dead Sound.
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The guitars alternate between twangy and buzzy. Sune and Sharin's voices are wrapped around each other and combined in languid loveliness. Unusually the chorus is actually the quietest part of the song of the song (Yes you can change the laws of physics!) and it's got the tense pulse and impossibly pretty keyboards of Cheree by Suicide.
So once again The Raveonettes have used easily traceable sources, but it sounds so good that it would be churlish to complain. So I won't.
On the other hand there are The Raveonettes.
Danish duo Sharin Foo and Sune Rose Wagner have taken the Jesus And Mary Chain template of fuzz guitar, feedback, mixed it with girl group melodies and added Suicide, Buddy Holly and surf guitar.
Usually all in the same song.
Add in a B move poster aesthetic (all good girls going bad and bad boys going worse) and a willingness to embrace the gimmick. A stand up drummer (not Bobby Gillespie). Add a dash more Mary Chain.
Ok the result may not be original and you can easily spot where they've got every one of their moves from (er would that be the Jesus and Mary Chain?), but it's still a bag of fun. And Sharin Foo doesn't look like either of the sulky Scottish Reid brothers. Result!
First album Whip It On is an 8 song dash through Garage Surf titles like Cops On Our Tail, Bowels Of The Beast and Beat City. The boast is that all the tracks are written in B flat minor and are no more than 3 minutes long. No more than 3 chords, no hi-hat and no cymbals. Whoever said Rock 'n' Roll was about no rules?
2003's follow up Chain Gang Of Love proudly screams from it's film poster style sleeve that this time it's written and recorded in B flat major. There is a difference. It's also produced by Richard Gottherer who produced the first Blondie records, co wrote My Boyfriend's Back by The Angels and co founded Sire. Put in those terms he pretty much built New York!
Chain Gang Of Love is an altogether shinier album. It plays with the idea of the innocence of 50's rock n roll and recognises that dumb lyrics are often the right lyrics. Sometimes a well placed "Yeah" can say more than 1000 other words.
In an interview on www.noripcord.com Foo describes their approach as "Both a homage and a little bit of satire. We're not totally romantically infatuated with American culture. On Chain Gang of Love in particular though, there's a real sentimental, nostalgic feeling in the lyrics and the music. There's a bunch of references to Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers, and the kind of melodies from back then; good old-fashioned song-writing"
Lets Rave On has an impossibly fast racing pulse of a drum machine. It's just bass drum, but if it was an episode of Casualty, then trolleys would be crashing through doors and they'd be a lot of shouting.
The lyrics not only echo Buddy Holly, but are for those moments when you think you watch films at the drive in rather than from Blockbusters: "Lets rave on cos I know that you want to. Lets make out cos I know that you want to. Lets go down where the hearts are broken. Fix them all in time"
The Love Gang has a lyric about "Two delinquents in love". As a phrase it's pure 50's imagery. West Side Story and James Dean. Nostalgia for when it was Grease rather than Grecian 2000 and it was all fields and juvenile delinquents round here.
The band's lyrics are one of the pleasures. How about this gem from The Love Gang? "Chains black leather and sex. Yeah it's not that complex." Sounds like a quiet night in to me, but as a lyric it made me giggle a like a loon.
Of course the band think they're doing more than just providing me with giggly entertainment.
Foo told Noripcord that ""We kinda like the contradictions in the music. It's interesting for us to have the opposites - the really sweet, subtle, mellow vocals; poppy and a bit naïve - and then a fuzzy background that's very guitar and bass-driven and pretty intense.
"And to have a melody that sounds innocent, but with lyrics that are really decadent. It creates an interesting tension we think."
Little Animal has the opening line "My girl is a little animal. She always wants to fuck. I can't find the reason why, I guess it's just my luck." I'd keep quiet about that…everyone will want one! The opening chords are standard Mary Chain issue and there's a great fuzz bass sound.
The lyrics to the title track break one of the oldest rules of pop in an interesting way. All bands need to have a prison song and the cast iron law is that you are always a prisoner of your baby's love. The singer is always powerless and can never stop loving his baby.
That's the language of Pop. Sentences are served and rules are obeyed.
However on Chain gang of Love amidst all the "Huh" and "Yeahs" that echo round the song and root it to the original chain gang of Sam Cooke etc there is this lyric. "I'm just a prisoner of love. I'm serving time for something I can't do. They call it a crime, cos I'm not in love with you."
Could be Sune Wagner be the only man in Pop prison who doesn't love his baby?
Best track on the album though is The Great Love Sound. I don't want to harp on about The Mary Chain but it starts like You Trip Me Up and the (excellent) line "So I walk right up to you and you walk all over me" couldn't be more like JAMC if it was wearing shades and punching it's brother.
Love Can Destroy You is a White Stripes style country song. Woozy and disorientating like wind up jewellery box. The guitars overlap from each speaker and there's a regular chime that helps to keep the beat, which actually sounds like a squeaky hamster wheel.
By their 2005 album and Pretty In Pink they were able to call in favours from Ronnie Spector who sings on Ode To LA and there are also appearances from Suicide's Martin Rev and Mo Tucker from the Velvet Underground.
New album Lust Lust Lust is released this week on Fierce Panda. There are 3 d glasses to go with it and more importantly a terrific single, Dead Sound.
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The guitars alternate between twangy and buzzy. Sune and Sharin's voices are wrapped around each other and combined in languid loveliness. Unusually the chorus is actually the quietest part of the song of the song (Yes you can change the laws of physics!) and it's got the tense pulse and impossibly pretty keyboards of Cheree by Suicide.
So once again The Raveonettes have used easily traceable sources, but it sounds so good that it would be churlish to complain. So I won't.
British Sea Power
Being a Wash 'n' Go musician does have it's advantages. Angus Young only ever has to remember to bring his satchel and school uniform and Iggy Pop knows he's never going to have to remember to iron a shirt.
But there is always room for a band who've got a dressing up box in the dressing room. A band who have really thought through their image.
Brighton based four piece British Sea Power are 2 albums deep into their career of being one of Britain's, oddest, most intriguing and literate bands.
The band name sounds like it should be found in the darker recesses of the lower shelf, between Railway Modeller and Practical Caravanning. Admit it. When you are in the newsagents buying porn, don't you always have a sneaky look down to the bottom shelf and Trout Fisherman?
Their stage sets are festooned with foliage and stuffed animals, their haircuts look like they've been imposed on them and their lyrics are filled with references to military and wildlife themes.
Something Wicked from 2003's debut The Decline Of British Sea Power has the opening verse.....
"Where the ancient oak leaf clusters grew/The deaths head hawk moth flew/Something wicked this way comes/The swallow is depicted there along your fuselage/Something wicked this way comes."
Musically you can trace a line through Bowie, Psychedelic Furs and Granddaddy. The Psychedelic Furs link is really in the vocals which often have that Richard Butler atonal sneer. However on a song like Blackout there's a definite Morrissey feel. The Bowie link is more for the guitar lines. They're really good and thick enough to plaster a wall with.
Given the band's enthusiasm for uniforms and songs about Field Marshal Montgomery (Favours In The Beetroot Fields) I'm a bit disappointed to see only conventional instruments listed...I demand First World War Poetry.
The band line up reads like a Public School register. Last names only. Yan, Hamilton, Noble, Wood. Report for band practice after prep! They've also upped the mystery quotient by meeting journalists at grid references rather than pubs.
There's a great performance of Carrion on Jools Holland. Yes the keyboard player is wearing WW2 style helmet. And when was the last time you heard a lyric to equal "From Scapa Flow to Rotherhithe I felt the lapping of an ebbing tide"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JF5ivWRKBU
There's also a great moving statues video of Remember Me at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Peo0s75QDR0
Remember Me has a chorus of "Increment by increment." Again it's not the standard issue pop lyric but it does know it's pop history.
The downhill rush for the bus, of guitar bass and drums, sounds like the mighty riff from Victoria by The Kinks. And of course a band like British Sea Power who revel in the imagery of an imagined England will know all about The Kinks. And as the wilful awkward obscurists they are, they must surely also be Fall fans and so will know all about The Fall's faithful version of it.
Wilful and obscure...ok then. Lately is a brevity testing 14 minutes long while Apologies For Insect Life may well be about Dostoyevsky but it's hard to tell as the only intelligible lyrics are the repeated yelping of "Oh Fyodor, you are the most attractive man. Oh Fyodor, you are the most attractive man I know."
It's got a great step forward step back bass line and the drums and guitar alternately hold back then pile in. It's a thrilling ride.
The Lonely has the line "Just like Liberace I will return to haunt you with peculiar piano riffs." A line that actually scares me...it's camply threatening, like Liberace himself or the Sopranos Johnny Sack. The song itself could sit happily on Suede's second album and it's got some of the wooziness of Bowie's Aladdin Sane album.
The second album Open Season 2005 is a bit more straightforward, with less guitars and a bit more keyboards. But there again the band are never going to be too obvious. So long as they are releasing singles with titles like It Ended On An Oily Stage.
The word "ventricles" appears in Be Gone (and being British Sea Power it actually isn't the oddest choice of word in the song) and it may be the first time it's been used in a pop song since The Bozo Dog Doo Dah Band. Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On might have been improved if only she'd been a bit more medically accurate.
New ep Krankenhaus is available as an (expensive) import but there is a free download through the bands website.
They gamely describe the lead track Atom as combining a pre school understanding of atomic theory with ancient wisdom in amplified rock music.
But they also do foliage and crowd surfing and those kind of post punk hard stares that are part Wilco Johnson part Paddington bear.
But there is always room for a band who've got a dressing up box in the dressing room. A band who have really thought through their image.
Brighton based four piece British Sea Power are 2 albums deep into their career of being one of Britain's, oddest, most intriguing and literate bands.
The band name sounds like it should be found in the darker recesses of the lower shelf, between Railway Modeller and Practical Caravanning. Admit it. When you are in the newsagents buying porn, don't you always have a sneaky look down to the bottom shelf and Trout Fisherman?
Their stage sets are festooned with foliage and stuffed animals, their haircuts look like they've been imposed on them and their lyrics are filled with references to military and wildlife themes.
Something Wicked from 2003's debut The Decline Of British Sea Power has the opening verse.....
"Where the ancient oak leaf clusters grew/The deaths head hawk moth flew/Something wicked this way comes/The swallow is depicted there along your fuselage/Something wicked this way comes."
Musically you can trace a line through Bowie, Psychedelic Furs and Granddaddy. The Psychedelic Furs link is really in the vocals which often have that Richard Butler atonal sneer. However on a song like Blackout there's a definite Morrissey feel. The Bowie link is more for the guitar lines. They're really good and thick enough to plaster a wall with.
Given the band's enthusiasm for uniforms and songs about Field Marshal Montgomery (Favours In The Beetroot Fields) I'm a bit disappointed to see only conventional instruments listed...I demand First World War Poetry.
The band line up reads like a Public School register. Last names only. Yan, Hamilton, Noble, Wood. Report for band practice after prep! They've also upped the mystery quotient by meeting journalists at grid references rather than pubs.
There's a great performance of Carrion on Jools Holland. Yes the keyboard player is wearing WW2 style helmet. And when was the last time you heard a lyric to equal "From Scapa Flow to Rotherhithe I felt the lapping of an ebbing tide"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JF5ivWRKBU
There's also a great moving statues video of Remember Me at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Peo0s75QDR0
Remember Me has a chorus of "Increment by increment." Again it's not the standard issue pop lyric but it does know it's pop history.
The downhill rush for the bus, of guitar bass and drums, sounds like the mighty riff from Victoria by The Kinks. And of course a band like British Sea Power who revel in the imagery of an imagined England will know all about The Kinks. And as the wilful awkward obscurists they are, they must surely also be Fall fans and so will know all about The Fall's faithful version of it.
Wilful and obscure...ok then. Lately is a brevity testing 14 minutes long while Apologies For Insect Life may well be about Dostoyevsky but it's hard to tell as the only intelligible lyrics are the repeated yelping of "Oh Fyodor, you are the most attractive man. Oh Fyodor, you are the most attractive man I know."
It's got a great step forward step back bass line and the drums and guitar alternately hold back then pile in. It's a thrilling ride.
The Lonely has the line "Just like Liberace I will return to haunt you with peculiar piano riffs." A line that actually scares me...it's camply threatening, like Liberace himself or the Sopranos Johnny Sack. The song itself could sit happily on Suede's second album and it's got some of the wooziness of Bowie's Aladdin Sane album.
The second album Open Season 2005 is a bit more straightforward, with less guitars and a bit more keyboards. But there again the band are never going to be too obvious. So long as they are releasing singles with titles like It Ended On An Oily Stage.
The word "ventricles" appears in Be Gone (and being British Sea Power it actually isn't the oddest choice of word in the song) and it may be the first time it's been used in a pop song since The Bozo Dog Doo Dah Band. Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On might have been improved if only she'd been a bit more medically accurate.
New ep Krankenhaus is available as an (expensive) import but there is a free download through the bands website.
They gamely describe the lead track Atom as combining a pre school understanding of atomic theory with ancient wisdom in amplified rock music.
But they also do foliage and crowd surfing and those kind of post punk hard stares that are part Wilco Johnson part Paddington bear.
CSS
Are CSS just a bunch of arty Brazilian women who play smutty, sweary punk rock electro pop? Do they have a catsuit wearing half Japanese singer called Lovefoxx and a gay bruiser with a moustache that you could use to paint fences? Thankfully yes. Debut album CSS came out last year on Sub pop where it nestles incongruously amongst the back catalogue of Nirvana and Mudhoney.
Their name Cansei de Ser Sexy comes from a Beyonce quote and translates as "tired of being sexy" in Portuguese.
"Lets Make Love And Listen To Death From Above" was one of the best singles (and titles) of last year. It sounded like the band themselves as it veered from disco pickety guitar, frisky bass and a swooping theramin type sound to a splurging Spirit In The Sky meets Dr Who theme tune pile up.
One minute it's a foxy, slinky dancer on a better class of dance floor. Then it morphs into beery uncle at a wedding, stomping and gurning in altogether stickier surroundings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7agPOt1XZz8
"Patins" is a gleeful guitar rush, recalling the Riot Grrl acts or The Slits. The guitar and vocals follow each other closely. Now that's often a sign that a band have run out of ideas, or never had them in the first place. In this case though it just sounds absolutely right And Lovefoxx's vocal exuberance carries it off. "Whenever I look at you I don't know what to do. Whenever you talk to me I don't know what is true"
Adriano Cintra's male vocal line "Listen Baby I've got something to say" arrives in the song just like shouty bloke from the Sugarcubes used to. He's a bit more welcome, though, and I'm not going to argue with either him or his 'tache.
The song moves into Iggy Pop territory recalling the excellent duet with Debbie Harry ("Did You Ever") and Peaches ("Kick it"). It also sounds like they're packing for their holidays as Cintra and Lovefoxx sing alternate lines. "Your shirt, your shoes, your skirt your pants."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHFH2uc4Y9M
I really like Lovefoxx's vocals throughout the album. Although I've got to admit some of it is down to my own pervy preferences. I like the way she uses singing as a second language and there are definite parallels with Bjork.
On "Off The Hook" she sings "Why is it we stand so still, people gonna start thinking we're statues." Now there's no way that number of words should fit into the gaps into the song but she goes ahead and forces them to fit. It's a Bjorky moment.
I love Bjork's speaking voice with it's bizarre mix of Icelandic, American and Cockney inflexions. It's a voice I could listen to it all day without getting tired of. (Although I'd rather she talked about the bit where we both take our clothes off rather than the bit where she's telling me to go and unblock the sink. So that's my tip. Don't live with Pop Pixies unless you don't mind plumbing.)
About the sex and swearing. There's loads of it and it's really funny. (Obviously it's grown up and clever too!) One of their catchiest songs uses a synth chug, spiralling positively pretty pop keyboard lines and understated twangy guitar. It's called "Fuck Off Is Not The Only Thing You have to Show."
They've also used the whole celebrity culture and fashion scene. The excellently titled "Meeting Paris Hilton" has a chorus of "The bitch said yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah" while "Art Bitch" is about poo on a plate modern art where "Everything I do is featured on the pages of ID." Now I don't know much about art but I know what I like.....is opening nights with free drinks and nibbles.
"Art Bitch" has guitar lines that wriggle and squeal like The Dead Kennedys "Holiday in Cambodia" and the lines "lick lick lick my art tit suck suck suck my art hole"...Hmm. Did I mention the sex and swearing?
Guitarist Luiza Sa has said "We only realised how sexy some of our lyrics were when people started asking about them. We'd never sing that stuff in Portuguese, but it's very liberating to say those things in English." Actually they're fairly fluent in filth as liberated Luiza also Dj's with fellow band member Ana under the name Meuku.....which is Portuguese for "my arse."
"Alcohol" sounds like a Chas and Dave with it's crowd pleasing chorus of "Hey hey hey hey Do you wanna drink some alcohol." It's the most knockabout of their songs.
They did the rounds of all the festivals this summer and from my comfortable and mud free sofa they looked thoroughly entertaining. They've just supported Gwen Stefani on her tour of UK enormodomes.
Cynics might think that the elements that make up CSS are just too perfect. On paper they do sound like a cut and paste dream pop project, but on record and live the whole thing works well. So I think they're thoroughly Punk Rock (in a disco booty shaking way
Their name Cansei de Ser Sexy comes from a Beyonce quote and translates as "tired of being sexy" in Portuguese.
"Lets Make Love And Listen To Death From Above" was one of the best singles (and titles) of last year. It sounded like the band themselves as it veered from disco pickety guitar, frisky bass and a swooping theramin type sound to a splurging Spirit In The Sky meets Dr Who theme tune pile up.
One minute it's a foxy, slinky dancer on a better class of dance floor. Then it morphs into beery uncle at a wedding, stomping and gurning in altogether stickier surroundings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7agPOt1XZz8
"Patins" is a gleeful guitar rush, recalling the Riot Grrl acts or The Slits. The guitar and vocals follow each other closely. Now that's often a sign that a band have run out of ideas, or never had them in the first place. In this case though it just sounds absolutely right And Lovefoxx's vocal exuberance carries it off. "Whenever I look at you I don't know what to do. Whenever you talk to me I don't know what is true"
Adriano Cintra's male vocal line "Listen Baby I've got something to say" arrives in the song just like shouty bloke from the Sugarcubes used to. He's a bit more welcome, though, and I'm not going to argue with either him or his 'tache.
The song moves into Iggy Pop territory recalling the excellent duet with Debbie Harry ("Did You Ever") and Peaches ("Kick it"). It also sounds like they're packing for their holidays as Cintra and Lovefoxx sing alternate lines. "Your shirt, your shoes, your skirt your pants."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHFH2uc4Y9M
I really like Lovefoxx's vocals throughout the album. Although I've got to admit some of it is down to my own pervy preferences. I like the way she uses singing as a second language and there are definite parallels with Bjork.
On "Off The Hook" she sings "Why is it we stand so still, people gonna start thinking we're statues." Now there's no way that number of words should fit into the gaps into the song but she goes ahead and forces them to fit. It's a Bjorky moment.
I love Bjork's speaking voice with it's bizarre mix of Icelandic, American and Cockney inflexions. It's a voice I could listen to it all day without getting tired of. (Although I'd rather she talked about the bit where we both take our clothes off rather than the bit where she's telling me to go and unblock the sink. So that's my tip. Don't live with Pop Pixies unless you don't mind plumbing.)
About the sex and swearing. There's loads of it and it's really funny. (Obviously it's grown up and clever too!) One of their catchiest songs uses a synth chug, spiralling positively pretty pop keyboard lines and understated twangy guitar. It's called "Fuck Off Is Not The Only Thing You have to Show."
They've also used the whole celebrity culture and fashion scene. The excellently titled "Meeting Paris Hilton" has a chorus of "The bitch said yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah" while "Art Bitch" is about poo on a plate modern art where "Everything I do is featured on the pages of ID." Now I don't know much about art but I know what I like.....is opening nights with free drinks and nibbles.
"Art Bitch" has guitar lines that wriggle and squeal like The Dead Kennedys "Holiday in Cambodia" and the lines "lick lick lick my art tit suck suck suck my art hole"...Hmm. Did I mention the sex and swearing?
Guitarist Luiza Sa has said "We only realised how sexy some of our lyrics were when people started asking about them. We'd never sing that stuff in Portuguese, but it's very liberating to say those things in English." Actually they're fairly fluent in filth as liberated Luiza also Dj's with fellow band member Ana under the name Meuku.....which is Portuguese for "my arse."
"Alcohol" sounds like a Chas and Dave with it's crowd pleasing chorus of "Hey hey hey hey Do you wanna drink some alcohol." It's the most knockabout of their songs.
They did the rounds of all the festivals this summer and from my comfortable and mud free sofa they looked thoroughly entertaining. They've just supported Gwen Stefani on her tour of UK enormodomes.
Cynics might think that the elements that make up CSS are just too perfect. On paper they do sound like a cut and paste dream pop project, but on record and live the whole thing works well. So I think they're thoroughly Punk Rock (in a disco booty shaking way
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Shack
Their work rate and drug habits mean they’d have been more accurately named Slack or Smack. Over the last 20 years Shack have become synonymous with bad luck, bad timing and bad habits; but they still have the knack of turning out perfectly formed psychedelic acoustic (they still sound acoustic even when they’re electric!) pop songs using The Byrds and Love as their starting point.
Liverpool brothers Mick and John Head’s first band was the Pale Fountains who pretty much drowned in a surplus of record company cash and overproduction.
There was a feyness running through Indie Pop in the early 80’s with bands like Orange Juice, the Farmers Boys. Bands and fans wore Hawaiian shirts, shorts and hats. There were allusions to jazz and mutterings about Burt Bacharach. The early Pale Fountains sessions for John Peel included songs like The Norfolk Broads which was definitely a part of that era, nostalgic whimsical, trumpet noodling.
Their first single for Virgin, Thank You was blown up to Eurovision Song contest standard of pointless orchestral lushness. The album Pacific Street was a confused mix of Astrud Gilberto Latin pop and more straightforward, straight ahead acoustic stomps like Natural. I saw them twice at the Hacienda, once around 1982 as the fragile band of the early sessions, short of material and (very probably) in shorts. Second time around I disparagingly thought of them as an acoustic rockin’ Alarm. With hindsight I may have been wrong about that gig (although not about thinking of The Alarm as a bad thing).
Second album From Across the Kitchen Table worked better and contained the excellent Jeans Not Happening, a song, which I think, captures the strengths and source of Mick Head's songwriting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6RFhVib1uw
It’s a song which combines the goofy gee whizz phrasing of someone imagining what the 60’s were like with, with a dash of 60’s TV theme tune and frazzled guitar line. You can almost hear the catsuits. (The Boo Radleys would do similar things in their poppier moments.) He takes the music he loves as a source and then writes his own tribute to it. You can usually hear who he’s thinking of but he’s a good enough songwriter for it not just to be a pastiche.
Ultimately though the Pale Fountains floundered. Their early orchestral stuff just didn’t work when the Human League were number 1. They headed back to Liverpool with an enthusiasm for heroin and a lack of interest in promoting the second album, eventually splitting in 1986 with bassist Chris McCaffrey dying from a brain haemorrhage shortly afterwards.
So that’s’ the Pale Fountains then...fondly remembered, but unfulfilled potential.
Shack’s debut Zilch came out in 88 and is fairly unloved, while the single I Know You Well from 1990 borrows from a vocal from the Byrds Triad (more of that later) and steals a McCartney bass line. It ends up sounding like Rain by The Beatles. This makes it fantastic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gEWDm-5gbE&mode=related&search=
Meanwhile Shack were receiving regular visits from Messrs Bad Luck and Underachievement. They recorded their second album Waterpistol in 1991, but the studio burnt down, taking the master tapes with it. A dat copy survived but had been left in producer Chris Allison’s hire car...in the States. By the time it turned up the record company had gone bust. Fortunately though a German company Marina were able to release it…A tardy 4 years later. It’s a terrific album though. A cleverly stitched together tapestry of all the best moves of Love and The Byrds
Hey Mama owes a debt to David Crosby’s song Triad. It’s a tribute to the art of the threesome and was greeted less enthusiastically by the rest of The Byrds. It was booted off The Notorious Byrd Brothers lp in favour of Goffin and King’s song Goin’ Back. Crosby left the band soon after and the myth grew that Crosby was replaced by a horse on the albums sleeve.
And the thing is you know that Shack know the debt to Triad. They know all the stories and they know all their heroes tricks. In later years Shack backed Arthur Lee on live dates in the Uk. There’s probably no better band qualified and they would have known all the songs
The album Waterpistol has a warm, murky feel.to it. Mood Of The Morning is built on little circular, intertwining bass and guitar riffs like So You Wanna Be A Rock ‘n’ Roll Star, but with bongos. It has the line “My baby loves happy mondays, My Baby drinks leftovers in the morning, She’s always singing and yawning, She’s into the mood of the morning”
But of course the band didn’t really exist anymore. Mick and John Head recorded an album as The Strands, financed by a French fan. The Magical World Of The Strands.
By this point it was looking like Head was going to become one of those oft cited rarely sighted figures like Lee Mavers. In a last ditch burst of commercialism Shack regrouped and released HMS Fable on London in 1999. Big tunes big promotion and less dependent on the Byrds and Love.
Opening track Natalie’s Party crashes into the kitchen on a wave of Pete Townsend style scything guitar, pilfers the best bottles and then stumbles into the garden to see if there’s a swimming pool for Keith Moon to park his Rolls Royce in it...or at least somewhere to piss. It’s a great opener and the exuberance of the guitar and vocal is matched by the sweep of the string section. The whole lp is brasher in sound than their previous work.
The backing vocals throughout the album are interesting. What works best is John’s vocal following just behind Mick’s, sounding like it’s straining to keep up. Yes it may be a Beatles trick, but it’s still a good one.
There’s some silly stuff to contend with though. The key line on Lend Some Dough is “I’ve got to get out of the kitchen. Lend some dough, I’ve got a sore back and I’m itching” It’s actually a song about buying smack, but sung as a rousing Oliver style musical. All it needs is a kids chorus line to strike up as they go skipping down the street to meet an Artful Dodger in a sulky Scouse coat. I’m afraid they also use the line “Lend some dough, re me fa so la ti.” Ouch!
The anticipated commercial breakthrough didn’t happen, so Shack followed up the album with another single, Oscar. A song about a man in a wheelchair who wants to move to the Netherlands for state sponsored sex with prostitutes. That wasn’t a hit either.
At least the work rate was picking up though. Here’s Tom With The Weather hurtled into the shops a mere 4 years later. More Beatles Byrds, Love and some Nick Drake.
Byrds Turn To Stone is a wonderful song, wistful, and warmly nostalgic about the two brothers “Learning to play guitar, One for you and one for me. Who’ll be the first to learn. All the tricks of Mr Lee”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEman36xAIQ&mode=related&search=
And of course it does sound like the Byrds and Love. But as you may have gathered I don’t have a problem with that. I’ve bought many versions of Love’s staggering album Forever Changes over the years. The only way it could be improved for me would be if it could step out of a bath of custard, wearing a nurses uniform and announce it was ready for a little spanking. Apart from that it’s got everything I could want in an album.
The Shack release schedule was now unstoppable. The Corner of Miles and Gil was released on Noel Gallagher’s label Sour Mash. They describe the title as a tip of the hat to Miles Davis and his arranger Gil Evans. Now a mere year later there’s a greatest hits album Time Machine out complete with full on tour and in store appearances.
Pop music’s easy. You just need great songs, great singing and great playing. And a little bit of time. Which means Shack have got it all.
Liverpool brothers Mick and John Head’s first band was the Pale Fountains who pretty much drowned in a surplus of record company cash and overproduction.
There was a feyness running through Indie Pop in the early 80’s with bands like Orange Juice, the Farmers Boys. Bands and fans wore Hawaiian shirts, shorts and hats. There were allusions to jazz and mutterings about Burt Bacharach. The early Pale Fountains sessions for John Peel included songs like The Norfolk Broads which was definitely a part of that era, nostalgic whimsical, trumpet noodling.
Their first single for Virgin, Thank You was blown up to Eurovision Song contest standard of pointless orchestral lushness. The album Pacific Street was a confused mix of Astrud Gilberto Latin pop and more straightforward, straight ahead acoustic stomps like Natural. I saw them twice at the Hacienda, once around 1982 as the fragile band of the early sessions, short of material and (very probably) in shorts. Second time around I disparagingly thought of them as an acoustic rockin’ Alarm. With hindsight I may have been wrong about that gig (although not about thinking of The Alarm as a bad thing).
Second album From Across the Kitchen Table worked better and contained the excellent Jeans Not Happening, a song, which I think, captures the strengths and source of Mick Head's songwriting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6RFhVib1uw
It’s a song which combines the goofy gee whizz phrasing of someone imagining what the 60’s were like with, with a dash of 60’s TV theme tune and frazzled guitar line. You can almost hear the catsuits. (The Boo Radleys would do similar things in their poppier moments.) He takes the music he loves as a source and then writes his own tribute to it. You can usually hear who he’s thinking of but he’s a good enough songwriter for it not just to be a pastiche.
Ultimately though the Pale Fountains floundered. Their early orchestral stuff just didn’t work when the Human League were number 1. They headed back to Liverpool with an enthusiasm for heroin and a lack of interest in promoting the second album, eventually splitting in 1986 with bassist Chris McCaffrey dying from a brain haemorrhage shortly afterwards.
So that’s’ the Pale Fountains then...fondly remembered, but unfulfilled potential.
Shack’s debut Zilch came out in 88 and is fairly unloved, while the single I Know You Well from 1990 borrows from a vocal from the Byrds Triad (more of that later) and steals a McCartney bass line. It ends up sounding like Rain by The Beatles. This makes it fantastic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gEWDm-5gbE&mode=related&search=
Meanwhile Shack were receiving regular visits from Messrs Bad Luck and Underachievement. They recorded their second album Waterpistol in 1991, but the studio burnt down, taking the master tapes with it. A dat copy survived but had been left in producer Chris Allison’s hire car...in the States. By the time it turned up the record company had gone bust. Fortunately though a German company Marina were able to release it…A tardy 4 years later. It’s a terrific album though. A cleverly stitched together tapestry of all the best moves of Love and The Byrds
Hey Mama owes a debt to David Crosby’s song Triad. It’s a tribute to the art of the threesome and was greeted less enthusiastically by the rest of The Byrds. It was booted off The Notorious Byrd Brothers lp in favour of Goffin and King’s song Goin’ Back. Crosby left the band soon after and the myth grew that Crosby was replaced by a horse on the albums sleeve.
And the thing is you know that Shack know the debt to Triad. They know all the stories and they know all their heroes tricks. In later years Shack backed Arthur Lee on live dates in the Uk. There’s probably no better band qualified and they would have known all the songs
The album Waterpistol has a warm, murky feel.to it. Mood Of The Morning is built on little circular, intertwining bass and guitar riffs like So You Wanna Be A Rock ‘n’ Roll Star, but with bongos. It has the line “My baby loves happy mondays, My Baby drinks leftovers in the morning, She’s always singing and yawning, She’s into the mood of the morning”
But of course the band didn’t really exist anymore. Mick and John Head recorded an album as The Strands, financed by a French fan. The Magical World Of The Strands.
By this point it was looking like Head was going to become one of those oft cited rarely sighted figures like Lee Mavers. In a last ditch burst of commercialism Shack regrouped and released HMS Fable on London in 1999. Big tunes big promotion and less dependent on the Byrds and Love.
Opening track Natalie’s Party crashes into the kitchen on a wave of Pete Townsend style scything guitar, pilfers the best bottles and then stumbles into the garden to see if there’s a swimming pool for Keith Moon to park his Rolls Royce in it...or at least somewhere to piss. It’s a great opener and the exuberance of the guitar and vocal is matched by the sweep of the string section. The whole lp is brasher in sound than their previous work.
The backing vocals throughout the album are interesting. What works best is John’s vocal following just behind Mick’s, sounding like it’s straining to keep up. Yes it may be a Beatles trick, but it’s still a good one.
There’s some silly stuff to contend with though. The key line on Lend Some Dough is “I’ve got to get out of the kitchen. Lend some dough, I’ve got a sore back and I’m itching” It’s actually a song about buying smack, but sung as a rousing Oliver style musical. All it needs is a kids chorus line to strike up as they go skipping down the street to meet an Artful Dodger in a sulky Scouse coat. I’m afraid they also use the line “Lend some dough, re me fa so la ti.” Ouch!
The anticipated commercial breakthrough didn’t happen, so Shack followed up the album with another single, Oscar. A song about a man in a wheelchair who wants to move to the Netherlands for state sponsored sex with prostitutes. That wasn’t a hit either.
At least the work rate was picking up though. Here’s Tom With The Weather hurtled into the shops a mere 4 years later. More Beatles Byrds, Love and some Nick Drake.
Byrds Turn To Stone is a wonderful song, wistful, and warmly nostalgic about the two brothers “Learning to play guitar, One for you and one for me. Who’ll be the first to learn. All the tricks of Mr Lee”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEman36xAIQ&mode=related&search=
And of course it does sound like the Byrds and Love. But as you may have gathered I don’t have a problem with that. I’ve bought many versions of Love’s staggering album Forever Changes over the years. The only way it could be improved for me would be if it could step out of a bath of custard, wearing a nurses uniform and announce it was ready for a little spanking. Apart from that it’s got everything I could want in an album.
The Shack release schedule was now unstoppable. The Corner of Miles and Gil was released on Noel Gallagher’s label Sour Mash. They describe the title as a tip of the hat to Miles Davis and his arranger Gil Evans. Now a mere year later there’s a greatest hits album Time Machine out complete with full on tour and in store appearances.
Pop music’s easy. You just need great songs, great singing and great playing. And a little bit of time. Which means Shack have got it all.
Alabama 3
How much you like Alabama 3 depends on how much you like the idea of acid country house music, larger than life stage personas and people who think it would be more fun to sing as if they were from the American South than rather than the London South. So yes I like them a lot.
They deal in the traditional Country concerns of death, God, lust and drinking but spliced with clubby drug tales. On Saturday night live to excess, come Sunday morning you pray and confess. The sacred, profane and cocaine in a Mucky Chemical Romance.
They play sinuous looping stretched out grooves with the cod blues rasp of Rob Spragg AKA Larry Love and the holly roller testifying of Jake Black AKA The Very Reverend Dr. D. Wayne Love.(Is that cod meets God then?)
There's much fun to be had with the alter egos, the crumpled white suits of their stage wear carry the stains of hard living almost as much as their crumpled band faces. They're a band who look as if they've spent a long hard life in front of and behind bars.
On the face of it dressing up and pretending to be something that you're not should actually get in the way of the music. But is it where you walk or the way you walk that matters the most? Alabama 3 carry it off because underpinning, the subtle irony and the blatant piss taking is a deep knowledge of the music it's based on, and pop culture generally.
Trombonist Pascal Wyse who played a gig with them described a quick chat with a hungover Jake Black. "He may look all over the place, but talking to him leaves you feeling like you have never read a book, seen a film or listened to a CD in your life."
Debut album Exile On Coldharbour Lane came out in 97 with the band boasting that "We spent half of our advance from Geffen on various contraband items and with the rest we made an over-produced, brilliant situationist masterpiece called 'Exile on Coldharbour Lane'. Ever since then we've been preaching our Gospel all over the world. We've got into a whole bunch of trouble and met a whole bunch of nice people. We make friends where ever we go"
It's not only the Rolling Stones-saluting title and cover art that betray the band's ability to both dig and dig up the past. There's a cover of John Prine's Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness that turns it into a twangy boing fest.
Ain't Goin' To Goa sticks the boot into the hippy rave trail and concludes "Cos the righteous truth is, there ain't nothing worse than some fool lying on some Third World beach wearing spandex, psychedelic trousers, smoking damn dope pretending he gettin' consciousness expansion. I want consciousness expansion, I go to my local tabernacle an' I sing with the brothers and sisters "
There's more pun slinging action with La Peste from 2000 with Sad Eyed Lady Of The Low Life which borrows from a Dylan for the title and an unlikely blend of Primal Scream's Loaded and Elton John's Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting for the tune.
In 2001 they did a month long residency at the Camden Underworld supporting themselves in various guises, as a country band with Eileen Rose and BJ Cole and as a gospel act with David McAlmont. Larry Love described it as "This is our chance to show that we know our country, we know our gospel, we know our techno and we know our blues… It's a chance for people to see us for the eclectic motherfuckers that we are.
"We can show the various elements of faith that make up our canon. I love being able to take a bluegrass loop or a rockabilly loop and turn it into a modern, computer-based concept…which is what Moby's had such success with on "Play"…we've been doing for years"
Outlaw came out in 2005 and tries to live up to it's title by having a song called Hello I'm Johnny Cash and another called Have You Seen Bruce Richard Reynolds. The Great Train Robber Reynolds wrote the sleeve notes for the album.
The new album MOR is just released and for the upcoming tour the band's website promise that "Maybe you've done some good things in your life, maybe you've done some bad things. We forgive you. Forgive yourself. Then dress up real sexy and come and party with us sometime. We'll look after you."
They deal in the traditional Country concerns of death, God, lust and drinking but spliced with clubby drug tales. On Saturday night live to excess, come Sunday morning you pray and confess. The sacred, profane and cocaine in a Mucky Chemical Romance.
They play sinuous looping stretched out grooves with the cod blues rasp of Rob Spragg AKA Larry Love and the holly roller testifying of Jake Black AKA The Very Reverend Dr. D. Wayne Love.(Is that cod meets God then?)
There's much fun to be had with the alter egos, the crumpled white suits of their stage wear carry the stains of hard living almost as much as their crumpled band faces. They're a band who look as if they've spent a long hard life in front of and behind bars.
On the face of it dressing up and pretending to be something that you're not should actually get in the way of the music. But is it where you walk or the way you walk that matters the most? Alabama 3 carry it off because underpinning, the subtle irony and the blatant piss taking is a deep knowledge of the music it's based on, and pop culture generally.
Trombonist Pascal Wyse who played a gig with them described a quick chat with a hungover Jake Black. "He may look all over the place, but talking to him leaves you feeling like you have never read a book, seen a film or listened to a CD in your life."
Debut album Exile On Coldharbour Lane came out in 97 with the band boasting that "We spent half of our advance from Geffen on various contraband items and with the rest we made an over-produced, brilliant situationist masterpiece called 'Exile on Coldharbour Lane'. Ever since then we've been preaching our Gospel all over the world. We've got into a whole bunch of trouble and met a whole bunch of nice people. We make friends where ever we go"
It's not only the Rolling Stones-saluting title and cover art that betray the band's ability to both dig and dig up the past. There's a cover of John Prine's Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness that turns it into a twangy boing fest.
Ain't Goin' To Goa sticks the boot into the hippy rave trail and concludes "Cos the righteous truth is, there ain't nothing worse than some fool lying on some Third World beach wearing spandex, psychedelic trousers, smoking damn dope pretending he gettin' consciousness expansion. I want consciousness expansion, I go to my local tabernacle an' I sing with the brothers and sisters "
There's more pun slinging action with La Peste from 2000 with Sad Eyed Lady Of The Low Life which borrows from a Dylan for the title and an unlikely blend of Primal Scream's Loaded and Elton John's Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting for the tune.
In 2001 they did a month long residency at the Camden Underworld supporting themselves in various guises, as a country band with Eileen Rose and BJ Cole and as a gospel act with David McAlmont. Larry Love described it as "This is our chance to show that we know our country, we know our gospel, we know our techno and we know our blues… It's a chance for people to see us for the eclectic motherfuckers that we are.
"We can show the various elements of faith that make up our canon. I love being able to take a bluegrass loop or a rockabilly loop and turn it into a modern, computer-based concept…which is what Moby's had such success with on "Play"…we've been doing for years"
Outlaw came out in 2005 and tries to live up to it's title by having a song called Hello I'm Johnny Cash and another called Have You Seen Bruce Richard Reynolds. The Great Train Robber Reynolds wrote the sleeve notes for the album.
The new album MOR is just released and for the upcoming tour the band's website promise that "Maybe you've done some good things in your life, maybe you've done some bad things. We forgive you. Forgive yourself. Then dress up real sexy and come and party with us sometime. We'll look after you."
Maps
Their debut album We Can Create was hotly fancied for the Mercury prize, but ultimately lost out to Klaxons. On a night out, the nu rave Klaxons songs would be all jabbing glow sticks in your ribs and telling you to wake up. The Maps sound is a much more comfortable, sonic duvet.
It doesn't just tickle your ear, it envelopes you in gorgeousness, gets you drunk and tells you it loves you.
Maps aren't really a band. It's Northampton bedroom electro fiddler James Chapman. Unusually for an electronic project the album was written on a 16 track machine at home rather than using a computer. He'd spent years tinkering with the songs and arrangements without playing them to friends let alone playing them live.
Once the world became interested though he was lured out of the bedroom and assembled a band to tour with.
As is often the case the record he thinks he's making in his head isn't the one that actually comes out. He describes himself as a massive fan of Boards Of Canada and the back catalogue of the Warp label, but by sidestepping the computer it sounds like he's used analogue methods to try and make an electronic album.
So what actually emerges recalls the electropop side of Spiritualised and the swooning breathlessness of Loveless era My Bloody Valentine. There's also the grandeur of Doves or New Order at their most ceremonial and the occasional whiff of Moby. The hazy, fragile vocals are mixed low, but the overall feeling is of stateliness. These are songs carried in slow dignified procession...by elves.
The songs do all follow the same format though. Similar mid paced tempos, and as each new instrumental layer is added, you're never surprised by the actual sound or where it sits. So it's not revolutionary but it does sound warm, welcoming and just absolutely "right". Each song is cut from the same cloth, but you do end up with a wardrobe of good suits....And so easy to wear!
There's been a frugal approach to the lyrics to. The complete lyrics to Back And Forth are "The Sounds. They separated. Back and forth to you." More of a cryptic crossword clue than a lyric.
When You Leave is also on the shorter side of brief. "When you leave. I ain't coming. What you have comes to nothing"
He's not only a man of few words. He's often a man of the same few words. The line "We can create I say" from opening track So High So Low reappears on Liquid Sugar as "Now we can create".
"Need help to cut on through" from To The Sky resurfaces as "You can try to cut it down" on Lost My Soul. In his defence I'm sure Chapman would be the first to argue that the lyrics are just another layer in themselves and that even the vocals are there to suggest a feeling rather than being a burning statement that just has to get out or the singer will combust.
A sentiment eloquently summed up by James Brown in Hot Pants Road.
The album was co-produced by Valgeir Sigurdsson and mixed by Ken Thomas who have also worked with Bjork and Sigur Ros respectively. So no strangers to the strange then.
So Low So High contains a sample from, Theme From A Teenage Opera by Mark Wirtz. This was the was the b side to Keith West's frankly bonkers 60's single Grocer Jack.
So Low So High follows the "quiet LOUD quiet" formula of the Pixies, but with treated brass fanfares, while You Don't Know Her Name has a Pixies type bass line.
The majestic Elouise approaches the "quiet LOUD quiet" trick from a different angle, using discordant throbbing synths for the LOUD part. When they stop the song itself just snaps into focus with the equivalent of the quiet part. It's the sound itself that's doing the trick rather than the volume. It's a really good effect and the song's great too!
The album does sound so overwhelmingly lovely that dwelling on any negative or critical feelings I have about it just make me feel a bit ungrateful. Like the swinish brute from a romantic tale who just doesn't appreciate the beauty and charms of the silky tressed heroine.
But here's the thing..
..I think it's going to end up as dinner party music, on adverts and voiceover music. I think we'll all feel worse about Maps because of it. Which is a shame, and a bit unfair.
It doesn't just tickle your ear, it envelopes you in gorgeousness, gets you drunk and tells you it loves you.
Maps aren't really a band. It's Northampton bedroom electro fiddler James Chapman. Unusually for an electronic project the album was written on a 16 track machine at home rather than using a computer. He'd spent years tinkering with the songs and arrangements without playing them to friends let alone playing them live.
Once the world became interested though he was lured out of the bedroom and assembled a band to tour with.
As is often the case the record he thinks he's making in his head isn't the one that actually comes out. He describes himself as a massive fan of Boards Of Canada and the back catalogue of the Warp label, but by sidestepping the computer it sounds like he's used analogue methods to try and make an electronic album.
So what actually emerges recalls the electropop side of Spiritualised and the swooning breathlessness of Loveless era My Bloody Valentine. There's also the grandeur of Doves or New Order at their most ceremonial and the occasional whiff of Moby. The hazy, fragile vocals are mixed low, but the overall feeling is of stateliness. These are songs carried in slow dignified procession...by elves.
The songs do all follow the same format though. Similar mid paced tempos, and as each new instrumental layer is added, you're never surprised by the actual sound or where it sits. So it's not revolutionary but it does sound warm, welcoming and just absolutely "right". Each song is cut from the same cloth, but you do end up with a wardrobe of good suits....And so easy to wear!
There's been a frugal approach to the lyrics to. The complete lyrics to Back And Forth are "The Sounds. They separated. Back and forth to you." More of a cryptic crossword clue than a lyric.
When You Leave is also on the shorter side of brief. "When you leave. I ain't coming. What you have comes to nothing"
He's not only a man of few words. He's often a man of the same few words. The line "We can create I say" from opening track So High So Low reappears on Liquid Sugar as "Now we can create".
"Need help to cut on through" from To The Sky resurfaces as "You can try to cut it down" on Lost My Soul. In his defence I'm sure Chapman would be the first to argue that the lyrics are just another layer in themselves and that even the vocals are there to suggest a feeling rather than being a burning statement that just has to get out or the singer will combust.
A sentiment eloquently summed up by James Brown in Hot Pants Road.
The album was co-produced by Valgeir Sigurdsson and mixed by Ken Thomas who have also worked with Bjork and Sigur Ros respectively. So no strangers to the strange then.
So Low So High contains a sample from, Theme From A Teenage Opera by Mark Wirtz. This was the was the b side to Keith West's frankly bonkers 60's single Grocer Jack.
So Low So High follows the "quiet LOUD quiet" formula of the Pixies, but with treated brass fanfares, while You Don't Know Her Name has a Pixies type bass line.
The majestic Elouise approaches the "quiet LOUD quiet" trick from a different angle, using discordant throbbing synths for the LOUD part. When they stop the song itself just snaps into focus with the equivalent of the quiet part. It's the sound itself that's doing the trick rather than the volume. It's a really good effect and the song's great too!
The album does sound so overwhelmingly lovely that dwelling on any negative or critical feelings I have about it just make me feel a bit ungrateful. Like the swinish brute from a romantic tale who just doesn't appreciate the beauty and charms of the silky tressed heroine.
But here's the thing..
..I think it's going to end up as dinner party music, on adverts and voiceover music. I think we'll all feel worse about Maps because of it. Which is a shame, and a bit unfair.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Undertones
Nostalgia just keeps getting better and better.
With the Punk Rock nostalgia circuit you can see bands that you may not have seen at the time and bands who've spent the intervening years learning how to play.
You can see bands who've realised that maybe that 3rd album that they insisted on playing in it's excruciating entirety the last time you saw them was in actual fact, a waste of studio time, gig time and your time. So this time round they'll just play the good stuff.
It does get complicated though because there are bands you don't want to see because they were ropey old toss 30 years ago and now they're just ageing ropey old toss. Then there are bands who you loved so much that you don't want to run the risk of seeing them again and having the memory spoilt. Decisions decisions.
The Undertones were my favourite band for years, so any reunion runs the risk of crushing disappointment. It could be like finding your first love has had a sex change and your place of birth is marked by a skip rather than a commemorative plaque.
So what about the Undertones? On the face of it doesn't sound promising, as they've reformed without their distinctive, original singer, Feargal Sharkey. They split in ‘83, but have been playing sporadically since 1999, with new singer Paul McLoone.
His vocals have a bit of the Sharkey quavery quality and the rest of the band are still belting out punchy pop punk as if their lives depended on it.... or at least because they're having so much fun that they don't want to stop. And that's the key to it really.
Many people go to a reunion gig as a celebration of the band, or of a period of their own lives. Inevitably it's the bands earliest songs that matter most to the audience and it's the bands attitude to the knowledge that in the public eye (even if not in their own heads) they've done their best work that makes the difference.
If a band still look like they've got a genuine excitement about playing live, then it's not just nostalgia. …It's a great gig with songs you like.
I saw them at the 3 years ago at the Academy. They were excellent and I probably enjoyed the gig more than any of the times I'd seen them first time round. (Review here)
Their debut single "Teenage Kicks" was such a pivotal pop moment and their first 2 albums delivered more unstoppable Pop thrills, Ramones and romance.
With "Positive Touch" and the final album "Sin Of Pride" they attempted to broaden their sound and musical influences...while actually leading to a narrower audience and increasing tensions between the rest of the band and Sharkey. They always delivered as a live band though. And still do.
"Get What You Need" was released in 2003 and is a zesty romp through a bunch of songs that have some of the same fizz and crackle of the first 2 albums. There are demos for material for the forthcoming album Dig Yourself Deep at http://www.myspace.com/theundertonesmyspace
The live show is based round all the songs you want to hear, ie the singles, the first 2 albums and a smattering of songs from the new one that sound like it could have been on the old one. Expect joyous enthusiasm from both band and audience.
With the Punk Rock nostalgia circuit you can see bands that you may not have seen at the time and bands who've spent the intervening years learning how to play.
You can see bands who've realised that maybe that 3rd album that they insisted on playing in it's excruciating entirety the last time you saw them was in actual fact, a waste of studio time, gig time and your time. So this time round they'll just play the good stuff.
It does get complicated though because there are bands you don't want to see because they were ropey old toss 30 years ago and now they're just ageing ropey old toss. Then there are bands who you loved so much that you don't want to run the risk of seeing them again and having the memory spoilt. Decisions decisions.
The Undertones were my favourite band for years, so any reunion runs the risk of crushing disappointment. It could be like finding your first love has had a sex change and your place of birth is marked by a skip rather than a commemorative plaque.
So what about the Undertones? On the face of it doesn't sound promising, as they've reformed without their distinctive, original singer, Feargal Sharkey. They split in ‘83, but have been playing sporadically since 1999, with new singer Paul McLoone.
His vocals have a bit of the Sharkey quavery quality and the rest of the band are still belting out punchy pop punk as if their lives depended on it.... or at least because they're having so much fun that they don't want to stop. And that's the key to it really.
Many people go to a reunion gig as a celebration of the band, or of a period of their own lives. Inevitably it's the bands earliest songs that matter most to the audience and it's the bands attitude to the knowledge that in the public eye (even if not in their own heads) they've done their best work that makes the difference.
If a band still look like they've got a genuine excitement about playing live, then it's not just nostalgia. …It's a great gig with songs you like.
I saw them at the 3 years ago at the Academy. They were excellent and I probably enjoyed the gig more than any of the times I'd seen them first time round. (Review here)
Their debut single "Teenage Kicks" was such a pivotal pop moment and their first 2 albums delivered more unstoppable Pop thrills, Ramones and romance.
With "Positive Touch" and the final album "Sin Of Pride" they attempted to broaden their sound and musical influences...while actually leading to a narrower audience and increasing tensions between the rest of the band and Sharkey. They always delivered as a live band though. And still do.
"Get What You Need" was released in 2003 and is a zesty romp through a bunch of songs that have some of the same fizz and crackle of the first 2 albums. There are demos for material for the forthcoming album Dig Yourself Deep at http://www.myspace.com/theundertonesmyspace
The live show is based round all the songs you want to hear, ie the singles, the first 2 albums and a smattering of songs from the new one that sound like it could have been on the old one. Expect joyous enthusiasm from both band and audience.
Polyphonic Spree
I've always liked big bands and I've never feared the gimmick. Polyphonic Spree score on all counts.
They've recently slimmed down to a compact 24 members (from a stage busting 28) including orchestra and choir. They had tap dancers on stage at their recent Lollaplooza appearance in Chicago.
They've got husband and wife bandleaders in Tim DeLaughter and Julie Doyle (although statistically speaking, with all those people involved, you're bound to find you are married to at least one of them).
More gimmicks? Oooh yes please. How about robes?
And then just in case the robes were overshadowing the band they've replaced them....with tunics. Is this a band or a cult? Would Sir care for another tiny piece of gimmick? Ok cut me a large slice.
How about 3 albums worth of bouncily scary "Happy". That's arm waving, stranger hugging, life affirming. A laughing Labrador of positivity and happiness. None of your bedsit Indie gloom in the Spree camp.
Tim DeLaughter formed the band in 2000 as a positive response to the breakup of his former band Tripping Daisy and death of his bandmate Wes Berggren.
There are other big bands around of course. I'm From Barcelona have the numbers, Arcade Fire have that same weird cult feel and Broken Social Scene have that collective arrangement, dipping in and out of a pool of musicians.
They call themselves a choral symphonic Pop band but in terms of the sound, it's a bonkers Flaming Lips or Mercury Rev, cooked up with ELO, musicals like Godspell or Hair and The Beatles brass fanfares from the songs like Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (which funnily enough Spree have covered)....and then the whole rich pudding is over-egged some more.
Bring on the choirs, wheel on the harp and don't be frugal with the flugal horn.
The first album The Beginning Stages came out in 2002, while the lusher sounding Together We Are Heavy was released in 2004. They've even managed to add a gimmick to the song titles.
The first track on the first album is called Section 1 (Have a Day/Celebratory) continuing up to it's final track Section 10 (A Long day). While the first track on the second album is Section 11 (A long day Continues). The last track on the second album is Section 20 (Together We're Heavy) while the first track on the third album is polyphonic Section 21 (Together We're Heavy).
David Bowie was an early fan, and put them on at the Meltdown festival he compiled in 2002.
The Bowie connection becomes deeper with the appearance of Bowie's legendary pianist (careful how you read that!) on The Spree's new album The Fragile Army.
Mike Garson played the certifiable piano solo on the title track of Bowie's 70's classic Aladdin Sane, with it's a jaw dropping pop moment, where Glam Rock met Jazz. It's undoubtedly the strangest piano part on a Pop record....and it's the kind of thing that causes non Jazz fans to wonder. "Aren't they just making it up as they go along?"
On the video for current single Running Away the band are performing in front of a banner that reads "Hope" and the video itself is composed of thousands of still photos rather than moving video image.
It's classic Polyphonic Spree, joyous, with dippy lyrics. "I'm projecting and reflecting desire. For you to come into my life."
With it's pop rush and the emphasis of the opening syllable, it reminds me of Blondie's Dreamin' and it's "When I met you in the restaurant" line.
But obviously with extra choral swing, harps, cellos, a rousing gear change up for the final straight (this band only do up!) and a breakdown at the end where you could almost be getting ready to do The Timewarp.
Oh yes Musicals are never far away from The Spree.
The opening to Guaranteed Nightlife does sound like it should have come straight from a musical, you can almost hear the sound of hands being raised to the skies to set free the lyrics "Remember the night you said you had a vision of all of these wonderful feelings going by".
Then it takes an alarming turn as the song picks up and all I can think of is Patsy Gallant's 1977 hit New York to LA. I say it's alarming....but I do find myself strangely drawn back to Guaranteed Nightlife.
Get Up And Go has a catchy stop start drum pattern and I was especially pleased to see that they couldn't resist accompanying the line "We're marching to the left and right" with the sound of marching feet. The obvious can be good and the obvious can be fun!
One of the key things to the sound of both Arcade Fire and The Polyphonic Spree is the drums. The bands may approach the other instruments differently but for both, bands the drums are more important for driving the music forward than may at first appear.
And it is surprising given that the drums are just one instrument in many. Especially as both bands have so much going on in terms of sounds and layering...or just sheer numbers of people involved.
With the Arcade Fire the drums and vocals are shifting round the verses and choruses. While the other instruments are playing drones, the drums keep it moving. With the Polyphonic Spree, the vocals and other instruments are definitely providing melody but the drums are still really motoring.
The best track on the album though is The Championship. It's got bells and an opening "Wooh!" which as might as well say "C'mon kids lets do the show right here". Well if it was a Musical it would do.....but being the positively Polyphonic Spree, the key line is actually "If we try, somehow we will keep it alive".
Now this part of the song and it's swirling yet stately backing inhabits that strange and unexplored world somewhere between Prince and The Waterboys. I could always hear echoes of the pervy purple imp's When Doves Cry in the overblown Whole of the Moon.
The song really takes off with more piano hammering, a coronation's worth of trumpet fanfares and a low flying harp. And plenty of singing too!
To complete the Bowie links it actually sounds like Brian Eno circa Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy. Which is not just a good thing, it's one of the best things!
Just how many of the band are going to fit in the Glee Club though?
They've recently slimmed down to a compact 24 members (from a stage busting 28) including orchestra and choir. They had tap dancers on stage at their recent Lollaplooza appearance in Chicago.
They've got husband and wife bandleaders in Tim DeLaughter and Julie Doyle (although statistically speaking, with all those people involved, you're bound to find you are married to at least one of them).
More gimmicks? Oooh yes please. How about robes?
And then just in case the robes were overshadowing the band they've replaced them....with tunics. Is this a band or a cult? Would Sir care for another tiny piece of gimmick? Ok cut me a large slice.
How about 3 albums worth of bouncily scary "Happy". That's arm waving, stranger hugging, life affirming. A laughing Labrador of positivity and happiness. None of your bedsit Indie gloom in the Spree camp.
Tim DeLaughter formed the band in 2000 as a positive response to the breakup of his former band Tripping Daisy and death of his bandmate Wes Berggren.
There are other big bands around of course. I'm From Barcelona have the numbers, Arcade Fire have that same weird cult feel and Broken Social Scene have that collective arrangement, dipping in and out of a pool of musicians.
They call themselves a choral symphonic Pop band but in terms of the sound, it's a bonkers Flaming Lips or Mercury Rev, cooked up with ELO, musicals like Godspell or Hair and The Beatles brass fanfares from the songs like Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (which funnily enough Spree have covered)....and then the whole rich pudding is over-egged some more.
Bring on the choirs, wheel on the harp and don't be frugal with the flugal horn.
The first album The Beginning Stages came out in 2002, while the lusher sounding Together We Are Heavy was released in 2004. They've even managed to add a gimmick to the song titles.
The first track on the first album is called Section 1 (Have a Day/Celebratory) continuing up to it's final track Section 10 (A Long day). While the first track on the second album is Section 11 (A long day Continues). The last track on the second album is Section 20 (Together We're Heavy) while the first track on the third album is polyphonic Section 21 (Together We're Heavy).
David Bowie was an early fan, and put them on at the Meltdown festival he compiled in 2002.
The Bowie connection becomes deeper with the appearance of Bowie's legendary pianist (careful how you read that!) on The Spree's new album The Fragile Army.
Mike Garson played the certifiable piano solo on the title track of Bowie's 70's classic Aladdin Sane, with it's a jaw dropping pop moment, where Glam Rock met Jazz. It's undoubtedly the strangest piano part on a Pop record....and it's the kind of thing that causes non Jazz fans to wonder. "Aren't they just making it up as they go along?"
On the video for current single Running Away the band are performing in front of a banner that reads "Hope" and the video itself is composed of thousands of still photos rather than moving video image.
It's classic Polyphonic Spree, joyous, with dippy lyrics. "I'm projecting and reflecting desire. For you to come into my life."
With it's pop rush and the emphasis of the opening syllable, it reminds me of Blondie's Dreamin' and it's "When I met you in the restaurant" line.
But obviously with extra choral swing, harps, cellos, a rousing gear change up for the final straight (this band only do up!) and a breakdown at the end where you could almost be getting ready to do The Timewarp.
Oh yes Musicals are never far away from The Spree.
The opening to Guaranteed Nightlife does sound like it should have come straight from a musical, you can almost hear the sound of hands being raised to the skies to set free the lyrics "Remember the night you said you had a vision of all of these wonderful feelings going by".
Then it takes an alarming turn as the song picks up and all I can think of is Patsy Gallant's 1977 hit New York to LA. I say it's alarming....but I do find myself strangely drawn back to Guaranteed Nightlife.
Get Up And Go has a catchy stop start drum pattern and I was especially pleased to see that they couldn't resist accompanying the line "We're marching to the left and right" with the sound of marching feet. The obvious can be good and the obvious can be fun!
One of the key things to the sound of both Arcade Fire and The Polyphonic Spree is the drums. The bands may approach the other instruments differently but for both, bands the drums are more important for driving the music forward than may at first appear.
And it is surprising given that the drums are just one instrument in many. Especially as both bands have so much going on in terms of sounds and layering...or just sheer numbers of people involved.
With the Arcade Fire the drums and vocals are shifting round the verses and choruses. While the other instruments are playing drones, the drums keep it moving. With the Polyphonic Spree, the vocals and other instruments are definitely providing melody but the drums are still really motoring.
The best track on the album though is The Championship. It's got bells and an opening "Wooh!" which as might as well say "C'mon kids lets do the show right here". Well if it was a Musical it would do.....but being the positively Polyphonic Spree, the key line is actually "If we try, somehow we will keep it alive".
Now this part of the song and it's swirling yet stately backing inhabits that strange and unexplored world somewhere between Prince and The Waterboys. I could always hear echoes of the pervy purple imp's When Doves Cry in the overblown Whole of the Moon.
The song really takes off with more piano hammering, a coronation's worth of trumpet fanfares and a low flying harp. And plenty of singing too!
To complete the Bowie links it actually sounds like Brian Eno circa Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy. Which is not just a good thing, it's one of the best things!
Just how many of the band are going to fit in the Glee Club though?
Wilco
After an evening of fine dining, post cheeseboard but pre brandy and cigars the talk often turns to things Alt Country and Americana.The name of Wilco will come up. They formed from the ashes of Uncle Tupelo who pretty much invented the whole Alt Country genre by taking as much from the Minutemen as they did from Hank Williams.
Over the course of six very different albums frontman Jeff Tweedy has navigated a course through Country Rock and electronics, shed band members with the regularity (if not the sheer numbers) of The Fall and after a classic David and Goliath tussle with their record company become one of the first established bands to actively embrace the internet.
They've recorded 2 albums of Woody Guthrie songs with Billy Bragg released as Mermaid Avenue" Vols 1 and 2.
The current line up have come closer than anyone else I can think of to capturing that searing, unflashy virtuoso guitar style of Tom Verlaine and Television. It's mixed in with Beatles and Country moves though, and some really unflustered, confident playing.
The definitive Wilco album was always Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" from 2002.
The first few seconds of opening track I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" gives a clue to what they're trying to do.
It actually sounds like a roomful of electronics has just been switched on.The hums and bleeps circle round each other as the drums and keyboards shuffle in before snapping into focus with the opening line "I'm an American aquarium drinker. I assassin down the avenue."I'm still baffled after 7 minutes of it, but the ghost of Eels is definitely present.
It's in the half spoken /sung delivery and the dislocation in Tweedy's voice.
No confusion with next track Kamera" though.It's just a terrific, melodic pop song that could work in any style. You could speed it up and fuzzify it for Weezer/Blink 182 powerpop, play it Country style or like Simon and Garfunkel.How clever is that!
And the reason that's possible is that it started off as really good song.Which is also a clever thing to be able to do.
I like the lyric "Phone my family.Tell them I'm lost on the sidewalk. No it's not Ok."Now you can look for genius in different places (personally I find it easier to do my research in pop music than quantum physics) but I do really like the way Tweedy squeezes the line "No it's not Ok" into the melody and makes the phrase itself sound like pop genius.
What Wilco did with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" was to really play with the sounds.One minute the drums sound natural and untreated, the next there's a fuzzy edge to them, guitar lines merge into keyboards.
It's tricksy but for the most part it's not getting in the way of the songs themselves.
Heavy Metal Drummer" has the great opening line "I sincerely miss those heavy metal bands we used to see on the landing in the sun....I miss the innocence I've known, playing Kiss covers beautiful and stoned."
It's another great mixture of carefully crafted pop, warm and woody, mixed with the artificial.Shuffling drums and the Georgio Moroder chug. The opening line "I sincerely wish" is either going to entrance or infuriate you. Like Morrissey or Marmite.
Radio Cure" has the desolate feel of the 3rd big Star album, while War On War" is ghostly synth pop.
Pot Kettle Black" is the Country Pop relative of The Cure's Inbetween Days", with electric piano, turning into acoustic guitar strummer time before the cheap cheese synthesiser ending that sounds a bit like Telstar. Which sells it to me!
The killer track though is I'm The Man Who Loves You".
They manage to squeeze so many different influences and changes into the song, without actually detracting from the song itself. From a sliding, guitar intro, it takes in Beatles/Scritti Politti melody, a fuzzy Mr Soul guitar mutates into brass, throws in a funk chord sequence, some "Whoo Whoo" backing vocals and then ends it with a Tom Verlaine guitar pile up.
And of course the song title itself sounds like Pop songs should.Broken hearted and braggadocios.There's a live version at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHnEMdXN_FU&mode=related&search =
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" may be revered now, but at the time their label Reprise had no confidence in it.As part of the shake out when Time and Warners merged, Wilco left the label and instead started streaming the album from their own website until they signed to Nonesuch.....which is ironically a Warners subsidiary.
The process of making the album was legendarily fraught and saw the departure of multi instrumentalist Jay Bennett. The albums follow up A Ghost Is Born" saw the departure of Leroy Bach and Tweedy going into rehab for painkiller addiction.
With Sky Blue Sky" released earlier this year (but streamed though the band's site before it's official release) the emphasis is squarely on the songs rather than the production values.
You Are My Face" has hints of Leonard Cohen or Paul Simon type phrasing.The vocals on Side With Seeds" have some of that Steely Dan smooth yelp quality, while What Light" is Dylanesque.
The key track though is "Impossible Germany".
Even though Tweedy has spoken in recent interviews about feeling that this time round he wanted to make the lyrics more direct, he has still managed to use the phrase "Impossible Germany Unlikely Japan".
It's a beautiful song though, full of longing and very long.The band stretch out quite literally, utilising lots of Television moves and then moving onto the Thin Lizzy trick of both guitars playing the same line.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97IT0-EDTtw
Wilco mix the usual musical influences with the experimental, abstract lyrics with the traditional Country concerns of drinking and gambling, but it's the incendiary guitar playing that's really got my interest at the moment. Live, I think it'll be a treat.
Over the course of six very different albums frontman Jeff Tweedy has navigated a course through Country Rock and electronics, shed band members with the regularity (if not the sheer numbers) of The Fall and after a classic David and Goliath tussle with their record company become one of the first established bands to actively embrace the internet.
They've recorded 2 albums of Woody Guthrie songs with Billy Bragg released as Mermaid Avenue" Vols 1 and 2.
The current line up have come closer than anyone else I can think of to capturing that searing, unflashy virtuoso guitar style of Tom Verlaine and Television. It's mixed in with Beatles and Country moves though, and some really unflustered, confident playing.
The definitive Wilco album was always Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" from 2002.
The first few seconds of opening track I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" gives a clue to what they're trying to do.
It actually sounds like a roomful of electronics has just been switched on.The hums and bleeps circle round each other as the drums and keyboards shuffle in before snapping into focus with the opening line "I'm an American aquarium drinker. I assassin down the avenue."I'm still baffled after 7 minutes of it, but the ghost of Eels is definitely present.
It's in the half spoken /sung delivery and the dislocation in Tweedy's voice.
No confusion with next track Kamera" though.It's just a terrific, melodic pop song that could work in any style. You could speed it up and fuzzify it for Weezer/Blink 182 powerpop, play it Country style or like Simon and Garfunkel.How clever is that!
And the reason that's possible is that it started off as really good song.Which is also a clever thing to be able to do.
I like the lyric "Phone my family.Tell them I'm lost on the sidewalk. No it's not Ok."Now you can look for genius in different places (personally I find it easier to do my research in pop music than quantum physics) but I do really like the way Tweedy squeezes the line "No it's not Ok" into the melody and makes the phrase itself sound like pop genius.
What Wilco did with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" was to really play with the sounds.One minute the drums sound natural and untreated, the next there's a fuzzy edge to them, guitar lines merge into keyboards.
It's tricksy but for the most part it's not getting in the way of the songs themselves.
Heavy Metal Drummer" has the great opening line "I sincerely miss those heavy metal bands we used to see on the landing in the sun....I miss the innocence I've known, playing Kiss covers beautiful and stoned."
It's another great mixture of carefully crafted pop, warm and woody, mixed with the artificial.Shuffling drums and the Georgio Moroder chug. The opening line "I sincerely wish" is either going to entrance or infuriate you. Like Morrissey or Marmite.
Radio Cure" has the desolate feel of the 3rd big Star album, while War On War" is ghostly synth pop.
Pot Kettle Black" is the Country Pop relative of The Cure's Inbetween Days", with electric piano, turning into acoustic guitar strummer time before the cheap cheese synthesiser ending that sounds a bit like Telstar. Which sells it to me!
The killer track though is I'm The Man Who Loves You".
They manage to squeeze so many different influences and changes into the song, without actually detracting from the song itself. From a sliding, guitar intro, it takes in Beatles/Scritti Politti melody, a fuzzy Mr Soul guitar mutates into brass, throws in a funk chord sequence, some "Whoo Whoo" backing vocals and then ends it with a Tom Verlaine guitar pile up.
And of course the song title itself sounds like Pop songs should.Broken hearted and braggadocios.There's a live version at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHnEMdXN_FU&mode=related&search =
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" may be revered now, but at the time their label Reprise had no confidence in it.As part of the shake out when Time and Warners merged, Wilco left the label and instead started streaming the album from their own website until they signed to Nonesuch.....which is ironically a Warners subsidiary.
The process of making the album was legendarily fraught and saw the departure of multi instrumentalist Jay Bennett. The albums follow up A Ghost Is Born" saw the departure of Leroy Bach and Tweedy going into rehab for painkiller addiction.
With Sky Blue Sky" released earlier this year (but streamed though the band's site before it's official release) the emphasis is squarely on the songs rather than the production values.
You Are My Face" has hints of Leonard Cohen or Paul Simon type phrasing.The vocals on Side With Seeds" have some of that Steely Dan smooth yelp quality, while What Light" is Dylanesque.
The key track though is "Impossible Germany".
Even though Tweedy has spoken in recent interviews about feeling that this time round he wanted to make the lyrics more direct, he has still managed to use the phrase "Impossible Germany Unlikely Japan".
It's a beautiful song though, full of longing and very long.The band stretch out quite literally, utilising lots of Television moves and then moving onto the Thin Lizzy trick of both guitars playing the same line.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97IT0-EDTtw
Wilco mix the usual musical influences with the experimental, abstract lyrics with the traditional Country concerns of drinking and gambling, but it's the incendiary guitar playing that's really got my interest at the moment. Live, I think it'll be a treat.
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