What sort of song would you expect to see at a Karaoke evening in a pub on the outskirts of a major financial district? A selection of recent hits plus some older numbers guaranteed to get the frustrated singer in all of us to drunkenly stagger up the steps with the sole purpose of slaughtering "Wonderwall" or "American Pie", bellowing like a cow at an abbatoir? Yep. And then you look through the list and there, amongst the usual stuff, sits "Transmission" by Joy Division. I ask you, who's going to go up and sing [...]
Of all life's little pleasures, coming across a band you've not listened to in years and remembering how great they are must rank up there with finding a nice warm cup of tea next to your chair you didn't know you had (the tea, not the chair). Whilst regular readers - all three of you - know I harp on about this kind of thing rather a lot, but this is my blog, and at my age and infirmity one is allowed a touch of leniency. Today's remembered pleasure is Throwing Muses. 4AD, the genius record [...]
"So why did you have to get a 64Gb MP3 player then?" people ask me, disbelievingly. "Because I like to have loads of old stuff on there I haven't listened to for years, so when the song pops back into my head, I can listen to it straight away", I reply. They look at me funnily. Usually whilst walking backward, slowly. But today it came into its own. Lying in bed feeling more than a little poorly, I had the sudden urge to listen to Smashing Pumpkin's ludicrous "Mellon Collie and the Infinite [...]
In the mid '802s, British Indie music woke up from its glum post-punk nightmare and started to produce music that was, if not out and out happy, at least willing to step outside its front door with something approaching a smile. Of course, this was largely due to the huge amounts of drugs it was consuming, but never mind. IndiePop sprung to life. All was sunny. Kind of. Cocteau Twins – Lorelei New Order – Bizarre Love Triangle Billy Bragg – A New England In 1984, Cocteau Twins were a [...]
Doesn't Time Fly? I hope I don't end up in the press again. Let's Play Spot The Blogger In other news, I've finally got me a new iPod, with tons of lovely free space, so I happily loaded on a huge bunch of stuff I've not listened to in ages. One of those was this gem from, appropriately, 2008; there's been a whole load of dream-pop posted round here lately, and this is another fine example. [...]
That post title is my entry in this year's "Most Tortuously Entitled Blog Post" prize. I think I'm in with a good chance. Hope this Sunday finds you well; mine's been largely spent doing a combination of cooking, lounging and working. And typing. As I have more cooking and working to get on with, I'll keep this short. Avi Buffalo hail from sunny Long Beach, California, and frankly, sound it. Those dreamy vocals, reverb-heavy guitars, handclaps, tunes that easily [...]
The music blog world is driven not only by the personal tastes of music bloggers themselves, but by PR people, bands and labels, who are constantly emailing music bloggers to plug their new bands. As any honest blogger will tell you, if you buy them a can of Old Purple's Anxiety Reducer in your local scummy fleapit, that by and large these emails can be something of a mixed blessing. Personally, I never get anything like the amount of time I'd like to listen to each and every bit of music I get sent. But it just doesn't [...]
The Mercury Prize has something of a chequered history. Widely sneered at by the cognoscenti 1 , winners over the years have ranged from the worthy (Elbow, PJ Harvey), the new and frankly astonishing (Dizzee Rascal), the soon-to-be-obscure (Roni Size) and the ludicrous (M People. Seriously? Klaxons? You jest, surely?). The Xx have also, for some reason, been getting sneered at by the cognoscenti too. I can sort of understand a few of the criticisms. Yes, it's just some herberts from Putney pissing about with a drum machine, bass and guitar, and [...]
Back in the dark, dim mists of time (oh ok then, April ), I mused away on some bad reviews Pitchfork had given two artists - Freelance Whales and The Kissaway Trail . The former had released one of my favourite records of the year , and the latter had piqued my curiosity thanks to a little (or rather quite long) tune named "SDP". Which, I have been reliably informed, is not about David Owen's lot. So, fast forwarding [...]
First of the month, no returns. The lack of posting round here could well be taken as being a clear example of the maxim stating "A man who is very, very busy has no time to blog". Whilst my life has become a thrilling rollercoaster of new projects, Spitfires, drunken nights out and all sorts of unexpected joys and challenges, these things are not conducive to the process of sitting down and writing something interesting 1 . So, as first blog [...]
Falling in love with a record is like falling in love with a beautiful woman. With some records, you're instantly smitten within the first few bars. Others, they initially underwhelm before slowly taking hold in your soul, and before you know it, you're constantly listening to them and (if you're musically minded) trying to download tabs from the Interwebz so you can cack-handedly play along. Laura Veirs' "July Flame" has been the latter. First time I heard it, I was left thinking it was perfectly pleasant, and filed it on the "give it another try later" [...]
I was chatting to The Venerable Indie Dave in the boozer after this the other day, and we got chatting about our respective blogs, especially the whole "how the fuck are people going to make money now?" thing. He mentioned a post he did the other week, about Les Savy Fav . It's a great read , pointing out how the band posted a note on their website here asking people who'd downloaded the album to donate some money to them to make up for lost cash 1 . [...]
The world was shocked and amazed on Saturday following an unexpected announcement by foremost chamber-pop tyke, Sufjan Stevens, stating that he was releasing a new EP, like, NOW. Ok, when I mean "shocked and amazed" I mean "mildly and pleasantly surprised" and by "The world" I mean "some bloggers and Hype Machine". But still, Sufjan, new EP, how's about that then? It's only been about 26 years since his last proper release. What's more, it's free. You can download the tracks at a low bitrate for free , or get better quality ones [...]
This is a gig I've been looking forward to for ages. I'm not sure if it's age, or the fact that this is the 100th gig I've put up on Songkick , but I'm starting to get a little bit weary of the whole live gig thing. But every time I've listened to "Albatross" or "Glass Printer" this year, the thought of hearing them through a big fuckoff set of speakers makes me a little bit excited. Funnily enough, this is a band that I know next to nothing about. If you asked me to [...]
I got an email last month. It read something along the lines of "Listen to this guy, Paul Thomas Saunders. I think he's incredible". The last time this friend sent me was Frightened Rabbit's "Swim Until You Can't See Land", and since that was one of the best songs I'd heard in years , then it was definitely the time to start paying attention. Off I toddle to the Myspace page and have a quick listen. For all the talk of new ways to listen to music, unique paradigm shifts and [...]
Getting recommendations is a double-edged sword. For every fantastic new unsung and unsigned band there's a hundred who would give Keane a run for their money in the 3:15 from Mediocrity Racecourse, Tedioustown. And what do you say to a friend who's given you a hot tip, only to find out they make you want to tear your ears off, and theirs too, for suggesting such unwashed tripe? Thankfully, in the last couple of weeks, I've been introduced to some supremely good bands. Two of them are so good they make my eyes water at [...]
The hype machine has started to rev up in the UK for Caitlin Rose, a Tennessee-based country singer-songwriter, with positive reviews in everything from the BBC, to The Word via the Sunday Times. And this is no bad thing; country music still has a bad name here, being largely associated with line-dancing and straw-chewing rednecks who's as soon shoot you as sodomise you. Those of us in the know (like me, natch) understand that country isn't just the preserve of gun-totin' crackers, but a fine genre of [...]
Here's a little question for you. How many copies of Parallel Lines do you think Blondie sold? 1 million? Sure, that's a pretty decent number for a post-punk-pop band, but not even close. 5 million? That would keep any decently managed band in drainpipe jeans and guitars for life. But no. 10 million? Getting closer, but still no cigar. They sold, depending on who you listen to, between 20 and 40 million copies. Let that sink in a minute. Those [...]
The mid-'802s saw the UK Independent music scene reach another of its many high points. For a couple of years, the scene had been characterised by ramshackle amateurism, post-punk dourness and not a small amount of glumness (following on from the late '702s glories ). But as always in the ever-changing UK scene, like mushrooms growing from manure, some of the finest pop music known to man sprung from all over the UK. Others, like The Jesus And Mary Chain, found new ways to be angry and noisy and blew apart the hitherto moribund [...]
The brain works in mysterious ways. Last night, idly flicking through "Guitarist" magazine (the finest Guitar magazine known to man, I'll have you know), I was overcome by an urge to listen to Radiohead's "The Bends". First the song, which I picked up on You Tube: Then the album, on the way to work today. What a track. What an album. From a band whose previous sole success had been the Nirvana-meets-The Pixies whine of "Creep", The Bends was [...]
Loft And Lost
Avicii – Two Million
Yellow Magic Orchestra edit from Chrome Canyon
Beck – I Just Started Hating Some People Today
H&M Lookbook Mujer y Hombre Otoño 2012.
