Great Cover #11 The Be Good Tanyas - Waiting 'Round To Die

“Now I'm out of prison, I got me a friend at last. He don't steal or cheat or drink or lie. His name's codeine, he's the nicest thing I've seen. Together we're gonna wait around and die."

Waiting ‘Round To Die is of course the classic Townes Van Vandt song about a man that goes from place to place to escape his troubles and finds some more on the way. It’s a stand out classic that many artists have covered. And the best cover of the song that I’ve heard has to be from The Be Good Tanyas which appeared on their second album Chinatown.
Okay so it may not come close to the version that Townes Van Vandt performs on the documentary Heartworn Highways [which is even better than the recorded version] but that could never happen.



Follow link to download: The Be Good Tanyas - Waiting 'Round To Die

Cam Butler - I Surrender

Cam Butler is an Australian guitarist and composer who’s music I’ve just began getting into. From what I’ve heard of the guitar work it atmospheric, dark and melodic. Though I’ve not yet heard much of the string stuff yet (the next album that’s soon to be released has been recorded with a23 piece string orchestra) the song that I first heard from him and made me want to hear some more is a song called I Surrender that has a big band jazz feel to it. It sounds like a piece of John Barry music and really wouldn’t sound out of place alongside those big classic James Bond theme tunes.



Follow the link to download Cam Butler - I Surrender

Adam's House Cat - Town Burned Down

Adam’s House Cat was the band that Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley played in before they went on to perform the Drive-By Truckers.
They recorded one album that never saw the light of day. This week I’ve managed to get hold of a download of the album Town Burned Down, its ragged and raw cow punk and the sound is a bit thin but its still a good listen.
They last song it an acoustic version of the song Nine Bullets that’s on the Drive-By Truckers second album Pizza Deliverance and is still a live favourite.

Follow this link to download: Adam’s House Cat - Nine Bullets

Lost Children Net Label

A great place to find some really good post-rock, experimental, ambient, drone, electronic, math-rock type stuff is from the Lost Children Net Label. And it’s a place where you can download the music for free as they care more about good music being heard than making a profit (and anyway do any record labels make much of a profit nowadays?).
There is over seventy albums available so if you don’t know where to start then I would suggest starting at The Silent Ballet compilations from which I’ve found many things to get further into such as French Teen Idol, Amberhaze, Orange Crush and Ben Frost to name a few.

Dirty Beaches - Badlands

Dirty Beaches is the guise that that Taiwanese born Zhang Hungtai goes under. Earlier on this year the official debut album Badlands was released on Zoo Records. I’ve recently came across it and its been on heavy rotation. Its minimalist and lo-fi and dare I say that there is even a Goth feel to it.
This song Sweet 17 is what first grabbed my attention, it sounds like Nick Cave collaborating with Suicide that’s been recorded on Guided By Voices 4-track.



Follow link to download: Dirty Beaches - Sweet 17

The Jesus & Mary Chain - Cracking Up

The Jesus & Mary Chain just might well be one of my favourite bands (as in somewhere in the top twenty) without me ever noticing that they are. I won’t listen to them for months and months and then I can here one song and will have to dig through every album they made.
For me they didn’t do much wrong, whether it be the squawking feedback of Psychocandy, which still sounds as abrasive all these years later, or the clean sounding Stoned & Dethroned.
This time I’ve been giving some more attention to their final album Munki. Its not their but still has some cracking songs on it. Like Cracking up which was one of the best singles of 1998.



Click on link to download: The Jesus & Mary Chain - Cracking Up

Spoon - Crap Name Great Band

To name your band after a piece of cutlery is not the best idea. Has it got drug connotations what with cooking up on a spoon? No idea. But anyway, crap name but a great band.
I first become aware of the band some time around the beginning of the last decade when I heard bought the album Kill The Moonlight after hearing a song of theirs on some compilation CD. And nowadays I seem to take them for granted as they’re so consistently good.
No matter how many instruments are in the mix there’s always so much room in their songs, and a groove too. Like on this song from the album Gimme Fiction called I Turn My Camera On.

Click on here to download: Spoon - I Turn My Camera On.

Tom Waits - Blood Money

What with the new Tom Waits album out I like many are in a in a Tom Waits world. The new album is of course very good indeed but I’ve also been going through his back catalogue (something that I do about once a year).
For the moment I can’t get enough of Blood Money. Its Waits at his ram shackled best. With song titles such as Misery Is the River of the World, Everything Goes to Hell, God's Away on Business, Knife Chase and Starving in the Belly of a Whale you get the picture.

Oasis - (It’s Good) To Be Free

So on the first week of release Noel Gallagher and his Flying Birds perched on the top of the album charts. I have no idea what the album is like as I have no interest in it whatsoever. Maybe he’s actually put some real effort into the album. If he has then its about time as he’s been cruising on autopilot for years. Oasis finished a couple of years ago but the foot was off the gas long before that.
They never came anywhere close to their debut Defiantly Maybe. What about the second album What’s The Story Morning Glory? Give over, it had a few good songs but it doesn’t compare.
The second best Oasis album is The Masterplan which is a collection of early b-sides. The b-sides are better than anything on the third album Be Here Now. Which is when they really went off the boil.
My favourite song has to be (It’s Good) To Be Free which just edges over the Liam and Noel duet Acquiesce.

Lou Reed With Metallica

So this blog is mainly about songs that I like, but after tuning into Later With Jools Holland the on Tuesday night I feel as if I just have to write about something that I really don’t like. And that’s Lou Reed playing with Mettalica.
For the record I really love a lot of Lou Reed’s solo albums as well as all four Velvet Underground albums. As for Metallica, well there was a period in my teenage tears when I thought they were a great band but that’s about it.
I’ve not heard all of the album but what I have heard is sounds pretty ropey, but I didn’t think that it would be as bad as what I heard the other night on Later With Jools Holland.
The first song sounded as if they were all playing a completely different song that they all started at different times. Fucking awful.
Then at the end the play The Velvet Underground song White Light/White Heat. Fucking awful don’t come close.

Richmond Fontaine - The High Country

Knowing that it would be a concept album I was a bit apprehensive about the latest album from Alt-country legends (in my eyes they are anyway) Richmond Fontaine. Singer songwriter Willy Vlautin is also a novelist and mixing that with the songs I wasn’t so sure about. Yes his songs are in themselves short story’s about drunks down on their luck but a whole album with a story continuation might just be a bit too straight on the nose.
And on first listen of The High Country it was, but only because of some spoken word pieces that have some of the worst acting that I’ve ever heard. The rest of the album has some good spoken word and quiet instrumental songs as well as some rocking ones where the band are in top form.
The album is growing on my with each listen. Especially now that I always skip the two bad spoken word songs.

Great Cover #10 M. Ward - Rave On

Rave on is a song that wasn’t written by Buddy Holly but his recording made it as good as his. With good reason.
M. Ward recorded the song on his brilliant 2009 album Hold Time. His version is more laid back and has a nice riff on the acoustic guitar but it’s the overall sound that he gets that makes it a great cover version. It sounds fresh but also retains some of that old time recording feel that M. Ward is an avid student of.

Download: M. Ward - Rave On

Spititualized - Think I'm In Love (The Chemical Brothers Remix)

The single song download has killed the CD single. The only reason that I used to buy singles was for the B-sides. Bands would usually chuck their left over’s from the recording sessions on a B-side but sometimes some interesting stuff would be on it too. Like a reworked or stripped down version of a song, or an interesting remix.
Such as the B-side to I Think I’m In Love by Spiritualized that has a remix by the Chemical Brothers. They give it their full treatment to great affect. As if they took the song stripped it back to the vocals and then pressed a button that says Block Rockin’ Beats.

Download: Spiritualized - Think I’m In Love (The Chemical Brothers Remix)

Lanterns on the Lake - Gracious Tide, Take Me Home

I don’t listen to a great deal of English bands. The reason being that there’s not many good ones. If you listen to XFM all day and are therefore into landfill indie then you’ll no doubt think otherwise. But I’m not.
There’s plenty of good music coming north of the border but I’ve not heard anything much good of late on the other side.
That is until I heard the debut album from a band on Bella Union called Lanterns on the Lake who hail from England’s most northern county Northumberland.
Gracious Tide, Take Me Home is folk music that often soars to an epic landscape.
Certainly the best album from an English band that I’ve heard this year.

Download: Lanterns on the Lake - Keep On Trying

Elvis Presley - Heartbreak Hotel

In the area where I live there used to be an Elvis Presley themed restaurant. It was like a much more tackier Hard Rock Café where you can eat hamburger’s and fries while a Las Vegas period Elvis impersonator croons away in the corner. The place was thriving in the late 80s and early 90s but has long shut down as that sort of place is as dated as stone washed jeans and white linen suits with the sleeves rolled up.

Almost all Elvis impersonators do the fat jumpsuit period. Its easier than doing the lean sharp suited acoustic guitar swinging 50s Elvis.
In that period he was untouchable as a performer and had the songs to match. Like his first big hit Heartbreak Hotel.
Everything about the song is spot on. Elvis’ vocal range and phrasing, the double bass and brushed drums. Plus coming in at 1:22 is one of the finest guitar breaks in rock n’ roll, and it only last ten seconds. Then there’s the lyrics that are based on the suicide of a man who jumped out of a hotel window, with that and the songs haunting echo it’s kind of a Goth prototype.



Download Elvis Presley - Heartbreak Hotel by clicking on this link.

ZXYZXY - Subclass of the Dead

I’ve mentioned the work of Greg Pappas who goes under the name ZXYZXY before. Everything he puts out is very diverse, whether it be post-rock, ambient or one song that’s a forty five minute drone.
I’ve spent some time with the latest release Subclass of the Dead (available to buy here) and each listen I get more drawn in to its multi-layered world.
And clocking in at ninety minutes it’s a big world to get drawn to and lost in.
The guitars take a back seat on this outing. Instead there’s more electronic, chillwave and some outright weird stuff that phases in and out of tune.
Every listen I find something new and its on the way to being my favourite output from ZXYZXY yet.

Download: ZXYZXY - Rainbow Dash mp3

Howlin Wolf - Smokestack Lightning

I’m keeping on with my blues trip at the moment, so here’s a classic from Howlin’ Wolf, the man with one of the best (if not the best then definitely the grittiest) voices ever put to record.
Smokestack Lighting doesn’t follow the usual blues chord structure. What it does instead is locks into a riff and stays put.
It’s a song that’s been interoperated in ways before and after Howlin’ Wolf did it. But surely none better.

Download: Howlin’ Wolf - Smokestack Lightning

Elmore James - Dust My Broom

A recent purchase from the downstairs section in hmv is a two CD collection of blues man Elmore James. To my recollection I hadn’t heard any of his work before, but its old blues music from Mississippi so of course I had a pretty good idea. Its not going to be happy hardcore is it. And at six quid its worth a go.
Well its been on heavy rotation for the last couple of weeks. It starts off with the overdriven acoustic slide of Dust My Broom (with a riff that makes a regular appearance throughout) but some songs slip into jazz and swing with the piano or saxophone leading the way.
It was six quid more than well spent. And I can’t get that riff out of my head.

Mark Lanegan - Bubblegum

For a while now Mark Lanegan has become Mr voice for hire. Queens of the Stone Age, The Twilight Singers, Soulsavers, Unkle, Isobel Campbell and various others have required his services. It seems like the only creative output that he’s done of late is with Greg Dulli under the name The Gutter Twins. Need a rich baritone growl of a voive? Then give Mark a call.
All of this work is fine but he hasn’t released a solo album since Bubblegum in 2004. Which for me is the finest piece of work that Lanegan has ever put his name to. Including The Screaming Trees.
Its so sparse and yet so dirty with deep throbbing bass lines that compliment Lanegan’s voice so well.
So come on, make another solo album will ya.



Download Mark Lanegan Band - Wedding Dress from this link.

Mogwai - Mogwai Fear Satan (Live)

The days of multi platinum albums are albums almost gone, but what is extinct and has been for some time is the big selling live album.
I have a few live albums but I seldom give them a listen as the studio versions of the songs are always superior. Songs that took weeks or in the studio to get right are put onto an album that is often badly recorded.

The exception is Mogwai. Who‘s live recordings are on par with the studio versions. Like on Government Commissions: BBC Sessions 1996-2003 which contains a mammoth eighteen minute version of Like Herod and a superior version of New Paths To Helicon Pt I.
And the version of Mogwai Fear Satan on the recent live album Special Moves is just stunning.
As good as the live recordings are, seeing Mogwai play live is something else.



Download Mogwai- Mogwai Fear Satan (live) from this link.