Whenever I walk into the flagship hmv store on Oxford Street a nauseous feeling rapidly consumes me. After a very quick browse at what they have in the ‘new biggest ever sale’ I soon make my way downstairs to the blues/country/world/classical/soundtrack/ musical/folk/jazz/comedy section to get away from the crowd and the new Rhiannon or Kaiser Chiefs release that’s getting blasted out from the sound system.
I know this sounds like I’m old before my time but downstairs is just an all round better shopping experience. Okay so maybe not if you don’t like any of the music they have but even if I did want the new offering from Rhiannon or the Kaiser Chiefs I would still go down there to pay as the queue is almost non-existent.
Luckily I do like a lot of the music in the downstairs section and its where I bought my best ever value for money music purchase that is Hank Williams Greatest Hits. A two CD album with forty great songs for the price of six quid.
Get an mp3 of Hank Williams - Lost Highway by left clicking on this link.
This is a great cover of the Beck song Jack-Ass by err… Beck. It first appeared as a B-side to the single but has since appeared on the deluxe edition of Odelay. Okay so it’s a re-working of the song but it sounds like a cover as its done in a full on mariachi style, complete with Beck singing in Spanish.
One of the main components of Jack-Ass is the sample of Van Morison’s old band Them performing Bob Dylan’s It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.
So Burro is sort of like a cover of a song that’s based on a cover of another song.
There’s another version called Strange Invitation which is stripped down to an acoustic guitar and strings. Its good but Burro stands out because it’s so different from the original.
When Bon Iver’s first album For Emma, Forever Ago came out three years ago the story of the album - After the break up of his band and a relationship Justin Vernon went back to Wisconsin where he recuperated in his fathers isolated cabin out in the woods - along with rave reviews was a great selling point, and I soon bought it without even hearing a note. In the main it lived up to what I hoped it would be, especially with the songs Skinny Love, For Emma and Flume.
So where did Bon Iver go with the recently released follow up? Well in some parts he's gone back to the 80s with bad sounding synth and keyboard. On the last song there’s even some cheesy 80s saxophone. Also the vocals are in a falsetto that has as much range as a water pistol.
It’s a huge let down. Especially after the in-between EP Blood Bank. With the title tracks slightly distorted chords, varied vocal range and well written lyrics its with out doubt my favourite Bon Iver track.
Shame that on the second album he decided to sound like fucking Enya.
Download an mp3 of Bon Iver - Blood Bank from this link.
There’s not too much subtlety from the London five piece band The Jim Jones Revue. Everything is full on and raucous as they play old time fifties rock ’n’ roll in a garage style that sounds like Jerry-Lee Lewis playing with The Sonics.
I’m a recent convert and what with them being from London I’ll soon get around to seeing them play live. I imagine it to be bordering on shambolic, with a feeling that the wheels could come off at any minute. The way this type of music should sound live.
Only thing is that the next time they play in London its at the Shepherds Bush Empire. Not one of my favoured venues. If only I got into this band earlier then I could have caught them in a in a small sweaty place that skinks of stale beer. That’s this type of music’s natural home.
Download an mp3 of The Jim Jones Revue - High Horse from this link.
My teenage metal phase was brief. But for while there I only listened to Megadeath, Metallica, Slayer and Pantera. I don’t listen to any of them bands anymore but I still put on a metal record every so often. I would be into the genre a whole lot more if it wasn’t for the vocals. Many times I’ve liked the heavy distorted riffing, pounding drums and throbbing bass and then the growling cookie monster vocals come in and ruin it. I just don‘t understand why they pretend to be some kind of evil devil from hell, its childish pantomime. And I can’t stand the high pitched Brice Dickinson type vocals either.
That’s why I like the instrumental post-metal of Chicago band Pelican. None of that growling of operatic screaming with them. Its heavy grooves that don’t let vocals get in the way.
Here is really good cover of an Earth song. A band who don’t need vocals either.
The Redlands Palomino Company are one of the best UK Alt-Country type bands around. Okay so on the surface there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of competition for that crown, but there’s a few knocking about. They’re a band that know their sound and don’t fret about wearing their influences on there sleeve. But what really sets them apart are the vocals. Some songs have slightly ragged voice of Alex Elton-Wall, some the smooth voice of Hannah Elton-Wall and sometimes they alternate like on the opening song Call Me Up from their recently released third album Don’t Fade. Its their first album in four years and sees them continue with what they do best. The Redlands Palomino Company don’t throw any curveballs into the mix, its ten straight up country rock songs with guitars, bass, drums and pedal steel. And it sounds great.
Download an mp3 of Call Me Up by The Redlands Palomino Company from here.
There’s nothing more smug than an indie rock fan who says “I was into (insert name of band) before they became well known.” And if the band in question is Guided By Voices then that would take smugness to a whole new level.
I’m not one of them people myself as I only got into them when they released a best of compilation called Human Amusements At Hourly Rates. By then main man Bob Pollard had broke the band up. So unfortunately I never got to see them live or could look forward to new releases. But its okay as its never too late to get into a band, and Guided By Voices can easily become one of your favourites. I go through spells when they're the only band that I want to listen to.
Some of their songs are Lo-fi, some just a verse snippet that comes and goes before you know it. Then there's indie rock anthems like this:
Download Guided By Voices - Glad Girls mp3 from here.
The last couple of days I’ve been listening to Björk’s first solo album Debut. Well its her first solo album if you don't include the one she recorded when she was eleven years old and the album of traditional Icelandic and jazz tunes.
The first time that I was aware of Bjork was when I saw an interview with her on MTV (back when MTV was worth watching). She was onset making the video for her first single Human Behaviour and spoke in an accent that I couldn’t place. When they played the video at the end of the interview it was clear that she didn’t sound like any other female pop singers. I was intrigued. Venus As A Boy was another great single with a strange video, as was Play Dead (that was released as a single but not originally on Debut), but it wasn’t until I heard Big Time Sensuality that I realised that I really do like Bjork. It’s a song that I regularly listen to. A song that I never skip when it pops up on shuffle. And it has that great chord change at the start of the chorus. I never tire of it.
And another really good video.
The other day I was flicking around the TV channels when I came across Top of the Pops 2. The song playing was the awful Stacy’s Mom by Fountains of Wayne. As I watched the in studio performance I realised something. That the band look as if they are in their thirties. After doing a quick Google search I found out that Fountains of Wayne had been going for years before they recorded Stacy’s Mom. When I first heard it on the radio I thought that the band must a crap new American version of Busted or McFly. Kids pop music with guitars.
Power pop bands pushing thirty or forty singing about being a teenager like Fountains of Wayne and Blink 182 are much worse than Hanson still singing Mmm Bop.
So let’s have some power pop that’s worth listening to. Husker Du had melodic pop sensibilities along with their frantic speed and buzz saw guitar. But when the band split up and Bob Mould went on to form another three piece called Sugar some of the melody’s were pushed to the front. Especially on the single If I Can’t Change Your Mind where Mould uses an acoustic twelve string guitar to give it a Big Star, REM sound type of sound.
It even got to number 30 in the UK charts. Back when some people cared about that sort of thing.
Download Sugar - If I Can’t Change Your Mind from here.
Apparently Foghat had a resurgence in popularity when one of their songs appeared on the video game Guitar Hero. Suddenly a whole new generation was being introduced to their crap boogie-blues-70s rock. It was my first introduction to Foghat as they are not at all well known in the UK, even though its where the band are from.
I played that edition of Guitar Hero and sure it was fun playing along to Foghat, but it was also fun to play along to the Scorpions. Neither bands I intend to listen to outside the realms of Guitar Hero.
After spending some time with the game Story of My Life by the Californian band Social Distortion is a song that I did want to investigate more. It sounds like a punk band covering Creedence Clearwater Revial and is much easier to play on an actual guitar than on the medium level on Guitar Hero. The album by the same name is worth getting too.
Download an mp3 of Social Distortion - Story of My Life from here.
I’ve been playing a lot of music from Athens Georgia’s down tuned noise-rockers Harvey Milk lately. And one song that I’ve paid special attention to is the opener from the 2008 album Life…The Best Game in Town called Death Goes To The Winter.
It’s a pretty weird song. The opening verse doesn’t sound like Harvey Milk at all with its clean guitar and quire boy vocals, it takes just over a minute and a half before it kicks into the usual thumping riff and growled vocals of Harvey Milk.
And what a great outro, with a tight one note riff and a guitar solo where the strings are being loosened until they are completely slack so the guitar solo turns into a low pitched rumble. Oh and after all that it ends with a single big piano chord that replicates that end of song chord on The Beatles A Day In The Life.
Download Harvey Milk - Death Goes To The Winter mp3 from here.
Laughing Stock is considered to be of the first post-rock albums. I see it more as a sparse post-rock outline, albeit a very good one. Either way, it’s a massive departure from the synth pop of their early albums. Laughing Stock should be played from start to finish, preferably late at night. The exception is the song After The Flood which I can play anytime of the day. It glides along with a hypnotic laid back organ riff and then sores up in the chorus with Mark Hollis’ restraint but still intense vocal delivery.
Halfway through the nine minutes of the song there’s a one note solo that I believe is played on a wind instrument synthesizer called a Variophone. It sounds like nothing else that I’ve heard before as the note grows a life of its own and is trying desperately to stay in tune. Or desperately trying to wriggle out of tune.
Like in Neil Young’s Cinnamon Girl sometimes a one note solo is all the notes you need.
Download an mp3 of Talk Talk - After The Flood from here.
For years I only ever though of Bruce Springsteen as some old overblown stadium rocker. As a kid growing up in the 80s I always used to hear him on the radio, mainly the big singles from Born In The U.S.A. That album was made for the radio, its so compressed and everything is up loud in the mix with no subtlety. Plus its got them massive shouty choruses.
Then about three or four years ago I picked up a copy of The River in the sales. I liked it but like almost all double albums it would be better if it was trimmed down to one really decent albums with no fillers. I soon picked up the stripped down acoustic Nebraska and the breakthrough album Born To Run, both good but it wasn’t until I heard Darkness on the Edge of Town that I really appreciated Springsteen. Then I got Born In The U.S.A which I liked more than I thought I would.
Although I now have and like a fair amount of his work I wouldn’t call myself a Bruce Springsteen fan as such. I will listen to him every so often but I’ve no intention of ever seeing him live as a three hour set in an arena would just be too much to bare.
Everything you need to know about the Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band live show is in the 2009 Super Bowl half time show. It had all the theatrics of a three hour set condensed into twelve minutes.
In the first minute he’s already thrown his guitar in the air, made a preaching speech to the camera telling the people at home to ‘step away from the guacamole, put the chicken fingers down and turn the volume up,' jumped onto a piano, jumped down again and is lying back while down on his knees.
In the four songs that follow all the boxes are ticket.
High fiving the front row. Holding the microphone to the crowd so they can sing. Sliding on knees. Air Punching. Members of the band all singing the chorus into one microphone. Fireworks. Playing back to back with the lead guitarist. Big rock and roll ending.
You feel knackered just watching it.
Great for stadium rock and the half time show but I would prefer to watch the basics of a Neil Young & Crazy Horse show.
So I guess I do still think of Springsteen as an old overblown stadium rocker, but with good songs.
The Hombres were a short lived psychedelic garage rock band from Memphis. I only have one song of theirs called Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out). Its their most well know and the only one you need.
Its got a simple three chord riff and a laid back swinging groove over rambling vocals that don’t make too much sense. ‘Hanging from a pine tree by my knees, sun is shining through the shade. Nobody knows what it's all about, it's too much man let it all hang out.’
The best place to get it is from the brilliant compilation album Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968 were you will also find many other short lived psychedelic garage rock bands who recorded one two great songs.
Download The Hombres Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out) mp3 from here.
While most of rock music’s elder statesmen lost their way during the 80s, Lou Reed ignored all the glossy production values of the time and found his way again. There’s no synth stabs or linen snare drums on the guitar driven The Blue Mask from 1982. Then at the end of the decade he released his finest solo album. New York was my first introduction to Lou Reed. Sometime in the mid 90s when I was about seventeen or eighteen my dad suggested that I listen to it, saying “If you like Bob Dylan then you might like this album.”
My dad was right. Lyrically I would put New York on par with any Dylan record. Set mainly to a late period Velvet Underground sounding backdrop (though there is a lounge jazz sort of song that somehow doesn’t feel too out of place) its full with stories set in New York City and takes swipes at many public figures and highlights many political issues. “Americans don't care too much for beauty, they'll shit in a river, dump battery acid in a stream. They'll watch dead rats wash up on the beach and complain if they can't swim.”
From New York I went on to Velvet Underground albums then back to the solo records. Some of his solo stuff I wish I hadn’t bought like Sally Can’t Dance and Berlin (I know Berlin is supposed to be one of Reed’s finest albums but I find it extremely dull), and some I still regularly listen too like Street Hassle and Transformer.
But in my opinion New York is Lou Reed’s finest Moment.
Around this time last year I got a self titled album by a band called Moonhearts. I played it once and then forgot about it. Until last week that is, and now its on heavy rotation. I know little about the Moonhearts. All I know is that they’re a three piece band that used to be called Charlie & the Moonhearts who play stripped down garage punk rock and are on Tic Tac Totally Records.
When I first gave them a listen it was just after I'd recently purchased the Gangliens album Monster Head Room. I think that took up my drenched in reverb rock quota for a while. Maybe I just needed to give Moonhearts one more listen.
Whatever, its doesn’t matter, it has my attention now. It’s a short energetic album, where the guitar is loud and the vocals are buried. There’s a few goofy titles (like Eat My Shorts) and a couple of mid tempo songs with strong melody’s. All which sound as if they have been recorded in a large bathroom.
I’m now going to see if I can get my hands on the album they did when they were called Charlie & the Moonhearts.
If you’re an instrumental band then its much harder to name a song. You can’t just take the first or last line in the chorus when there is no chorus. Even more thought might go into naming the album. Or maybe you can just open a book and put your finger on a random word and stick with that. That’s what the Washington DC progressive/math rock three piece Caverns seemed to have done by naming there 2008 album Kittens!
Today I heard Kittens! for the first time in a while and its just as fucked up as I remembered it. Over the shredding riffs and crashing drums there's a piano that's sometimes playing in a grand orchestral way and sometimes just plink plonking along.
If I listened to this sort of music for too long I would soon tire of it, but Kittens! doesn’t tire as its a short album of twenty four minutes.
Download an mp3 from Kittens! called Dance You Son Of A Bitch from here.
I’ve downloaded many music podcasts, tried them out and then deleted them. There are so many out there but most of them are ill informed rubbish or slow and boring. Podcasting is like radio. It can’t meander about. It needs a flow and that’s where the students who think they can record a podcast on their laptop after a joint or two go wrong.
Here are some music podcasts that are well worth a listen:
Sound Opinions
A Chicago public radio show that also comes out as a podcast. Its hosted by well informed music critics Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot. The show includes music news, record reviews, sometimes has live in the studio performances, sometimes has a feature on a theme or classic album.
NPR: All Songs Considered
Another Public Radio podcast this time from Washington D.C. It’s a varied one that could be a discussion about the best new music discovered at a recent festival. Could be an episode devoted to a certain genre. Could be a well known musician that comes in to have a chat and play some songs.
Word Podcast
No music is played in this podcast. It’s a few people from the Word Magazine - sometimes with a guest- who sit around talking. Music is discussed but it moves onto other stuff. The way that conversation does.
Musicheads
This is from the Minnesota Public Radio station The Current. Each week host Bill DeVille and two other dj's from the station give their opinions on three recently released albums. It’s a standard format that’s done well.
In a previous post about rock without guitars I didn’t mention Holy Fuck who are an electronic band that rocks a whole lot more than most skinny white boy bands like say, Razerlight. One of their hardest rocking songs is the last track on their second album Latin called P.I.G.S. It has the most overdriven pounding bass, industrial Nine Inch Nail type drums and a keyboard riff that sounds like Thin Lizzy’s twin guitar attack.
Why a band would have the word fuck in their name I don’t know. Its hard enough to get on in the music world without giving yourself such a handicap. Its supposed to be edgy I guess, like saying ‘yeah we don’t want to be in your corporate machine anyway man, fuck you’. Yawn. If you type Holy Fuck into Google their website is at the top of the list, but when they first started out it must have been well difficult. Especially if you then clicked on images.
For every reasonably successful band like Holy Fuck, Fucked Up or Fuck Buttons there’s hundreds of bands who fought that putting fuck in their name would be a good idea but got nowhere. Fuck People, Fuck The Facts, Fuck The World, I Just Wanna Fuck, Fuck Your Shadow From Behind, Fuck You And Die, Fuck On The Beach are some of the band names with fuck that I found on Myspace. Most of them Metal bands or Hip Hop because of cause its fuck you and the horse you rode in on music.
I don’t own a lot of music that comes from the Merseyside area. I had an Echo &The Bunnymen album on cassette but that’s long gone. There was a whole sleuth of Brit-Pop bands in the nineties such as The Boo Radleys, Cast, The Lighting Seeds and Space. Cast had a few good singles but I didn’t care for the others at all.
Half Man Half Biscuit, The Coral and Clinic are alright but I’ve never really got too deep into their music.
The Zutons and The Wombats don’t interest me. As for A Flock of Seagulls and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, no thanks.
There’s some other band that I’ve forgot to mention. Some band from the sixties… Gerry & the Pacemakers, no. Oh yes of course, The Beatles. Yeah sure I can appreciate that they made some great music but the only songs that I have are a few that I ripped from an old flatmates CD.
My favourite band from around the Liverpool area are unlike all of the above. They’re a psych-space-kraut rock band called Mugstar. If you’re into that sort of thing then you won’t be disappointed my Mugstar. Their latest album Lime is very good, but I would start with Technical Knowledge As A Weapon. Its full of big riffs and freakouts, and ends with a thirteen minute mammoth of a song called Faurklausundbo.
I’ve yet to see them live but will make sure that I do the next time they play in London.
Download an mp3 of the song Ouroboror from Technical Knowledge As A Weaponhere.
