Yeah, we're branching out. Rather than do our own background work to a downloadable theme, every so often we're going to pin down someone we openly like and browbeat them until they give us a list of songs they'd put on a mixtape to explain their influences, background etc. First cab off the rank, please welcome the selections of Alexei Berrow, artful shouter and guitar mangler at the front of Johnny Foreigner. They have a new single out next week, which sounds a little like this:
All opinions are those of Alexei Berrow and do not necessarily reflect those of Sweeping The Nation or Blogger.
STN vs Johnny Foreigner
Urusei Yatsura - Thank You
I got into Urusei approx. a day after they split. Then I heard this, and the sheer emotional POW! of hearing someone telling you they're giving up over such a perfect song made me first wonder if I should be dancing or weeping, and then buy everything i could find. And there was a lot, most of it glittery and superltd, and it was all amazing.
From Everybody Loves Urusei Yatsura
Pavement - Grounded
Pavement, Pixies, Sonic Youth are year zero to us. and, as such, even their greatest songs tend to atrophy with a million repeated plays. Not this song tho. To the extent of, we used to play it ourselves for ages and it's still not been ruined.
From Wowee Zowee
Bright Eyes - The City Has Sex
Before he was THE ONE for all my female friends circa 2003, Bright Eyes was these little angsty country songs I used to annoy my friend Jim by playing constantly when he was round my flat. Perfect lyrics, amazing arrangments, crying over girls had never been so catchy or cathartic. Of course, it was too perfect to stay ours. Now I hear he has people to pick girls from the crowd each night for him to fuck. He's not my hero no more, sir.
From Letting Off The Happiness
Idlewild - Everyone Says You're So Fragile
Idlewild were like our gods. Watching them go from playing our shitty locals to filling out the Wulfrun, with an ever increasing list of AMAZING melody bomb singles, was the first time I ever felt righteous about the music I love. American English ruined everything forever, obviously, but I went Pavlov-mental last time I saw them and they played this. WAH!
From Hope Is Important
Broken Social Scene - Ibi Dreams Of Pavement (A Better Day)
Was so so nervous the first time heard this. I feel like I lived inside You Forgot It In People for about a year. Please dont have gone rubbish, Broken Social Scene, yr teetering so precariously over so many pretentious/prog/production mines. And then this song comes on and I was like FUCCCCCCCCCCK YEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSS!!!!!
From Broken Social Scene
Smashing Pumpkins - Today
Cos when I was a 6th form, me and Craig Middleton would get in extra early to secure the common room ghetto blaster. And this is what we'd play, allthefuckingtime. and it was like, a small chunk of awesomeness in two years of shit.
From Siamese Dream
Los Campesinos! - Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks
Dananananaykroyd - Some Dresses
Probably the only time these two songs should be listed together, hearing them a couple of years ago when we were broke and almost broken and altogether all less acclaimed, thinking WOW there are others like us out there! was super reassuring.
These are the original demo and original single versions: check against the re-records on Hold On Now, Youngster... and Hey Everyone! respectively
Distophia - Thug Passion
Local band that should have been less local. Beat Dyslexia, the last, unreleased album, is the sound of my friends taking ideas from every bit of music we love and shoving them into these fucking incredible tight pop songs. I've met London Industry types and ended up speaking to them about how great this band was. And they go, oh yeh, Distophia, they had no image, that was their problem. And I go, no, you dumb fuck THAT WAS THE POINT. Then I end them. And I'd like to think the amount of posthumous love this band gets on DiS proves me right. Love live Calories.
The Starries - Feature 85
Another local band, slighter older than me and mine, constantly drunk and out of tune and under-rehearsed and long split up, but with the most perfect discordant indie rock songs ever. The greatest Birmingham band ever, IMO. I still don't think they had any idea how amazingly great they where.
Cap'n Jazz - Little League
Modest Mouse - Dukes Up
Rapider Than Horsepower - Autumn Season
Not the greatest songs on their parent albums, but the first I heard through mix CDs and Epitonic (aaaaaaaaah, Epitonic) I judge people I meet on their reactions to these albums. Those that go: but, its so out of tune, they can't even play properly, I arrange to be shot, and those that are left with big happy faces from the sheer JOY they have just heard, and have goosebumps because they didn't know one could receive such JOY from a bunch of noises in the ear, I love and hold and cherish forever.
From, respectively, Analphabetapolothology, Sad Sappy Sucker and What's Our Visibility?, which we can't find a sale link for.
Sleeper - What Do I Do Now?
Is the greatest British guitar song of the 20th century. I'm not in the slightest upset that people will snort over this, they are idiots and I pity them.
From The It Girl
Rainer Maria - The Contents Of Lincoln's Pockets
I always feel faintly embarrassed when people complement our vocal arrangments. Thanks, I should say, make sure you never listen to early Rainer Maria! I dont care about the contents of Lincoln's pockets, but this song is actually PERFECT.
From A Better Version Of Me
Owls - Holy Fucking Ghost
I could put any Owls song on really, the album should be listened to whole, but this is like a thematic summary of all the other songs so serves purpose well. I once spent a whole summer doing nothing but taking pills and lazing around my house with these True Metal Girls. Mutual Kinsella loving was our only musical common ground, and this record is the ultimate comedown saver (and still my default answer when anyone asks me, whats the best album ever made)
From Owls
AC Acoustics - B2
I know it's not their best song, I know it's a dEUS steal, I listened to it just now and I don't even know if it's a good song anymore. but nothing else will ever remind me of going to Helen Elwood's house for Christmas 2001, which is a beautiful memory.
From Understanding Music
Radiohead - Vegetable
I am a fat depressive teenage mess alone on a bus crowded full of idiots from my school who DON'T UNDERSTAND ME, and I have a tape with Pablo Honey on and as soon as I put my headphones on everything is alright forever. And it was.
From Pablo Honey
Stapleton - Chez Chef
THE ORIGINAL VERSION YEH? thx. Not their best song by quite a way (tho, the worst Stapleton is better than 99.9% of other songs) but it totally reminds me of going to see them, shakily passing tickets over barriers for them to awkwardly sign. If I'm allowed a hidden track I'd like it to be the whole of On The Enjoyment Of Unpleasant Places, the mini album that preceded these EPs. Best car journey album ever.
From Chez Chef EP
Showing posts with label covermount. Show all posts
Showing posts with label covermount. Show all posts
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Sweeping The Nation Covermount #17: April Fools
Slight change to STN Covermount protocol from now on, as we've extended the runtime of each from 74 to 80 minutes, given the shorter CDR seems to be being phased out by some manufacturers. Plus it means fewer 'last one to be dropped' dilemmas for us.
This is a Covermount we've been meaning to do on the last couple of April 1sts, and we're not sure how you'd class these other than "songs and, mostly, artists with a GSOH". Inspired partly by Left And To The Back's novelty compilation, these 26 range from straight up low comedy to satirical subtleties, from wry to direct. You probably won't like all of them, but they all work without the pictures. And just in case they don't, for some (except in one case) we've put up an embedded video of an entirely different track by the same people for ballast. Lighten up, everyone!
April Fools
Barnes & Barnes - Fish Heads
Art Barnes and Artie Barnes - not actual names, in fact one of them was Lost In Space's Will Robinson of famed danger - colonised Annie Nightingale's request show for years with their meditation on the likelihood of said piscine part to be seen "drinking cappuccino in Italian restaurants with Oriental women". Their words, not ours. Not even their own song, apparently. There's an Essential... out!
Spinal Tap - Stonehenge
"Nigel gave me a drawing that said eighteen inches. Alright?"
Mojo Nixon - Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child
Psychobilly! Mojo Nixon, one bloke, was from North Carolina and later recorded Don Henley Must Die, a title that earned itself unending irony when Henley crashed the stage to co-perform it one night in Texas.
Chris Morris - Motherbanger
The contents of the Select Magazine flexidisc this comes from are in the recent On The Hour Series 2 box, but we're still using an old rip from years ago for that authentic distortion. This is his Pixies parody, so damn spot on that it occasionally turns up in lists of lost Pixies songs.
Gindrinker - Hey! Greengrocer
Cardiff's two-man aural assault of belligerent shouting, guitar and drum machine, long time STN favourites. Contains greatest personal insult in recorded history, perhaps.
I, Ludicrous - Preposterous Tales
Long serving, loved by the few but committed, south London duo put together Fall fuzz and pub bore.
The Shirehorses - A Girl Like You (Hiya)
Ah. Radcliffe and Riley, plus BBC radio's go-to poetry guy Ian McMillan on guest word, surprisingly successful with what they openly admitted was pretty much just the Barron Knights with swearing, their albums charting at 22 The Worst...Album In The World...Ever...EVER!) and 20.
Peter Cook & Dudley Moore - Bedazzled
The number of times we've seen the film Bedazzled referred to and then realised it was part of Hurley bashing... Pete'n'Dud made the original in 1967, where one of Stanley Moon (Dud)'s wishes was to become a rock star, only to become usurped by Drimble Wedge and the Vegetations (George Spiggott (Pete)) and a performance that Johnny Rotten would later cite as an influence on his own style.
A Tribe Of Toffs - John Kettley Is A Weatherman
Sunderland students made big by CBBC with celeb namechecking jangle. Apparently then tried to go serious before realising nobody was interested in them at all doing that.
Bill Bailey - Unisex Chipshop
A Billy Bragg tribute/pisstake which Billy seems to have been quite sporting about:
Jake Thackray - On Again! On Again!
Georges Brassens infected by Noel Coward in West Yorkshire, Thackray was a regular in the early days of That's Life! but has never quite gained the wider cult following he deserves. Get the Very Best Of. Danny Baker maintains this has the best opening line in pop.
Randy Newman - Political Science
From the same album, Sail Away, as the original version of You Can Leave Your Hat On - and they should have used that version in The Full Monty, we say - Newman finds a satirical stance about thirty years too early.
Otis Lee Crenshaw - He Almost Looks Like You
Rich Hall's jailbird Tennessee country singer reflects on the fine line of prison love.
Ivor Cutler - Lemonade
Scottish harmonium-touting poetic genius from his last album A Flat Man, released on Creation.
Vic Reeves - Vienna
His 1991 album I Will Cure You is reportedly worth a small bit already; this just slightly reworded Ultravox reworking came from the NME's fortieth anniversary compilation Ruby Trax.
The Bonzo Dog Band - My Pink Half of the Drainpipe
More surreal genius for the ages at work, Vivian Stanshall this time with Neil Innes desperately trying to keep up. And yeah, we've always referred to them as the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, but they'd dropped the middle epithet for a while around The Doughnut In Granny's Greenhouse.
MJ Hibbett & The Validators - Do The Indie Kid
The indiepop resident bard of Peterborough/Leicester/actually he lives in London now but that's not as helpful has a new album out in May and a new show at the Edinburgh Fringe this August.
Midfield General - Midfielding
There's still an ongoing threat of a Mighty Boosh band, but back in 2000 when they were highly rated but still very much under the radar Noel Fielding guested on a track by big beat ubergrupenfuehrer Damien Harris on his album Generalisation.
The Lonely Island - I'm On A Boat
No, we're not including Flight Of The Conchords, because it's our Covermount, we'll do what we want with it. We'll give you this nod to modishness, but no more. Incredibad, that's the album. At least it's not Dick In A sodding Box.
Del Tha Funkee Homosapien - The Wacky World Of Rapid Transit
Gorillaz first album sideman, cousin of Ice Cube (who's on this), admirer of bus etiquette. Album: I Wish My Brother George Was Here. Done.
John Cooper Clarke - Twat
Back on tour at the moment, and not in supporting The Fall this time. Word Of Mouth: The Very Best Of contains most of the Martin Hannett productions and is as good as you're going to find. Beasley Street should be on the GCSE syllabus. And in fact it is.
John Shuttleworth - I Can't Go Back To Savoury Now
Inspired by some demo tapes Graham Fellows heard when under songwriting contract with Chappell Music, and early on subject to a rumour, when only the songs existed, that these were indeed demo tapes received by a major label.
Spitting Image - I've Never Met A Nice South African
Breyten Breytenbach! There's a namecheck for the teenagers. John Lloyd and Peter Brewis (not the Field Music one, a regular comedy TV music composer of the 80s) penned the brusque take on apartheid for the B-side of soon millstone The Chicken Song.
Monty Python - Accountancy Shanty
The theme from The Crimson Permanent Assurance, the Gilliam directed supporting feature short from the start of The Meaning Of Life, eventually compiled onto Monty Python Sings.
Spike Jones And His City Slickers - William Tell Overture
1940s-50s bandleader Jones took the long way round the big band standards of the day, referred to by Jones as musicial "homicides", replete with stupid sounds, whistles, comedy percussion and gunshots, the best of which are compiled on Spiketaculars. Here Rossini is rendered on kitchen implements while a horse race goes on (and no, one of the horses isn't called Beetlebum)
Half Man Half Biscuit - A Country Practice
Well, of course. Eliza Carthy has named this, from Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral as the song she felt most defined 'Englishness'.
This is a Covermount we've been meaning to do on the last couple of April 1sts, and we're not sure how you'd class these other than "songs and, mostly, artists with a GSOH". Inspired partly by Left And To The Back's novelty compilation, these 26 range from straight up low comedy to satirical subtleties, from wry to direct. You probably won't like all of them, but they all work without the pictures. And just in case they don't, for some (except in one case) we've put up an embedded video of an entirely different track by the same people for ballast. Lighten up, everyone!
April Fools
Barnes & Barnes - Fish Heads
Art Barnes and Artie Barnes - not actual names, in fact one of them was Lost In Space's Will Robinson of famed danger - colonised Annie Nightingale's request show for years with their meditation on the likelihood of said piscine part to be seen "drinking cappuccino in Italian restaurants with Oriental women". Their words, not ours. Not even their own song, apparently. There's an Essential... out!
Spinal Tap - Stonehenge
"Nigel gave me a drawing that said eighteen inches. Alright?"
Mojo Nixon - Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child
Psychobilly! Mojo Nixon, one bloke, was from North Carolina and later recorded Don Henley Must Die, a title that earned itself unending irony when Henley crashed the stage to co-perform it one night in Texas.
Chris Morris - Motherbanger
The contents of the Select Magazine flexidisc this comes from are in the recent On The Hour Series 2 box, but we're still using an old rip from years ago for that authentic distortion. This is his Pixies parody, so damn spot on that it occasionally turns up in lists of lost Pixies songs.
Gindrinker - Hey! Greengrocer
Cardiff's two-man aural assault of belligerent shouting, guitar and drum machine, long time STN favourites. Contains greatest personal insult in recorded history, perhaps.
I, Ludicrous - Preposterous Tales
Long serving, loved by the few but committed, south London duo put together Fall fuzz and pub bore.
The Shirehorses - A Girl Like You (Hiya)
Ah. Radcliffe and Riley, plus BBC radio's go-to poetry guy Ian McMillan on guest word, surprisingly successful with what they openly admitted was pretty much just the Barron Knights with swearing, their albums charting at 22 The Worst...Album In The World...Ever...EVER!) and 20.
Peter Cook & Dudley Moore - Bedazzled
The number of times we've seen the film Bedazzled referred to and then realised it was part of Hurley bashing... Pete'n'Dud made the original in 1967, where one of Stanley Moon (Dud)'s wishes was to become a rock star, only to become usurped by Drimble Wedge and the Vegetations (George Spiggott (Pete)) and a performance that Johnny Rotten would later cite as an influence on his own style.
A Tribe Of Toffs - John Kettley Is A Weatherman
Sunderland students made big by CBBC with celeb namechecking jangle. Apparently then tried to go serious before realising nobody was interested in them at all doing that.
Bill Bailey - Unisex Chipshop
A Billy Bragg tribute/pisstake which Billy seems to have been quite sporting about:
Jake Thackray - On Again! On Again!
Georges Brassens infected by Noel Coward in West Yorkshire, Thackray was a regular in the early days of That's Life! but has never quite gained the wider cult following he deserves. Get the Very Best Of. Danny Baker maintains this has the best opening line in pop.
Randy Newman - Political Science
From the same album, Sail Away, as the original version of You Can Leave Your Hat On - and they should have used that version in The Full Monty, we say - Newman finds a satirical stance about thirty years too early.
Otis Lee Crenshaw - He Almost Looks Like You
Rich Hall's jailbird Tennessee country singer reflects on the fine line of prison love.
Ivor Cutler - Lemonade
Scottish harmonium-touting poetic genius from his last album A Flat Man, released on Creation.
Vic Reeves - Vienna
His 1991 album I Will Cure You is reportedly worth a small bit already; this just slightly reworded Ultravox reworking came from the NME's fortieth anniversary compilation Ruby Trax.
The Bonzo Dog Band - My Pink Half of the Drainpipe
More surreal genius for the ages at work, Vivian Stanshall this time with Neil Innes desperately trying to keep up. And yeah, we've always referred to them as the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, but they'd dropped the middle epithet for a while around The Doughnut In Granny's Greenhouse.
MJ Hibbett & The Validators - Do The Indie Kid
The indiepop resident bard of Peterborough/Leicester/actually he lives in London now but that's not as helpful has a new album out in May and a new show at the Edinburgh Fringe this August.
Midfield General - Midfielding
There's still an ongoing threat of a Mighty Boosh band, but back in 2000 when they were highly rated but still very much under the radar Noel Fielding guested on a track by big beat ubergrupenfuehrer Damien Harris on his album Generalisation.
The Lonely Island - I'm On A Boat
No, we're not including Flight Of The Conchords, because it's our Covermount, we'll do what we want with it. We'll give you this nod to modishness, but no more. Incredibad, that's the album. At least it's not Dick In A sodding Box.
Del Tha Funkee Homosapien - The Wacky World Of Rapid Transit
Gorillaz first album sideman, cousin of Ice Cube (who's on this), admirer of bus etiquette. Album: I Wish My Brother George Was Here. Done.
John Cooper Clarke - Twat
Back on tour at the moment, and not in supporting The Fall this time. Word Of Mouth: The Very Best Of contains most of the Martin Hannett productions and is as good as you're going to find. Beasley Street should be on the GCSE syllabus. And in fact it is.
John Shuttleworth - I Can't Go Back To Savoury Now
Inspired by some demo tapes Graham Fellows heard when under songwriting contract with Chappell Music, and early on subject to a rumour, when only the songs existed, that these were indeed demo tapes received by a major label.
Spitting Image - I've Never Met A Nice South African
Breyten Breytenbach! There's a namecheck for the teenagers. John Lloyd and Peter Brewis (not the Field Music one, a regular comedy TV music composer of the 80s) penned the brusque take on apartheid for the B-side of soon millstone The Chicken Song.
Monty Python - Accountancy Shanty
The theme from The Crimson Permanent Assurance, the Gilliam directed supporting feature short from the start of The Meaning Of Life, eventually compiled onto Monty Python Sings.
Spike Jones And His City Slickers - William Tell Overture
1940s-50s bandleader Jones took the long way round the big band standards of the day, referred to by Jones as musicial "homicides", replete with stupid sounds, whistles, comedy percussion and gunshots, the best of which are compiled on Spiketaculars. Here Rossini is rendered on kitchen implements while a horse race goes on (and no, one of the horses isn't called Beetlebum)
Half Man Half Biscuit - A Country Practice
Well, of course. Eliza Carthy has named this, from Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral as the song she felt most defined 'Englishness'.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Sweeping The Nation Covermount 16: Talk Talk
The first proper Covermount of 2009 was a tricky one to finalise, we'll be honest with you. The concept was simple enough - songs which centrally feature spoken word rather than singing. What we ended up with was a shortlist that came to twice as long as our arbitrarily decided 74 minute CDR length limit. So yes, there are omissions - John Cooper Clarke, Slint, Tindersticks' My Sister, Gang Of Four's Paralysed, James Yorkston's Woozy With Cider to name five late deletions, mostly for space reasons - but we wanted to keep it interesting and little-known where possible so allow us some leeway.
Talk Talk
Ken Nordine - Green
Linda Blair's vocal coach for The Exorcist, 1960s hipster favourite Nordine's 'word jazz' style was put into action by a paint company who commissioned him in 1967 to write a number of surrealistic pieces on colours for their campaign. So well did they go down that Nordine re-recorded them and added a load more for an album called Colors.
Tom Waits - What's He Building?
Waits has admitted his own compellingly dark spoken word pieces are influenced by Nordine, and the pair collaborated on Nordine's Devout Catalyst album in 1991. This heartening tale of paranoid suspicion is from 1999's Mule Variations.
Billy Bragg - Walk Away Renee
It is connected to the Four Tops song of the same name, albeit only in that Johnny Marr's playing a guitar line based on the original vocal melody behind and it was originally on the B-side of Levi Stubbs Tears. Is it really a cover if it changes so much? That's for committees to discuss, we'll just concentrate on the many one-liners Bragg had been meaning to get into a song for a while. It's now on career collection Must I Paint You A Picture.
William Campbell & Kevin MacNeil - Local Man Ruins Everything
As well as sharing a name with McCartney's double in the Paul Is Dead story, William Campbell was singer in briefly Next Big Thing status holders Isle Of Lewis power-pop outfit Astrid and was in Gary Lightbody's The Reindeer Section. MacNeil is a local award winning poet. They've been promising a collaborative album for a couple of years but we'd almost prefer it to remain this good a one-off.
Adam Gnade & Youthmovies - It's Five O'Clock in America
Youthmovies you'll probably know, Oxford trumpet-aided math-pop acolytes who grew Foals in a test tube. Gnade is a Portland, Oregon based New Weird America sideman who writes novels and puts some of his prose over a wide range of musical styles. They combined for 2007's Honey Slides EP.
BARR - Half Of Two Times Two
Brendan Fowler, another one of those graduates from The Smell (see also: Abe Vigoda, HEALTH, Lavender Diamond, The Mae Shi, Mika Miko, No Age), has BARR as an outlet for meta-deconstructive confessionals. Debut album Summary is described in its own press release as "a document of the body as a record... record(ing) the idiosyncratic nature of thought processes".
Drive-By Truckers - The Three Great Alabama Icons
The sophisti-rednecks lightly fictionalised the Lynyrd Skynyrd story as a metaphor for the southern states on 2001's Southern Rock Opera, taking the story on with a joint consideration in context of Ronnie Van Zant, pro-racially segregationist governor George Wallace, and hugely successful university football coach Bear Bryant, who doesn't seem to get much of a look-in.
Hank Williams - Too Many Parties And Too Many Pals
Actually, technically this is by Luke The Drifter, a nom de plume Williams worked up for an idealized gospel preacher type as a vehicle for his recitations. Williams was famously a drunken carouser who died aged 29, making him the diametric opposite of Luke. That was surely the idea. All the Luke The Drifter songs are collected on Beyond The Sunset.
Meanwhile, Back In Communist Russia... - Morning After Pill
Right, back to the wilful young Brits. MBICR were Oxford Peel favoured post-rockers who merged the overwhelming guitar surges with Emily Gray's dark, claustrophobic poetry readings, here on the 2001 mini-album Indian Ink. And in case you didn't before, you now understand that lyric in Los Campesinos!' Don't Tell Me To Do The Math(s).
ballboy - I Hate Scotland
It was a shame that Gordon McIntyre's individualist tales of national non-pride emerged in the slipstream of Belle & Sebastian because it gave too many journalists too easy a hook and McIntyre, as proved here, is more culturally cutting. EP compilation Club Anthems 2001 is the album.
David Holmes - The Holiday Girl
AKA Arab Strap's remix of Don't Die Just Yet, because when there's so much of the band's material we could have used we might as well dig a little deeper. Yeah, it's about a girl Aidan Moffatt can't get with.
Talking Heads - Seen And Not Seen
Remain In Light was the apotheosis of the David Byrne/Brian Eno axis, deconstructing recording by melding layers of jammed polyrhythms and synth pulses together in the mix. It also opened the cracks that led to their poppier sound from then on and ultimate split.
Prince Buster - Judge Dread
The importance of Cecil Bustamente Campbell to Jamaican ska cannot be underestimated. His importance to law and order, less so. Fabulous Greatest Hits is generally a good place to start, but we really need a complete career overview of more than twelve tracks.
The Barbarians - Moulty
The Barbarians were one of the Nuggets set of American garage rock bands, from Massachusetts in fact. Apart from having long hair, their calling card was that drummer Victor 'Moulty' Moulton had a prosthetic hook in lieu of a left hand, having lost it in an accident aged 14, this being his autobiographical tale of success over adversity. It later turned out that Moulty aside the rest of the band aren't even on the track, replaced at short notice by studio band The Hawks, who later became The Band.
James Brown - King Heroin
Not exactly the JBs at their on the one-esque funky best, from 1972's There It Is, and not exactly to the letter either - specifics, we know, but just the idea of James Brown delivering an anti-drugs sermon.
Material with William S Burroughs - Words Of Advice
Material is the band name for the work of the feted and always in demand world-funk bassist Bill Laswell, whose other band Praxis contains the dream pairing of Funkadelic key member Bernie Worrell and Guns'n'Roses' celebrated ex-guitarist Buckethead. This is from Material's 1994 album Hallucination Engine.
Barry Adamson - Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Pelvis
As with Aidan'n'Malcolm we're spoilt for choice for Jarvis Cocker narrations, so we picked something he did for someone else, ex-Magazine bassist and scorer of imaginary films Barry Adamson's 1996 LP Oedipus Schmoedipus. Jarvis has the full box of vocal tics out here, and we suspect he was listening to a lot of Serge Gainsbourg at the time.
Jegsy Dodd and the Original Sinners - Grumpy Old Men
Scouse poet laureate Dodd first emerged in 1985 with Jegsy Dodd And The Sons Of Harry Cross, contemporaries of Half Man Half Biscuit on Probe Plus, and returned to music in 2004 with the tremendously titled Wake Up And Smell The Offy, from which this... can we call it the inverse of that whole Baz Luhrmann Sunscreen business?
The Shangri-Las - Past, Present And Future
And a proper oddity from a group who were fairly offbeat to begin with, when you think about Shadow Morton's habits and stuff like Leader Of The Pack. Appropriating Moonlight Sonata - and to think Glasvegas didn't think we'd notice when they did the same - Mary Weiss suggests something has happened and she's not at journalistic liberty to reveal exactly what it was. Also, it gives us another chance to luxuriate in the fact their best Best Of is called Myrmidons Of Melodrama.
Talk Talk
Ken Nordine - Green
Linda Blair's vocal coach for The Exorcist, 1960s hipster favourite Nordine's 'word jazz' style was put into action by a paint company who commissioned him in 1967 to write a number of surrealistic pieces on colours for their campaign. So well did they go down that Nordine re-recorded them and added a load more for an album called Colors.
Tom Waits - What's He Building?
Waits has admitted his own compellingly dark spoken word pieces are influenced by Nordine, and the pair collaborated on Nordine's Devout Catalyst album in 1991. This heartening tale of paranoid suspicion is from 1999's Mule Variations.
Billy Bragg - Walk Away Renee
It is connected to the Four Tops song of the same name, albeit only in that Johnny Marr's playing a guitar line based on the original vocal melody behind and it was originally on the B-side of Levi Stubbs Tears. Is it really a cover if it changes so much? That's for committees to discuss, we'll just concentrate on the many one-liners Bragg had been meaning to get into a song for a while. It's now on career collection Must I Paint You A Picture.
William Campbell & Kevin MacNeil - Local Man Ruins Everything
As well as sharing a name with McCartney's double in the Paul Is Dead story, William Campbell was singer in briefly Next Big Thing status holders Isle Of Lewis power-pop outfit Astrid and was in Gary Lightbody's The Reindeer Section. MacNeil is a local award winning poet. They've been promising a collaborative album for a couple of years but we'd almost prefer it to remain this good a one-off.
Adam Gnade & Youthmovies - It's Five O'Clock in America
Youthmovies you'll probably know, Oxford trumpet-aided math-pop acolytes who grew Foals in a test tube. Gnade is a Portland, Oregon based New Weird America sideman who writes novels and puts some of his prose over a wide range of musical styles. They combined for 2007's Honey Slides EP.
BARR - Half Of Two Times Two
Brendan Fowler, another one of those graduates from The Smell (see also: Abe Vigoda, HEALTH, Lavender Diamond, The Mae Shi, Mika Miko, No Age), has BARR as an outlet for meta-deconstructive confessionals. Debut album Summary is described in its own press release as "a document of the body as a record... record(ing) the idiosyncratic nature of thought processes".
Drive-By Truckers - The Three Great Alabama Icons
The sophisti-rednecks lightly fictionalised the Lynyrd Skynyrd story as a metaphor for the southern states on 2001's Southern Rock Opera, taking the story on with a joint consideration in context of Ronnie Van Zant, pro-racially segregationist governor George Wallace, and hugely successful university football coach Bear Bryant, who doesn't seem to get much of a look-in.
Hank Williams - Too Many Parties And Too Many Pals
Actually, technically this is by Luke The Drifter, a nom de plume Williams worked up for an idealized gospel preacher type as a vehicle for his recitations. Williams was famously a drunken carouser who died aged 29, making him the diametric opposite of Luke. That was surely the idea. All the Luke The Drifter songs are collected on Beyond The Sunset.
Meanwhile, Back In Communist Russia... - Morning After Pill
Right, back to the wilful young Brits. MBICR were Oxford Peel favoured post-rockers who merged the overwhelming guitar surges with Emily Gray's dark, claustrophobic poetry readings, here on the 2001 mini-album Indian Ink. And in case you didn't before, you now understand that lyric in Los Campesinos!' Don't Tell Me To Do The Math(s).
ballboy - I Hate Scotland
It was a shame that Gordon McIntyre's individualist tales of national non-pride emerged in the slipstream of Belle & Sebastian because it gave too many journalists too easy a hook and McIntyre, as proved here, is more culturally cutting. EP compilation Club Anthems 2001 is the album.
David Holmes - The Holiday Girl
AKA Arab Strap's remix of Don't Die Just Yet, because when there's so much of the band's material we could have used we might as well dig a little deeper. Yeah, it's about a girl Aidan Moffatt can't get with.
Talking Heads - Seen And Not Seen
Remain In Light was the apotheosis of the David Byrne/Brian Eno axis, deconstructing recording by melding layers of jammed polyrhythms and synth pulses together in the mix. It also opened the cracks that led to their poppier sound from then on and ultimate split.
Prince Buster - Judge Dread
The importance of Cecil Bustamente Campbell to Jamaican ska cannot be underestimated. His importance to law and order, less so. Fabulous Greatest Hits is generally a good place to start, but we really need a complete career overview of more than twelve tracks.
The Barbarians - Moulty
The Barbarians were one of the Nuggets set of American garage rock bands, from Massachusetts in fact. Apart from having long hair, their calling card was that drummer Victor 'Moulty' Moulton had a prosthetic hook in lieu of a left hand, having lost it in an accident aged 14, this being his autobiographical tale of success over adversity. It later turned out that Moulty aside the rest of the band aren't even on the track, replaced at short notice by studio band The Hawks, who later became The Band.
James Brown - King Heroin
Not exactly the JBs at their on the one-esque funky best, from 1972's There It Is, and not exactly to the letter either - specifics, we know, but just the idea of James Brown delivering an anti-drugs sermon.
Material with William S Burroughs - Words Of Advice
Material is the band name for the work of the feted and always in demand world-funk bassist Bill Laswell, whose other band Praxis contains the dream pairing of Funkadelic key member Bernie Worrell and Guns'n'Roses' celebrated ex-guitarist Buckethead. This is from Material's 1994 album Hallucination Engine.
Barry Adamson - Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Pelvis
As with Aidan'n'Malcolm we're spoilt for choice for Jarvis Cocker narrations, so we picked something he did for someone else, ex-Magazine bassist and scorer of imaginary films Barry Adamson's 1996 LP Oedipus Schmoedipus. Jarvis has the full box of vocal tics out here, and we suspect he was listening to a lot of Serge Gainsbourg at the time.
Jegsy Dodd and the Original Sinners - Grumpy Old Men
Scouse poet laureate Dodd first emerged in 1985 with Jegsy Dodd And The Sons Of Harry Cross, contemporaries of Half Man Half Biscuit on Probe Plus, and returned to music in 2004 with the tremendously titled Wake Up And Smell The Offy, from which this... can we call it the inverse of that whole Baz Luhrmann Sunscreen business?
The Shangri-Las - Past, Present And Future
And a proper oddity from a group who were fairly offbeat to begin with, when you think about Shadow Morton's habits and stuff like Leader Of The Pack. Appropriating Moonlight Sonata - and to think Glasvegas didn't think we'd notice when they did the same - Mary Weiss suggests something has happened and she's not at journalistic liberty to reveal exactly what it was. Also, it gives us another chance to luxuriate in the fact their best Best Of is called Myrmidons Of Melodrama.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Sweeping The Nation Covermount: The Class Of '09
Here we go again. A new year, and so after the blogger poll has been cleared up it's time to crank out a third annual blank CD's worth of new talent for the new year, mostly unsigned at time of going to press. Just to make it clear, the only rules of thumb used were a) nobody who has previously appeared in a Class Of Covermount and b) we're not necessarily suggesting that the following 21 artists (all British, by the way - that wasn't intentional, but it speaks volumes for something) are bound to be enormous stars come 51 weeks' time, but at this moment we think there's a great amount of potential and we'll be hoping for them to do some very interesting things, chiefly in the field of recording and releasing albums, throughout 2009.
The Class Of '09
Thirty Pounds Of Bone - When She Goes Up
Debut album The Homesick Children Of Migrant Mothers came out to little immediate acclaim in late 2006, but it proved to be an early marker being laid down for Drift Records, the Brighton/Stroud-based attempt to light a rocket under modern English folk and see what curious places it led to. Johny Lamb and his shifting brethren came across an endlessly fascinating sound equal parts Sparklehorseish new Americana, the folk revival's delicate acoustic picking and southern sea shanties. A nautically themed EP, And They Go Down To It In Ships, is due imminently with an album pencilled in for the autumn.
Mumford And Sons - Liar
The famous ones, insomuch as they're this year's only band to do the STN Class Of/BBC Sound Of double. We're sure they'll treat both imposters just the same. Marcus Mumford was Laura Marling's drummer, albeit only by proxy given everything else he played live, and while his band have more than a toe in the same modern British folk waters their range is comfortably expanded into bluegrass, country and Appalachian mountain music, and Mumford likes an unaccompanied vocal start. Like Marling, Flynn, Fink et al, they sound at once weathered and entirely modern.
Blue Roses (Laura Groves) - I Am Leaving
Shipley near Bradford's Groves seems to have been around for a couple of years already, like an even slower burning Emmy The Great, whom she's recently supported. Maybe it's this that's as of late November caused her to rename the project Blue Roses ("I feel like I'm in a different place musically to when I started out, so it seemed appropriate to become something new") As of this moment the delivery is much the same, melancholy yet uplifting storytelling with Groves' clear voice front and centre and instrumentation used sparingly around it. Just signed to XL, April is the tentative album arrival date.
Nat Johnson - Judy's First Beat
Until the end of 2007 Johnson was singer and lead songwriter in Monkey Swallows The Universe, the Sheffield outfit whose teak-gossamer switching folk-pop was much admired around these parts. On her own, albeit with most of MSTU in her regular backing band, there's a harder edge with diversions into country and fuzzier tones but for the most part the delicate songwriterly balance is still intact, her writing always simple but effective. And of course there's that drop dead alluring voice. Don't think there's so much as a deal in place at the moment, although she's released a 7" through Thee SPC.
Gossamer Albatross - Bones
STN EXCLUSIVE! This is from their recent Jeremy Warmsley produced session, which frontman Lewis Gordon assures us is "about a million times better than anything else we've ever done". Baroque, rustic tales attaining a scale and ambition that befits much more lauded Americana bands, suggesting Beirut, Final Fantasy and Conor Oberst, if you were placing bets sight unseen on where Britain's answer to such worldly folk updating would come from a group of Hereford teenagers would be some way down the list, but here we are.
Copy Haho - Pulling Push Ups
From Stonehaven near Aberdeen, they take as their starting point the fractured dynamics of the US lo-fi brigade and put a very Scottish melancholic introspective while still expansive pop twist (think Teenage Fanclub, Vaselines, Postcard Records) spin of their own atop the broken riffs and counter-melodies. They're still pushing on with a vitality and elan well beyond their years, having spent 2008 supporting the likes of Sebadoh, Blood Red Shoes, Dananananaykroyd and Hot Club de Paris, and they're in good hands having signed to Big Scary Monsters for a February EP.
We Were Promised Jetpacks - Quiet Little Voices
Bands that are a bit reminiscent of the Cure and Joy Division? Hey, there's a brave new avenue for '09. What makes these 21 year old Glaswegians stand out is the intrinstic detail that goes into their songs, not afraid to both jangle brazenly and head explosively towards anthemhood. You can dance to it in the indie disco, but you can also unpick its impassioned layers should you so wish. FatCat won the signing race, they won't now be content with remaining on the Scottish support circuit.
Sunset Cinema Club - Hardcore
Purveyors of a T-shirt occasionally to be seen adorning the torsos of members of fellow Brummies Johnny Foreigner - and vice versa, actually - with whom they released a double A sided 7" in May 2007, SCC were bred on, yes, the American underground, this time the Fugazi/early Pixies/Minutemen/Mission Of Burma school of taut, rhythm section-led post-hardcore punk-funk with surprises and not a few pop chops. They've just released an album called Homina Homina Homina. In Japan. Like that, is it?
Picture Books In Winter - Zoom Pedals Make For Wanna Be Hendrix
We've been talking up this Cardiff outfit, friends of Los Campesinos! (you can tell how we find these people, can't you? One of them's in Neil C!'s other band Crimesss too), for a good year now and began to thought we were alone in doing so until Radio 1 asked them to play their Introducing stage at Glastonbury. There's something of LC! in the violin and looseness, but they can't really be pinned down to one identifiable main influence, ping ponging from Pavementisms to dance-math to low-key melodrama, athletically lithe and up for everything.
i concur - Build Around Me
Back to Cardiff in a moment, but first two bands from Leeds, which with Sky Larkin, Napoleon IIIrd et al is somewhere that's set for a big 2009. i concur (yes, lower case all) are an expansive outfit who bring to mind Broken Social Scene, The Twilight Sad and Explosions In The Sky, but also The National's nervous tension, Interpol's intense megalomania and Wilco's anti-stadium rock. With bands like this you're hoping the developmental stage will take them higher and further, but with this slow burning grandiosity they sound pretty much there already.
Grammatics - The Manageress
Meanwhile these prefer the more mesmerisingly melodramatic route, having a cellist on board adding to the affection of ambitious soundscapes. They like a bold statement, do Grammatics, not least in the way Owen Brinley's voice swoops and pirouettes around at top register while all around whip up a storm. Again, this is a band who refuse to be stylistically pinned down, juddering from electronic trickery to wistful acoustica to overwhelming bombast. Their debut is out on March 3rd; whether it can do justice to such dark drama can only be hoped.
Joy Of Sex - December, Month Of Plenty
Somewhat less exotically, Joy Of Sex are a Cardiff art-rock trio who share more than member numbers and locale with old STN favourites The Victorian English Gentlemens Club, that is to say a fondness for Wire/Pixies-esque skeletal post-punk dynamics, taut interplay, boy/girl three-way vocals and song structures all over the place. They like short songs, crashing already pretty jagged riffs into walls and dark lyrics, spiky and keen on keeping the listener alert just in case. They've just released an EP, beyond that we know nothing but are looking forward to finding out.
Minnaars - Essay Essay Essay
Even this Leicester band, featuring a founder member of fellow travellers Tired Irie, make references to sounding not unlike Foals, but it's as if some particularly intense people had been set the task of reconstructing Foals from constituent parts of Minus The Bear, Q And Not U, Cap'n Jazz, Owls and all that, only with a smidgeon of pop potential. ¡Forward Russia!'s Tom Woodhead produced their recent EP and it's quite reminiscent of his now hiatused band too. Maybe not immediately, but certainly as the year drags on we'd expect some wind to develop behind these.
Post War Years - False Starts
Originally from rock city Leamington Spa, Post War Years are one of those bands who strive to find a connecting point between indie guitar and synth dance. With most it'd turn into a shouty mess; what these do is make it work for them with no little poise, clever cross-faded keyboards, loops and samples for the purposes of both cutting a groove and reaching deep into the brain. With three singers/songwriters who swap instruments as much as lead vocals there's plenty of ideas to go round, but they refrain from packing too many of them into each song to good effect.
Wake The President - You Can't Change That Boy
A good eighteen months has passed since we first stumbled on Wake The President at Indietracks, and later watched a comfortably worse for wear either Bjorn or Erik Sandberg (they're identical twins) nearly stumble on stage and into Darren Hayman. Since then Radcliffe & Maconie have been all over them but at heart they're fundamentally unchanged, jangily bowing at the Scotpop altars of Orange Juice and Josef K via Belle & Sebastian and the Go-Betweens, refracted through Aidan Moffatt and Malcolm Middleton's notebooks.
4 Or 5 Magicians - Ideal Man
Longstanding favourites of STN, of course - we interviewed leader Dan Ormsby in our not too distant past - but word is that now their ever fluctuating backline has steadied itself labels are on the prowl and an album is in the process of being majicked. March, they've claimed. If you're new to them, then let's call them Lamacq and Huw Stephens-supported purveyors of only the finest slanted melodies touched by the spirit of the US lo-fi high priests but with their own peculiarly English swirlingly intense and lyrically wry slant.
Let's Wrestle - Music Is My Girlfriend
The self styled "most miserable and hateful band in north London" were recently arrested in the wake of Fucked Up supports (something vehicular, we're assured). Lest you get the wrong idea, this is not some set of rock'n'roll hellraisers but a wry, scrappy David Shrigley referencing trio who crash about and, in WPG's case, declaim in an amusedly blank fashion, all in the grand tradition of the Television Personalities, Subway Sect, Beat Happening, Art Brut and a little bit early Pavement. It's not musical rocket science, it's just damned good idiot savant indie as she used to be made. Album on the way, probably.
The Voluntary Butler Scheme - Tabasco Sole
Up until recently at least, Stourbridge raised Rob Jones has been the quintessential one man band, working behind a full complement of instruments on his own and looping everything from vocals, guitar and keyboard to drums, kazoo and sundry noise makers to build up his peculiar opuses. And it's no small, unambitious sound either, nicking influences from all over the place from glam to cod-soul to tweepop, plus no small amount of likeable lyrical whimsy, all with due love, care and attention. We hope for much more in 2009.
Superman Revenge Squad - I'm Gonna Go To Bed And When I Wake Up I'm Gonna Be Someone Else
Croydon's Ben Parker, previously of trio Tempertwig and duo Nosferatu D2 before logically going solo, is one man strumming an acoustic guitar. Plenty of those to go round already. What there aren't too many of is songwriters who have so many thoughts and ideas their own song structures barely contain them, necessitating lapses into rapidfire spoken word littered with pop culture references. Darkly humorous and thought provoking, sharply spun, skin-crawlingly honest and self-deprecating to a fault, he's been compared to Jeffrey Lewis and admits a love of Will Oldham, should you require a ballpark figure.
Joe Gideon And The Shark - True Nature
Few noticed Bikini Atoll, who put out two albums on Bella Union, one Albini-recorded, which was a shame as they had plenty of ideas mostly involving dark imagery and discordant interplay. The duo formed by frontman Gideon and sister Viva continue down much the same route with even more sleazy intensity, often spoken word grim tales, sinister chants and wild-eyed fuzzy blues riffage playing off thumping drums and keyboards to create an effect akin to Nick Cave's The Firstborn Is Dead melded with Lift To Experience. Recent tour support choice of the aforementioned Cave, their debut should be out in spring.
Rose Elinor Dougall - To The Sea (demo)
Brighton-reared Dougall, who comes with British Sea Power and Brakes connections, drew in attention with the whirling psych-pop of her debut 7" and the slow burn blur of her demos, suggesting a decent range of influences from electronic retro-futurism a la Broadcast to sunny indie-pop via warmly folkily wistful vocals and Young Marble Giants-recalling haziness. Oh, alright, she used to be Rosay Pipette, but don't worry about that because in the short term it'll only put people off. Album in early summer.
The Class Of '09
Thirty Pounds Of Bone - When She Goes Up
Debut album The Homesick Children Of Migrant Mothers came out to little immediate acclaim in late 2006, but it proved to be an early marker being laid down for Drift Records, the Brighton/Stroud-based attempt to light a rocket under modern English folk and see what curious places it led to. Johny Lamb and his shifting brethren came across an endlessly fascinating sound equal parts Sparklehorseish new Americana, the folk revival's delicate acoustic picking and southern sea shanties. A nautically themed EP, And They Go Down To It In Ships, is due imminently with an album pencilled in for the autumn.
Mumford And Sons - Liar
The famous ones, insomuch as they're this year's only band to do the STN Class Of/BBC Sound Of double. We're sure they'll treat both imposters just the same. Marcus Mumford was Laura Marling's drummer, albeit only by proxy given everything else he played live, and while his band have more than a toe in the same modern British folk waters their range is comfortably expanded into bluegrass, country and Appalachian mountain music, and Mumford likes an unaccompanied vocal start. Like Marling, Flynn, Fink et al, they sound at once weathered and entirely modern.
Blue Roses (Laura Groves) - I Am Leaving
Shipley near Bradford's Groves seems to have been around for a couple of years already, like an even slower burning Emmy The Great, whom she's recently supported. Maybe it's this that's as of late November caused her to rename the project Blue Roses ("I feel like I'm in a different place musically to when I started out, so it seemed appropriate to become something new") As of this moment the delivery is much the same, melancholy yet uplifting storytelling with Groves' clear voice front and centre and instrumentation used sparingly around it. Just signed to XL, April is the tentative album arrival date.
Nat Johnson - Judy's First Beat
Until the end of 2007 Johnson was singer and lead songwriter in Monkey Swallows The Universe, the Sheffield outfit whose teak-gossamer switching folk-pop was much admired around these parts. On her own, albeit with most of MSTU in her regular backing band, there's a harder edge with diversions into country and fuzzier tones but for the most part the delicate songwriterly balance is still intact, her writing always simple but effective. And of course there's that drop dead alluring voice. Don't think there's so much as a deal in place at the moment, although she's released a 7" through Thee SPC.
Gossamer Albatross - Bones
STN EXCLUSIVE! This is from their recent Jeremy Warmsley produced session, which frontman Lewis Gordon assures us is "about a million times better than anything else we've ever done". Baroque, rustic tales attaining a scale and ambition that befits much more lauded Americana bands, suggesting Beirut, Final Fantasy and Conor Oberst, if you were placing bets sight unseen on where Britain's answer to such worldly folk updating would come from a group of Hereford teenagers would be some way down the list, but here we are.
Copy Haho - Pulling Push Ups
From Stonehaven near Aberdeen, they take as their starting point the fractured dynamics of the US lo-fi brigade and put a very Scottish melancholic introspective while still expansive pop twist (think Teenage Fanclub, Vaselines, Postcard Records) spin of their own atop the broken riffs and counter-melodies. They're still pushing on with a vitality and elan well beyond their years, having spent 2008 supporting the likes of Sebadoh, Blood Red Shoes, Dananananaykroyd and Hot Club de Paris, and they're in good hands having signed to Big Scary Monsters for a February EP.
We Were Promised Jetpacks - Quiet Little Voices
Bands that are a bit reminiscent of the Cure and Joy Division? Hey, there's a brave new avenue for '09. What makes these 21 year old Glaswegians stand out is the intrinstic detail that goes into their songs, not afraid to both jangle brazenly and head explosively towards anthemhood. You can dance to it in the indie disco, but you can also unpick its impassioned layers should you so wish. FatCat won the signing race, they won't now be content with remaining on the Scottish support circuit.
Sunset Cinema Club - Hardcore
Purveyors of a T-shirt occasionally to be seen adorning the torsos of members of fellow Brummies Johnny Foreigner - and vice versa, actually - with whom they released a double A sided 7" in May 2007, SCC were bred on, yes, the American underground, this time the Fugazi/early Pixies/Minutemen/Mission Of Burma school of taut, rhythm section-led post-hardcore punk-funk with surprises and not a few pop chops. They've just released an album called Homina Homina Homina. In Japan. Like that, is it?
Picture Books In Winter - Zoom Pedals Make For Wanna Be Hendrix
We've been talking up this Cardiff outfit, friends of Los Campesinos! (you can tell how we find these people, can't you? One of them's in Neil C!'s other band Crimesss too), for a good year now and began to thought we were alone in doing so until Radio 1 asked them to play their Introducing stage at Glastonbury. There's something of LC! in the violin and looseness, but they can't really be pinned down to one identifiable main influence, ping ponging from Pavementisms to dance-math to low-key melodrama, athletically lithe and up for everything.
i concur - Build Around Me
Back to Cardiff in a moment, but first two bands from Leeds, which with Sky Larkin, Napoleon IIIrd et al is somewhere that's set for a big 2009. i concur (yes, lower case all) are an expansive outfit who bring to mind Broken Social Scene, The Twilight Sad and Explosions In The Sky, but also The National's nervous tension, Interpol's intense megalomania and Wilco's anti-stadium rock. With bands like this you're hoping the developmental stage will take them higher and further, but with this slow burning grandiosity they sound pretty much there already.
Grammatics - The Manageress
Meanwhile these prefer the more mesmerisingly melodramatic route, having a cellist on board adding to the affection of ambitious soundscapes. They like a bold statement, do Grammatics, not least in the way Owen Brinley's voice swoops and pirouettes around at top register while all around whip up a storm. Again, this is a band who refuse to be stylistically pinned down, juddering from electronic trickery to wistful acoustica to overwhelming bombast. Their debut is out on March 3rd; whether it can do justice to such dark drama can only be hoped.
Joy Of Sex - December, Month Of Plenty
Somewhat less exotically, Joy Of Sex are a Cardiff art-rock trio who share more than member numbers and locale with old STN favourites The Victorian English Gentlemens Club, that is to say a fondness for Wire/Pixies-esque skeletal post-punk dynamics, taut interplay, boy/girl three-way vocals and song structures all over the place. They like short songs, crashing already pretty jagged riffs into walls and dark lyrics, spiky and keen on keeping the listener alert just in case. They've just released an EP, beyond that we know nothing but are looking forward to finding out.
Minnaars - Essay Essay Essay
Even this Leicester band, featuring a founder member of fellow travellers Tired Irie, make references to sounding not unlike Foals, but it's as if some particularly intense people had been set the task of reconstructing Foals from constituent parts of Minus The Bear, Q And Not U, Cap'n Jazz, Owls and all that, only with a smidgeon of pop potential. ¡Forward Russia!'s Tom Woodhead produced their recent EP and it's quite reminiscent of his now hiatused band too. Maybe not immediately, but certainly as the year drags on we'd expect some wind to develop behind these.
Post War Years - False Starts
Originally from rock city Leamington Spa, Post War Years are one of those bands who strive to find a connecting point between indie guitar and synth dance. With most it'd turn into a shouty mess; what these do is make it work for them with no little poise, clever cross-faded keyboards, loops and samples for the purposes of both cutting a groove and reaching deep into the brain. With three singers/songwriters who swap instruments as much as lead vocals there's plenty of ideas to go round, but they refrain from packing too many of them into each song to good effect.
Wake The President - You Can't Change That Boy
A good eighteen months has passed since we first stumbled on Wake The President at Indietracks, and later watched a comfortably worse for wear either Bjorn or Erik Sandberg (they're identical twins) nearly stumble on stage and into Darren Hayman. Since then Radcliffe & Maconie have been all over them but at heart they're fundamentally unchanged, jangily bowing at the Scotpop altars of Orange Juice and Josef K via Belle & Sebastian and the Go-Betweens, refracted through Aidan Moffatt and Malcolm Middleton's notebooks.
4 Or 5 Magicians - Ideal Man
Longstanding favourites of STN, of course - we interviewed leader Dan Ormsby in our not too distant past - but word is that now their ever fluctuating backline has steadied itself labels are on the prowl and an album is in the process of being majicked. March, they've claimed. If you're new to them, then let's call them Lamacq and Huw Stephens-supported purveyors of only the finest slanted melodies touched by the spirit of the US lo-fi high priests but with their own peculiarly English swirlingly intense and lyrically wry slant.
Let's Wrestle - Music Is My Girlfriend
The self styled "most miserable and hateful band in north London" were recently arrested in the wake of Fucked Up supports (something vehicular, we're assured). Lest you get the wrong idea, this is not some set of rock'n'roll hellraisers but a wry, scrappy David Shrigley referencing trio who crash about and, in WPG's case, declaim in an amusedly blank fashion, all in the grand tradition of the Television Personalities, Subway Sect, Beat Happening, Art Brut and a little bit early Pavement. It's not musical rocket science, it's just damned good idiot savant indie as she used to be made. Album on the way, probably.
The Voluntary Butler Scheme - Tabasco Sole
Up until recently at least, Stourbridge raised Rob Jones has been the quintessential one man band, working behind a full complement of instruments on his own and looping everything from vocals, guitar and keyboard to drums, kazoo and sundry noise makers to build up his peculiar opuses. And it's no small, unambitious sound either, nicking influences from all over the place from glam to cod-soul to tweepop, plus no small amount of likeable lyrical whimsy, all with due love, care and attention. We hope for much more in 2009.
Superman Revenge Squad - I'm Gonna Go To Bed And When I Wake Up I'm Gonna Be Someone Else
Croydon's Ben Parker, previously of trio Tempertwig and duo Nosferatu D2 before logically going solo, is one man strumming an acoustic guitar. Plenty of those to go round already. What there aren't too many of is songwriters who have so many thoughts and ideas their own song structures barely contain them, necessitating lapses into rapidfire spoken word littered with pop culture references. Darkly humorous and thought provoking, sharply spun, skin-crawlingly honest and self-deprecating to a fault, he's been compared to Jeffrey Lewis and admits a love of Will Oldham, should you require a ballpark figure.
Joe Gideon And The Shark - True Nature
Few noticed Bikini Atoll, who put out two albums on Bella Union, one Albini-recorded, which was a shame as they had plenty of ideas mostly involving dark imagery and discordant interplay. The duo formed by frontman Gideon and sister Viva continue down much the same route with even more sleazy intensity, often spoken word grim tales, sinister chants and wild-eyed fuzzy blues riffage playing off thumping drums and keyboards to create an effect akin to Nick Cave's The Firstborn Is Dead melded with Lift To Experience. Recent tour support choice of the aforementioned Cave, their debut should be out in spring.
Rose Elinor Dougall - To The Sea (demo)
Brighton-reared Dougall, who comes with British Sea Power and Brakes connections, drew in attention with the whirling psych-pop of her debut 7" and the slow burn blur of her demos, suggesting a decent range of influences from electronic retro-futurism a la Broadcast to sunny indie-pop via warmly folkily wistful vocals and Young Marble Giants-recalling haziness. Oh, alright, she used to be Rosay Pipette, but don't worry about that because in the short term it'll only put people off. Album in early summer.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Sweeping The Nation Covermount 15: C99
A year and a bit ago we Covermounted C97, a collection of the songs time seems to have overlooked from what was then ten years ago. So popular did it prove that in haste we shoved out C98 a year ago, and so it follows that we should complete the decade set before this year is out, again using no artist that was on either of the previous sets. In the wider world 1999 was the year of Britney and Christina, of Westlife's reign of terror commencing, of trance and two-step, of Eminem's ascension to international pariah, of Shania Twain, Martine McCutcheon and Ricky Martin, of the Vengaboys, A1 and solo Spice Girls, of Blue (Da Ba Dee), Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen), Mambo Number 5 and the Millennium Prayer.
No, come back. Other intriguing stuff happened during the year, and if maybe it wasn't as strong all round it was certainly pre-millennially fascinating. Observe:
C99
Looper - Ballad of Ray Suzuki
Belle & Sebastian have always liked a good side project, and first off the blocks was bassist Stuart David's beats, samples and spoken word, bringing the hitherto seperate worlds of lo-fi charm and breakbeat building together like they'd never been apart.
From Up A Tree
Ladytron - He Took Her To A Movie
Before Daniel and Reuben met Helen and Mira there was Lisa Eriksson, an electronic musician whose previous band had had Peel interest and was the original third hand. She only stopped for this debut single before the pan-European electro-temptresses to be joined and Eriksson moved to the unpromisingly named Techno Squirrels.
From 604
Appliance - Food Music
Mute signed Exeter trio Appliance at a time when it looked like motorik influences were about to rule all, album Manual adding levity and no little widescreen invention to the introspective Krautrock. Although they say they've started rehearsing again they've been dormant since 2003.
From Manual
Scott 4 - Catastrophe
Of course they weren't a four-piece. Their blend of country blues, indie introspection and synthy hip hop/funk/Krautrock influenced electro actually found a space nobody else had touched - Allmusic labelled them 'electronic cowpunks' - and leader Scott Blixen donned a big white stetson long before the Appleton sisters did.
From Works Project LP
Language Lab - Burning Disaster
Yorkshireman Robin Morley was (is?) Language Lab, a much darker variant on the electronic music that was making carefully Noel-approved waves at the time. And that's him rapping on it too. Don't panic. If you know it it's because it was used on Chris Morris' Jam, which is some backup to all that darkness stuff.
M.Organ - Miss Parker
Morgan Nicholls (who we know was Morgan on his album, but the CD single - with Jamie Hewlett drawn cover - says thus), formerly of Senseless Things, later of the Gorillaz live band, now Muse's touring keyboardist, here putting Hammond organ behind his fifteen year old brother's Dictaphone recorded anti-teacher freestyling.
From Organized
Delakota - 555
Nicholls and fellow Senseless Things/Gorillaz member Cass Browne formed two thirds of these post-baggy explorers, whose album came out in 1998 but this later single makes the cut. A lot of post-baggy around then; rest assured that Delakota were no Regular Fries, let alone Campag Velocet.
From One Love
Brassy - Good Times
Jon 'Blues Explosion' Spencer's sister Muffin spent her time living in Manchester forming this combination of fuzzy guitars and whiteboy hip-hop beats (their drummer did dual time as turntablist), "the sound of the Shangri La's produced by Schoolly D" said the label. One of their songs ended up advertising Motorola.
From Got It Made
Rosita - Live It Down
So Kenickie split in two in 1998, and Marie and Emmy-Kate emerged with their guitar tech and a former Swervedriver drummer to form the knife between the summery pop teeth Rosita. They lasted for two singles, but what singles they were. Ripped for us off the original 7", this.
Murry The Hump - Thrown Like A Stone
"They should have been huge" is a much overused phrase, but no, really, Aberystwyth trio Murry The Hump should have been huge. Maybe they were too angular, Matthew Evans too gawky and his lyrics too obscure for the mass market. We couldn't find the original version, so this is the 2001 album rerecording.
From Songs Of Ignorance
Ben Lee - Cigarettes Will Kill You
Not as obscure as most here - he's recorded with Kylie, Evan Dando and Ben Folds, is engaged to Ione Skye and his recent album featured one of Good Charlotte and Dave Matthews' producer - but he sells nothing in the UK, and we like it, and it's our compilation.
From Breathing Tornados
Venini - Mon Camion
Guitarist/violinist Russell Senior left Pulp in 1998 citing a disenchantment with everything they took up with Different Class and a year later returned with this vampish art-pop outfit who lasted two self-released singles before Senior opened an antiques shop instead.
Whistler - Don't Jump In Front Of My Train
EMF are, like everyone, back on the reunion trail at the moment, but in between times guitarist and songwriter Ian Dench formed what we suppose would be his own Lilac Time, a fragile, folkily acoustic trio who put out a couple of albums to declining acclaim.
From Whistler
Wheat - Don't I Hold You
When Mercury Rev kicked the door blocking chart action and the American psychedelic underground door wide open Massachusetts' Wheat, produced by Dave Fridmann as they were, were expected to be among the first through. Then they disappeared for a few years in record company limbo and lost their way, but what a way that originally was.
From Hope And Adams
Beulah - Score From Augusta
Not to be confused with the post-Dido briefly lauded by Radio 2 singer-songriter, Beulah were Elephant Six members whose upbeat horn and string-aided chamber maxi-pop briefly made them cult following major players. Still are for a lot of people.
From When Your Heartstrings Break
Mazarin - Wheats
Mazarin were (and we do mean that, as they're still together but under a new name - legalities, see) essentially Philadelphian singer-songwriter Quentin Stoltzfus, another of the Rev/Lips school with the intricate melodies recalling late Beatles that seemingly only Americans can now do.
From Watch It Happen
Ten In The Swear Jar - Sita Deth
From outside anything that even in those unknowing days would be deemed sellable to a mass audience, whacked out experimental fuzzy indie-rock from California. Most of them, and even some of their songs, went on to go even further adrift and awry as Xiu Xiu.
From My Very Private Map
The Make-Up - White Belts
Time for some righteousness, then. Ian Svenonius and co attempted to transplant communicative voodoo soul power into garage rock tropes, had well mapped out theories alternate to rock'n'roll, called their style 'Gospel Yeh-Yeh' and got some NME attention. Who knows, now Svenonius might have gone the same way Beth Ditto did.
From Save Yourself
Six By Seven - Ten Places To Die
Chris Olley would never, ever have done that. The doomy, droney slow burn intensity of this standalone single was pretty much what they were all about for their first two albums. In all honesty, though, "picking apples from a tree" is a fairly unlikely place to die, unless it's in a thunderstorm.
From The Closer You Get
No, come back. Other intriguing stuff happened during the year, and if maybe it wasn't as strong all round it was certainly pre-millennially fascinating. Observe:
C99
Looper - Ballad of Ray Suzuki
Belle & Sebastian have always liked a good side project, and first off the blocks was bassist Stuart David's beats, samples and spoken word, bringing the hitherto seperate worlds of lo-fi charm and breakbeat building together like they'd never been apart.
From Up A Tree
Ladytron - He Took Her To A Movie
Before Daniel and Reuben met Helen and Mira there was Lisa Eriksson, an electronic musician whose previous band had had Peel interest and was the original third hand. She only stopped for this debut single before the pan-European electro-temptresses to be joined and Eriksson moved to the unpromisingly named Techno Squirrels.
From 604
Appliance - Food Music
Mute signed Exeter trio Appliance at a time when it looked like motorik influences were about to rule all, album Manual adding levity and no little widescreen invention to the introspective Krautrock. Although they say they've started rehearsing again they've been dormant since 2003.
From Manual
Scott 4 - Catastrophe
Of course they weren't a four-piece. Their blend of country blues, indie introspection and synthy hip hop/funk/Krautrock influenced electro actually found a space nobody else had touched - Allmusic labelled them 'electronic cowpunks' - and leader Scott Blixen donned a big white stetson long before the Appleton sisters did.
From Works Project LP
Language Lab - Burning Disaster
Yorkshireman Robin Morley was (is?) Language Lab, a much darker variant on the electronic music that was making carefully Noel-approved waves at the time. And that's him rapping on it too. Don't panic. If you know it it's because it was used on Chris Morris' Jam, which is some backup to all that darkness stuff.
M.Organ - Miss Parker
Morgan Nicholls (who we know was Morgan on his album, but the CD single - with Jamie Hewlett drawn cover - says thus), formerly of Senseless Things, later of the Gorillaz live band, now Muse's touring keyboardist, here putting Hammond organ behind his fifteen year old brother's Dictaphone recorded anti-teacher freestyling.
From Organized
Delakota - 555
Nicholls and fellow Senseless Things/Gorillaz member Cass Browne formed two thirds of these post-baggy explorers, whose album came out in 1998 but this later single makes the cut. A lot of post-baggy around then; rest assured that Delakota were no Regular Fries, let alone Campag Velocet.
From One Love
Brassy - Good Times
Jon 'Blues Explosion' Spencer's sister Muffin spent her time living in Manchester forming this combination of fuzzy guitars and whiteboy hip-hop beats (their drummer did dual time as turntablist), "the sound of the Shangri La's produced by Schoolly D" said the label. One of their songs ended up advertising Motorola.
From Got It Made
Rosita - Live It Down
So Kenickie split in two in 1998, and Marie and Emmy-Kate emerged with their guitar tech and a former Swervedriver drummer to form the knife between the summery pop teeth Rosita. They lasted for two singles, but what singles they were. Ripped for us off the original 7", this.
Murry The Hump - Thrown Like A Stone
"They should have been huge" is a much overused phrase, but no, really, Aberystwyth trio Murry The Hump should have been huge. Maybe they were too angular, Matthew Evans too gawky and his lyrics too obscure for the mass market. We couldn't find the original version, so this is the 2001 album rerecording.
From Songs Of Ignorance
Ben Lee - Cigarettes Will Kill You
Not as obscure as most here - he's recorded with Kylie, Evan Dando and Ben Folds, is engaged to Ione Skye and his recent album featured one of Good Charlotte and Dave Matthews' producer - but he sells nothing in the UK, and we like it, and it's our compilation.
From Breathing Tornados
Venini - Mon Camion
Guitarist/violinist Russell Senior left Pulp in 1998 citing a disenchantment with everything they took up with Different Class and a year later returned with this vampish art-pop outfit who lasted two self-released singles before Senior opened an antiques shop instead.
Whistler - Don't Jump In Front Of My Train
EMF are, like everyone, back on the reunion trail at the moment, but in between times guitarist and songwriter Ian Dench formed what we suppose would be his own Lilac Time, a fragile, folkily acoustic trio who put out a couple of albums to declining acclaim.
From Whistler
Wheat - Don't I Hold You
When Mercury Rev kicked the door blocking chart action and the American psychedelic underground door wide open Massachusetts' Wheat, produced by Dave Fridmann as they were, were expected to be among the first through. Then they disappeared for a few years in record company limbo and lost their way, but what a way that originally was.
From Hope And Adams
Beulah - Score From Augusta
Not to be confused with the post-Dido briefly lauded by Radio 2 singer-songriter, Beulah were Elephant Six members whose upbeat horn and string-aided chamber maxi-pop briefly made them cult following major players. Still are for a lot of people.
From When Your Heartstrings Break
Mazarin - Wheats
Mazarin were (and we do mean that, as they're still together but under a new name - legalities, see) essentially Philadelphian singer-songwriter Quentin Stoltzfus, another of the Rev/Lips school with the intricate melodies recalling late Beatles that seemingly only Americans can now do.
From Watch It Happen
Ten In The Swear Jar - Sita Deth
From outside anything that even in those unknowing days would be deemed sellable to a mass audience, whacked out experimental fuzzy indie-rock from California. Most of them, and even some of their songs, went on to go even further adrift and awry as Xiu Xiu.
From My Very Private Map
The Make-Up - White Belts
Time for some righteousness, then. Ian Svenonius and co attempted to transplant communicative voodoo soul power into garage rock tropes, had well mapped out theories alternate to rock'n'roll, called their style 'Gospel Yeh-Yeh' and got some NME attention. Who knows, now Svenonius might have gone the same way Beth Ditto did.
From Save Yourself
Six By Seven - Ten Places To Die
Chris Olley would never, ever have done that. The doomy, droney slow burn intensity of this standalone single was pretty much what they were all about for their first two albums. In all honesty, though, "picking apples from a tree" is a fairly unlikely place to die, unless it's in a thunderstorm.
From The Closer You Get
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Sweeping The Nation Covermount 14: It's A London Thing
So, that's the Beijing Olympics done. The world records and gold medallists are in the books, the imagery committed to video library, and the flags and the honours have been passed on for London 2012 after a closing ceremony demonstration of the country's legacy in pop (Jimmy Page, Leona Lewis), sport (David Beckham), nostalgic culture (a double decker bus) and comedy (Bori...come on, you could see that punchline coming, couldn't you? The Now Show, you know where to find us)
When better time - apart from in 2012, but we've got this together now - to pay tribute to the history of London as the muse for a whole host of songwriters - its areas, its riches, its deprivation, its Tube system, its party culture, its stay at home attitude. London has a place in popular music we reckon not even New York or Paris can match. It becomes part of band's stories but it makes its own mythologies. It creates genres and sounds that only really exist or thrive within its boundaries. There are songs here by lovers and haters, storytellers and detractors. A creative, financial and often psychological hub, the musical capital gains are endless, and here's 74 minutes or so of them.
It's A London Thing
Ian Dury - The Bus Driver's Prayer
Right, we'll try and get through these twenty without leaving in confusing syntax or horrible factual errors, unlike the last Covermount (we're not sure we'll ever let ourselves forget confusing Cath Carroll for Cathal Coughlan - they're not even the same gender!) It's not actually a Dury original - the writer is unknown but it's been around since the early 70s - but you can see how Dury, who slightly changed the words, would be attracted to a song that namechecks various stops in Greater London. Here he is doing it on So It Goes.
Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine - The Only Living Boy In New Cross
The clips on YouTube of Carter USM's 'final' (as in they're playing two more in November) gig last year made it seem more like Sodom & Gomorrah than a last hurrah for a band that slipped through the critical net and turned up on every other T-shirt in the early 90s. Rock-fisted as they were, we wouldn't mind an issues band like them now, this being equally about HIV paranoia and celebrating South London lowlifes.
From 1992 - The Love Album
Girls Aloud - Swinging London Town
This isn't issues led at all. In fact, it's a fairly open pisstake of ligging debutante partygoers who are always pictured pissed in expensive dresses in the celebrity magazines. You might like to stop for a moment here and consider the irony of Xenomania writing a song on that subject for the members of Girls Aloud to sing.
From Chemistry
Good Shoes - Morden
A band that got swept along on the south London straightforwardly rattling indie-rock 'thing' that got the Maccabees noticed, although before then they'd played at the Mystery Jets' Eel Pie Island hullaballoos. All the members are from the Borough of Merton locale, although title aside it could be about any average urban small town.
From Think Before You Speak
Blur - London Loves
Parklife, however, was as chirpy Cockerney as they come. Well, so cliche had it, the album's character sketches in retrospect being as paranoid and alienated from the party life as celebratory. This, as an example, is generally about empty lifestyles and the subject's ignorance of "the way people just fall apart".
From Parklife
Squeeze - Piccadilly
Difford and Tilbrook wrote a lot about London life and urbanity - certainly you can't imagine a lot of other places packing in those locales in 1982.
From East Side Story
Pulp - Mile End
Jarvis was living in London during Britpop and partaking well in the self-celebratory nature of the scene, as he would document in his comedown album This Is Hardcore. This came a couple of years before that, on the Trainspotting soundtrack, documenting the seedy underbelly of the area Cocker first moved to when coming down from Sheffield.
From Different Class Deluxe Edition
David Devant And His Spirit Wife - Pimlico
And then there's the vaudeville angle. We've discussed DDAHSW back on C97, since when The Vessel, who now appears to be referring to himself as David Devant in contravention of naming convention before (actually no he's not - see the comments), has formed Glam Chops with fan/kindred spirit Eddie Argos.
Elvis Costello - London's Brilliant Parade
Although occasionally referred to as a Liverpudlian Declan grew up in Twickenham and spent very little time in Birkenhead when the family moved there before going back south, working at the Elizabeth Arden factory and writing a song about the former Hoover factory in Perivale. Fair to say he wasn't impressed by its postcard image.
From Brutal Youth
Madness - Primrose Hill
Madness borrowed as much from music hall and Ray Davies as ska, and 1982's The Rise And Fall was their version of a concept album based on their childhoods. Being on the side of Regent's Park and next to Hampstead and Camden Town Primrose Hill's place in the band's psychogeography was assured.
From The Rise And Fall
Lord Kitchener - London Is The Place For Me
In 1948 the Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury, Essex carrying nearly 5000 Jamaicans starting a new life abroad, marking the start of the modern era of multicultural relations. Among them were calypso musicians Lord Beginner and Lord Kitchener, born Aldwyn Roberts, who between them helped spread their indigenous music to Europe. This song gave its title to a series of Honest Jon's Records compilations of 1940s and 1950s calypso.
From London Is The Place For Me
Smiley Culture - Cockney Translation
The second generation of the Jamaican immigrants were exemplified by David Emmanuel, who would go on to break the top 20 with Police Officer but had earlier had a minor hit and Peel attention with this comparisons and confusions of East End and West Indian slang, one of Michael Rosen's Desert Island Discs and a song Simon Reynolds has argued facilitated the leaking of black terms into general East London slang.
Saint Etienne - London Belongs To Me
Regular Covermount contributors, Bob and Pete (and probably Sarah too, to be fair) have had a long affinity with the sociology and landscape of London, producing the films Finisterre and What Have You Done Today, Mervyn Day? This takes a different tack, documenting love in Camden Town while namechecking World Of Twist.
From Foxbase Alpha
Richard Thompson - Sights And Sounds Of London Town
Tales of prostitution, homelessness, drug dealing, Soho wheeler-dealing - the cheery stuff - from Thompson's 1999 early folk revival-themed album.
From Mock Tudor
Tori Amos - London Girls
Being the iconoclast, North Carolina born Amos has covered two Chas & Dave songs, on the B-side of her Caught A Lite Sneeze single. One was That's What I Like Mick, and is absurd. This is at least more universal in lyrical tone, despite references to a geezer and getting a round in.
Robyn Hitchcock - Trams Of Old London
Onto the Tube now, with the eccentric English songwriter's eccentric English songwriter imagining the journey of the ghost of a derelict tram.
From I Often Dream Of Trains
Elliott Smith - Waterloo Sunset (live)
Calexico - The Guns Of Brixton
Two of the most quintessentially London bands of them all, two of their most capital specific songs that every one of you will know, both subject to stripped back covers by Americans.
Hefner - The Greater London Radio
Obviously it's about love dashed on the rocks, but despite being from Essex and Kent Hefner were always metropolitan at heart. This is the next album due on Darren Hayman's extension and reissue series.
From We Love The City
Catatonia - Londinium
And eventually those who move to the city hoping the streets are paved with gold get fed up, or filled up, and decide to leave. Cerys Matthews' party lifestyle and attendant issues are well documented, but this was written by guitarist and Cerys' former paramour Mark Roberts and it was rumoured Cerys wasn't overly keen. Christ, she's not still dating Marc Bannerman, is she?
From Equally Cursed And Blessed
When better time - apart from in 2012, but we've got this together now - to pay tribute to the history of London as the muse for a whole host of songwriters - its areas, its riches, its deprivation, its Tube system, its party culture, its stay at home attitude. London has a place in popular music we reckon not even New York or Paris can match. It becomes part of band's stories but it makes its own mythologies. It creates genres and sounds that only really exist or thrive within its boundaries. There are songs here by lovers and haters, storytellers and detractors. A creative, financial and often psychological hub, the musical capital gains are endless, and here's 74 minutes or so of them.
It's A London Thing
Ian Dury - The Bus Driver's Prayer
Right, we'll try and get through these twenty without leaving in confusing syntax or horrible factual errors, unlike the last Covermount (we're not sure we'll ever let ourselves forget confusing Cath Carroll for Cathal Coughlan - they're not even the same gender!) It's not actually a Dury original - the writer is unknown but it's been around since the early 70s - but you can see how Dury, who slightly changed the words, would be attracted to a song that namechecks various stops in Greater London. Here he is doing it on So It Goes.
Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine - The Only Living Boy In New Cross
The clips on YouTube of Carter USM's 'final' (as in they're playing two more in November) gig last year made it seem more like Sodom & Gomorrah than a last hurrah for a band that slipped through the critical net and turned up on every other T-shirt in the early 90s. Rock-fisted as they were, we wouldn't mind an issues band like them now, this being equally about HIV paranoia and celebrating South London lowlifes.
From 1992 - The Love Album
Girls Aloud - Swinging London Town
This isn't issues led at all. In fact, it's a fairly open pisstake of ligging debutante partygoers who are always pictured pissed in expensive dresses in the celebrity magazines. You might like to stop for a moment here and consider the irony of Xenomania writing a song on that subject for the members of Girls Aloud to sing.
From Chemistry
Good Shoes - Morden
A band that got swept along on the south London straightforwardly rattling indie-rock 'thing' that got the Maccabees noticed, although before then they'd played at the Mystery Jets' Eel Pie Island hullaballoos. All the members are from the Borough of Merton locale, although title aside it could be about any average urban small town.
From Think Before You Speak
Blur - London Loves
Parklife, however, was as chirpy Cockerney as they come. Well, so cliche had it, the album's character sketches in retrospect being as paranoid and alienated from the party life as celebratory. This, as an example, is generally about empty lifestyles and the subject's ignorance of "the way people just fall apart".
From Parklife
Squeeze - Piccadilly
Difford and Tilbrook wrote a lot about London life and urbanity - certainly you can't imagine a lot of other places packing in those locales in 1982.
From East Side Story
Pulp - Mile End
Jarvis was living in London during Britpop and partaking well in the self-celebratory nature of the scene, as he would document in his comedown album This Is Hardcore. This came a couple of years before that, on the Trainspotting soundtrack, documenting the seedy underbelly of the area Cocker first moved to when coming down from Sheffield.
From Different Class Deluxe Edition
David Devant And His Spirit Wife - Pimlico
And then there's the vaudeville angle. We've discussed DDAHSW back on C97, since when The Vessel, who now appears to be referring to himself as David Devant in contravention of naming convention before (actually no he's not - see the comments), has formed Glam Chops with fan/kindred spirit Eddie Argos.
Elvis Costello - London's Brilliant Parade
Although occasionally referred to as a Liverpudlian Declan grew up in Twickenham and spent very little time in Birkenhead when the family moved there before going back south, working at the Elizabeth Arden factory and writing a song about the former Hoover factory in Perivale. Fair to say he wasn't impressed by its postcard image.
From Brutal Youth
Madness - Primrose Hill
Madness borrowed as much from music hall and Ray Davies as ska, and 1982's The Rise And Fall was their version of a concept album based on their childhoods. Being on the side of Regent's Park and next to Hampstead and Camden Town Primrose Hill's place in the band's psychogeography was assured.
From The Rise And Fall
Lord Kitchener - London Is The Place For Me
In 1948 the Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury, Essex carrying nearly 5000 Jamaicans starting a new life abroad, marking the start of the modern era of multicultural relations. Among them were calypso musicians Lord Beginner and Lord Kitchener, born Aldwyn Roberts, who between them helped spread their indigenous music to Europe. This song gave its title to a series of Honest Jon's Records compilations of 1940s and 1950s calypso.
From London Is The Place For Me
Smiley Culture - Cockney Translation
The second generation of the Jamaican immigrants were exemplified by David Emmanuel, who would go on to break the top 20 with Police Officer but had earlier had a minor hit and Peel attention with this comparisons and confusions of East End and West Indian slang, one of Michael Rosen's Desert Island Discs and a song Simon Reynolds has argued facilitated the leaking of black terms into general East London slang.
Saint Etienne - London Belongs To Me
Regular Covermount contributors, Bob and Pete (and probably Sarah too, to be fair) have had a long affinity with the sociology and landscape of London, producing the films Finisterre and What Have You Done Today, Mervyn Day? This takes a different tack, documenting love in Camden Town while namechecking World Of Twist.
From Foxbase Alpha
Richard Thompson - Sights And Sounds Of London Town
Tales of prostitution, homelessness, drug dealing, Soho wheeler-dealing - the cheery stuff - from Thompson's 1999 early folk revival-themed album.
From Mock Tudor
Tori Amos - London Girls
Being the iconoclast, North Carolina born Amos has covered two Chas & Dave songs, on the B-side of her Caught A Lite Sneeze single. One was That's What I Like Mick, and is absurd. This is at least more universal in lyrical tone, despite references to a geezer and getting a round in.
Robyn Hitchcock - Trams Of Old London
Onto the Tube now, with the eccentric English songwriter's eccentric English songwriter imagining the journey of the ghost of a derelict tram.
From I Often Dream Of Trains
Elliott Smith - Waterloo Sunset (live)
Calexico - The Guns Of Brixton
Two of the most quintessentially London bands of them all, two of their most capital specific songs that every one of you will know, both subject to stripped back covers by Americans.
Hefner - The Greater London Radio
Obviously it's about love dashed on the rocks, but despite being from Essex and Kent Hefner were always metropolitan at heart. This is the next album due on Darren Hayman's extension and reissue series.
From We Love The City
Catatonia - Londinium
And eventually those who move to the city hoping the streets are paved with gold get fed up, or filled up, and decide to leave. Cerys Matthews' party lifestyle and attendant issues are well documented, but this was written by guitarist and Cerys' former paramour Mark Roberts and it was rumoured Cerys wasn't overly keen. Christ, she's not still dating Marc Bannerman, is she?
From Equally Cursed And Blessed
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Sweeping The Nation Covermount 12A: Heroes And Villains
When we did songs about or named after other musicians as a Covermount last year, it was only ever going to scratch the surface of the tribute genre of songwriting. Musicians have always wanted to pass on their idolatory, make sure someone's name is mud, comment on events or just use a celebrated identity for sport. Like this...
Heroes And Villains
The Modern Lovers - Pablo Picasso
The first Modern Lovers album was recorded in 1972 but not released until 1976, by which time producer and pianist John Cale had recorded it for his own solo album. That's hardly fair.
From The Modern Lovers
The Adverts - Gary Gilmore's Eyes
Gilmore was found guilty of murdering a gas station employee and motel manager in Utah in 1976, who gained notoreity by insisting his firing squad death sentence be fulfilled against the wishes of Utah authorities and by requesting his eyes be given for transplant purposes. TV Smith wondered what might happen if the recipient found out.
From Crossing The Red Sea With The Adverts
Half Man Half Biscuit - Fuckin' 'Ell It's Fred Titmus
You have to, really, don't you?
From Back In The DHSS
Boney M - Rasputin
You don't have to, really, but screw you, it's our Covermount. Who is that narrator in the bridge?
From The Collection
Le Tigre - What's Yr Take On Cassavetes?
John Cassavetes was an auteur pioneer of American independent film who has also influenced songs by Fugazi and the Hold Steady. Kathleen Hanna and co don't give his legacy a lot of room for manoevure here.
From Le Tigre
Sleater-Kinney - I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone
Just across the Riot Grrrl divide (and yes, we know Sleater-Kinney really postdate that whole thing, but the ideas are there), this album was Carrie Brownstein's coming-out party of sorts, not least in her ambiguous call to be celebrated.
From Call The Doctor
Super Furry Animals - Hermann Loves Pauline
Hermann Einstein and Pauline Koch, to be precise, parents of Albert Einstein, whose development Gruff considers before veering off into Marie Curie and late night garage culture (who'd know a celebrated weedhead would be aware of that?)
From Radiator
Franz Ferdinand - All For You, Sophia
Here's where that reading in art school dorm pays off - Sophia was the name of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's wife (and daughter, actually). Indeed this Take Me Out B-side is a proper retelling of his murder - Gavrilo Princip was one of seven men from the Black Hand Gang sent to assassinate Ferdinand.
The Clash - The Right Profile
Montgomery Clift was a intense, sensitive kind of actor who was a Oscar-nominated Hollywood star until a car crash in 1956 left him with spinal damage and facial damage. As his health and looks deteriorated Clift became addicted to drink and painkillers and died of a heart attack aged 44. REM's Monty Got A Raw Deal? That's about him too.
From London Calling
Scritti Politti - Jacques Derrida
Living in a cramped Camden squat in the late 70s Green Gartside and fellow critical theory-loving commune dwellers read theory voraciously, and it was those addled idealistics that fed into 1982's melodic soul experiments that brought them closer to the New Pop mainstream.
From Songs To Remember
Modest Mouse - Bukowski
Big old lit-touchstone for any self respecting US indie rocker in the Isaac Brock mould, Charles.
From Good News For People Who Love Bad News
Billy Bragg & Wilco - Ingrid Bergman
Woody Guthrie's 1950 love song to the celebrated Swedish actress resurrected for the covers project...
From Mermaid Avenue Vol.1
David Bowie - Andy Warhol
Bowie was an early Velvets champion and is reputed to have played this to Warhol when he visited Bowie's studio, to a less than positive reaction. Not that we'd expect anything more, obviously. Also on the same album is Song for Bob Dylan, and the subject didn't like that either. John Frusciante claims the intro to Under The Bridge is inspired by this song.
From Hunky Dory
The Go-Betweens - Lee Remick
Hefner also had a song called Lee Remick, but it wasn't about the late actress. "She was in The Omen with Gregory Peck/She got killed, what the heck".
From The Lost Album 1978-1979
10,000 Maniacs - Hey Jack Kerouac
cf Bukowski.
From Campfire Songs
Lloyd Cole And The Commotions - Sean Penn Blues
Cole wasn't averse to the odd cultural reference - Norman Mailer, Grace Kelly, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Raymond Carver - but being sympathetic to the then much mocked Penn was a new dimension.
From Mainstream
Manic Street Preachers - Let Robeson Sing
It's not as if MSP have few options in this regard, but there's something oddly touching about their tribute to actor/singer/civil rights champion Paul Robeson, not to mention it being one of their few late period highlights.
From Know Your Enemy
Sufjan Stevens - John Wayne Gacy, Jr
Serial killer number two: Gacy, the "Killer Clown", was executed in 1994 for the rape and murder of 33 boys and young men between 1972 and his arrest in 1978, having been sentenced to 21 consecutive life sentences and 12 death sentences. Sufjan thinks they might be alike somehow. Gulp.
From Illinoise
Okkervil River - John Allyn Smith Sails
Confessional poet John Berryman has suddenly became an indie rock cause celebre over the last couple of years. The Hold Steady's Stuck Between Stations is about him, and Nick Cave (We Call Upon The Author) and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (Mama, Won't You Keep Them Castles In The Air And Burning) both lyrically namecheck him and his style. Best of all, though, is Will Sheff's retelling of his 1972 suicide by bridge jumping which lurches - naturally, Sheff says - into the traditional song best known as Sloop John B. An unfollowable finish to any compilation...
From The Stage Names
The Fatima Mansions - Blues For Ceausescu
...were it not due to this. There's not a lot of direct political comment here, largely because we might want to do a current affairs leaning Covermount one day, but Cath Carroll's molten precision targeted anger at... what? Royalty, Britain, the nature of dictatorship? Anyway, it was a Song To Learn And Sing and actually is unfollowable by anything.
From Viva Dead Ponies
Heroes And Villains
The Modern Lovers - Pablo Picasso
The first Modern Lovers album was recorded in 1972 but not released until 1976, by which time producer and pianist John Cale had recorded it for his own solo album. That's hardly fair.
From The Modern Lovers
The Adverts - Gary Gilmore's Eyes
Gilmore was found guilty of murdering a gas station employee and motel manager in Utah in 1976, who gained notoreity by insisting his firing squad death sentence be fulfilled against the wishes of Utah authorities and by requesting his eyes be given for transplant purposes. TV Smith wondered what might happen if the recipient found out.
From Crossing The Red Sea With The Adverts
Half Man Half Biscuit - Fuckin' 'Ell It's Fred Titmus
You have to, really, don't you?
From Back In The DHSS
Boney M - Rasputin
You don't have to, really, but screw you, it's our Covermount. Who is that narrator in the bridge?
From The Collection
Le Tigre - What's Yr Take On Cassavetes?
John Cassavetes was an auteur pioneer of American independent film who has also influenced songs by Fugazi and the Hold Steady. Kathleen Hanna and co don't give his legacy a lot of room for manoevure here.
From Le Tigre
Sleater-Kinney - I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone
Just across the Riot Grrrl divide (and yes, we know Sleater-Kinney really postdate that whole thing, but the ideas are there), this album was Carrie Brownstein's coming-out party of sorts, not least in her ambiguous call to be celebrated.
From Call The Doctor
Super Furry Animals - Hermann Loves Pauline
Hermann Einstein and Pauline Koch, to be precise, parents of Albert Einstein, whose development Gruff considers before veering off into Marie Curie and late night garage culture (who'd know a celebrated weedhead would be aware of that?)
From Radiator
Franz Ferdinand - All For You, Sophia
Here's where that reading in art school dorm pays off - Sophia was the name of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's wife (and daughter, actually). Indeed this Take Me Out B-side is a proper retelling of his murder - Gavrilo Princip was one of seven men from the Black Hand Gang sent to assassinate Ferdinand.
The Clash - The Right Profile
Montgomery Clift was a intense, sensitive kind of actor who was a Oscar-nominated Hollywood star until a car crash in 1956 left him with spinal damage and facial damage. As his health and looks deteriorated Clift became addicted to drink and painkillers and died of a heart attack aged 44. REM's Monty Got A Raw Deal? That's about him too.
From London Calling
Scritti Politti - Jacques Derrida
Living in a cramped Camden squat in the late 70s Green Gartside and fellow critical theory-loving commune dwellers read theory voraciously, and it was those addled idealistics that fed into 1982's melodic soul experiments that brought them closer to the New Pop mainstream.
From Songs To Remember
Modest Mouse - Bukowski
Big old lit-touchstone for any self respecting US indie rocker in the Isaac Brock mould, Charles.
From Good News For People Who Love Bad News
Billy Bragg & Wilco - Ingrid Bergman
Woody Guthrie's 1950 love song to the celebrated Swedish actress resurrected for the covers project...
From Mermaid Avenue Vol.1
David Bowie - Andy Warhol
Bowie was an early Velvets champion and is reputed to have played this to Warhol when he visited Bowie's studio, to a less than positive reaction. Not that we'd expect anything more, obviously. Also on the same album is Song for Bob Dylan, and the subject didn't like that either. John Frusciante claims the intro to Under The Bridge is inspired by this song.
From Hunky Dory
The Go-Betweens - Lee Remick
Hefner also had a song called Lee Remick, but it wasn't about the late actress. "She was in The Omen with Gregory Peck/She got killed, what the heck".
From The Lost Album 1978-1979
10,000 Maniacs - Hey Jack Kerouac
cf Bukowski.
From Campfire Songs
Lloyd Cole And The Commotions - Sean Penn Blues
Cole wasn't averse to the odd cultural reference - Norman Mailer, Grace Kelly, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Raymond Carver - but being sympathetic to the then much mocked Penn was a new dimension.
From Mainstream
Manic Street Preachers - Let Robeson Sing
It's not as if MSP have few options in this regard, but there's something oddly touching about their tribute to actor/singer/civil rights champion Paul Robeson, not to mention it being one of their few late period highlights.
From Know Your Enemy
Sufjan Stevens - John Wayne Gacy, Jr
Serial killer number two: Gacy, the "Killer Clown", was executed in 1994 for the rape and murder of 33 boys and young men between 1972 and his arrest in 1978, having been sentenced to 21 consecutive life sentences and 12 death sentences. Sufjan thinks they might be alike somehow. Gulp.
From Illinoise
Okkervil River - John Allyn Smith Sails
Confessional poet John Berryman has suddenly became an indie rock cause celebre over the last couple of years. The Hold Steady's Stuck Between Stations is about him, and Nick Cave (We Call Upon The Author) and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (Mama, Won't You Keep Them Castles In The Air And Burning) both lyrically namecheck him and his style. Best of all, though, is Will Sheff's retelling of his 1972 suicide by bridge jumping which lurches - naturally, Sheff says - into the traditional song best known as Sloop John B. An unfollowable finish to any compilation...
From The Stage Names
The Fatima Mansions - Blues For Ceausescu
...were it not due to this. There's not a lot of direct political comment here, largely because we might want to do a current affairs leaning Covermount one day, but Cath Carroll's molten precision targeted anger at... what? Royalty, Britain, the nature of dictatorship? Anyway, it was a Song To Learn And Sing and actually is unfollowable by anything.
From Viva Dead Ponies
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Sweeping The Nation Covermount 12: This Sporting Life
There's a big summer of sport coming up, what with the Olympics and European Championships alongside all the usual summer sport hoopla, as well as in two days' time the most unlikely of FA Cup finals and in thirteen days' time the most inevitable of Champions League finals. Time, then to dust off a long pencilled in Covermount on songs to do with the many and varied methods and angles of sport. We gave ourselves a strict rule - the songs have to be about or reference sport, but they can't be by sportspeople, which we have to point out because we fear hundreds of people posting "ahhhh! Snooker Loopy!" in the comment box or suggesting Dreadlock Holiday. Yes. It mentions cricket. Well spotted. We think we've done well enough in avoiding a lot of the obvious and hackneyed, although ultimately you'll be the judges of that.
This Sporting Life
The Hold Steady - Take Me Out To The Ball Game
A Tin Pan Alley staple written a full hundred years ago and commonly held to be the third most often played song in the US after The Star Spangled Banner and Happy Birthday. Craig Finn adapted a second verse for play at his local team the Minnesota Twins from last year onwards.
Warren Zevon - Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song)
Americana songwriter's Americanasongwriter Zevon had a habit of morbidity well before being diagnosed with terminal cancer; from 2000's Life'll Kill Ya, a darkly ending song about an ice hockey enforcer. Longtime Zevon fan David Letterman does the chorus spoken bit.
Therapy? - Joey
Five time world motorcycling champion Joey Dunlop, once voted the fifth greatest motorcycling icon in history, was killed in a race crash in 2000. A year later Andy Cairns penned this tribute to him on the album Shameless.
The Hitchers - Strachan
Fellow Irishmen the Hitchers' singer was called Niall Quinn, which is a good start. Their 1997 football-as-art squally tribute, from It's All Fun And Games 'Til Someone Loses An Eye, apparently led Gordon to see them live at Reading Festival and send an appreciatory note.
Half Man Half Biscuit - Friday Night And The Gates Are Low
Were we just going on references we could have had our choice from about a hundred HMHB songs, but as far as we can think only this, from Some Call It Godcore, is the only song directly about football in their mighty canon. Bob Wilson Anchorman is about the person Bob Wilson, see.
I, Ludicrous - The Highland League
Similarly the Crystal Palace-associated long serving duo have their fair share of football references. This is from February's Dirty Washing EP and, as they so rarely say on Wikipedia, features original research.
Oh, yeah, The Referee's Alphabet. As you were.
The Long Blondes - Darts
Some will hear this B-side to the original Giddy Stratospheres release and admire its quasi-shambling charm, others will suggest this is why Kate leaves most of the lyrics to Dorian. Still others will note that the LBs do tend to appear on Covermounts more than most bands.
The Pogues - Bottle Of Smoke
Found on nearly high water mark If I Should Fall From Grace With God. Shane MacGowan puts a shitload (unspecified) of money on the titular horse which comes in at "twenty-fucking-five to one". Outcome is pleasing for all.
Jackie Leven - Museum Of Childhood
In a more general treatise on reminiscence on 2005's Elegy For Johnny Cash album Scottish folk singer and former Doll By Doll singer Leven alights on the events of November 25th 1980 in the Louisiana Superdome, Sugar Ray Leonard v Roberto Duran II, the "no mas" fight, a phrase nobody has decisively said they heard Duran say but which has passed into pop culture regardless.
Loudon Wainwright III - Tonya's Twirls
Around the turn of the decade Loudon, taking time out from writing about his family, was employed by NPR to pen the occasional topically slanted song, in much the same way he did for Carrott Confidential, all later collected on Social Studies. Here he tackles the Tonya Harding supported attack on Nancy Kerrigan.
The Mountain Goats - Fall Of The Star High School Running Back
From the last great Mountain Goats lo-fi record, 2002's All Hail West Texas (track 2, in fact, track 1 having been on the last Covermount - limited scope, us?), John Darnielle's college gridiron peer blows out his knee and heads downwards from there.
Billy Bragg - God's Footballer
Subject Peter Knowles was a free scoring striker for Wolves who was heavily touted as a future England regular before suddenly retiring in 1969 ages 23 after experiencing religious revelations and becoming a Jehovah's Witness. Bragg tells his story on Don't Try This At Home.
The Pioneers - Long Shot Kick De Bucket
In 1967 the rocksteady vocal trio had a Jamaican number one with Long Shot, a tribute to their favourite racehorse and an underperforming race. Two years later the horse was killed in an accident at Caymanas Park racetrack, leading to a necessary follow-up and an unlikely for the subject big international hit. Let Your Yeah Be Yeah: Anthology 1966-1986 has both on, as well as pretty much everything else.
Lord Beginner - Victory Test Match
More reportage. Egbert Moore, along with his more famous calypso mate Lord Kitchener, was in the stands at Lords when the West Indies beat England for the first time in 1950. Having led musical celebrations from the ground to Piccadilly that night, he went home and wrote it up.
Johnny Wakelin - Black Superman (Muhammad Ali)
And now, white reggae. Wakelin was a Brighton cabaret artist drawn to record about Ali in 1974. The follow-up In Zaire was about the Rumble In The Jungle. When he started recording about other people and things, his career faltered. A salutory lesson.
Erlend Oye - The Athlete
Between Kings Of Convenience and The Whitest Boy Alive Oye made an eclectic retro-electro solo album, Unrest, here teaming up and partly adopting the language of French electro duo Minizza.
Barcelona - Kasey Keller
In 1998 the US beat Brazil 1-0 largely thanks to the former Millwall, Leicester and Spurs keeper making a series of great saves. Now defunct Washington new wave pop outfit Barcelona document events, adding "we don't blame you for that fiasco in France in '98". That's a relief.
Kraftwerk - Tour de France
Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider are famously cycling obsessives, Karl Bartos once claiming their constant talk about their bikes rather than their music was the reason he left. Utilising the synthesised sounds of chains, gear changes and breaths, it's been remixed and re-recorded several times, but we'd be here all day if we got into that.
Saint Etienne - Conchita Martinez
Spain's most successful female tennis player ever, Wimbledon title winner in 1994 and once number two in the world. The song doesn't really have any further connection with the person, but never mind. Found on So Tough.
Von Sudenfed - Slow Down Ronnie
As with HMHB the Fall's back catalogue has touched upon football (Kicker Conspiracy, Final Score's Theme From Sparta FC, Ray Stubbs banter) but as we're being mildly perverse we've gone for Mark E and Mouse On Mars' collaborative effort (not actually on Tromatic Reflexxions, by the by) on the subject of Ronnie O'Sullivan. You'd fancy yourself against Smith at pool for a tenner, wouldn't you?
This Sporting Life
The Hold Steady - Take Me Out To The Ball Game
A Tin Pan Alley staple written a full hundred years ago and commonly held to be the third most often played song in the US after The Star Spangled Banner and Happy Birthday. Craig Finn adapted a second verse for play at his local team the Minnesota Twins from last year onwards.
Warren Zevon - Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song)
Americana songwriter's Americanasongwriter Zevon had a habit of morbidity well before being diagnosed with terminal cancer; from 2000's Life'll Kill Ya, a darkly ending song about an ice hockey enforcer. Longtime Zevon fan David Letterman does the chorus spoken bit.
Therapy? - Joey
Five time world motorcycling champion Joey Dunlop, once voted the fifth greatest motorcycling icon in history, was killed in a race crash in 2000. A year later Andy Cairns penned this tribute to him on the album Shameless.
The Hitchers - Strachan
Fellow Irishmen the Hitchers' singer was called Niall Quinn, which is a good start. Their 1997 football-as-art squally tribute, from It's All Fun And Games 'Til Someone Loses An Eye, apparently led Gordon to see them live at Reading Festival and send an appreciatory note.
Half Man Half Biscuit - Friday Night And The Gates Are Low
Were we just going on references we could have had our choice from about a hundred HMHB songs, but as far as we can think only this, from Some Call It Godcore, is the only song directly about football in their mighty canon. Bob Wilson Anchorman is about the person Bob Wilson, see.
I, Ludicrous - The Highland League
Similarly the Crystal Palace-associated long serving duo have their fair share of football references. This is from February's Dirty Washing EP and, as they so rarely say on Wikipedia, features original research.
Oh, yeah, The Referee's Alphabet. As you were.
The Long Blondes - Darts
Some will hear this B-side to the original Giddy Stratospheres release and admire its quasi-shambling charm, others will suggest this is why Kate leaves most of the lyrics to Dorian. Still others will note that the LBs do tend to appear on Covermounts more than most bands.
The Pogues - Bottle Of Smoke
Found on nearly high water mark If I Should Fall From Grace With God. Shane MacGowan puts a shitload (unspecified) of money on the titular horse which comes in at "twenty-fucking-five to one". Outcome is pleasing for all.
Jackie Leven - Museum Of Childhood
In a more general treatise on reminiscence on 2005's Elegy For Johnny Cash album Scottish folk singer and former Doll By Doll singer Leven alights on the events of November 25th 1980 in the Louisiana Superdome, Sugar Ray Leonard v Roberto Duran II, the "no mas" fight, a phrase nobody has decisively said they heard Duran say but which has passed into pop culture regardless.
Loudon Wainwright III - Tonya's Twirls
Around the turn of the decade Loudon, taking time out from writing about his family, was employed by NPR to pen the occasional topically slanted song, in much the same way he did for Carrott Confidential, all later collected on Social Studies. Here he tackles the Tonya Harding supported attack on Nancy Kerrigan.
The Mountain Goats - Fall Of The Star High School Running Back
From the last great Mountain Goats lo-fi record, 2002's All Hail West Texas (track 2, in fact, track 1 having been on the last Covermount - limited scope, us?), John Darnielle's college gridiron peer blows out his knee and heads downwards from there.
Billy Bragg - God's Footballer
Subject Peter Knowles was a free scoring striker for Wolves who was heavily touted as a future England regular before suddenly retiring in 1969 ages 23 after experiencing religious revelations and becoming a Jehovah's Witness. Bragg tells his story on Don't Try This At Home.
The Pioneers - Long Shot Kick De Bucket
In 1967 the rocksteady vocal trio had a Jamaican number one with Long Shot, a tribute to their favourite racehorse and an underperforming race. Two years later the horse was killed in an accident at Caymanas Park racetrack, leading to a necessary follow-up and an unlikely for the subject big international hit. Let Your Yeah Be Yeah: Anthology 1966-1986 has both on, as well as pretty much everything else.
Lord Beginner - Victory Test Match
More reportage. Egbert Moore, along with his more famous calypso mate Lord Kitchener, was in the stands at Lords when the West Indies beat England for the first time in 1950. Having led musical celebrations from the ground to Piccadilly that night, he went home and wrote it up.
Johnny Wakelin - Black Superman (Muhammad Ali)
And now, white reggae. Wakelin was a Brighton cabaret artist drawn to record about Ali in 1974. The follow-up In Zaire was about the Rumble In The Jungle. When he started recording about other people and things, his career faltered. A salutory lesson.
Erlend Oye - The Athlete
Between Kings Of Convenience and The Whitest Boy Alive Oye made an eclectic retro-electro solo album, Unrest, here teaming up and partly adopting the language of French electro duo Minizza.
Barcelona - Kasey Keller
In 1998 the US beat Brazil 1-0 largely thanks to the former Millwall, Leicester and Spurs keeper making a series of great saves. Now defunct Washington new wave pop outfit Barcelona document events, adding "we don't blame you for that fiasco in France in '98". That's a relief.
Kraftwerk - Tour de France
Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider are famously cycling obsessives, Karl Bartos once claiming their constant talk about their bikes rather than their music was the reason he left. Utilising the synthesised sounds of chains, gear changes and breaths, it's been remixed and re-recorded several times, but we'd be here all day if we got into that.
Saint Etienne - Conchita Martinez
Spain's most successful female tennis player ever, Wimbledon title winner in 1994 and once number two in the world. The song doesn't really have any further connection with the person, but never mind. Found on So Tough.
Von Sudenfed - Slow Down Ronnie
As with HMHB the Fall's back catalogue has touched upon football (Kicker Conspiracy, Final Score's Theme From Sparta FC, Ray Stubbs banter) but as we're being mildly perverse we've gone for Mark E and Mouse On Mars' collaborative effort (not actually on Tromatic Reflexxions, by the by) on the subject of Ronnie O'Sullivan. You'd fancy yourself against Smith at pool for a tenner, wouldn't you?
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Sweeping The Nation Covermount 11: Dancing About Architecture Part 2
So in our last post we investigated those who love this musical life. But as we should know - we do read comment boxes, after all - not all music is equally celebrated. Here's another 21 songs of varying levels of scorn and satire, these less enamoured with other artists, other scenes or indeed the whole of pop culture.
Dancing About Architecture Part 2
Mitch Benn & The Distractions - Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Now
Surely the only song to explore the scansion possibilities of the name Thirteen Senses, the prolific musical comedian and Radio 4 stalwart manque hits satirical soundalike nail firmly on post-Barron Knights head.
Misty's Big Adventure - Fashion Parade
Meanwhile the Birmingham jazz-pop-madness octet trained their sights in 2006 on the new guitar bands. Might have been better timed had they or someone tackled the new guitar bands now, you have to think in the back of your mind.
The Fall - A Past Gone Mad (Peel session)
"Why is Pete Gabriel always following us?" Of course, Mark E is an old hand at such carpet bombing ways. What Ian McShane did to upset him remains unclear, but the disdain for retro shines through as much as it ever does with mid-90s Fall/Smith.
XTC - Funk Pop A Roll
Here's what Andy Partridge does - he writes a song about disposable pop and the management thereof that does nothing except infect your inner ear, and then puts it in the casing of a hook-laden pop earworm.
Denim - Middle Of The Road
The ever inscrutable Lawrence constructs glam as a method by which to critique all other music in the negative, interpolating Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep as he goes.
The Arctic Monkeys - Fake Tales Of San Francisco (original version from Five Minutes With Arctic Monkeys EP)
Yeah, the Arctic Monkeys. Got a problem with that? Certainly Alex Turner had a problem with the Sheffield scenesters in the New Rock Revolution age. Have a look at its entry on SongMeanings should you ever find yourself in too good a mood.
Television Personalities - Part Time Punks
The Guardian printed a slightly bizarre story in 2005 alleging without actually coming up with evidence or reasoning that Dan Treacy of the TVPs secretly wrote the Arctics' songs. At the time he was barely able to control his own affairs, let alone a number one band's.
The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band - Can Blue Men Sing The Whites?
Another taking on the enemy's sound from the pen of Vivian Stanshall, according to the first reissue's sleevenotes "about the horrors of rich white singers, having to dress down to sing the blues".
The Kinks - The Moneygoround
From 1970's cumbersomely titled Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround Part One, at a time when Ray Davies had issues with what he was getting and how he'd been treated by the industry.
Frank Zappa - Who Needs The Peace Corps?
From Zappa's Sgt Pepper society skewering We're Only In It For The Money, the iconoclastic hero to Vaclav Havel takes on the hippie ideal, the stress on the latter word.
John Lennon - How Do You Sleep?
And so we reach inexorably for Lennon's 1971 attack on his former writing partner (which also features George Harrison's slide guitar), although Lennon would later claim that much of it is about himself as much as Paul.
Syd Barrett - Bob Dylan Blues
Barrett, especially in his condition, was a man rarely given to public outbursts, but this long lost track only unearthed this decade for a reissue project seems to take a poke at Dylan's activism and pretensions, although apparently Barrett was a fan.
The Indelicates - We Hate The Kids
Brighton really-a-quintet-but-essentially-just-a-duo are mates of but also the mirror image in a way of Art Brut - they've got tons of literate culture-cauterising songs like this, albeit none so directly titled.
The Smiths - Paint A Vulgar Picture
There's a song on the Indelicates' forthcoming album called If Jeff Buckley Had Lived, and this from Strangeways Here We Come is kind of related, being Morrissey's swipe at posthumous repackaging and profiting.
Pet Shop Boys - How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously?
Oh, they may look innocent with their hats and YBA associates, but they wound Bono up something rotten with both their When The Streets Had No Name cover and its single flipside, a comment on world saving pop stars.
Black Box Recorder - Being Number One
Well, it's a lucky dip as far as Luke Haines' career is concerned but the Haines-Moore-Nixey triumverate slipped the lead into the velvet glove, not least on this sarcastic view from inside the Pop Idol malestrom.
Helen Love - Long Live The UK Music Scene
Steadfastly refusing to be swept away by Cool Britannia, the Ramones obsessed postmodern popette utilised among others the name of Steven Wells, who with his image might have professed to like this kind of thing were he not trying so hard.
Mikrofisch - The Kids Are All Shite
And bringing that song's sentiments right up to date, a Hamburg/London duo with a bass, a keyboard, a drum machine and an opinion.
Teen Anthems - I Hate Oasis (And I Hate The Beatles)
And taking that song's sentiments back ten years to Porthcawl bouncy pop nihilist John William Davies, who somehow got this to become a Radio 1 breakfast show record of the week (under Mark & Lard's stewardship, inevitably)
Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine - Lenny And Terrence
Jim Bob produced the Indelicates track back there, and here he and Fruitbat adopt an industrial fodderstompf taking Messrs Kravitz and Trent D'Arby as AOR wicker men, the latter an odd choice for 1993.
The Jesus & Mary Chain - I Hate Rock 'N' Roll
And where better to finish than Jim and William Reid, rock icons in their heads who took hating everyone else to fresh heights by hating each other and everyone else in their band at any one time.
Dancing About Architecture Part 2
Mitch Benn & The Distractions - Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Now
Surely the only song to explore the scansion possibilities of the name Thirteen Senses, the prolific musical comedian and Radio 4 stalwart manque hits satirical soundalike nail firmly on post-Barron Knights head.
Misty's Big Adventure - Fashion Parade
Meanwhile the Birmingham jazz-pop-madness octet trained their sights in 2006 on the new guitar bands. Might have been better timed had they or someone tackled the new guitar bands now, you have to think in the back of your mind.
The Fall - A Past Gone Mad (Peel session)
"Why is Pete Gabriel always following us?" Of course, Mark E is an old hand at such carpet bombing ways. What Ian McShane did to upset him remains unclear, but the disdain for retro shines through as much as it ever does with mid-90s Fall/Smith.
XTC - Funk Pop A Roll
Here's what Andy Partridge does - he writes a song about disposable pop and the management thereof that does nothing except infect your inner ear, and then puts it in the casing of a hook-laden pop earworm.
Denim - Middle Of The Road
The ever inscrutable Lawrence constructs glam as a method by which to critique all other music in the negative, interpolating Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep as he goes.
The Arctic Monkeys - Fake Tales Of San Francisco (original version from Five Minutes With Arctic Monkeys EP)
Yeah, the Arctic Monkeys. Got a problem with that? Certainly Alex Turner had a problem with the Sheffield scenesters in the New Rock Revolution age. Have a look at its entry on SongMeanings should you ever find yourself in too good a mood.
Television Personalities - Part Time Punks
The Guardian printed a slightly bizarre story in 2005 alleging without actually coming up with evidence or reasoning that Dan Treacy of the TVPs secretly wrote the Arctics' songs. At the time he was barely able to control his own affairs, let alone a number one band's.
The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band - Can Blue Men Sing The Whites?
Another taking on the enemy's sound from the pen of Vivian Stanshall, according to the first reissue's sleevenotes "about the horrors of rich white singers, having to dress down to sing the blues".
The Kinks - The Moneygoround
From 1970's cumbersomely titled Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround Part One, at a time when Ray Davies had issues with what he was getting and how he'd been treated by the industry.
Frank Zappa - Who Needs The Peace Corps?
From Zappa's Sgt Pepper society skewering We're Only In It For The Money, the iconoclastic hero to Vaclav Havel takes on the hippie ideal, the stress on the latter word.
John Lennon - How Do You Sleep?
And so we reach inexorably for Lennon's 1971 attack on his former writing partner (which also features George Harrison's slide guitar), although Lennon would later claim that much of it is about himself as much as Paul.
Syd Barrett - Bob Dylan Blues
Barrett, especially in his condition, was a man rarely given to public outbursts, but this long lost track only unearthed this decade for a reissue project seems to take a poke at Dylan's activism and pretensions, although apparently Barrett was a fan.
The Indelicates - We Hate The Kids
Brighton really-a-quintet-but-essentially-just-a-duo are mates of but also the mirror image in a way of Art Brut - they've got tons of literate culture-cauterising songs like this, albeit none so directly titled.
The Smiths - Paint A Vulgar Picture
There's a song on the Indelicates' forthcoming album called If Jeff Buckley Had Lived, and this from Strangeways Here We Come is kind of related, being Morrissey's swipe at posthumous repackaging and profiting.
Pet Shop Boys - How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously?
Oh, they may look innocent with their hats and YBA associates, but they wound Bono up something rotten with both their When The Streets Had No Name cover and its single flipside, a comment on world saving pop stars.
Black Box Recorder - Being Number One
Well, it's a lucky dip as far as Luke Haines' career is concerned but the Haines-Moore-Nixey triumverate slipped the lead into the velvet glove, not least on this sarcastic view from inside the Pop Idol malestrom.
Helen Love - Long Live The UK Music Scene
Steadfastly refusing to be swept away by Cool Britannia, the Ramones obsessed postmodern popette utilised among others the name of Steven Wells, who with his image might have professed to like this kind of thing were he not trying so hard.
Mikrofisch - The Kids Are All Shite
And bringing that song's sentiments right up to date, a Hamburg/London duo with a bass, a keyboard, a drum machine and an opinion.
Teen Anthems - I Hate Oasis (And I Hate The Beatles)
And taking that song's sentiments back ten years to Porthcawl bouncy pop nihilist John William Davies, who somehow got this to become a Radio 1 breakfast show record of the week (under Mark & Lard's stewardship, inevitably)
Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine - Lenny And Terrence
Jim Bob produced the Indelicates track back there, and here he and Fruitbat adopt an industrial fodderstompf taking Messrs Kravitz and Trent D'Arby as AOR wicker men, the latter an odd choice for 1993.
The Jesus & Mary Chain - I Hate Rock 'N' Roll
And where better to finish than Jim and William Reid, rock icons in their heads who took hating everyone else to fresh heights by hating each other and everyone else in their band at any one time.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Sweeping The Nation Covermount 11: Dancing About Architecture Part 1
This again. Thanks to the people who gave us suggestions to fill out this ambitious double-header - you know who you are.
They're the two immunable rules of songwriting according to Those Who Know - write about what you know and don't write about what you know of life spent on the road. That's why they call it Second Album Syndrome, because you've had roughly twenty years to write your first album and six months in a striplit rehearsal studio to pen your second. By the law of averages, though, among all the shit about hotel rooms and easy blondes every so often a song is bound to turn up that gets to the nub of why we're all here, why they're making music, why we're listening to it and reading about it. This is a Covermount of songs about music - the industry, the process, the life, the fandom, the greatness and perfection.
Dancing About Architecture Part 1
(NB. This is slightly more than 100Mb and thus can't be stored on Rapidshare, so hopefully for one upload only it's being stored on MegaUpload. Let us know if you have any problems with this and we'll try and do something about it. Part 2 will be back on Rapidshare, don't fret.)
We thought long and hard about what track would open this Covermount. What song can possibly get across the joy and possibilities of finding yourself caught up in this entertainment maelstrom.
Art Brut - Formed A Band (original single version)
No, of course we didn't.
BARR - The Song Is The Single
And this is its American cousin, the musical ego of Brendan Fowler, part-diary (he/they really did cancel shows in Northampton and Glasgow through illness), part self-questioning analysis, all-meta.
Minutemen - History Lesson Part II
D Boon chronicles his and Mike Watt's journey from schoolkids learning instruments together to being in a musically unpredictable hardcore trio ready to take on the world. The first line gave its name to Michael Azerrad's excellent American alternative set text.
The Mountain Goats - The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton
John Darnielle and friends form a band but don't follow the dream until it's too late. Regarding the three band names they came up with, there is now a band called Satan's Fingers And The Hospital Bombers. The other name is also taken.
Frank Turner - Back In The Day
Hardcore bluegrass! Along the same lines, the former Million Dead singer turned perma-touring opinionated odds-shouter grows up among the punks. Turner is one of the surely scarce people to have covered live a song by...
Half Man Half Biscuit - Running Order Squabble Fest
Because for these purposes it's obligatory.
Pavement - Range Life
Slacker lo-fi, they called it in the day, but Malkmus and Kannberg were far too smart for all that, here documenting the ageing hippy watching the Lollapalooza hordes with some disquiet.
Loudon Wainwright III - Talking New Bob Dylan
Father of him and her, but in the mid-70s Loudon was, yes, a New Bob Dylan manque. Which, going on this, he'd gladly admit to.
Dire Straits - Sultans Of Swing
This is the Heart FM section of the Covermount, right here, but rarely has the idea of the pub band as escape, and indeed as What We Do, been better expressed. And let's not overlook that they made their TV debut on Peter Cook-helmed punk show Revolver.
The Wrens - This Boy Is Exhausted
One time next big things, this is on the album that emerged seven years after the one that was supposed to make them big after record company difficulties, hence the resigned tone bolstered by the thought that "once a while We'll play a show (that) makes it worthwhile"
Okkervil River - Unless It's Kicks
Will Sheff's extended treatise on entertainment and fandom, here about the pure obsession of music. Hell, it's why we do this.
Mos Def - Rock N Roll
Alright, the nu-metal outro's hard to stomach from this distance, but cross-pollination rarely worked out this way where the hip-hopper acknowledges "When I get down in my zone I be rockin Bad Brains and Fishbone" but points out that none of this rock'n'roll fad is whitey's anyway.
Cursive - Art Is Hard
Emo, in a good way, Tim Kasher attempting to personify emotional catharsis in showbiz. Oberst, eat shit.
Jawbreaker - Tour Song
A touring song, but one about the bus breaking down rather than the tyranny of the New York chain hotel.
Sleater-Kinney - Words And Guitar
Which is what Corin and Carrie specialised in, and it's what you, the Sleater-Kinney listener, want.
Let's Wrestle - I Wish I Was In Husker Du
Which starts "I wish I was in Part Chimp". Inscrutable, these North London lo-fi types. They're the new Pooh Sticks!
The Wannadies - Might Be Stars
Less involved than most in its subject, but Swedish melodica rock is likeable however you slice it.
Bow Wow Wow - C30 C60 C90 Go!
Even in this brand-extension era nobody's recorded a tribute to the means of the mp3 player. Malcolm McLaren's Machiavellian meanderings, of course.
Suburban Kids With Biblical Names - Rent A Wreck
They've been around the indie world but they can't find their, erm, Frosties, apparently.
M - Pop Muzik
Robin Scott says: "I was looking to make a fusion of various styles which somehow would summarize the last 25 years of pop music. It was a deliberate point I was trying to make. Whereas rock and roll had created a generation gap, disco was bringing people together on an enormous scale. That's why I really wanted to make a simple, bland statement, which was, 'All we're talking about basically (is) pop music'".
Mott The Hoople - Saturday Gigs
"I was ready to quit, but then we went to Croydon!" Ian Hunter's farewell to the not actually one hit wonders but may as well be, although oddly not meant as such as Hunter didn't decide to leave until after its release. Imagine if they'd continued for another couple of albums after this career coda.
And in part two later this week, songs about hating it all.
They're the two immunable rules of songwriting according to Those Who Know - write about what you know and don't write about what you know of life spent on the road. That's why they call it Second Album Syndrome, because you've had roughly twenty years to write your first album and six months in a striplit rehearsal studio to pen your second. By the law of averages, though, among all the shit about hotel rooms and easy blondes every so often a song is bound to turn up that gets to the nub of why we're all here, why they're making music, why we're listening to it and reading about it. This is a Covermount of songs about music - the industry, the process, the life, the fandom, the greatness and perfection.
Dancing About Architecture Part 1
(NB. This is slightly more than 100Mb and thus can't be stored on Rapidshare, so hopefully for one upload only it's being stored on MegaUpload. Let us know if you have any problems with this and we'll try and do something about it. Part 2 will be back on Rapidshare, don't fret.)
We thought long and hard about what track would open this Covermount. What song can possibly get across the joy and possibilities of finding yourself caught up in this entertainment maelstrom.
Art Brut - Formed A Band (original single version)
No, of course we didn't.
BARR - The Song Is The Single
And this is its American cousin, the musical ego of Brendan Fowler, part-diary (he/they really did cancel shows in Northampton and Glasgow through illness), part self-questioning analysis, all-meta.
Minutemen - History Lesson Part II
D Boon chronicles his and Mike Watt's journey from schoolkids learning instruments together to being in a musically unpredictable hardcore trio ready to take on the world. The first line gave its name to Michael Azerrad's excellent American alternative set text.
The Mountain Goats - The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton
John Darnielle and friends form a band but don't follow the dream until it's too late. Regarding the three band names they came up with, there is now a band called Satan's Fingers And The Hospital Bombers. The other name is also taken.
Frank Turner - Back In The Day
Hardcore bluegrass! Along the same lines, the former Million Dead singer turned perma-touring opinionated odds-shouter grows up among the punks. Turner is one of the surely scarce people to have covered live a song by...
Half Man Half Biscuit - Running Order Squabble Fest
Because for these purposes it's obligatory.
Pavement - Range Life
Slacker lo-fi, they called it in the day, but Malkmus and Kannberg were far too smart for all that, here documenting the ageing hippy watching the Lollapalooza hordes with some disquiet.
Loudon Wainwright III - Talking New Bob Dylan
Father of him and her, but in the mid-70s Loudon was, yes, a New Bob Dylan manque. Which, going on this, he'd gladly admit to.
Dire Straits - Sultans Of Swing
This is the Heart FM section of the Covermount, right here, but rarely has the idea of the pub band as escape, and indeed as What We Do, been better expressed. And let's not overlook that they made their TV debut on Peter Cook-helmed punk show Revolver.
The Wrens - This Boy Is Exhausted
One time next big things, this is on the album that emerged seven years after the one that was supposed to make them big after record company difficulties, hence the resigned tone bolstered by the thought that "once a while We'll play a show (that) makes it worthwhile"
Okkervil River - Unless It's Kicks
Will Sheff's extended treatise on entertainment and fandom, here about the pure obsession of music. Hell, it's why we do this.
Mos Def - Rock N Roll
Alright, the nu-metal outro's hard to stomach from this distance, but cross-pollination rarely worked out this way where the hip-hopper acknowledges "When I get down in my zone I be rockin Bad Brains and Fishbone" but points out that none of this rock'n'roll fad is whitey's anyway.
Cursive - Art Is Hard
Emo, in a good way, Tim Kasher attempting to personify emotional catharsis in showbiz. Oberst, eat shit.
Jawbreaker - Tour Song
A touring song, but one about the bus breaking down rather than the tyranny of the New York chain hotel.
Sleater-Kinney - Words And Guitar
Which is what Corin and Carrie specialised in, and it's what you, the Sleater-Kinney listener, want.
Let's Wrestle - I Wish I Was In Husker Du
Which starts "I wish I was in Part Chimp". Inscrutable, these North London lo-fi types. They're the new Pooh Sticks!
The Wannadies - Might Be Stars
Less involved than most in its subject, but Swedish melodica rock is likeable however you slice it.
Bow Wow Wow - C30 C60 C90 Go!
Even in this brand-extension era nobody's recorded a tribute to the means of the mp3 player. Malcolm McLaren's Machiavellian meanderings, of course.
Suburban Kids With Biblical Names - Rent A Wreck
They've been around the indie world but they can't find their, erm, Frosties, apparently.
M - Pop Muzik
Robin Scott says: "I was looking to make a fusion of various styles which somehow would summarize the last 25 years of pop music. It was a deliberate point I was trying to make. Whereas rock and roll had created a generation gap, disco was bringing people together on an enormous scale. That's why I really wanted to make a simple, bland statement, which was, 'All we're talking about basically (is) pop music'".
Mott The Hoople - Saturday Gigs
"I was ready to quit, but then we went to Croydon!" Ian Hunter's farewell to the not actually one hit wonders but may as well be, although oddly not meant as such as Hunter didn't decide to leave until after its release. Imagine if they'd continued for another couple of albums after this career coda.
And in part two later this week, songs about hating it all.
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