This Weekend I’ll Mostly Be Listening to… A selection for late Spring/early Summer May 3, 2014
Posted by WorldbyStorm in This Weekend I'll Mostly Be Listening to....trackback
Dead Bronco – False Hearted Lover Blues
From the Basque Country, here’s Dead Bronco who somehow manage to effortlessly look as if they live many thousands of miles to the west. Great song, album is well worth a listen.
The Freshies – Bouncing Babies
Given that it’s all Frank Sidebottom at the moment here from a previous incarnation of Chris Sievey’s is this. The Freshies were pretty good, sometimes pretty great, power pop/punk outfit whose output hovered at or around the line where humour enters the equation but with some success.
Ray Collins’ Hot-Club – Barefoot
Here from Germany, I think, it’s Ray Collins’ Hot Club, with jump and jive, swing, rock’n’roll and to my ears it’s great.
Angel Olsen – Forgiven/Forgotten
This reminds me of the Pixies, or perhaps the Breeders. Angel Olsen is much feted, and her album is not exactly like this for the most part though mighty impressive.
Donald Fagen – Slinky Thing
Heard this on holiday at Easter and wondered at first was it a parody because it’s so quintessentially Donald Fagen. Or to put it another way, it seemed too Fagen to be Fagen. Odd lyrical content.
Mike Oldfield – Five Miles Out
A strange strange song which mashes together a heap of styles and added late 70s and early 1980s vile guitar! But I have to be honest I like Maggie Reilly’s vocals on this which effortlessly swoop from sweet to something approaching the demented in the space of a few seconds.
Tiain Noone – Everything Is Okay With The Universe (eiokwtu)
Shoegaze and hip hop influenced producer/arranger. An interesting listen if only to spot sometimes curiously familiar sounds.
The Men – Turn It Around
This from US based operation The Men, reminds me of the Replacements crossed with Foo Fighters, the former of which is always a good thing, the latter I can take or leave. Their album mixes straight ahead trashy guitar rock of this sort with some experimentation.
Steve Kilbey – Gethsemene
The fact Kilbey crops up so much these days on this site is testament to his prolific output. Apparently he decided it would be a good idea to make an album full of songs recorded in Garageband on his computer. And why not?
The Raincoats – Overheard
Been listening again to them after a long while and realising just how remarkable they were. From their last record of the 1980s, this is an almost folky affair and again, another track with very interesting lyrics.
EMA – Neuromancer
Erika M. Anderson, AKA EMA, produces something interesting here from an album which apparently is based in part on the works of William Gibson. Kind of like it.
X-Marks the Pedwalk – The Side of the Wrong
German electro-industrial/hint of futurepop seeing as you asked.
Tycho – Dive
A bit of M83, a bit of Toro Y Moi, a bit of ambient, a bit of this, a bit of that.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Speaking of music, there’s a very interesting article by Ian Penman on Kate Bush on the London Review of Books site which is well worth a read.
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The Tycho track is wonderful, starts off like a less subdued Burial and ends up almost disco territory. The customary terrific find from this thread.
I love The Raincoats track as well, a magnificent remnant from a culture now as distant from us as that of the Mayans.
It’s great to hear the Freshies again and bizarre to think that there’s going to be a Frank Sidebottom movie. I thought I’d imagined him too. The Tiain Noone is worthy of further study and I’ve a soft spot for the Angel Olsen with its Sonic Youth guitar and drawly vocals, I’d have loved it twenty odd years ago.
Like I said before the Oldfield sounds like something off the last Daft Punk album and like you said Maggie Reilly’s voice makes it infinitely more bearable. One of these days I must actually listen to all the bits of Tubular Bells that aren’t in The Exorcist.
Nice groove on X-Marks the Pedwalk but the vocals remind me of why the Pet Shop Boys were such a great group, because they proved electronic music doesn’t have to have this kind of vocal and lyrics, it can have wit and camp and general lightness. Same thought occurred with the EMA.
I felt very kindly disposed towards the Ray Collins actually, reminded me of that brief spell as a teenager when I thought Roman Holiday, Blue Rondo A La Turk and Matt Bianco were the height of sophistication. Nothing wrong at all with reviving the old jumping jive.
The Fagen is essence of Fagen alright. I like it, I’ve been listening to a lot of Steely Dan lately and have come to the conclusion that the closer they got to jazz and the further away from rock the more interesting they were. (And they were very interesting). Some of Can’t Buy A Thrill could have been The Eagles whereas Gaucho, derided as them losing the run of themselves and getting too polished and self-indulgent sounds like a masterpiece to me.
The Men’s guitar intro is so much the same as the start of Suspect Device it almost counts as a sample. Steve Kilbey is grand but I’ve developed an aversion to that Mercury Rev whine which seems to be the current default mode for profundity among American singers.
Dead Bronco. I lost my patience with Pastiche Americana a while back. Seriously.
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Excellent.
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My Weekend.
Because Opera sometimes reaches places nothing else can. The sheer beauty of this.
Great song by August Darnell’s band pre Kid Creole. Natty summation of the subversive nature of disco and the fear of Middle America about city life in the seventies. But mainly fun.
Before you get fed up of hearing it as the soundtrack to world cup montages. Brilliant and lifted for the sleaziest number one of the seventies.
Classic from the Brit Funk movement of the early eighties which produced several good hit songs which deserve excavation. Never featured in those ubiquitous Eighties Nights either.
In the injustice section, this song came out on a small Louisiana label soon after Martin Luther King’s death. In a proper world this would be known as a soul classic and played everywhere. But it’s forgotten.
And who’d have thought that a blind travelling gospel musician who spent his life around his home patch in Texas would have made some of the most moving devotional music of the 20th century.
Or that this preacher who did most of his work around Baton Rouge would have done the same.
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I love Southern Freez. I just think the guitar line, the synths, the vocals etc are brilliant. Always have always will. It’s something about the very very slightly detached vocal. Love it.
Africa Brasil is amazing. I really like Brazilian inflected music.
Machine. Excellent.
Rigoletto likewise.
The George Perkins track is clearly not entirely forgotten! At least by you. A worthy addition to the soul greats.
And the William Philips and Reverend Charlie Jackson pieces are great. The former in particular, lovely instrumentation.
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