Powerful dreams indeed

In 1990, a college classmate gave me a tape of an album by a new Dublin band which he had bought but did not think much of; I gave it a listen and it blew me away. It was 'Immigrants, emigrants and me' (a title just as appropriate in Ireland now as then at the end of the bleak 1980s) by Power of Dreams, who were only an average of 18 when they recorded it. On the surface it was conventional guitar pop with a fondness for the loud-quiet-loud cycle, but somehow it worked its way into my head and my heart, with a clear maturity belying its creators' youth and a recurrin lyrical sadness, and tunes that burrowed into your consciousness and made themselves at home.

I went to see Power of Dreams at least once then, when I moved to Cork in late 1990, in the gone-but-not-forgotten club called Sir Henry's, when I thought they were great but way louder than on record. I also bought 'Positivity' and '2 Hell with Common Sense', their next albums, which both had good songs but did not match the majesty of the debut.

Years passed then, as they do, and I thought frequently and fondly of Power of Dreams, and on several occasions made efforts to find their classic debut on CD, scouring shops and websites to no avail. I even tried to use one of those yokes for transferring cassettes to MP3 to recover my overworn tape, but the sound was crap. Then, around a year ago, I checked (as I had many times before) iTunes to find 'Immigrants' and 'Common sense' there, and bought both in an instant before it turned out to be a mirage or hallucination. They were back in my life in proper sound quality and I listened quite a bit to the former over the months since.

Then, last December, I found them on Myspace, as I started to dabble there myself, and through their page discovered they were playing the Pavillion in Cork on the date I now call 'last night', and of course I went, bringing a friend new to their charms.

Support was provided by Tallulah does the hula, hu I knew my name only, but actually really liked, despite them being of a sort that does not feature much on my iPod: spiky, (almost) all-girl, old-fashioned (sixties meets eighties?). They swapped instruments, vocal duties and perhaps clothes (or maybe I was just confused) throughout, with 2 synths front and centre giving the sound a richness and their drummer was excellent. They were not favoured by a sound mix which buried the vocals too low (a problem also encountered by the headliners) but I was definetely impressed and want to find out more. A clip of them (no idea of the song name but it was one of their best of the evening) follows (apologies for faily poor video quality, as I had a great view from a seat on the balcony, but the N95's video zoom was somewhat stretched):

Then, after a reasonably long support set, Power of Dreams came on. It is not too many bands who can be doing a 20-year anniversary tour and still be younger then me (let's face it, they're not exactly the Rolling Stones!) so they did not look particularly elderly or anything, but my distinct memories of lots of hair and possibly red dreadlocks from Sir Henry's were left in the past as far more sensible haircuts prevailed, although a very 1980s studded belt may have been in evidence.

They started with a blistering 'The joke's on me' and the years fell away; assorted other cliches could be inserted here to make the point that they sounded just like they did back then. By the third song it had dawned on the that they were playing 'immigrants' IN ORDER, which seemed quite wonderful to me (although this rule became far more flexible as the gig went on and other songs were inserted, one was moved earlier, and the best was kept for last). Anyway, the first POD clip I have is 'Does it matter?':

They then came to one of my favourites, which is 'Never told you', which began this time with a savage drum assault (their drummer was superb throughout), and which I always love for starting very heavy (I think singer Craig Walker may have introduced it with some line about Megadeath), rising to a soaring chorus, and the slowing to a really cool vocal interplay towards the end. It cruises with uttter confidence through several songs in 3 minutes, and I always loved it:

Around that point in both album and gig came 'Stay', which in many ways encapsulates their sound, with guitars roaring but always in perfect fealty to the melody and vocals:

Later came the slowest and loveliest moment of both gig and CD, 'Maire I don't love you', which always struck me as having lyrics far more convincing and lifeworn than their years suggested possible:

The later stages of the gig included far more non-Immigrants material (only one of which was not familiar to me), including the great 'Untitled' from '2 Hell with Common Sense', and a song which definetely included a lyrical snatch of the Cure's 'Just like heaven' ('show me how you do it, and I promise you, I promise you, I'll run away with you') and, on the same theme, a rather unexpected cover version of the wonderful 'There is a light that never goes out' by the Smiths.

They did two encores, one of three songs and one of two, and, as I have hinted before, kept the finest wine of all for last, launching into a version of '100 ways to kill a love' which lifted the roof off:

It seemed clear to me that the audience were mainly men like me who, of an age like me, who got the albums at the same time as me, and may even been in Sir Henry's with me those years ago. This was an audience of long-time fans reconnecting with their youth and, much as I would have loved more young fans to be there and discover how this sort of music can sound when it is really really done right, there was a lovely sense of pride and nostalgia there last night which I found quite touching. Many songs had full audience participation vocally, from folks who knew every word, and I suspect some of those jumping up and down near the stage had not done that for quite a while. The clip of '100 ways' above captures some of this, which really reached its climax as the gig did.

Afterwards, I went mooching for merchandise and met Craig (I missed a CD of the anniversary version of 'Immigrants', with demos, B-sides etc, which I must now hunt for, but did get his solo album and their long-lost final CD from 1994). He was very nice as I unloaded some Murphys-stoked nostalgia on him, and told him that if they had only played 'She's gone' (from 'Common sense') it would have been perfect, but it really was close to perfect. He also said they would release some new material next year, so maybe it is not too late for the new generation to find out what they never knew they were missing.

Well done lads, welcome back, and thanks for bridging the gap from now to then.

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Michael Stipe duets

There was a time (the late 1980s) where Michael Stipe of REM popped up on all sorts of albums, usually to give an up-and-coming or unknown band some help or publicity. This was of course at the time when his main band were making probably some of the best music of their career (leading up to Green) and were poised at the tipping point between indie heroes and global superstars.

Some his protegees poked fun at this help, like the late great Vic Chesnutt did on his Stipe-duet 'Guilty by association' (which unfortunately I could not find any clip of on Youtube) but there remains no doubt that Stipe could add a tingle to any spine when he appeared in their songs. A classic example of this is 'Kid fears' by the Indigo Girls, which I did find a live clip of below:

I love the way he sidles onto the stage in the shadows and wonder how many of those in the audience at that gig knew he would show up. He starts his bit a lot higher than the spooky way he does it on the album version, which is well worth checking out.

Another band he supported around that time was 10,000 maniacs, and their album 'In my tribe' features Stipe on the jaunty 'Campfire song', which again I could not find on Youtube, but I did find another duet below:

I have recently written about the third in my trinity of lovely Stipe-vs-female vocals of that time, with Kirsten Hersh on 'Your ghost', but he also did duets with male performers, and I like the duet below on Patti Smith's 'Because the night' (which I love) with Bruce Springsteen:

And I will finish on a song which presented a rare case of Stipe including a duet on an REM album, which was 'E-bow the letter' on 'New adventures in hi-fi', seen here with Thom Yorke not being even slightly mistaken for Patti live:

I have written before on this blog about the best duets Stipe ever did, in my mind, which were again with Natalie Merchant of 10,000 Maniacs, in a guitar shop called McCabes, and which I have on very poor quality cassette bootleg. To hear them singing 'Leaving on a jet plane' and 'Sunday morning', together and simultaneously, and having the sort of fun one would not traditionally associate either of them with, is absolutely lovely and special, and I hope someday someone will clean up that audio and make that great show available again!

Hint, hint, hint.

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A brontosaurus and four yorkshiremen

You sometimes forget what riches are to be found on Youtube (scant roses scattered among the many turds, with a good nose or a trusty map needed to steer you right), and it was only recently that I thought to check what Monty Python material may be found there; the answer, apparently, is a lot.

Monty Python started on BBC the year I was born and ran for five years, until 1974, and was an effectively unique and never equalled mix of surreal imagery and humour. I did not discover Python in real time, being far more concerned at the time with learning to walk and talk (although I am sure my early efforts at both were silly enough to be consistent), and I actually first discovered it actually through the films ('Life of Brian', of course) and cassettes of the live shows.

There is so much to discuss on Python I think I will come back to it on several posts in the future, but I will kick off now with two sketches which are not perhaps as famous as the Dead Parrot or the Cheese Shop, but which I discovered on those early tapes and still love.

The first is the theory of Miss Anne Elk on brontosauruses, featuring a simply wonderful performance by John Cleese:



I particularly love the spin-off idea of 'Elk theories' scientific observations that are not theories but merely minimal accounts, of which I have come across a few in my ofter life in research.

The second sketch is of Four Yorkshiremen looking back from a position of comfort on their early lives and trying to outdo each other in painting the bleakest of pictures:



This sketch, according to the all-knowing Wikipedia, actually predated Flying Circus, being first performed in 1967, but by a group include Cleese and Chapman, and never appeared on the show itself, although it was in their live shows (including the famour one at the Hollywood bowl).

I cannot say that all Monty Python shows were classics, or that every sketch worked for me, but there is a hell of a lot of gold there, and I will use Youtube to mine some more of it in the future. Click Here to Read More..

Revised forecast for Snow (Patrol)

A few nights ago, I was channel-surfing when I came across a show on Irish TV called 'Other voices', in which musical acts, national and international, play in a church in a (lovely) small town in the south west of Ireland called Dingle. On this occasion, I tuned in midway through an incredible souding song where several guys were making a very unusual choral wordless melody surrounded by strings, and my jaw dropped. The overall melody was only vaguely familiar, and then got more familiar, and then the main singer started back into a verse and I realised with quite a start that it was Snow Patrol playing 'Chasing cars'.

The performance can be seen below; 'Chasing cars' actually starts around the 5 minute mark (after another song and an interview clip) and I estimate I tuned in around the 7 min 52 seconds mark.



That is just simply incredible. I have always had a moderately favourable disposition towards Snow Patrol, and feel they are talented lads who know how to write a good song (much of 'Eyes open' is actually very good) and are almost relutant pop stars despite themselves. However, on the basis of the above, my estimation of them has increased hugely.

The other version of 'Chasing cars' I always liked was the mash-up by 'Partyben' where it was crossed intimately with the Police's 'Every breath you take' to quite interesting effect.



I also loved 'Set the fire to the third bar' with Martha Wainright, as seen on some European TV show below:



The final track I will leave this post with is what I think was the first song of theirs I heard, off an Uncut CD (of course), called 'On/off', a live version of which (unfoartnately not brilliant quality) I found below:



The original of that, without visuals, but worth including for the immaculate sound quality and lovely delicate acoustic sound, is below:



All in all, having listened to these songs as I constructed this post, I think it is time I gave Snow Patrol a lot more attention and credit in future. This last month in Ireland has seen levels of snow and ice almost unprecedented in the country, so maybe it is just appropriate, or nature was giving me a big hint..... Click Here to Read More..

Florence and the Machine

Finally downloaded Florence and the Machine from iTunes; there have been a lot of female acts in the last year or so which have sort of blended in my head into something which did not fill me with enthusiasm, but for some reason I took a chance on this one. It was actually partly her version of 'You've got the love' which I got on a recent compilation (of which more separately), and an accumulation of awareness of positive buzz building in my head.

Overall, I actually really like the album, although I definetely would not go as far as love (on this Valentine's Day). I have a wariness of mad artists, and female ones in particular, and have always been slightly scared of Kate Bush, Bjork and Joanne Newsome and such like. In this regard, Florence certainly qualifies as pretty mad, with the roars and musical eccentricities and wierd instrumentation, but there remains something charming about the album and it sort of swept me up in its rush of OTT energy.

Favourites include 'Dog days are over' (love in particular the opening of the handclaps):



I also really like 'Drumming song' (the name is enough for me) and 'Howl', which strangely reminds me of Josh Ritter's 'Wolves' (something about the lupine must bring out similar rhythms in diverse artists):



Continuing the theme of her songs reminding me of unexpected folks, the guitar at the start of 'Girl with one eye' reminds me of Billy Bragg's wonderful 'Levi Stubb's tears', which made it a bizarre coincidence when a search on Youtube found a duet below between the two, on 'Fairytale of New York', in which Florence's love of the harp lends thic classic a very unusual angle:



Having wandered from the album proper into cover versions, I will end with another totally unexpected find, of her singing Wham's 'Last Christmas':



I know Christmas is long gone, and I did a piece on these songs a few weeks back, and (crucially) it is not exactly a classic to begin with it, but it is still a good cover. Maybe 2009 wasn't as bad as I recently opined for new music, and there are more Florences out there I need to go back and seek out. Maybe. Click Here to Read More..

Finding Greg Laswell via Grey's Anatomy

Just a quick post to show what I love about the internet and how it has really revolutionised the way we can access music. I was watching Grey's Anatomy (or at least it was on while I was reading) when my ears tweaked up at the sound of a cover version of 'your ghost' by Kirsten Hersh (with Michael Stipe), a beautiful duet. Two minutes on later my iPod touch I typed 'your ghost cover version grey's anatomy' into Google and found Greg Laswell's name, which I then went to my PC and typed into eMusic, for which I have a subscription. I had 7 downloads left in this month's allowance, and lo and behold there was his 5-track 'Covers' EP featuring 'Your ghost', along with a nice version of the Bunnymen masterpiece 'The killing moon', and what follows below:



This, 'A woman's work' is apparently a Kate Bush song but his version is just incredible. That is the power of the worldwide interweb, from never hearing of someone to loving their songs in less than an hour. How did we ever do without it? Almost justifies the existence and budget of 'Grey's anatomy' by itself. Greg's homepage is at http://greglaswell.com/.

I will finish with 'Your ghost', but the original Hersh/Stipe version; I found ones with her singing live but this one, although not an actual video, does give the full effect of the duet:



Magic! Now I have just downloaded Florence and the Machine (finally) so need to work on that for a few days and get back with comments. Click Here to Read More..

The end of the road

Last Saturday night I went to a very very late show of 'The road', in a state of some anticipation. I read the book last summer in practically a single sitting, in fact sitting on a train when I should have been doing work, but somehow mesmerised by the spare stripped-back prose, economical and minimalist, but with occasional flashes of poetry, and occasional pretension.

When I heard about the film, all signs were good:

- Viggo Mortensen, a hell of an actor who redfined sensitive toughness you could absolutely believe in as Aragorn, enough to forget crap performances like 'Daylight' (well clearly not completely forgotten)

- director John Hillcoat, whose 'The proposition' was so raw and gritty you needed a shower after watching it, just like 'The road' should be

- music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, enough said


Bringing such baggage into the cinema, motly empty so with plenty of space to spread it around, it did not disappoint, and almost completely lived up to expectations and the book, to the extent that I could not imagine a more convincing bringing of McCarthy's blasted world to failing life. The actors were almost perfect, and some thoughts and slight issues are as follows:

1. The trailer is bizarre, or at least the first few seconds, which make it look like a Roland Emmerich film. The official trailer on Youtube is blocked, but I found a version with crap intro below. The first scenes are not even in the film, and come perilously close to explaining what must must muct not be explained. I heard an interview with Hillcoat on Mark Kermode's podcast where he said the studio did this and can only think - is that not illegal, immoral or just plain ill? Luckily I only saw the trailer after the film, but it could lure the unsuspecting into a false sense of what the movie is about.



2. The ending remains as problematic for me in the film as it was in the book. Obviously, the tale cannot have a conventional happy ending, and to end with a double death would be nihilistic in the extreme, as arguably would be the sight of the boy abandoned and alone. So, this is perhaps the only logical twist that could leave any residual hope (even if 5 - and a dog - are not all that much safer from the bands seen marauding than 2, and it is not like they had a map to Disneyland with them). However, it is still a little 'convenient', particularly in the film where time and geography are slightly compressed compared to the book. In another minor but significant change, the dog is not mentioned in the book, and a new referce to having followed them has been added, which lead to the question (due to the clarity of the incredible soundscape carrying barking sounds on several occasions) of how long they had been following, what they had seen and missed, and why they waited so long.

3. I have a niggling doubt about the boy, both in film and book. Somehow, I feel that he does not seem like he has not known anything else, and was born after 'the mysterious yet cataclysmic event'; I cannot help but think he too much of a sense of longing and missing which suggest knowledge of things being different, and that he would be somehow tougher and colder if all he had experienced was this awful world.

4. What does Viggo know about apocalyptic dental hygiene that Guy Pearce does not?

On a final note, I read where they found the boy in Australia and he is perfect, notwithstanding my comment above. The most amazing thing to me is how much he resembles the distinctive features of Chrlize Theron, emphasised when they wear the same hat - it cannot be accidental in the casting, and makes sure the father is carrying his family right through that long long road.

Anyway, enough nit-picking - a great book demanded a great movie which could not flinch from the source's grim and appalling vista, and on all fronts this was a success. Click Here to Read More..

Tindersticks: a name so good they kept on using it

What an album cover! I raved some months ago about the cover of Depeche Mode's 'A broken frame', and this is another stand-out, despite appearing incongrously as a picture in a character's house in Coronation Street some years ago. I haven't tracked down the original source. As well as the image, the word that appears is just wonderful.

What a name, and so beautiful it was not just used for the band, but also the album, and then their second album too. I must admit, if I had come up with a word so musical, so lyrical, so gentle, I would use it 'til it gagged too. I do have a theory that the name may have come from a Sude B-side, whose name escapes me but was on 'Sci-fi lullabies' some years ago (hilariously mislabelled by a Cork radio station at the time as 'Hi-fi melodies', which could not possibly be further from a likely Suede album title).

Anyway, this post is partly inspired by waiting for the new Tindersticks album, 'Falling down a mountain', but also by the fact that this must rank as one of my favourite debut albums ever. I have mentioned previously that I have a habit of buying each Christmas an album that appears on many critics' end-of-year best-of lists, and in this year (1992?) I bought Tindersticks on the basis of it's topping the now-gone Melody Maker's list. There are some albums which I can clearly remember my first hearing of, and this was one, as I bought it on casette in an underground (literally) record shop in Dublin called Freebird Records, and can recall slipping the tape into my walkman (it really was the dark ages) and letting 'Nectar' wash over me, sounding like nothing else I had heard to date, with the velvety hushed vocals and complex arrangements and warm dark atmosphere.

This is just an incredible album, sounding like no-one else (not even, to me, the Bad Seeds, to which it was most frequently compared), with huge ambition, long songs, and fragments and snippets, with it even being hard to match song names on the tape sleeve to actual tracks. It had (relatively) loud and angry bits (as discussed below) but its magic resides in the calm and still of songs like the astonishing 'Blood' (it has often hard to hear exactly what Stuart Staples is singing, but it may just contain the wonderful chorus line 'Where does the blood go, that runs away from broken hearts...'), 'Piano song' and 'Raindrops'.

The album's most high-profile (again, in relative terms) song (not sure if it was actually a single) is the great 'City Sickness', which encapsulates much of the albums faded grandeur, inherent sadness of purpose, and orchestral ambition (fully realised in later years by the band, as will be explored in later posts). I think I remember hearing in an interview at the time that they had a small number of strings which they recorded over and over (or something far more technical) to achieve the sound of massed violins, but however they did, it sounds great:

The nastier, dirtier side of the album (which I don't love as much at extremes like 'Paco de Renaldo's dream' and 'Her') does come across very effectively in the film noir menace of 'Jism':

I will finish with the quite breathtaking sound of 'The not knowing', which must be simply the most unexpected song to appear on an album by any band who could be even loosely said to be related to the genre known as rock music. This sounds like the clash between my music and classical music to me.

Obviously, debut albums by any band have the huge significance of capturing what it is that made them want to be in a band, and capture their life experience and ambition to that point, a far greater span than between any subsequent albums which also bear the baggage of their earlier work's reception and any fan's expectations. The debut, on the other hand, is like fresh snow and unspoiled, and sets out their stall. What a stall Tindersticks set out here, which they rarely topped in subsequent years, although their next albums (all 7?) all contain moments of beauty and wonder (they had not even discovered how incredibly they could duets, for example, in their first album), as I will come back to. Click Here to Read More..

2009 on screen

I have blogged recently about how 2009 was not (in my own opinion) a particularly great year for music, but it was probably a much better year for movies and TV than several of the last few have been. In movies, I got to the cinema quite a bit, and enjoyed the following:

'Star Trek' - even as a fervent 'Wars-not-Trek' person I found this huge fun
'Terminator salvation' - I actually enjoyed, with pretty cool se4ttings and action, but not up to those that preceeded (even the third)
'The hurt locker' - hugely powerful, but perhaps not as overwhelmingly great as many critics said
'District 9' - very good but not in a huge rush to see it again (my review is here)
'In the loop' - favourite of the year, and much more below
'Up' - sweet, funny and really well done
'Avatar' - actually really liked it but for the Aliens-nostalgic scenes more than anything
'Public enemies' - very good but not as good as the book from parts of which it was taken
'Inglorious basterds' - liked quite a lot and reviewed it here

I did find 'Paranormal activity' very effective and scary and just different to the usual type of horror movie of recent years, and was a very good value use of the coffee budget on 'Avatar':

As usual, Mark Kermode's podcast guided me fairly well through the morass of movies to that which was worth the money, even if I ignored him sometimes. For example, I did find '2012' to be big bumb fun, because that, in some ways, are what movies are for - jaw-dropping moments where things are shown to you or thrown at you which are so far from everyday life that you cannot help but go 'wow', even as your inner brain knows it is crap; special effects can do stuff, and sometimes that stuff can be simultaneously incredibly stupid but yet gut-clecnchingly escapist, and that's got its place too, surely?

On DVD, the move of the year was 'In bruges', on which I will have a separate blog post soon. Other movie highlights were 'Doubt' (really surprised me as I was expecting worthy but dull and found it really intense and watchable), 'Fifty dead men walking' (a good thriller), 'Frost/Nixon' (liked a lot but not sure how badly I would want to see it again), 'Slumdog millionaire' (yes, yes, I know I should have seen it in the cinema), 'Gran torino' (that man is just class, let's face it) and 'State of play' (both the BBC original and the inferior but still decent remake). I watched 'Man on wire' on a flight to Australia and was just blown away by it, and rewatched on DVD.

Overall, though, the big moments of the year for me were actually made for the small screen, as I tackled several box sets. I did not make much progress on 'Weeds' or 'Jericho', but plan to return one day, and am most of the way through series 1 of 'The wire'; in that case, I can see what is great about it, but do find it occasionally slow and confusing, but will persist regardless. Hell, I had no idea what was going on in most episodes of 'The west wing' and it was still incredible! I also watched a lot of 'Battlestar galactica', which I really like, although I do really feel it got a little too abstract, dark and pretentious for me somewhere around the start of the third series.

However, the big discovery of the year was 'The thick of it' (all episodes, plus the specials, plus 'In the loop', and all several times over) which is quite simply brilliant. The writing and acting are just incredible, and Malcolm Tucker is one of the most intensely immense creations ever. It is amazing how few people know and appreciate it, but maybe that just makes it that little bit more special.

On-screen moment of the year (any screen, any programme) has to be episode 7 of series 2 of 'The thick of it' when Tucker is out-manoeuvered and fired, and suddenly the laughter fades and intensity threatens to burn a hole in the TV screen. The last 5 minutes of that show must be among the most incredible acted scenes I have ever seen, with so many details (Nicola's confusion and indecision at being there at the moment, the Sky news btreaking news ticker tape behind Tucker's back, his secretary's tears, his storming out of Downing Street) - truly astonishing stuff which simply sucked my breath away and left me in a state of shock, albeit without a single computer-generated special effect involved. Now that is class! Click Here to Read More..

Vic Chesnutt, gone but not forgotten

It feels like someone famous always dies around Christmas (although James Brown is the only one who springs to mind right now), and today I was saddened to hear (from an Uncut email newsletter) that Vic Chesnutt had died on Christmas day.

While he was very much of the Uncut 'genre' I have written frequently about in this blog, I first heard of Vic quite a few years before I read about him in Uncut, with 1995's 'Is the actor happy?'. That album featured a memorable duet with Michael Stipe, 'Guilty by association', which celebrated and bemoaned his sponsorship by his far more famous (then as now) fellow denizen of Athens, Georgia, as well as 'Gravity of the situation'. I read a bit about Vic then, and learned how he was rendered paraplegic by a car accident at the age of 18.

The famous (at least on these pages) Uncut CD 'Songs of the new west' then featured 'Until the led', a gloriously uptempo romp with Lambchop as his backing band, taken from their full album together 'The salesman and Bernadette', which I still rank as one of my favourites of the alt-country scene (although I do not necessarily think Vic fitted too neatly into even a category as wide-flung as that, and in fact I have no idea what category he ever fitted in to). 'Until the led' can be seen below:

I found some footage on Youtube of Vic with Lambchop, doing the latter's wonderful 'The saturday option' here:

I listened to Vic's later albums faithfully, and while none for me reached the heights of 'Salesman', there were always great songs to be found, such as 'Strange language'

And another uptempo romp in 'Band camp' from 2003's 'Silver lake':

The songs shown here, I think, demonstrate his characteristic and somewhat unmistakeable take on music and lyrics, which just didn't sound like anyone else. I have been listening today to a playlist of my favourite of his songs, which is as follows:

Arthur Murray
Band Camp
Bernadette & Her Crowd
Duty Free
Gravity of the Situation
Guilty By Association
Little Man
Maiden
Mysterious Tunnel
Old Hotel
Parade
Stay Inside
Strange Language
Until The Led
Woodrow Wilson

He also acted in the very good movie 'Sling blade', written and directed by Billy Bob Thornton, from which a clip featuring Vic can be seen here:

It seems clear from what I have read on-line, previously and since his death (e.g., see Guardian piece here) that Vic had a hard and troubled life, and that his early death (from an overdose of muscle relaxants) may well have been suicide. This is certainly a very sad tale, whose end was perhaps foreshadowed since that car accident left him in a wheelchair. All that can be said is that he left a great body of music behind, and made an impression on many, from those famous fans who have come out to praise him in recent days, to far-away fans like me. Click Here to Read More..

Albums of the decade?

As well as albums of the year, the fact that the year itself has a '9' in it has inevitably resulted in a slew of lists of best albums of the decade; this time 10 years ago we were worried about the Y2K bug, and had never heard of an iPod; now we are worried about swine flu, and the CD is fast becoming something we expect to see in a museum in the near future.


Some of the lists I have found are as follows:

Uncut magiaxine (of course)
http://www.uncut.co.uk/music/uncut/special_features/13807

The Observer:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/nov/29/albums-of-the-decade

The Irish Times:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2009/1201/1224259791948.html

E-music:
http://www.emusic.com/features/hub/decade_albums/index.html

NME
http://www.nme.com/list/the-top-100-greatest-albums-of-the-decade/158049/page/10

So, what are the big winners? Common threads (easier to pick out than for the best of 2009, as commented in my last post) are as follows, in an ad hoc assembled meta-analysis top 10 (no particular order, not scientific methods applied).


Arcade Fire - Funeral (my thoughts of this have been clear on this blog before)
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes (respected, but not loved)
LCD soundsystem - Sound of silver (stole Uncut's 1997 poll from 'Boxer' but did like some of it)
Radiohead - Kid A (never warmed to it, ever, not inclined to try again)
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Raising Sand (liked but not loved)
The Streets - Any of them (must admit to loving 'Dry your eyes')
The Strokes - Is that it? (everything about it put me off, never tried it)
The White Stripes - Elephant (recently commented on this)


The absence of alt-country music from most charts (with the occasional exception of Lambchop's wonderful 'Nixon') betrays why my tastes for most of the decade diverge from the lists. I know I am just showing my age here but I would tend to moan predicatbly that my favourite decade for music (so far) is the 1980s, but of course that was when all was new and wonderful and I was impressionable and suddenly interested - such formative influences cannot easily be shrugged off.

I will finish with two tracks I do like from common poll-toppers, the first being 'Crown of love' from Arcade Fire's 'Funeral':

and the second is 'You've got her in your pocket' from 'Elephant' by the White Stripes.

The last two posts have been on the theme of how my tastes and those of critical analysis do not seem to align very well. In 2010, I hope to blather on some more about my tastes, and we will just have to see if they ever converge (as they did, albeit briefly, in 2008) again. Click Here to Read More..

Best of 2009 - back away from the mainstream again

It is close to that time of year again where multiple lists of the best albums of the year appear. In fact, I am being bombarded with two sets of lists, with one for the decade appearing also, but I will get back to them in a separate post.

At this point in 2009, I must admit that I feel a little let down, because I just don't think it was anywhere near the year that 2008 was. Where are my Glasvegas, my TV on the Radio, my Vampire Weekend? This time last year I wrote a post talking about how my tastes were suddenly in line with what every end-of-year poll listed, and wondered if I had been swept away into the mainstream (can be read here).

This year, I feel like I am on a different planet to the mainstream once again, gazing at it through a telescoope and straining to hear what sounds like music wafting towards me. I actually struggle to remember great albums this year beyond 'Wilco' by Wilco, from which the gorgeous 'you and I' (below) came:

In fact, my favourites have been compilations, specifically:

1. Dark was the night
2. Ciao my shining star
3. Music from the North Country (the Jayhawks)

The critics' lists have been quite diverse too, reflecting the lack of stand-out classics of the year. For example, Q magazine's top 10 were as follows:

10. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
09. U2 - No Line on the Horizon
08. Lily Allen - It's Not Me, It's You
07. Muse - The Resistance
06. Arctic Monkeys - Humbug
05. Manic Street Preachers - Journal for Plague Lovers
04. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
03. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!
02. Florence and the Machine - Lungs
01. Kasabian - West Rider Pauper Lunatic Asylum


While Uncut's are at:

http://www.uncut.co.uk/blog/index.php?blog=6&title=the_best_of_2009&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

I looked at the NME list and actually have not even heard of several albums in the top 10, and am astonished that I seem to only have 3 of their top 50. A few albums do pop up somewhat consistently, including the XX's debut, which I did download and quite liked, but certainly would not rave about. My favourite off it is probably 'Heart skipped a beat', as seen below:

The Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors and Grizzly Bear all got a lot of mentions too (in most lists), and I have all three albums, but nothing really grabbing me there either! These are in theory the kind of US indie music I have been in love with for several years, but none of those albums have excited me.

I also usually buy an album this time of year just because it appears in the lists and I think I should give it a go; I am also struggling to pick this, but at present the most likely contender is the Wild Beasts one, as it featured pretty strongly (including being no 1 in the Irish music magazine, Hot Press).

Hopefully this is just a slump (whether for me or the music industry remains to be seen) and next year will be better! Click Here to Read More..

One Christmas song that slipped past

In my last post about Christmas music, somehow I forgot Mick Flannery's 'Christmas pas', re-released recently (after being on his first EP originally) with Kate Walsh guesting. Can't believe I forgot it but here it is belatedly in all its melancholic melodic majesty.

Better late then never!

Click Here to Read More..

In cautious praise of Christmas songs, for the season that's in it

I guess it is that time of year where I am allowed to think of Christmas music, after my December 1 moratorium deadline on the matter has passed. In fact, I quite like Christmas music, for exactly 5 weeks per year, when I let my soft sentimental side shine through like fairy lights in a snowy mist (see what I mean?). Yes I know it is naff as hell, and it may be psychologically impossible to like Joy Division and Christmas music and retain any musical integrity or sanity (perhaps that is the sanity clause?), but for this season I soften the edges of my musical field of vision to allow some stuff that wouldn't be representative of my playlists the rest of the year creep through.

Anyway, the original Christmas music of my childhood was the Carpenters' Christmas album, which I actually went and bought again in a fit of tenstively-induced nostalgia on Christmas day from iTunes around 2 years ago. I must admit that, Christmas or not, crap songs and cardigans or not, Karen Carpenter has one of the most pure and beautiful voices of all time, so I will start with some unashamedly unabashedly naff 1970s Christmas music (like I said, I have a seasonal dispensation for this stuff, just for one post):

Moving (swiftly) along, I remember a charity CD in 1986 for the Special Olympics which included some good acts doing Christmas songs, and the stand-out by a mile was a tongue-in-cheek version of 'Baby please come home' by U2, which I rediscovered below:

Of course, that Christmas was the time of the Pogues' 'Fairytale of New York' and I know it is pretty bloody obvious to love that one but it sure does have something, and the line 'we kissed on the corner and danced through the night' gets me every time:

Moving ahead by over a decade brings me to Sufjan Stevens' massive Christmas set of a few years ago; as with all his work, it takes a bit of effort and not all of it hits the target, but there are always a few gems, in this case 'Sister winter' and 'Come on, let's boogie to the elf dance', neatly anchoring the opposite ends of the hedonic scale of Christmas from solemn to silly magnificently:

Moving ahead once again (this is like a selection of Dickens' Christmas ghosts!) brings us to the Killers' 'Great big sled' a few years ago, which is a very likeable and fun attempt at getting into the festive spirit (as was their 'don't shoot me Santa'):

The final song for this post brings me right up to this year and Bob Dylan's completely unexpected 'Christmas in the heart' CD, which I like against all expectations. It is perhaps typical that I do not like his critically acclaimed stuff and, when critics hate something (like this), I actually really like it, not in a 'judging by normal standards way' but in a 'judging by Chritmas standdards (when taste is allowed to go out the window) way'. My current favourite is the very Poguesian 'Must be Santa':

Normal service and standards will be resumed next post!

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The many guises of Joe Pernice

Return to the new west (part 5)

For various reasons I have been quiet of late (mainly busy at work) but want to get back to blog business, so thought I would start with something else I have been slow working on - my series of posts on the Uncut 'Sounds of the new west CD', after a longer than intended gap. Got distracted. Anyway......

The Pernice Brothers were another act discovered through this CD which led to a significant musical relationship, first through the purchase of the CD from which 'Crestfallen' came ('Overcome by happiness'), which I really did and still like, particularly the title track. I then worked backwards through their previous incarnation as the Scud Mountain Boys, who made a few albums of low-fi beautiful acoustic country which sounded like it was recorded simultaneously outdoors while in a large barn. While they recorded some lovely cover versions (including 'Wichita lineman' and 'Gypsies, tramps and thieves'), their finest moment for me was the song about breaking up whose central lovely plaintively sung line 'I would give anything to make it with you, just one more time' was ever so slightly undermined by the song's title ('Grudge f**k').

The core of both groups, Joe Pernice, went through several incarnations in several years, in fact (like others on this CD), including solo albums and one under the name 'Big Tobacco' , and I was very happy to see him at least twice live in Cork's much-missed intimate venue The Lobby. On one occasion, he signed my copy of this 'Chappaquiddick skyline' (what a name!), which featured a cover version of New Order's 'Leave me alone' (evidence of the English indie-US Alt Country axis which sort of defines my musical taste); if you don't believe me about the signing, by the way, see the evidence above.

The Pernice Brothers went on to record 'The world won't end' (packed with great pop tunes including 'Working girls (sunlight shines)', which can be seen below, and 'Our time has passed') , 'Yours, mine and ours' and several others which I must admit I failed to follow up on.

I will end with a longer clip of them in concert, ending up with 'Overcome with happiness'.

I will now try and return to this series of posts on a more frequent basis; the Pernice Brothers was as good a place to restart as any!

Click Here to Read More..