|
Week S
Jan 21, 2015 22:06:53 GMT
Post by gazz on Jan 21, 2015 22:06:53 GMT
Did anyone mention The Selecter? Brilliant band, but would still have to come second to The Specials though. Good shout though, I can't believe I didn't give them an honourable mention!
|
|
|
Week S
Jan 27, 2015 1:27:59 GMT
Post by gazz on Jan 27, 2015 1:27:59 GMT
I'm right in the middle of my own personal Specials/Ska renaissance (my phone is crammed full of all kinds of first and second wave Ska right now), and was scouring Google for any articles on that '2-Tone' era. and I came across this brilliant transcription of an interview with Terry Hall from 2010 after the band had got back together for the 30th Anniversary tour: www.davehaslam.com/#/terry-hall/Terry is a genuine legend, even though I'm in my middle 40s he's still my f**king idol!
|
|
|
Week S
Jan 27, 2015 1:54:55 GMT
Post by gazz on Jan 27, 2015 1:54:55 GMT
Great passage from the interview on how his music has been used in commercials: Interviewer: "That song ‘Windmills of Your Mind’ has been used a couple of times on adverts for Matalan and Tescos. What’s the process, how does that happen?"Terry: "Basically we sign over our rights to everything, and then people sell our music."Interviewer: "So you could be sat at home and an advert comes on and that might be the first time you know about it…"Terry: "Sometimes, sometimes. We did a song called ‘Ain’t What You Do’ and that is being used now by B&Q. (audience member cheers). Yeah, but you sit where I’m sitting and you think about why you recorded it and this bloke’s putting up a f*ckin’ shed! It’s like, it kills it a bit."Class!
|
|
|
Week S
Jan 27, 2015 22:32:11 GMT
Post by another_ruined_saturday on Jan 27, 2015 22:32:11 GMT
better late?
because i like long and earnest lists:
st etienne - 'nothing can stop us now', 'avenue' and their jump-starting of neil young's 'only love can break your heart' make it sunny. instantly. i got bored watching 'finisterre' though.
sylvian, david. singer from japan. i liked japan at the time, particularly the early collection, 'assemblage', but his first three solo efforts, 'brilliant trees', 'gone to earth', and 'secrets of the beehive' each improved on the last, all better than his original band. 'secrets...' in particular is the sort of adult poetry any adult should like.
stevens, sufjan. american folkie who decided to release an album chronicling each state. 'illinoise' is sprawling and very good, but it's an earlier album, 'seven swans', a reverent, bible-infused bubble of prettiness (check 'the dress looks nice on you') that particularly cuts it for me. saw him once in manchester, just him; banjo/guitar and his gorgeous breathy voice. a reverie.
superchunk. a little japanese girl at college made me loads of carefully annotated tapes of their prodigious early output. sorry luv, i wasn't that bothered. but 'here's to shutting up' from autumn 2001, was a great album, complete with prescient lyrics for that particular moment ('plane crash footage on tv...'). choice tracks, the opener and 'what do you look forward to?'.
smith, elliott. a city living depressive folk-pop sensation. people seemed to love a lot of his stuff, but for me it was really 1998's 'either/or' album, which is the essential. listen to 'angeles' primarily, but there are loads of good songs on it ('needle in the hay', '3.45 in the morning', 'say yes'). sadly, the depressive thing was not a pop persona. in the early 2000's he killed himself with a knife wound to the chest. a great shame.
shins. not quite exciting enough to retain my attention across their career, but lots of clever, pretty modern american indie-pop like 'caring is creepy', 'new slang' and a host of others over the first couple of albums. sounded great live too, although a little uncharismatic.
the silver mt. zion memorial orchestra & tra la la band (and variations), primarily for their (and the associated GY!BE's) naming of albums: 'lift yr skinny fists like antennas to heaven', 'he has left us alone but shafts of light sometimes grace the corner of our rooms', but also a bit for their particular brand of post-rock.
showaddywaddy were actually the first...ahem...proper band i ever saw live. in my defence, it was probably 1980.
silver jews have released some of my favourite, witty, lyrical songs ever. essentially the poet david berman and a revolving supporting cast (including members of pavement...a record shop sticker mentioning this was the reason i took a chance on them, via the ultra-obscure 'arizona record' in 1994). i ought to try a band eps mentioned, 'suburban kids with biblical names', just because they have the good taste to have filched their moniker from a line in the joos 'people'. first three albums ('starlite walker', 'the natural bridge', and 'american water') are all brilliant, the sound maturing along the way. essentially, an indie-folkie does country, and writes most of the best lyrical couplets ever, whether fizzing with clever comedy or knowing melancholy. hit drugs and went a bit sh*t after that. formed part of my epic tuesday/thursday/saturday triple-header (as recounted in CHAOS) - torquay away tuesday, silver jews in edinburgh thursday, barnet away saturday. too many doleful, great songs to list - those first three albums are full of them.
sparklehorse. main man mark linkous died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest a few years ago. a bit of a sad theme for me in 's', this. sounded like it was recorded on a rural southern US farm, everything rusting bucolically. his first and second 'vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot' and 'good morning spider' are full of big reverby indie pop, noisy sprints ('pig's 'i want to be a stupid and shallow motherf***er now' chorus never fails to engage), and f***ing gorgeous laments such as 'gasoline horseys', 'beautiful widow', or 'junebug'. inspired on the album version of 'happy man' which starts all tinny, the second verse dissolves entirely into radio being tuned static, and then comes back, thrillingly loudly, full bore for the remainder of the song. great falsettoed cover of daniel johnston's 'my yoke is heavy' on a b-side somewhere too, as well as one of johnston's 'hey joe' on '...spider'. either brilliant or dull live - saw them seven or eight times and the great performances formed only a narrow majority, but when he was good you knew about it. a hairs on the back of the neck moment at sheffield leadmill when he got the crowd to join in the last choruses of the devastatingly pretty 'homecoming queen' too. much missed.
sonic youth. i'm running out of stamina, but it's taken them until about now before they have. 'sister' is my favourite album - the one-two punch of 'schizophrenia' and 'catholic block', both with gorgeous guitars in strange tunings is still my favourite album opening ever. 'bad moon rising' and 'evol' were both intermittently good and they were just doing things differently to anyone else. stuff like the opening couple of minutes of 'brave men run' showcase how a detuned guitar sound that always sounds 'wrong' can be absolutely ravishing with their ferocious commitment to the idea. 'daydream nation' is an alt-classic but brilliant though 'teenage riot' (about dinosaur jr's j mascis), 'candle', 'total trash' 'hyperstation' etc are, there's a bit too much stuff on there. love the genuine ansaphone message set to a simple piano figure of 'providence' on it as well. some other good later albums, but the four i've mentioned are the essentials, i reckon. only saw them once, with pavement in support. i think i died and went to heaven.
smog bill callahan is smog. i've been listening since hearing the pretty desolation of 'drunk on the stars' in 1994. lo-fi and scratchy album? 'julius caeser', baroque chamber pop? 'wild love'. then sort of settled down a bit into rich, brilliantly observational songs, capturing nature's beauty, the ugliness simmering in relationships, and full of wit. 'knock knock', 'dongs of sevotion', 'supper', 'a river ain't too much to love' are among the great albums he's released. 'kicking a couple around' may be the most down e.p. ever released, but shines. i was listening again again again to one of the many smog compies i've burned for myself on the way back from gainsborough, and there's just everything. i can probably pick a favourite; the wry, self-referential 'teenage spaceship', but so, so many. i could probably derive musical sustenance from listening to nothing but smog/bill callahan for the rest of my life. wouldn't choose to, but his is a much bigger, deeper and more consistent body of work than my actual faves, pavement (might have to rethink my faves). macc and eps; if you haven't tried, i really think you ought to.
so too late, but smog.
|
|
|
Week S
Jan 28, 2015 15:12:14 GMT
Post by Epworth Hatter on Jan 28, 2015 15:12:14 GMT
Never too late, ars.
I've been listening to Bill Callahan in the office today. Really good first impressions. It's the immediacy of the lyrics that grab you (apologies for the tautology, but I couldn't think of another way of saying it!) Often with songs the lyrics are in the background - with smog they are very much in the foreground of every song. In fact, I've had to stop listening to him as I can't concentrate - songs like River Guard, The Sing 'well the only words I said today are "beer" and "thank you") and dark comedy Dress Sexy at my Funeral really draw you in. The music is pretty dreamy in places, so it's a good job the lyrics grab you, otherwise I'd be worried about you dropping off on the drive back from deepest darkest Lincolnshire. I'll definitely have to give him more airtime. Cheers much.
|
|
|
Week S
Jan 28, 2015 21:53:43 GMT
Post by another_ruined_saturday on Jan 28, 2015 21:53:43 GMT
'river guard' is very pretty, and lyrically very clever; and 'dress sexy...' is an ugly thing, with a coarse and winking protagonist, until the very last couplet of the song which flips the entire thing and becomes kind of devastating.
if you have the airtime, 'i break horses' the harshest relationship song ever, actually poetic in its misogyny. 'teenage spaceship' a warm self-referential bath; 'feather by feather' a brilliantly expressed evocation of a risk-taker's life; 'the morning paper' a bucolic dawn; 'came blue' deeply unsatisfying sexual relations; 'ex-con' a hilarious tale of how unnatural the protagonist feels when he's dressing 'smart' ("i'm gonna take that child..."); 'say valley maker' with bill testifying at the end over jim white's brilliantly rattling drums...there are many, many many. because it's (mainly) slow stuff, it can require a few hits to bite but it really doesn't let go.
|
|
|
Week S
Jan 29, 2015 14:28:10 GMT
Post by hatter_in_macc on Jan 29, 2015 14:28:10 GMT
Yep - with you both all the way on Bill Callahan. Smog did make it onto my own short list, and get a shout-out on my original thread here, too.
Nothing much to add to your words of praise - except that my own personal fave album is Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle, which is hard to surpass in terms of overall melodic beauty. I was also chuffed when Cold Blooded Old Times made the cut for the brilliant High Fidelity soundtrack. 'Lo-fi' for 'Hi-fi', if you will... Either way, Bill probably will have hated that.
|
|
|
Week S
Jan 29, 2015 19:27:17 GMT
Post by another_ruined_saturday on Jan 29, 2015 19:27:17 GMT
so you did. it's only re-reading that i spotted it as there are -conservatively- a trillion bands mentioned just in 's'. i've listened to 'sometimes...' a bit and liked what i heard, but 'woke on a whaleheart' was the last i played a fair bit. i sort of need to come away from bands/artists after a while and bill's held me in much more than pretty much anyone else - over ten or a dozen albums with only the odd wrinkle ('doctor came at dawn' was a little sparse for me, and i never massively enjoyed 'rain on lens' although i do kind of feel i should re-evaluate both given how much i like everything else). will probably give the most recent three 'sometimes...', 'apocalypse' and 'dream river' a fairer go first though. i'll see your 'cold blooded old times' in 'high fidelity' and raise it with 'vessel in vain' over the opening sequence of 'dead man's shoes'. devastating. should also have given a shout out to springsteen for 'born to run'. bloody obvious, but one of the most evocative and romantic songs ever. i once bought a coupe (that was in calamitous disrepair most of the time but also had a bit of grunt). when i was driving it back home the day i bought it i put the radio on and 'born to run' was in its opening charge. 'serendipitous' would be how i would describe it, were that not a c***'s word.
|
|