So here we are then. The last part of my review of the year. Hope you enjoy. (Parts One and Two are here , and over there ) Songs of the year Avi Buffalo - Truth Sets In On first hearing, I thought this song was pretty good. On second, third, fourth, all the way up to the hundredth, I thought this song was the best I heard all year. I adore it. The [...]
So, following on from yesterday’s first part, featuring all the records I was disappointed or just a bit meh-d with, here’s my list of ones I liked. Like I said yesterday, no absolute favourites, but some of the songs on these albums will live with me until my brain finally dissolves through alcohol abuse and Alzheimers. The Best Album Of The Year By A Band Half My Age Making Music For People Half My Age Contenders: Wavves Avi Buffalo Beach House Winner: Avi [...]
2010, for me, hasn’t been a vintage year. No Yellow House, no Funeral, no You Forgot It In People, no Boxer. Some good albums, sure, but there was little that really grabbed me by the balls and forced me to listen. Here's the first part of a three-part review of the year, with the first two featuring albums, and the last songs, gigs, and other stuff. You can sense this feeling in all those end-of-year lists that have been hosing around the web since the end of November (and, to whit, surely you should do your [...]
You know you've reached some exalted height of geekdom when you find yourself walking into a Godspeed You! Black Emperor gig with a David Foster Wallace book 1 . They are a band that have tended to attract the more cerebral end of the music-loving public; dense instrumental songs that can go on for tens of minutes and once got a somewhat overwrought NME front cover quoting their lyrics 3 . "And On Next Week's Cover, It's Kylie!" It is terribly easy to become overwrought [...]
Last month, I had the joy of seeing Wye Oak play live ( supporting Spoon ). Very good they were too, with a set list heavily comprised of material from their upcoming album. Bit of a pain that, since I wanted to hear some oldies , but you can't have what you want in this life, can you 1 ? You Have A Nice Lie Down, Then Anyway, they've released their first song from upcoming record Civilian ( out on City [...]
I have no idea why this song was in my head when I woke up this morning. Good, though, eh? MP3: Transdermal Celebration by Ween Buy "Quebec" (CD) Here Filed under: Music
A theme this blog returns to from time to time is how the blazes anyone’s going to make a living in the music industry these days. Artists can always go out on tour, but what about the labels that release their records? Records that no-one’s buying 1 ? And how can anyone do something different to separate them from the ravening herd? One relentlessly pursued idea has been to release records that are more special than before – from the usual “Special Edition” 2 or 3 CD sets, to Brooce Springsteen’s “Here’s a fuck-off load [...]
The other day, on my fourth consecutive night out, a friend started singing "Don't Stop Believin'". As you can imagine, this isn't exactly a favourite of mine. Quite the opposite. I hate it. Trite, irritating guff that drives me insane. You could safely say I'm not a big fan of this whole "Glee"-inspired reappraisal of horrendous '802s songs. I'm not sure my friend was so keen on me expressed my heartfelt hatred, but what can you do, eh? So on my way to work yesterday, irritating earworm still buzzing away in my [...]
That is, quite possibly, the most tortured pun I've ever tried. And I've tried a few. I'm not even going to try and explain. Anyway, this post is a quick one about how rubbish I am at the music blogging lark. Generally, one of the points of music blogging is having some semblance of being up to date and that. I fail dismally at this. Some PR people, bless their little cotton socks, send me stuff early and I think "Oooh, must listen to that soon". Then I forget. I'm a [...]
God, I hate corporate venues. I hate Ticketmaster, and I hate the way fans of bands get screwed every time their band plays somewhere like the O2. Why? Because you get forced into trying to buy tickets in some horrendous BUY NOW LIMITED SALE frenzy, hopefully clicking “retry” as the web page times out, until you finally manage to get a pair of tickets somewhere up in the roof. This is pre-sale, mind, even before the full release. The event sells out quickly. Then, of course, a few days before showtime, “a limited additional [...]
“Hey, were you at the Broken Social Scene gig last night? My boyfriend says he saw you there” Oh dear. Please don’t say that you saw me yelling at anyone . “Oh, did he say that for any particular reason?” “No, just that you were there.” Phew. Despite being one of the biggest cities in Europe, London is still fundamentally a small place. Go and see a certain type of band – your Nationals and your Elbows, your Bonnie Prince Billys and your Devendra Banharts – and you’ll [...]
For all the talk of how the new media - blogs and all that stuff - is going to rescue the music industry from the ginormous hole it's found itself in, there’s nothing quite like a good bit of hype in the print media to get things going. I get an email from a PR bloke pointing me in the direction of a new band, Brother, hailing from Slough (of all places). As I am utterly hopeless, this got completely ignored. Next thing I know they are on the cover of the Grauniad’s Film and Music [...]
You’ve got to love Mogwai. From their early publicity stunts like printing t-shirts with “BLUR=SHITE”, naming albums after (fake) Glasgow street gangs (Young Team, Come On Die Young) and having some fantastic song titles, to making some excellent examples of post-rock. Yeah, you can argue that they just take Slint’s Spiderland and repeat it in many different ways, but you wouldn’t tell them that to their faces. And I’d say you were wrong. There’s lots more to them than second-hand Slintery. More Lovely Cover Art [...]
So there's been a bit of Eddie Hinton love going on round here lately, firstly with some covers from Drive-By Truckers , then the superb "Breakfast In Bed" as sung by Dusty Springfield, and now, to finish it off, a song from the man himself. Ooh, a Blonde Tele You want beautiful Country Soul from one of the pioneers? Here you go. Grab yourself the " Country Got Soul " compilations if you like this. Which, of course, [...]
Reading up about Eddie Hinton the other day, as part of the Drive-By Truckers review , I came across the nugget of information that he'd written "Breakfast In Bed", as sung by Dusty Springfield, the possessor of one of the finest voices, ever. No more needs to be said, except that if you don't like this, you don't like music. MP3: Breakfast In Bed by Dusty Springfield Buy "At Her Very Best" (CD/MP3) - [...]
Once you see a band live a few times, you know what you're going to get. With Broken Social Scene, you know there will be about ten of them; you know they'll play a selection of great songs, which groove along 1 with about twenty guitars and keyboards and a trombone and all sorts of other gubbins, Kevin Drew will tell us how much he loves and appreciates us (gotta love these Canadians), and there will inevitably be a few newer songs that make you go "Hmmm, they definitely went downhill after You Forgot It In People". [...]
Like The Hold Steady, Drive-By Truckers take the sound of mainstream American rock and add a big dollop of literary nous. Desperate to overturn the notion that Southerners are a bunch of gator-wrestling, tobacco-chewing inbreds, their Southern-fried country rock albums are more like mini-operas than your average meat-and-potatoes rock bands could ever imagine. Plus, they’ve always worked hard to build a fanbase online, as well as touring, and that’s in evidence tonight. I haven’t seen a hardcore set of fans like this since Mastodon , and what’s more, they are tall. Very tall. Being over [...]
So I tried. I really, really tried. Tried to do a post a day. But on Friday, after a less-than-drunken night out and suffering from the first bloom of a winter cold, I just thought “I’m too tired for this. Sod the blog”. And there, after all of 11 days, goes my plan to do a post a day for the month. Still, nothing to stop me doing a post a day for the remainder of the month, is there? Especially not with a bunch of gigs coming up. Ah, who [...]
So this is a very quick post just to remind you all of one of the finest music videos ever: Yo La Tengo's "Sugarcube": How brilliant is that, eh? And yes, I finally got round to buying "I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One". Thanks, Gordon and Nosila ! MP3: Sugarcube by Yo La Tengo Buy "I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One" (CD/MP3) [...]
How Grandaddy never became successful is beyond me. Great tunes; intelligent lyrics about love, life and the struggle between nature and technology; a charmingly unpretentious band who gave the distinct impression they were just a bunch of mates who got together to form a band whilst skateboarding, all wrapped up with a slightly shambolic air of second-hand guitars and analogue synths. They sounded just different enough to be unique without being too challenging. Yet the world wasn’t quite ready for their tales of dogs, AM radio stations, broken-down robots and office workers gone astray on activity day [...]
Loft And Lost
NSFW: Miley Cyrus shows off her BANGIN TANKINI BOD!
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros - Better Days
Doldrums - "Holographic Sandcastles"
