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.
Friday, December 14, 2007
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.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=4263957
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.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=4263957
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.
Monday, August 06, 2007
Broken Family Band
Any one for "14 tracks of spite, bitterness and empty-hearted loathing"? That’s how The Broken Family band describe their new album "Hello Love."
Fortunately there’s a lot more to the band and their music than their tongue in cheek critique implies.
What you get is a band from Cambridge using Alt Country and Folk tricks mixed with American guitar bands and clever lyrics that understand the rules of Pop. They’re working in different fields but, like The Beta Band, you also get a sense that the unexpected is just around the corner.
They’ve also managed to do this while still holding down day jobs, working tours around annual leave. In a really entertaining piece in the Guardian recently singer Steven Adams made an excellent case for it.
He’d played in struggling bands for years, spending the days watching TV in his pants, before concluding "It's pretty easy to be in a band and have a job.
"You go to work in the daytime and you play shows in the evenings and on weekends. If we all agreed to take a pay cut (from our existing salaries) and to "do" the Broken Family Band full time for a year, we would require a one-off tax-free payment of £250,000. That's twenty-five grand each, per year, for two years (one year to "do" the band, one year to sit on our arses moaning about how we could have made it, and £50,000 for the pot). Anyone want to offer that? We have assumed not, so doing it this way makes sense to us. Two of our number have mortgages, one has a family to support, and one has an expensive trainer habit. So we've kept our jobs"
Giving up the day job or signing off is one of the foundations of the Rock n Roll world but think of the possibilities if you had to keep your old job, even after you’d cracked it as Rock ‘n’ Roll fabulous.
There’s the very real risk of being taught by Sting, being sold an ice cream by The Stranglers Jet Black or getting your hair cut by Kevin Rowland or Charlie Harper. Keanu Reeves would have to struggle on as a struggling actor.
And what about Bez? Forever cursed to wander the twilight between the worlds of work and Rock n Roll as one of the maraca shaking Undead.
Broken Family Band's current album "Hello Love" opens with "Leaps". It’s a saucy coupling of The Violent Femmes and Magic Numbers. It could be the most blatant celebration of afternoon delight since....Afternoon Delight.
"I love the way that it hides and it leaps out at you and it leaps out at me in the afternoon". The song fades out on a fuzz of discordant guitar, just before falling asleep with the afternoons intended tasks still undone.
The single "Love Your Man Love Your Woman" manages to get that deep ringing sound, like the bom bom bom rhythm of Mr Blue Sky, with the guitar, bass and drums hammering out the same note.
It’s a Grinderman type bastard blues howl and as Steve Adams sings "You need trees and flowers and someone to hold you when you want to be held" his vocals make the change, but the relentless (Nick) Caveman hammering behind him doesn’t follow the progression.
Eventually they do and use up those final 2 chords. Oooh, but they make you wait. It’s primitive and clever and there’s a scouring guitar solo that could contribute to coastal erosion.
Steven Adams vocals have a reedy Gram Parsons twang (obviously that’s a good thing) on "So Many Lovers" while on "Don’t Change Your Mind" he offers practical advice "You can’t always sleep naked knowing you have to run for the bathroom."
Well you’ve either got to wear PJ’s or else it’s cup and run. Might be one for the message boards.
My favourite track though is the wistful and jauntily sour "Give And Take" - "I’m sure she’s found a person/ to give her some attention/ and if I ever do meet him/there are things that I should mention/She will take your heart and crush it/and maybe you two should discuss it".
There’s an odd rhythm to the words but he fits the words round the melody so they sound absolutely right. With the female backing vocals from Jen Maro and the general guitar thrummery it feels like Leonard Cohen’s "The Partisan" meets Bill Callahan. It ends with a really effective reverbed trumpet part.
Closing track "Seven Sisters" goes from Will Oldham fragile hesitancy to a punkathon ending complete with that Johnny Greenwood (from Radiohead) style trick of squeezing needling, mosquito sounds from his guitar and Adams repeated distorted "Hello Love" bellowed refrain.
For a band whose original intention was to play a few gigs at their local and make an album they’re managed to squeeze out four full length albums and a 2 mini albums since 2002 including the impeccably titled "The King Will Build A Disco."
Their website is a treat www.brokenfamilyband.com because it actually captures something of the spirit of the band, sarky and funny and with an awareness of how they fit in (or don’t).
Triumphant gigs are described as "Smashed it" and I’m sorry to have missed two of their gigs in 2002.
"We were inappropriate but ultimately victorious at St. Luke's Primary School PTA Barbeque. It was great. Brian Penny's 59th birthday party was excellent, especially the hot pies, campsite, disco, bar area and eyebrows. Our happy future as a function band is secure"
Fortunately there’s a lot more to the band and their music than their tongue in cheek critique implies.
What you get is a band from Cambridge using Alt Country and Folk tricks mixed with American guitar bands and clever lyrics that understand the rules of Pop. They’re working in different fields but, like The Beta Band, you also get a sense that the unexpected is just around the corner.
They’ve also managed to do this while still holding down day jobs, working tours around annual leave. In a really entertaining piece in the Guardian recently singer Steven Adams made an excellent case for it.
He’d played in struggling bands for years, spending the days watching TV in his pants, before concluding "It's pretty easy to be in a band and have a job.
"You go to work in the daytime and you play shows in the evenings and on weekends. If we all agreed to take a pay cut (from our existing salaries) and to "do" the Broken Family Band full time for a year, we would require a one-off tax-free payment of £250,000. That's twenty-five grand each, per year, for two years (one year to "do" the band, one year to sit on our arses moaning about how we could have made it, and £50,000 for the pot). Anyone want to offer that? We have assumed not, so doing it this way makes sense to us. Two of our number have mortgages, one has a family to support, and one has an expensive trainer habit. So we've kept our jobs"
Giving up the day job or signing off is one of the foundations of the Rock n Roll world but think of the possibilities if you had to keep your old job, even after you’d cracked it as Rock ‘n’ Roll fabulous.
There’s the very real risk of being taught by Sting, being sold an ice cream by The Stranglers Jet Black or getting your hair cut by Kevin Rowland or Charlie Harper. Keanu Reeves would have to struggle on as a struggling actor.
And what about Bez? Forever cursed to wander the twilight between the worlds of work and Rock n Roll as one of the maraca shaking Undead.
Broken Family Band's current album "Hello Love" opens with "Leaps". It’s a saucy coupling of The Violent Femmes and Magic Numbers. It could be the most blatant celebration of afternoon delight since....Afternoon Delight.
"I love the way that it hides and it leaps out at you and it leaps out at me in the afternoon". The song fades out on a fuzz of discordant guitar, just before falling asleep with the afternoons intended tasks still undone.
The single "Love Your Man Love Your Woman" manages to get that deep ringing sound, like the bom bom bom rhythm of Mr Blue Sky, with the guitar, bass and drums hammering out the same note.
It’s a Grinderman type bastard blues howl and as Steve Adams sings "You need trees and flowers and someone to hold you when you want to be held" his vocals make the change, but the relentless (Nick) Caveman hammering behind him doesn’t follow the progression.
Eventually they do and use up those final 2 chords. Oooh, but they make you wait. It’s primitive and clever and there’s a scouring guitar solo that could contribute to coastal erosion.
Steven Adams vocals have a reedy Gram Parsons twang (obviously that’s a good thing) on "So Many Lovers" while on "Don’t Change Your Mind" he offers practical advice "You can’t always sleep naked knowing you have to run for the bathroom."
Well you’ve either got to wear PJ’s or else it’s cup and run. Might be one for the message boards.
My favourite track though is the wistful and jauntily sour "Give And Take" - "I’m sure she’s found a person/ to give her some attention/ and if I ever do meet him/there are things that I should mention/She will take your heart and crush it/and maybe you two should discuss it".
There’s an odd rhythm to the words but he fits the words round the melody so they sound absolutely right. With the female backing vocals from Jen Maro and the general guitar thrummery it feels like Leonard Cohen’s "The Partisan" meets Bill Callahan. It ends with a really effective reverbed trumpet part.
Closing track "Seven Sisters" goes from Will Oldham fragile hesitancy to a punkathon ending complete with that Johnny Greenwood (from Radiohead) style trick of squeezing needling, mosquito sounds from his guitar and Adams repeated distorted "Hello Love" bellowed refrain.
For a band whose original intention was to play a few gigs at their local and make an album they’re managed to squeeze out four full length albums and a 2 mini albums since 2002 including the impeccably titled "The King Will Build A Disco."
Their website is a treat www.brokenfamilyband.com because it actually captures something of the spirit of the band, sarky and funny and with an awareness of how they fit in (or don’t).
Triumphant gigs are described as "Smashed it" and I’m sorry to have missed two of their gigs in 2002.
"We were inappropriate but ultimately victorious at St. Luke's Primary School PTA Barbeque. It was great. Brian Penny's 59th birthday party was excellent, especially the hot pies, campsite, disco, bar area and eyebrows. Our happy future as a function band is secure"
Friday, August 03, 2007
Kaiser Chiefs
You can go a long way with a great song title or a nifty lyric and even further if the quality of the musical goods backs it up. Kaiser Chiefs have surfed on waves of goodwill partly due to the worth of their words.
I would have liked "I Predict A Riot" for it's title alone and there are probably Academics already researching the magnificence of new album title "Yours Truly Angry Mob."
Even at the time, their rise to Indie Stadium status did seem rapid.
The phrase "I Predict A Riot" had started to crop up as e mail sign offs and in knowing conversations and then at a 5 year old's birthday party in 2005 Punk Rock Builder Dad leaned over to me to recommend the just released debut album "Employment" (A note to Record Company execs. Forget MTV…Children's birthday parties is the way to do it.)
And the rest of course is history; Brit Award scooping, Glastonbury triumphing, "Ruby" at number 1, being covered by Lilly Allen and Girls Aloud, scooting off to America with the usual mutterings of "Could this be the British band to crack America?"
They've also had the benefit of being called "A bad Blur" by Liam Gallagher.
Actually that's not unusual as poor Liam is like the dazed Japanese soldier who's just staggered out of the jungle unable to accept that the Blur/Oasis war is over. He sees Blur in anything from the postman to the toaster.
There is a thick seam of Brit Pop running through their music but it's as much XTC as Blur. Stephen Street produced both of the Kaiser's albums, and even if he wasn't the architect of Britpop, he was certainly the builders merchant, with his Blur and Morrissey production jobs.
The key to the Kaiser Chiefs current success though is their lack of success in their previous incarnation Parva. They've realised this is the last chance of a bite at the pop pie, so they're willing to put the work in, and elbow their way to the front of the queue.
When they reconvened as the Kaiser Chiefs in 2003, they ditched all the old material and purposefully went all out for entertainment and big catchy choruses.
And these choruses are clearly signposted with plenty of spaces for oooohh aaahhhhhhGGGH! (Or other appropriate vocal signage).
You know the chorus is on it's way and you know you'll probably get flattened.
Never mind the Kaiser Chiefs, some of these choruses charge over the hills like the combined forces of Chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, relentless and irresistible. Bad news for Custer. Good news for the customer.
There are some clever words and some of them may well feature in a song like Na Na Na Na Naa, but the simplicity of the chorus means you can save mental energy for dancing and singing along. Commercial genius!
The other trick they use on tracks like I Predict A Riot or current single Everything Is Average Nowadays is to have long single note guitar lines; picking out the melody lines like 6 string rumble strips...to make absolutely sure your attention doesn't wander.
Ricky Wilson described his stage moves as being like a “Lithe Indie Ninja”. His stage persona of big waves, pogoing and crowd surfing where he likes to “Get out in the audience and see what they smell like” is plenty entertaining.
Especially from an Eddie Izzard look-alike in pub lunch office worker short sleeve shirt and tie combo.
The rhythm section have also done a trolley dash round the charisma department....witness big haired bassist Simon Rix and drummer Nick Hodgson.
Hodgson sings “Boxing Champ” from the second album which is a deliberately slight, piano and vocal affair with the excellent line “You were a boxing champ and I was a weakling. You didn't give me a chance, you gave me a beating.”
It's all a bit camp...and even better for the fact that Hodgson looks like the singer from Showaddywaddy who (warning....the following information is pub based research!) would only ever allow himself to be photographed sideways on....to let everyone see the full profile of the pipe in his drainpipes.
First album “Employment” has quite a range of styles from the powerhouse pogo chorus of “Oh My God” and the line “I've seen more blood than a back street dentist” to “You Can Have It All” which is pastoral XTC meets Duran Duran synths.
“Saturday Night” has the choice line “We are birds of a feather and you can be the fat one.” Musically it's Pop Scene era Blur and the revving motorcycle is apparently Graham Coxon's.
The second album “Yours Truly Angry Mob” released earlier this year, is the better of the two.
The intro to “Ruby” is one of the best of the year. It's a statement of intent. You just know this song is going somewhere and you're going to like it.
“The Angry Mob” starts off as “Modern Life Is Rubbish” era Blur meeting the overhanging guitars of “The Queen Is Dead” by The Smiths and changes gear halfway through for the coda “We are the angry mob, we like who we like, we hate who we hate”
There's also a bit of a Julian Cope feel to tracks like “I Can Do It Without You (But It Wouldn't Be Very Good)” and “Love's Not A Competition (But I'm Winning)”. Nice bracket work Ricky! I do like his line in "My Kind Of Guy" - "You're My Kind Of Guy Cos I Like Your Style And You Sound As Horrible As Me"
The best line of all though crops up on the albums best song. “Highroyds” is another of Wilson's despatches from the frontline of the teenage sidelines. Drinking and not getting into either clubs or girls. “I got a text from my ex. She wants to know when we're in London next” is Bolanesque genius
At their Glastonbury appearance 2 years ago they had the air of a band who knew their time had come. This year, Wilson's Indie Stadium theatrics and gestures didn't need balancing with irony. Their time was coming again.
The band never wanted small indie cosiness or to be smug and skint. So it's the full on tour of the UK's enormo sheds. They're not new, but they have got big.....and they are quite clever
I would have liked "I Predict A Riot" for it's title alone and there are probably Academics already researching the magnificence of new album title "Yours Truly Angry Mob."
Even at the time, their rise to Indie Stadium status did seem rapid.
The phrase "I Predict A Riot" had started to crop up as e mail sign offs and in knowing conversations and then at a 5 year old's birthday party in 2005 Punk Rock Builder Dad leaned over to me to recommend the just released debut album "Employment" (A note to Record Company execs. Forget MTV…Children's birthday parties is the way to do it.)
And the rest of course is history; Brit Award scooping, Glastonbury triumphing, "Ruby" at number 1, being covered by Lilly Allen and Girls Aloud, scooting off to America with the usual mutterings of "Could this be the British band to crack America?"
They've also had the benefit of being called "A bad Blur" by Liam Gallagher.
Actually that's not unusual as poor Liam is like the dazed Japanese soldier who's just staggered out of the jungle unable to accept that the Blur/Oasis war is over. He sees Blur in anything from the postman to the toaster.
There is a thick seam of Brit Pop running through their music but it's as much XTC as Blur. Stephen Street produced both of the Kaiser's albums, and even if he wasn't the architect of Britpop, he was certainly the builders merchant, with his Blur and Morrissey production jobs.
The key to the Kaiser Chiefs current success though is their lack of success in their previous incarnation Parva. They've realised this is the last chance of a bite at the pop pie, so they're willing to put the work in, and elbow their way to the front of the queue.
When they reconvened as the Kaiser Chiefs in 2003, they ditched all the old material and purposefully went all out for entertainment and big catchy choruses.
And these choruses are clearly signposted with plenty of spaces for oooohh aaahhhhhhGGGH! (Or other appropriate vocal signage).
You know the chorus is on it's way and you know you'll probably get flattened.
Never mind the Kaiser Chiefs, some of these choruses charge over the hills like the combined forces of Chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, relentless and irresistible. Bad news for Custer. Good news for the customer.
There are some clever words and some of them may well feature in a song like Na Na Na Na Naa, but the simplicity of the chorus means you can save mental energy for dancing and singing along. Commercial genius!
The other trick they use on tracks like I Predict A Riot or current single Everything Is Average Nowadays is to have long single note guitar lines; picking out the melody lines like 6 string rumble strips...to make absolutely sure your attention doesn't wander.
Ricky Wilson described his stage moves as being like a “Lithe Indie Ninja”. His stage persona of big waves, pogoing and crowd surfing where he likes to “Get out in the audience and see what they smell like” is plenty entertaining.
Especially from an Eddie Izzard look-alike in pub lunch office worker short sleeve shirt and tie combo.
The rhythm section have also done a trolley dash round the charisma department....witness big haired bassist Simon Rix and drummer Nick Hodgson.
Hodgson sings “Boxing Champ” from the second album which is a deliberately slight, piano and vocal affair with the excellent line “You were a boxing champ and I was a weakling. You didn't give me a chance, you gave me a beating.”
It's all a bit camp...and even better for the fact that Hodgson looks like the singer from Showaddywaddy who (warning....the following information is pub based research!) would only ever allow himself to be photographed sideways on....to let everyone see the full profile of the pipe in his drainpipes.
First album “Employment” has quite a range of styles from the powerhouse pogo chorus of “Oh My God” and the line “I've seen more blood than a back street dentist” to “You Can Have It All” which is pastoral XTC meets Duran Duran synths.
“Saturday Night” has the choice line “We are birds of a feather and you can be the fat one.” Musically it's Pop Scene era Blur and the revving motorcycle is apparently Graham Coxon's.
The second album “Yours Truly Angry Mob” released earlier this year, is the better of the two.
The intro to “Ruby” is one of the best of the year. It's a statement of intent. You just know this song is going somewhere and you're going to like it.
“The Angry Mob” starts off as “Modern Life Is Rubbish” era Blur meeting the overhanging guitars of “The Queen Is Dead” by The Smiths and changes gear halfway through for the coda “We are the angry mob, we like who we like, we hate who we hate”
There's also a bit of a Julian Cope feel to tracks like “I Can Do It Without You (But It Wouldn't Be Very Good)” and “Love's Not A Competition (But I'm Winning)”. Nice bracket work Ricky! I do like his line in "My Kind Of Guy" - "You're My Kind Of Guy Cos I Like Your Style And You Sound As Horrible As Me"
The best line of all though crops up on the albums best song. “Highroyds” is another of Wilson's despatches from the frontline of the teenage sidelines. Drinking and not getting into either clubs or girls. “I got a text from my ex. She wants to know when we're in London next” is Bolanesque genius
At their Glastonbury appearance 2 years ago they had the air of a band who knew their time had come. This year, Wilson's Indie Stadium theatrics and gestures didn't need balancing with irony. Their time was coming again.
The band never wanted small indie cosiness or to be smug and skint. So it's the full on tour of the UK's enormo sheds. They're not new, but they have got big.....and they are quite clever
Monday, July 09, 2007
Badly Drawn Boy
You could describe Damon Gough AKA Badly Drawn Boy as a woolly faced, woolly-hatted Manc guitar strummer. But you could also describe him as a singer who manages to walk that fine line between sentimentality and whimsical humour, between easy pop and wilful awkwardness.
Pop Music is a difficult and dangerous business, (although Test Pilots and North Sea Divers may disagree) and songs can go disastrously wrong. For the aspiring singer songwriter, James Blunt is always round the corner.
Badly Drawn Boy’s live shows were once famously chaotic, with well written, rehearsed songs often losing out to half written fragments that he’d knocked together in the soundcheck, acoustic strolls through the audience, extended monologues, story telling and impromptu knock about covers.
After a series of hard to find e.p.’s his first album The Hour Of Bewilderbeast won the Mercury music prize in 2000. It goes from the Nick Drake, acoustic pickings and orchestral flourishes of tracks like The Shining or Stone On The Water to the shambling Fall sound of Everybody’s Stalking. (Mark E Smith once mistook Gough’s car for a taxi and jumped in demanding to be taken home...and Gough obliged. Don’t know much he usually paid. However Gough later co wrote and appeared on Fall b side Calendar).
Another Pearl has an intro riff that sounds like Cornershop’s Brimful Of Asha while This Song includes the lyrics “This song will heal your soul/Rest by this song and the peace that it brings/This beautiful song has wings.” Perversely, though, the stereo effect switches from speaker to speaker so rapidly and is so disorientating that it is actually unlistenable. And there we go – that’s the Badly Drawn Boy conundrum. Just as he’s created something lovely, he’s scared of the result and decides to mess with our heads instead.
He wrote the soundtrack for About A Boy, which works really well, and it’s key song Silent Sigh manages to be both melancholic and uplifting at the same time. (You’d also want to describe it as haunting but there is a strict quota on combining the words”haunting” and “melancholic”. It’s a bit like the Hay diet.
What Silent Sigh does have though is a really good example of why Gough’s vocals work so well. He never over sings, his voice is warm and conversational, it strains a little as he steps up with the melody but he is definitely not Mariah Carey in a hat. Glad we’ve settled that!
While Bewilderbeast is still seen as his defining work, I actually prefer Have You Fed the Fish from 2002, for the simple reason that that the songs are better. It’s not as eclectic and there’s less deliberate awkwardness (still enough to keep an edge, mind), but like I said - the songs are better.
Gough is a self confessed Springsteen nut, and was playing Thunder Road at early gigs. The opening moments of Have You Fed The Fish’s title track is the closest he’d come so far to the boss Sound of The Boss. Except that Bruce would never sing “I need a new eiderdown, I want some binoculars”. Odds are he also wouldn’t sing “I’ve killed all the mockingbirds, I’ve wrestled the octopus, I came out with extra arms, to carry your baggage”.
The Further I slide has got the rhythm of Sexual Healing, whilst Using Our Feet has got the sinuous stretchiness of Got To Give It Up. It’s mind boggling to think of Badly Drawn Boy morphing into Marvin Gaye’s bedroom soul. Bet he keeps his hat on!
Best track though is You Were Right, it’s straight ahead pop. Nothing straightforward about the domestic nightmare of a dream he had though. “I was married to the Queen, And Madonna lived next door, I think she took a shine to me, And the kids were all grown up, But I had to turn her down, ‘cos I was still in love with you”.
The song is supremely catchy, but thankfully he still can’t shake that awkward spirit though. There is a clumsy rhythmic hiccup where the guitars and drums sound like they’re falling over each other. Well they may have done the first time, but he’s kept it in and kept playing it the same way for subsequent years.
All Possibilities has been used in an advert for Comet. Hopefully he made some money out of it because in the video for the single itself he spent 90 minutes busking outside Waterloo Station for the grand sum of £1.60.
2004’s album One Plus One Is One is a lower key return to folky Nick Drake guitar pickings. And flutes ahoy! The sleeve notes include refer to the death of his grandfather in WW2 and the sudden death of a close friend The latest album Born In The UK has had the promotional might of EMI behind it, including free chipforks given away with the single and a tour that included 3 gigs in chip shops.
The actual song Born In The UK is 30 years of recent British history. “You wanna be a rebel then turn your hose pipe on/With two years to wait for the sound of Jilted John.”
Born In The UK
If the title track is the punslinger's nod to Bruce Springsteen there is more of Bruce’s influence on Welcome To The Underground and also on Journey From A To B. The Way Things Used To Be is country tinged and Long Way Round has a keyboard and trumpet sounds that recalls The Pale Fountains.
It’s all good stuff though and well worth a look at the Mac next month. You might see him in a chippie afterwards, or some other scruffy bloke singing.
Pop Music is a difficult and dangerous business, (although Test Pilots and North Sea Divers may disagree) and songs can go disastrously wrong. For the aspiring singer songwriter, James Blunt is always round the corner.
Badly Drawn Boy’s live shows were once famously chaotic, with well written, rehearsed songs often losing out to half written fragments that he’d knocked together in the soundcheck, acoustic strolls through the audience, extended monologues, story telling and impromptu knock about covers.
After a series of hard to find e.p.’s his first album The Hour Of Bewilderbeast won the Mercury music prize in 2000. It goes from the Nick Drake, acoustic pickings and orchestral flourishes of tracks like The Shining or Stone On The Water to the shambling Fall sound of Everybody’s Stalking. (Mark E Smith once mistook Gough’s car for a taxi and jumped in demanding to be taken home...and Gough obliged. Don’t know much he usually paid. However Gough later co wrote and appeared on Fall b side Calendar).
Another Pearl has an intro riff that sounds like Cornershop’s Brimful Of Asha while This Song includes the lyrics “This song will heal your soul/Rest by this song and the peace that it brings/This beautiful song has wings.” Perversely, though, the stereo effect switches from speaker to speaker so rapidly and is so disorientating that it is actually unlistenable. And there we go – that’s the Badly Drawn Boy conundrum. Just as he’s created something lovely, he’s scared of the result and decides to mess with our heads instead.
He wrote the soundtrack for About A Boy, which works really well, and it’s key song Silent Sigh manages to be both melancholic and uplifting at the same time. (You’d also want to describe it as haunting but there is a strict quota on combining the words”haunting” and “melancholic”. It’s a bit like the Hay diet.
What Silent Sigh does have though is a really good example of why Gough’s vocals work so well. He never over sings, his voice is warm and conversational, it strains a little as he steps up with the melody but he is definitely not Mariah Carey in a hat. Glad we’ve settled that!
While Bewilderbeast is still seen as his defining work, I actually prefer Have You Fed the Fish from 2002, for the simple reason that that the songs are better. It’s not as eclectic and there’s less deliberate awkwardness (still enough to keep an edge, mind), but like I said - the songs are better.
Gough is a self confessed Springsteen nut, and was playing Thunder Road at early gigs. The opening moments of Have You Fed The Fish’s title track is the closest he’d come so far to the boss Sound of The Boss. Except that Bruce would never sing “I need a new eiderdown, I want some binoculars”. Odds are he also wouldn’t sing “I’ve killed all the mockingbirds, I’ve wrestled the octopus, I came out with extra arms, to carry your baggage”.
The Further I slide has got the rhythm of Sexual Healing, whilst Using Our Feet has got the sinuous stretchiness of Got To Give It Up. It’s mind boggling to think of Badly Drawn Boy morphing into Marvin Gaye’s bedroom soul. Bet he keeps his hat on!
Best track though is You Were Right, it’s straight ahead pop. Nothing straightforward about the domestic nightmare of a dream he had though. “I was married to the Queen, And Madonna lived next door, I think she took a shine to me, And the kids were all grown up, But I had to turn her down, ‘cos I was still in love with you”.
The song is supremely catchy, but thankfully he still can’t shake that awkward spirit though. There is a clumsy rhythmic hiccup where the guitars and drums sound like they’re falling over each other. Well they may have done the first time, but he’s kept it in and kept playing it the same way for subsequent years.
All Possibilities has been used in an advert for Comet. Hopefully he made some money out of it because in the video for the single itself he spent 90 minutes busking outside Waterloo Station for the grand sum of £1.60.
2004’s album One Plus One Is One is a lower key return to folky Nick Drake guitar pickings. And flutes ahoy! The sleeve notes include refer to the death of his grandfather in WW2 and the sudden death of a close friend The latest album Born In The UK has had the promotional might of EMI behind it, including free chipforks given away with the single and a tour that included 3 gigs in chip shops.
The actual song Born In The UK is 30 years of recent British history. “You wanna be a rebel then turn your hose pipe on/With two years to wait for the sound of Jilted John.”
Born In The UK
If the title track is the punslinger's nod to Bruce Springsteen there is more of Bruce’s influence on Welcome To The Underground and also on Journey From A To B. The Way Things Used To Be is country tinged and Long Way Round has a keyboard and trumpet sounds that recalls The Pale Fountains.
It’s all good stuff though and well worth a look at the Mac next month. You might see him in a chippie afterwards, or some other scruffy bloke singing.
The Stills - Destroyer
It starts with an electric piano, and Hammond riff, two of my favourite sounds in Pop, so I'm instantly doubly hooked.
The song itself is one those American Alt rock sound meets late period James (eg “Laid”). Big and warm sounding with a bit of a feel of “You're So Good To Me” by the Beach Boys and it's got great big parping slabs of burbling brass.
So that's pretty much everything I'd look for in a record.
You've got to worry about the keyboard players beard though...that kind of hairy chin shelf was last seen on a character living in Greendale and having letters delivered by Postman Pat.
Destroyer video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Y448s3fus
I like the fact that the record is called “Destroyer” and doesn't actually have the word "destroyer" in the song.
You can't beat using album titles by Kiss...especially when you are a bunch of pullover rocking Montreal art students. And I would count Kiss as one of my favourite bands, despite and also because of the fact that I never listen to them and have no interest in their music.
I just like the idea of the whole ludicrous thing they created. Revolving drum kits, rocket launching guitars, the merchandising…Gene Simmons. And who wouldn't want to be buried in a Kiss coffin?
I really like the sound of the Stills single and the way that singer Dave Hamelim has a good drawling delivery that manages to be both clear and earnest. And it does remind me of Tim Booth. But dear, oh dear... the lyrics.
"I will destroy you, Your soul impedes on mine, let go my free will, I can't stand compromise.....And the arrows are pointed and the archers delighted, the thrill the smell, The shit I've been put through.....I'm coming to your town "
Now there's always room in pop for a good vengeance song but I don't think The Stills lyrics have delivered.
Not only are they competing against the entire works of Nick Cave (either his vengeance or someone else's) or Morrissey's grumblings but there is also the absolute daddy of all song titles which pretty much explains the situation in real time. Just in the title alone!
I give you Melvin Van Peebles epic from the soundtrack of Sweet Sweetbacks Baadasssss Song (generally reckoned to be the first Blaxploitation film, the film also has a running time shorter than the song title I'm talking about).
Get ready, deep breath.... and... “The Man Tries Running His Usual Game but Sweetback Jones Is So Strong He Wastes the Hounds (Yeah! Yeah! And Besides That He Will Be Comin' Back Takin' Names And Collecting Dues)”.
But back to The Stills...”Destroyer” is a terrific song but sadly it's streets ahead of anything else on their just released second album, “Without Feathers”. The rest of the album is a bit pedestrian, and never really goes anywhere.
I'm still intrigued by their story though.
They formed in 2000 in Montreal. The first album “Logic Will Break Your Heart” came out in 2003 and they toured with the likes of Interpol and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
They certainly had that Joy Division, Bunnymen sound that the likes of Interpol and The Editors have been reviving. But then founder member and singer Greg Parquet left the band to go back University to finish his degree.
In a full and frank interview bassist Olivier Corbeil has said "For us, we were heading in a different direction for the record, I think Greg kind of felt like leaving. Not that we wanted him to leave, but we kind of felt that it wasn't a bad idea either.
“It wasn't a big deal. We hung out, had some beers, and he said, 'Yeah, I think I'm going to go finish this.' And I was like, 'Ah, that's cool' ". Beans comprehensively spilt!
So that's the singer and songwriter leaving after releasing a well received debut. Hmm. That can present a problem. So drummer Dave Hamelim steps forward.
Now this should be about as welcome as Phil Collins telling the rest of Genesis "Go on, lads I'll have a go" or indeed the (possibly apocryphal) homemade by Elvis porn movie where Elvis gets tired of filming and steps out from behind the camera to join in. A shaky leg indeed.
With Hamelim upfront on vocals and guitar, the band's sound changed from an English Post Punk to American Rock sound, closer to bands like Soul Asylum.
Although the album “Without Feathers” was originally released in the States last year, it's only just been released over here on Drowned In Sound. (Their site http://www.drownedinsound.com is always worth a look for new bands, reviews and scabrous comment) and they supported Kings Of Leon on their UK tour earlier this year.
Whether the radical change in style will pay off for the band though is debateable because there does seem to be a bit of a scramble for bands trying to nail that Joy Division Post Punk sound.
I proved this scientifically by watching the Glastonbury coverage this weekend, (from my sofa, getting into the spirit of the event by wearing wellies, avoiding the toilets and undercooking and overcharging myself for a veggie burger).
The Editors were paying their debts to Joy Division, and Bloc Party were doing their Joy Divison/Cure cut and shunt job.
When The Killers did their adventurous cover of Shadowplay. I was tickled by the way that the guitarist was punching the air. You wouldn't see Peter Hook doing that... unless there was actually someone in that particular airspace.
The song itself is one those American Alt rock sound meets late period James (eg “Laid”). Big and warm sounding with a bit of a feel of “You're So Good To Me” by the Beach Boys and it's got great big parping slabs of burbling brass.
So that's pretty much everything I'd look for in a record.
You've got to worry about the keyboard players beard though...that kind of hairy chin shelf was last seen on a character living in Greendale and having letters delivered by Postman Pat.
Destroyer video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Y448s3fus
I like the fact that the record is called “Destroyer” and doesn't actually have the word "destroyer" in the song.
You can't beat using album titles by Kiss...especially when you are a bunch of pullover rocking Montreal art students. And I would count Kiss as one of my favourite bands, despite and also because of the fact that I never listen to them and have no interest in their music.
I just like the idea of the whole ludicrous thing they created. Revolving drum kits, rocket launching guitars, the merchandising…Gene Simmons. And who wouldn't want to be buried in a Kiss coffin?
I really like the sound of the Stills single and the way that singer Dave Hamelim has a good drawling delivery that manages to be both clear and earnest. And it does remind me of Tim Booth. But dear, oh dear... the lyrics.
"I will destroy you, Your soul impedes on mine, let go my free will, I can't stand compromise.....And the arrows are pointed and the archers delighted, the thrill the smell, The shit I've been put through.....I'm coming to your town "
Now there's always room in pop for a good vengeance song but I don't think The Stills lyrics have delivered.
Not only are they competing against the entire works of Nick Cave (either his vengeance or someone else's) or Morrissey's grumblings but there is also the absolute daddy of all song titles which pretty much explains the situation in real time. Just in the title alone!
I give you Melvin Van Peebles epic from the soundtrack of Sweet Sweetbacks Baadasssss Song (generally reckoned to be the first Blaxploitation film, the film also has a running time shorter than the song title I'm talking about).
Get ready, deep breath.... and... “The Man Tries Running His Usual Game but Sweetback Jones Is So Strong He Wastes the Hounds (Yeah! Yeah! And Besides That He Will Be Comin' Back Takin' Names And Collecting Dues)”.
But back to The Stills...”Destroyer” is a terrific song but sadly it's streets ahead of anything else on their just released second album, “Without Feathers”. The rest of the album is a bit pedestrian, and never really goes anywhere.
I'm still intrigued by their story though.
They formed in 2000 in Montreal. The first album “Logic Will Break Your Heart” came out in 2003 and they toured with the likes of Interpol and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
They certainly had that Joy Division, Bunnymen sound that the likes of Interpol and The Editors have been reviving. But then founder member and singer Greg Parquet left the band to go back University to finish his degree.
In a full and frank interview bassist Olivier Corbeil has said "For us, we were heading in a different direction for the record, I think Greg kind of felt like leaving. Not that we wanted him to leave, but we kind of felt that it wasn't a bad idea either.
“It wasn't a big deal. We hung out, had some beers, and he said, 'Yeah, I think I'm going to go finish this.' And I was like, 'Ah, that's cool' ". Beans comprehensively spilt!
So that's the singer and songwriter leaving after releasing a well received debut. Hmm. That can present a problem. So drummer Dave Hamelim steps forward.
Now this should be about as welcome as Phil Collins telling the rest of Genesis "Go on, lads I'll have a go" or indeed the (possibly apocryphal) homemade by Elvis porn movie where Elvis gets tired of filming and steps out from behind the camera to join in. A shaky leg indeed.
With Hamelim upfront on vocals and guitar, the band's sound changed from an English Post Punk to American Rock sound, closer to bands like Soul Asylum.
Although the album “Without Feathers” was originally released in the States last year, it's only just been released over here on Drowned In Sound. (Their site http://www.drownedinsound.com is always worth a look for new bands, reviews and scabrous comment) and they supported Kings Of Leon on their UK tour earlier this year.
Whether the radical change in style will pay off for the band though is debateable because there does seem to be a bit of a scramble for bands trying to nail that Joy Division Post Punk sound.
I proved this scientifically by watching the Glastonbury coverage this weekend, (from my sofa, getting into the spirit of the event by wearing wellies, avoiding the toilets and undercooking and overcharging myself for a veggie burger).
The Editors were paying their debts to Joy Division, and Bloc Party were doing their Joy Divison/Cure cut and shunt job.
When The Killers did their adventurous cover of Shadowplay. I was tickled by the way that the guitarist was punching the air. You wouldn't see Peter Hook doing that... unless there was actually someone in that particular airspace.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Hayseed Dixie
We're not scared of gimmicks and novelties are we? It's better if the music comes first but you've got to warm to a band who have at least made the effort to come up with a good story. I don't fear the gimmick. I embrace the novelty and cop a sly feel of the one hit wonder. So how about Hayseed Dixie?
A bunch of hillbillies playing speeded up Bluegrass covers of AC/DC songs? I'll have some of that. According to their own story (which I'm buying into completely) it all started when stranger's car crashed near their isolated Tennessee valley home of Deer Lick Holler. On the back seat they found some AC/DC records, but they could only play them on their old 78 record player. "The boys all agreed it was some mighty fine country music. So, in memory of the stranger who had perished the boys set about learning these songs." Now anyone who doesn't believe that story will also have doubts about the sibling nature of The Ramones and may wonder why one of The Corrs just seemed slightly less attractive than the other pouting poppets.
Hayseed Dixie followed up the AC/DC album with rollicking live shows and the albums Kiss My Grass (a Kiss tribute), A Hot Piece Of Grass, Let There Be Rockgrass and the new album Weapons of Grass Destruction. The later albums have a mixture of classic rock and Punk covers, with a couple of originals thrown in. eg their own sensitive song about dealing with loss…I'm Keeping Your Poop In A Jar.
They play "Songs that are fun to play while drinking beer and are hopefully fun to listen to while drinking beer." The playing is phenomenal though. Drummerless, but stonking honky tonkin' with frantic mandolin, fiddle and banjo, dungarees, scary mullets and ponytails. And vocals that go from a yodelling yelp to a thick lascivious gurgle.
There are some people who think that AC/DC is schoolboy smut played by trolls. Some people think that Big Balls (elaborate well attended social occasions, with dancing), Lets Get It Up (possibly not about raising the Titanic), Sink The Pink (snooker?) are double entendres. These people have taken it the wrong way.
Hayseed Dixie think that AC/DC songs are about drinking, cheating, killing and hell. Which does indeed make for mighty fine country music. Frontman Barley Scotch reckons that the Lost Highway that Hank Williams sang about and AC/DC's Highway To Hell "Were the same damn road…They were singing about the same stuff, from the perspective of a working class guy who's reserving his right to fight the man and raise some hell." He also said that "I'm not trying to advocate alcohol…but I love beer." But later on in an interview with The Guardian it turns out that Barley Scotch is actually John Wheeler who runs a recording studio in Nashville and has a PhD. I still want to believe that his bandmates Reverend Don Wayne Reno and Deacon Dale Reno are trading under their real names though
On the dixified Highway To Hell you can hear all the little country and bluegrass tricks that the Stones and Gram Parsons used, played at berserker speed but still obviously both AC/DC and Bluegrass. It's great to hear him sing, "Hey Satan paid my dues singin' in this bluegrass band."
It's hard to top the way that Brian Johnson wails the line "Yeah you" on the original version of You Shook Me All Night Long, but Barley Scotches delivers the line "Knockin' me out with them American thighs" with the ripe country fruitiness and overstuffed contentment of a good ol boy that finds he's not just at Tractor Pull but there's a Hog Roast too! It's a sound that Brian would find hard to match, but Brian also finds it difficult to stand with his legs any less than 3 feet apart.
The new album features covers of the Scissor Sisters I Don't Feel Like Dancing, a countrified Holidays In The Sun and Judas Priest's Breakin' The Law.
Hayseed Dixie are a great idea for a band and they play like demons. Just have a look at their version of Motorhead's Ace Of Spades http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYJUywl7CFw
They're not only ones to tackle AC/DC's back catalogue though. If Bluegrass AC/DC is unlikely, then how about Folky AC/DC? The first solo album from Mark Kozelek (from sensitive 4AD types Red House Painters) included 3 AC/DC songs recorded as folky acoustic interpretations. They worked so well he recorded an album full with it's follow up What's Next To The Moon. His version of Love At First Feel takes AC/DC's slashing strutting boogie, puts it's trousers back on and gives it a haunted, regretful quality. It's a contrast to when Bon Scott sings, "They told me it was disgusting, they told me it was a sin" because you know that Bon wouldn't want it any way but sinful and disgusting. There's a Kozelek sample at
http://www.badmanrecordingco.com/bands/default.aspx#11
In fact to square the whole folk/metal circle, Kozelek's version of Love At First Feel actually ends up sounding like That's The Way from Led Zep3, but obviously with less elves. AC/DC never wrote about elves. They were too busy writing about drinking, shagging and Rocking. And they did do a lot of Rocking
A bunch of hillbillies playing speeded up Bluegrass covers of AC/DC songs? I'll have some of that. According to their own story (which I'm buying into completely) it all started when stranger's car crashed near their isolated Tennessee valley home of Deer Lick Holler. On the back seat they found some AC/DC records, but they could only play them on their old 78 record player. "The boys all agreed it was some mighty fine country music. So, in memory of the stranger who had perished the boys set about learning these songs." Now anyone who doesn't believe that story will also have doubts about the sibling nature of The Ramones and may wonder why one of The Corrs just seemed slightly less attractive than the other pouting poppets.
Hayseed Dixie followed up the AC/DC album with rollicking live shows and the albums Kiss My Grass (a Kiss tribute), A Hot Piece Of Grass, Let There Be Rockgrass and the new album Weapons of Grass Destruction. The later albums have a mixture of classic rock and Punk covers, with a couple of originals thrown in. eg their own sensitive song about dealing with loss…I'm Keeping Your Poop In A Jar.
They play "Songs that are fun to play while drinking beer and are hopefully fun to listen to while drinking beer." The playing is phenomenal though. Drummerless, but stonking honky tonkin' with frantic mandolin, fiddle and banjo, dungarees, scary mullets and ponytails. And vocals that go from a yodelling yelp to a thick lascivious gurgle.
There are some people who think that AC/DC is schoolboy smut played by trolls. Some people think that Big Balls (elaborate well attended social occasions, with dancing), Lets Get It Up (possibly not about raising the Titanic), Sink The Pink (snooker?) are double entendres. These people have taken it the wrong way.
Hayseed Dixie think that AC/DC songs are about drinking, cheating, killing and hell. Which does indeed make for mighty fine country music. Frontman Barley Scotch reckons that the Lost Highway that Hank Williams sang about and AC/DC's Highway To Hell "Were the same damn road…They were singing about the same stuff, from the perspective of a working class guy who's reserving his right to fight the man and raise some hell." He also said that "I'm not trying to advocate alcohol…but I love beer." But later on in an interview with The Guardian it turns out that Barley Scotch is actually John Wheeler who runs a recording studio in Nashville and has a PhD. I still want to believe that his bandmates Reverend Don Wayne Reno and Deacon Dale Reno are trading under their real names though
On the dixified Highway To Hell you can hear all the little country and bluegrass tricks that the Stones and Gram Parsons used, played at berserker speed but still obviously both AC/DC and Bluegrass. It's great to hear him sing, "Hey Satan paid my dues singin' in this bluegrass band."
It's hard to top the way that Brian Johnson wails the line "Yeah you" on the original version of You Shook Me All Night Long, but Barley Scotches delivers the line "Knockin' me out with them American thighs" with the ripe country fruitiness and overstuffed contentment of a good ol boy that finds he's not just at Tractor Pull but there's a Hog Roast too! It's a sound that Brian would find hard to match, but Brian also finds it difficult to stand with his legs any less than 3 feet apart.
The new album features covers of the Scissor Sisters I Don't Feel Like Dancing, a countrified Holidays In The Sun and Judas Priest's Breakin' The Law.
Hayseed Dixie are a great idea for a band and they play like demons. Just have a look at their version of Motorhead's Ace Of Spades http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYJUywl7CFw
They're not only ones to tackle AC/DC's back catalogue though. If Bluegrass AC/DC is unlikely, then how about Folky AC/DC? The first solo album from Mark Kozelek (from sensitive 4AD types Red House Painters) included 3 AC/DC songs recorded as folky acoustic interpretations. They worked so well he recorded an album full with it's follow up What's Next To The Moon. His version of Love At First Feel takes AC/DC's slashing strutting boogie, puts it's trousers back on and gives it a haunted, regretful quality. It's a contrast to when Bon Scott sings, "They told me it was disgusting, they told me it was a sin" because you know that Bon wouldn't want it any way but sinful and disgusting. There's a Kozelek sample at
http://www.badmanrecordingco.com/bands/default.aspx#11
In fact to square the whole folk/metal circle, Kozelek's version of Love At First Feel actually ends up sounding like That's The Way from Led Zep3, but obviously with less elves. AC/DC never wrote about elves. They were too busy writing about drinking, shagging and Rocking. And they did do a lot of Rocking
Monday, June 11, 2007
Richard Hawley
When the Arctic Monkeys received their Mercury award with the words "Call the police, Richard Hawley's been robbed" it was a good natured nod to their Sheffield neighbour. It seemed that the world had almost caught up with Hawley's modern retro melancholia.
On that occasion he missed out on a cheque and something to prop behind the toilet door, but with his fourth album Coles Corner, he had delivered something new, in an old fashioned way....he'd also taken his time doing it.
I mean what is the likelihood of a 40 year old guitarist with greased back hair, specs and a hair lip making that move a few feet to the centre of the stage, from hired hand to star and then that big leap into our hearts?
"I could always hum along cleaning the pots. But after the Longpigs split I thought it was about time I stopped washing the pots and crack on with writing and recording".
He originally played guitar with Sheffield indie poppers Treebound Story and the more angsty LongPigs. When the latter disintegrated space was at a premium in Drink and Drugs hell.
Old friend Jarvis Cocker threw him a lifeline with his offer to play guitar for Pulp on their popularity squashing “This Is Hardcore” album. He spent the next six years working with Pulp and also Cocker's art/performance skeleton suit wearing side project, Relaxed Muscle.
He also played the guitar solo on All Saints version of “Under The Bridge”, wrote “Clean” for Robbie Williams but turned down further collaborations with him because he wouldn't have known what to do with the money. "I just didn't want to do it. It would have changed my life too much. Earning millions of pounds is not the reason I get up in the morning".
Hawley grew up in Pitsmoor, Sheffield where his dad was a steelworker who played in rock n roll bands. Hawley started playing guitar at 6 and was gigging with his dad and uncle as a teenager. Hawley's musical heroes are the likes of Link Wray and the original Sun artists, like Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis...probably just like his dad.
Now I think there's something quite poetic and fitting about growing up in a Rock 'n' Roll household, having a youthful dalliance with indie pop and then hitting your musical prime as you approach your forties with music that draws heavily from your dad’s influence.
It's all in the Sidies....The sideburns you have at 40 are different to the ones of your 20's. Bushy grey truck driving monsters....none of your razored clubland cool, designer beers and bars...it's all tea and greasy spoon.
Which is fairly Rock 'n' roll when you consider that that the modern British mecca for Rock 'n' Roll is the original Rock 'n' Roll Mecca. The Ace Cafe with a car park full of oil leaking British bikes that dropped their engines in the road on the journey. Tellingly Hawley's 3rd album Lowedges has a classic BSA on the cover.
What Hawley has done with his music is to take a retro grown up, adult music, strip out any elements that don't work anymore, (there have been some very odd ideas about backing vocals and orchestrations that although they were ground breaking and maybe even necessary at the time, when you're given the choice, you wouldn't use again.) Richard Hawley had the choice and hasn't used them again.
Take for example Ray Charles “Modern Sounds In Country And Western”. As a link in the development of soul music and as a shake up to the country music establishment it's crucially important. But 45 years on, it can sound a bit syrupy to my ears.
Well Hawley has taken the style and sound of Roy Orbison, Sinatra or Johnny Cash and turned it into a very late night music. But without the cheese, despite the fact that he does call it cheesy old bloke music. The self deprecation is part of his charm.
He's an unabashed crooner and a shameless romantic and as the cd slides into the drawer, the hour seems to get later, the whisky bottle gets emptier and (depending on the song) the lover is either longer gone or closer to home.
And because this music is from the past if your TV's on in the corner, you'll find it's got less channels and your central heating has turned into a hissing gas fire.
Because Hawley is very muchin the wistful crooner tradition, you're not going to get the full highs and lows of the feelings behind the songs just from his vocals. It's just not part of the style.
That whole easy tradition that Hawley has drawn from, that Frank Sinatra, rinky dink and Martinis, showed pain without the wrenching Soul style pain of what Sam Moore from Sam and Dave called "The ugly face." The key to depth in Hawley's music is the arrangements rather than his vocals.
Hawley's arrangements are built on sparse echoing guitars, gentle sweeps from the lap steel and plenty of reverb. It's Twin Peaks soundtrack territory. Lowedges from 2003 is very much built on this sound with the likes of “Darlin'” with its Roy Orbison vocal style.
There are lots of songs about going away and coming back...exactly what the heartbroken crooner needs. “You Don't Miss Your Water (Till Your River Runs Dry)” has the line "Like A Thief In The Night, You Stole the love from my world... You Don't Miss Your Water Till Your River Runs Dry. You don't miss your lover till they're waving goodbye." And let's face it if you're never going to hear Roy Orbison sing those lines then Richard Hawley will do just fine.
“I'm On Nights” is a wonderful song built on a guitar that twangs like broken heartstrings. It feels like “I'd Rather Go Blind” which has been covered by Etta James, Clarence Carter (who was blind) and Rod Stewart (who was blonde, apparently) amongst many others.
Just the phrase itself "I'm On Nights" gives it an English feel despite the fact that he's crooning an American style song. "I'm on nights, we need the money" but in classic style he'll be coming back "Now it's time to lose your sorrow, I'm on days and off tomorrow."
While “Lowedges” mines the a rich but underplayed echoing guitar sound, “Coles Corner”from 2005 spans a wider range of styles.
“Coles Corner” refers to the popular meeting spot for lovers outside the Cole Brothers department store in Sheffield. Even though it was demolished in 1969, local people still refer to it and still arrange to meet there. The title track starts with an impossibly lovely sweep of strings as Hawley hopes that "Maybe there's someone waiting for me with a smile and a flower in her hair."
Actually he gets stood up, but the whole thing of singing about a place that no longer really exists, but is still a part of the city's emotional and social landscape and part of the soundtrack that's in his head definitely seems a very Richard Hawley thing to do.
“Darlin' Wait For Me.” Oh yes it's another darlin' song, another song about going away and coming back and another song where you can hear hints of Elvis. Thing is you can bet, Hawley can always hear Elvis.
“Tonight” is another song that seems rooted in Sheffield and while there may be other cities that have hills, to my ears the only thing that could make this song more Sheffield would be a line about Richard Hawley's beloved Henderson's Relish and the less loved Human League.
......"Oh tonight I got it really bad, Maybe I'll go out walking, Don't feel like staying home, Might take the car up to the hills and watch the city lights below."
“Wading Through The Waters Of My Time” is Johnny Cash style Country whilst on Woody Guthrie's “Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Feet” the echo is on the vocal rather than the instrumentation.
It's sparse and haunting with a thick, muted sound from the barely brushed guitar. Closing track “Last Orders” was written in a taxi on the way to the studio and is more Twin Peaky atmospherics. Maybe if the journey had been longer it wouldn't have ended up as an instrumental. Nonetheless it's a clever contrast with the lushness of the opening title track.
“Coles Corner” is the critic’s choice but my tip is buy both and spend more time with “Lowedges”.
On that occasion he missed out on a cheque and something to prop behind the toilet door, but with his fourth album Coles Corner, he had delivered something new, in an old fashioned way....he'd also taken his time doing it.
I mean what is the likelihood of a 40 year old guitarist with greased back hair, specs and a hair lip making that move a few feet to the centre of the stage, from hired hand to star and then that big leap into our hearts?
"I could always hum along cleaning the pots. But after the Longpigs split I thought it was about time I stopped washing the pots and crack on with writing and recording".
He originally played guitar with Sheffield indie poppers Treebound Story and the more angsty LongPigs. When the latter disintegrated space was at a premium in Drink and Drugs hell.
Old friend Jarvis Cocker threw him a lifeline with his offer to play guitar for Pulp on their popularity squashing “This Is Hardcore” album. He spent the next six years working with Pulp and also Cocker's art/performance skeleton suit wearing side project, Relaxed Muscle.
He also played the guitar solo on All Saints version of “Under The Bridge”, wrote “Clean” for Robbie Williams but turned down further collaborations with him because he wouldn't have known what to do with the money. "I just didn't want to do it. It would have changed my life too much. Earning millions of pounds is not the reason I get up in the morning".
Hawley grew up in Pitsmoor, Sheffield where his dad was a steelworker who played in rock n roll bands. Hawley started playing guitar at 6 and was gigging with his dad and uncle as a teenager. Hawley's musical heroes are the likes of Link Wray and the original Sun artists, like Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis...probably just like his dad.
Now I think there's something quite poetic and fitting about growing up in a Rock 'n' Roll household, having a youthful dalliance with indie pop and then hitting your musical prime as you approach your forties with music that draws heavily from your dad’s influence.
It's all in the Sidies....The sideburns you have at 40 are different to the ones of your 20's. Bushy grey truck driving monsters....none of your razored clubland cool, designer beers and bars...it's all tea and greasy spoon.
Which is fairly Rock 'n' roll when you consider that that the modern British mecca for Rock 'n' Roll is the original Rock 'n' Roll Mecca. The Ace Cafe with a car park full of oil leaking British bikes that dropped their engines in the road on the journey. Tellingly Hawley's 3rd album Lowedges has a classic BSA on the cover.
What Hawley has done with his music is to take a retro grown up, adult music, strip out any elements that don't work anymore, (there have been some very odd ideas about backing vocals and orchestrations that although they were ground breaking and maybe even necessary at the time, when you're given the choice, you wouldn't use again.) Richard Hawley had the choice and hasn't used them again.
Take for example Ray Charles “Modern Sounds In Country And Western”. As a link in the development of soul music and as a shake up to the country music establishment it's crucially important. But 45 years on, it can sound a bit syrupy to my ears.
Well Hawley has taken the style and sound of Roy Orbison, Sinatra or Johnny Cash and turned it into a very late night music. But without the cheese, despite the fact that he does call it cheesy old bloke music. The self deprecation is part of his charm.
He's an unabashed crooner and a shameless romantic and as the cd slides into the drawer, the hour seems to get later, the whisky bottle gets emptier and (depending on the song) the lover is either longer gone or closer to home.
And because this music is from the past if your TV's on in the corner, you'll find it's got less channels and your central heating has turned into a hissing gas fire.
Because Hawley is very muchin the wistful crooner tradition, you're not going to get the full highs and lows of the feelings behind the songs just from his vocals. It's just not part of the style.
That whole easy tradition that Hawley has drawn from, that Frank Sinatra, rinky dink and Martinis, showed pain without the wrenching Soul style pain of what Sam Moore from Sam and Dave called "The ugly face." The key to depth in Hawley's music is the arrangements rather than his vocals.
Hawley's arrangements are built on sparse echoing guitars, gentle sweeps from the lap steel and plenty of reverb. It's Twin Peaks soundtrack territory. Lowedges from 2003 is very much built on this sound with the likes of “Darlin'” with its Roy Orbison vocal style.
There are lots of songs about going away and coming back...exactly what the heartbroken crooner needs. “You Don't Miss Your Water (Till Your River Runs Dry)” has the line "Like A Thief In The Night, You Stole the love from my world... You Don't Miss Your Water Till Your River Runs Dry. You don't miss your lover till they're waving goodbye." And let's face it if you're never going to hear Roy Orbison sing those lines then Richard Hawley will do just fine.
“I'm On Nights” is a wonderful song built on a guitar that twangs like broken heartstrings. It feels like “I'd Rather Go Blind” which has been covered by Etta James, Clarence Carter (who was blind) and Rod Stewart (who was blonde, apparently) amongst many others.
Just the phrase itself "I'm On Nights" gives it an English feel despite the fact that he's crooning an American style song. "I'm on nights, we need the money" but in classic style he'll be coming back "Now it's time to lose your sorrow, I'm on days and off tomorrow."
While “Lowedges” mines the a rich but underplayed echoing guitar sound, “Coles Corner”from 2005 spans a wider range of styles.
“Coles Corner” refers to the popular meeting spot for lovers outside the Cole Brothers department store in Sheffield. Even though it was demolished in 1969, local people still refer to it and still arrange to meet there. The title track starts with an impossibly lovely sweep of strings as Hawley hopes that "Maybe there's someone waiting for me with a smile and a flower in her hair."
Actually he gets stood up, but the whole thing of singing about a place that no longer really exists, but is still a part of the city's emotional and social landscape and part of the soundtrack that's in his head definitely seems a very Richard Hawley thing to do.
“Darlin' Wait For Me.” Oh yes it's another darlin' song, another song about going away and coming back and another song where you can hear hints of Elvis. Thing is you can bet, Hawley can always hear Elvis.
“Tonight” is another song that seems rooted in Sheffield and while there may be other cities that have hills, to my ears the only thing that could make this song more Sheffield would be a line about Richard Hawley's beloved Henderson's Relish and the less loved Human League.
......"Oh tonight I got it really bad, Maybe I'll go out walking, Don't feel like staying home, Might take the car up to the hills and watch the city lights below."
“Wading Through The Waters Of My Time” is Johnny Cash style Country whilst on Woody Guthrie's “Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Feet” the echo is on the vocal rather than the instrumentation.
It's sparse and haunting with a thick, muted sound from the barely brushed guitar. Closing track “Last Orders” was written in a taxi on the way to the studio and is more Twin Peaky atmospherics. Maybe if the journey had been longer it wouldn't have ended up as an instrumental. Nonetheless it's a clever contrast with the lushness of the opening title track.
“Coles Corner” is the critic’s choice but my tip is buy both and spend more time with “Lowedges”.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Richard Hawley
When the Arctic Monkeys received their Mercury award with the words "Call the police, Richard Hawley's been robbed" it was a good natured nod to their Sheffield neighbour. It seemed that the world had almost caught up with Hawley's modern retro melancholia. On that occasion he missed out on a cheque and something to prop behind the toilet door, but with his album 4 th Coles Corner, he had delivered something new, in an old fashioned way....he'd also taken his time doing it. I mean what is the likelihood of a 40 year old guitarist with greased back hair, specs and a hair lip making that move a few feet to the centre of the stage, from hired hand to star and then that big leap into our hearts?
"I could always hum along cleaning the pots. But after the Longpigs split I thought it was about time I stopped washing the pots and crack on with writing and recording"
He originally played guitar with Sheffield indie poppers Treebound Story and the more angsty LongPigs. When the latter disintegrated space was at a premium in Drink and Drugs hell. Old friend Jarvis Cocker threw him a lifeline with his offer to play guitar for Pulp on their popularity squashing This Is Hardcore album. He spent the next six years working with Pulp and also Cocker's art/performance skeleton suit wearing side project, Relaxed Muscle. He also played the guitar solo on All Saints version of Under The Bridge, wrote Clean for Robbie Williams but turned down further collaborations with him because he wouldn't have known what to do with the money. "I just didn't want to do it. It would have changed my life too much. Earning millions of pounds is not the reason I get up in the morning"
Hawley grew up in Pitsmoor Sheffield where his dad was a steelworker who played in rock n roll bands. Hawley started playing guitar at 6 and was gigging with his dad and uncle as a teenager. Hawley's musical heroes are the likes of Link Wray and the original Sun artists, like Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis...probably just like his dad.
Now I think there's something quite poetic and fitting about growing up in a Rock 'n' Roll household, having a youthful dalliance with indie pop and then hitting your musical prime as you approach your forties with music that draws heavily from your dads influence. It's all in the Sidies....The sideburns you have at 40 are different to the ones of your 20's. Bushy grey truck driving monsters....none of your razored clubland cool, designer beers and bars...it's all tea and greasy spoon. Which is fairly Rock 'n' roll when you consider that that the modern British mecca for Rock 'n' Roll is the original Rock 'n' Roll Mecca. The Ace Cafe with a car park full of oil leaking British bikes that dropped their engines in the road on the journey. Tellingly Hawley's 3rd album Lowedges has a classic BSA on the cover.
What Hawley has done with his music is to take a retro grown up, adult music, strip out any elements that don't work anymore, (there have been some very odd ideas about backing vocals and orchestrations that although they were ground breaking and maybe even necessary at the time, when you're given the choice, you wouldn't use again. Richard Hawley had the choice and hasn't used them again. Take for example Ray Charles Modern Sounds In Country And Western. As a link in the development of soul music and as a shake up to the country music establishment it's crucially important. But 45 years on, it can sound a bit syrupy to my ears. Well Hawley has taken the style and sound of Roy Orbison, Sinatra or Johnny Cash and turned it into a very late night music. But without the cheese, despite the fact that he does call it cheesy old bloke music. The self depreciation is part of his charm.
He's an unabashed crooner and a shameless romantic and as the cd slides into the drawer, the hour seems to get later, the whisky bottle gets emptier and (depending on the song) the lover is either longer gone or closer to home. And because this music is from the past if your TV's on in the corner, you'll find it's got less channels and your central heating has turned into a hissing gas fire.
Because Hawley is very much in the wistful crooner tradition, you're not going to get the full highs and lows of the feelings behind the songs, just from his vocals. It's just not part of the style. That whole easy tradition that Hawley has drawn from, that Frank Sinatra, rinky dink and Martinis, showed pain without the wrenching Soul style pain of what Sam Moore from Sam and Dave called "The ugly face." The key to depth in Hawley's music is the arrangements rather than his vocals.
Hawley's arrangements are built on sparse echoing guitars, gentle sweeps from the lap steel and plenty of reverb. It's Twin Peaks soundtrack territory. Lowedges from 2003 is very much built on this sound with the likes of Darlin' with its Roy Orbison vocal style. There are lots of songs about going away and coming back...exactly what the heartbroken crooner needs. You Don't Miss Your Water (Till Your River Runs Dry) has the line "Like A Thief In The Night, You Stole the love from my world... You Don't Miss Your Water Till Your River Runs Dry. You don't miss your lover till they're waving goodbye." And let's face it if you're never going to hear Roy Orbison sing those lines then Richard Hawley will do just fine.
I'm On Nights is a wonderful song built on a guitar that twangs like broken heartstrings. It feels like I'd Rather Go Blind which has been covered by Etta James, Clarence Carter (who was blind) and Rod Stewart (who was blonde, apparently) amongst many others. Just the phrase itself "I'm On Nights" gives it an English feel despite the fact that he's crooning an American style song. "I'm on nights, we need the money" but in classic style he'll be coming back "Now it's time to lose your sorrow, I'm on days and off tomorrow."
While Lowedges mines the a rich but underplayed echoing guitar sound, Coles Corner from 2005 spans a wider range of styles.
Coles Corner refers to the popular meeting spot for lovers outside the Cole Brothers department store in Sheffield. Even though it was demolished in 1969, local people still refer to it and still arrange to meet there. The title track starts with an impossibly lovely sweep of strings as Hawley hopes that "Maybe there's someone waiting for me with a smile and a flower in her hair." Actually he gets stood up but the whole thing of singing about a place that no longer really exists, but is still a part of the city's emotional and social landscape and part of the soundtrack that's in his head definitely seems a very Richard Hawley thing to do.
Darlin'Wait For Me. Oh yes it's another darlin' song, another song about going away and coming back and another song where you can hear hints of Elvis. Thing is you can bet, Hawley can always hear Elvis
Tonight is another song that seems rooted in Sheffield and while there may be other cities that have hills, to my ears the only thing that could make this song more Sheffield would be a line about Richard Hawley's beloved Henderson's Relish and the less loved Human League. ......"Oh tonight I got it really bad, Maybe I'll go out walking, Don't feel like staying home, Might take the car up to the hills and watch the city lights below."
Wading Through The Waters Of My Time is Johnny Cash style Country whilst on Woody Guthrie's Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Feet the echo is on the vocal rather than the instrumentation. It's sparse and haunting with a thick, muted sound from the barely brushed guitar. Closing track Last Orders was written in a taxi on the way to the studio and is more Twin Peaky atmospherics. Maybe if the journey had been longer it wouldn't have ended up as an instrumental. Nonetheless it's a clever contrast with the lushness of the opening title track.
Coles Corner is the critics choice but my tip is buy both and spend more time with Lowedges
"I could always hum along cleaning the pots. But after the Longpigs split I thought it was about time I stopped washing the pots and crack on with writing and recording"
He originally played guitar with Sheffield indie poppers Treebound Story and the more angsty LongPigs. When the latter disintegrated space was at a premium in Drink and Drugs hell. Old friend Jarvis Cocker threw him a lifeline with his offer to play guitar for Pulp on their popularity squashing This Is Hardcore album. He spent the next six years working with Pulp and also Cocker's art/performance skeleton suit wearing side project, Relaxed Muscle. He also played the guitar solo on All Saints version of Under The Bridge, wrote Clean for Robbie Williams but turned down further collaborations with him because he wouldn't have known what to do with the money. "I just didn't want to do it. It would have changed my life too much. Earning millions of pounds is not the reason I get up in the morning"
Hawley grew up in Pitsmoor Sheffield where his dad was a steelworker who played in rock n roll bands. Hawley started playing guitar at 6 and was gigging with his dad and uncle as a teenager. Hawley's musical heroes are the likes of Link Wray and the original Sun artists, like Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis...probably just like his dad.
Now I think there's something quite poetic and fitting about growing up in a Rock 'n' Roll household, having a youthful dalliance with indie pop and then hitting your musical prime as you approach your forties with music that draws heavily from your dads influence. It's all in the Sidies....The sideburns you have at 40 are different to the ones of your 20's. Bushy grey truck driving monsters....none of your razored clubland cool, designer beers and bars...it's all tea and greasy spoon. Which is fairly Rock 'n' roll when you consider that that the modern British mecca for Rock 'n' Roll is the original Rock 'n' Roll Mecca. The Ace Cafe with a car park full of oil leaking British bikes that dropped their engines in the road on the journey. Tellingly Hawley's 3rd album Lowedges has a classic BSA on the cover.
What Hawley has done with his music is to take a retro grown up, adult music, strip out any elements that don't work anymore, (there have been some very odd ideas about backing vocals and orchestrations that although they were ground breaking and maybe even necessary at the time, when you're given the choice, you wouldn't use again. Richard Hawley had the choice and hasn't used them again. Take for example Ray Charles Modern Sounds In Country And Western. As a link in the development of soul music and as a shake up to the country music establishment it's crucially important. But 45 years on, it can sound a bit syrupy to my ears. Well Hawley has taken the style and sound of Roy Orbison, Sinatra or Johnny Cash and turned it into a very late night music. But without the cheese, despite the fact that he does call it cheesy old bloke music. The self depreciation is part of his charm.
He's an unabashed crooner and a shameless romantic and as the cd slides into the drawer, the hour seems to get later, the whisky bottle gets emptier and (depending on the song) the lover is either longer gone or closer to home. And because this music is from the past if your TV's on in the corner, you'll find it's got less channels and your central heating has turned into a hissing gas fire.
Because Hawley is very much in the wistful crooner tradition, you're not going to get the full highs and lows of the feelings behind the songs, just from his vocals. It's just not part of the style. That whole easy tradition that Hawley has drawn from, that Frank Sinatra, rinky dink and Martinis, showed pain without the wrenching Soul style pain of what Sam Moore from Sam and Dave called "The ugly face." The key to depth in Hawley's music is the arrangements rather than his vocals.
Hawley's arrangements are built on sparse echoing guitars, gentle sweeps from the lap steel and plenty of reverb. It's Twin Peaks soundtrack territory. Lowedges from 2003 is very much built on this sound with the likes of Darlin' with its Roy Orbison vocal style. There are lots of songs about going away and coming back...exactly what the heartbroken crooner needs. You Don't Miss Your Water (Till Your River Runs Dry) has the line "Like A Thief In The Night, You Stole the love from my world... You Don't Miss Your Water Till Your River Runs Dry. You don't miss your lover till they're waving goodbye." And let's face it if you're never going to hear Roy Orbison sing those lines then Richard Hawley will do just fine.
I'm On Nights is a wonderful song built on a guitar that twangs like broken heartstrings. It feels like I'd Rather Go Blind which has been covered by Etta James, Clarence Carter (who was blind) and Rod Stewart (who was blonde, apparently) amongst many others. Just the phrase itself "I'm On Nights" gives it an English feel despite the fact that he's crooning an American style song. "I'm on nights, we need the money" but in classic style he'll be coming back "Now it's time to lose your sorrow, I'm on days and off tomorrow."
While Lowedges mines the a rich but underplayed echoing guitar sound, Coles Corner from 2005 spans a wider range of styles.
Coles Corner refers to the popular meeting spot for lovers outside the Cole Brothers department store in Sheffield. Even though it was demolished in 1969, local people still refer to it and still arrange to meet there. The title track starts with an impossibly lovely sweep of strings as Hawley hopes that "Maybe there's someone waiting for me with a smile and a flower in her hair." Actually he gets stood up but the whole thing of singing about a place that no longer really exists, but is still a part of the city's emotional and social landscape and part of the soundtrack that's in his head definitely seems a very Richard Hawley thing to do.
Darlin'Wait For Me. Oh yes it's another darlin' song, another song about going away and coming back and another song where you can hear hints of Elvis. Thing is you can bet, Hawley can always hear Elvis
Tonight is another song that seems rooted in Sheffield and while there may be other cities that have hills, to my ears the only thing that could make this song more Sheffield would be a line about Richard Hawley's beloved Henderson's Relish and the less loved Human League. ......"Oh tonight I got it really bad, Maybe I'll go out walking, Don't feel like staying home, Might take the car up to the hills and watch the city lights below."
Wading Through The Waters Of My Time is Johnny Cash style Country whilst on Woody Guthrie's Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Feet the echo is on the vocal rather than the instrumentation. It's sparse and haunting with a thick, muted sound from the barely brushed guitar. Closing track Last Orders was written in a taxi on the way to the studio and is more Twin Peaky atmospherics. Maybe if the journey had been longer it wouldn't have ended up as an instrumental. Nonetheless it's a clever contrast with the lushness of the opening title track.
Coles Corner is the critics choice but my tip is buy both and spend more time with Lowedges
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