At Home with John and Debbie

My CDs: 7: Battles

John — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:41:35 +0000

My friend Chris once introduced me to the music of THRONES, saying “It’s impossible to walk and listen to THRONES at the same time”. I can well believe it, since many THRONES tracks have either a really strange time signature, or syncopation so extreme that it may as well be another time signature. However, I once tried putting Battles’ Mirrored on while jogging, and had to turn it off before I fell over.

Opening track “Race:In” starts with gentle drums, and I can tap my feet to it, but it doesn’t quite feel like 4/4, 3/4 or 12/8. Then in come some guitars, and they don’t fit. Then an odd little synth line, which makes sense, but then comes in again at an unexpected time. I’m not sure how they do it. It never sounds anything but deliberate, and it does fit together.

The album continues in similar vein, mostly instrumental, but with nonsensical vocals in places (including, on “Atlas”, irritating helium squeaking voices). You can’t help but think “isn’t this clever”.

Do I actually like it? Well, I’m not prepared to say I don’t like it yet, and I feel I could come to love it if I put some time in — it would take less time than Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica which has similar problems of approachability, except more so.

I suspect they would be quite a thing to witness live.

My CDs: 6: Ash

John — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:38:42 +0000

(Apologies for the break - I didn’t know whether I’d find time for CD blogging while on holiday. I didn’t.)

I fondly remember hearing Ash’s ‘Kung Fu’ playing on the radio in our university accommodation, and thinking it was the most exciting thing ever. I also fondly remember running around at Glastonbury singing “Ash! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Saviours of the universe….”. Youth eh.

In fact, youth is what Ash had on their side back then. They were the rock’n'roll gods who took a break from their tour schedule to take their A-levels. I still think the early stuff sounds wonderful. And of course, the Evil Dead inspired name helps too.
For a while they were a singles-only band, and not being much of a singles buyer, I was waiting eagerly for the debut album so that I could hear the noisy pop-punk ‘Kung Fu’ and ‘Girl From Mars’ on demand. In fact, the debut was the mini-album ‘Trailer’.

Trailer does not contain either of those singles, and seems to throw together some earlier, somewhat more amateurishly produced songs. Not that it isn’t a great set of songs - tuneful and intense.

The first album proper was ‘1977′, named, it’s said, after the year Star Wars came out. I guess nobody bothered to tell them Star Wars is rubbish.

It opens with the sound of a Star Wars Tie Fighter, which morphs into the thunderous buildup to ‘Lose Control’. It’s a great track, with some lovely widdly-widdly wah-wah guitar. There’s not a bad song on this album, and of course those singles I wanted so much are there too.

As the closing track ‘Darkside Lightside’ fades out, if you crank up the volume, you can faintly hear someone singing one of the themes from Star Wars. Or is it Lawrence of Arabia?

‘Meltdown’ saw a conscious step away from the melodic direction Ash had previously taken.

This wasn’t a choice that went down particularly well with me, and I haven’t played the album a great deal. It’s all a bit dour, at least compared to their joyous best.

I’m not sure whether there were other albums in between, but the only remaining CD in my collection is ‘Free All Angels’.

It’s a bit of a return to form, with some fantastic tunes, along with all the fuzzy guitar we all love.

In particular, I love the track ‘Cherry Bomb’. While of course this is done in Ash’s usual Buzzcocks-like style, it’s easy to imagine the same song performed as Stock-Aitken-Waterman synthpop, or Beach Boys 60s pop. Are the lyrics breezy or sinister?

She’s a cherry bomb
She’s a bullet in my head
Pull the trigger and I’m dead

OK, it doesn’t look very breezy in print, but hey, it’s only a song about how hot a girl is. And that’s what pop’s all about.

Bonus music blog: 808 State

John — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:32:07 +0000

This won’t make it into the CD blogs, because I only own this on Vinyl (and MP3 copied from Vinyl).

The other night I put on 808 State’s 1990 album 90. I’ve owned it since it was new, and hence it’s 18 years since I’ve really, properly, listened to it.

It was during track 2, Anacodia that I realised this isn’t just good; it’s brilliant. It’s not clear to me whether 808 State’s music was so unusual because they were unschooled, or whether they were “properly” trained musicians innovating. Regardless, the result is something really special.

Dance music always risks falling into the “tyranny of fours”, in which everything is a multiple of four - but on 90 808 State seldom fall into this trap. Things come in when you least expect them. Cliched drum patterns are uncommon. There’s harmony, but it’s unpredictable harmony.

It’s damn close to jazz, without that nasty preciousness jazz can have.

There is a downside - some of the solos are a little bit noodly. You can’t have everything.

And no, there’s no Amazon link because they don’t seem to have it.

Holibobs

John — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:37:51 +0000

We’re off again: Western Canada and Alaska this time. I’m very excited. The trip will be blogged here.

My CDs: 5: The Arctic Monkeys

John — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:22:15 +0000

OK, I’ve been remiss and missed a week. I think I’ll be missing more weeks in future.

It always seemed to me that within 20 seconds of the start of the first track on The Arctic Monkeys’ Whatever People Say I am, That’s What I’m Not, you know whether it’s for you. A fairly basic punky backing starts it off, then the voice of a hoodie from a South Yorkshire sink estate announces:

ANTICIPATION HAS A TENDENCY TO SET YOU UP!

FOR DISAPPOINTMENT IN NIGHTTIME ENTERTAINMENT BUT!

TONIGHT THERE’LL BE SOME LOVE

TONIGHT THERE’LL BE A RUCKUS, YEAH, REGARDLESS OF WHAT’S COME BEFORE

… and you either fall in love with it there and then (as I did), or you don’t.

But let’s face it, if you’ve not already played the Arctic Monkeys’ first album to death, there’s no getting through to you. So rather than go on and on, I’ll quote another fine lyric at you, then be on my merry way.

From “Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured”, a song about getting a taxi home after a night pubbing:

Ask if we can have six in, if not we’ll have to have 2
You’re coming up our end aren’t you? So I’ll get one with you.
Oh won’t he let us have six in? Especially not with the food.
He could’ve just told us no though, he di’nt have to be rude.

See her in the green dress? She talked to me at the bar.
How come its already two pound fifty? We’ve only gone about a yard.
Di’nt you see she were gorgeous, she was beyond belief!
But this lad at the side drinking a Smirnoff Ice came and paid for her tropical Reef.

Despite all this brilliance, I wasn’t inspired to buy the follow up. Fickle, me.

Edit: This is another album I’d been enjoying for a while as an MP3, but bought on CD when it came time to blog about it and I realised I didn’t ‘own’ it. Some time after getting the CD, I remembered that in fact, I’d paid to download those MP3s legally from bleep.com, so now I ‘own’ it twice. What a mess. At least I got some nice photographs of South Yorkshire people on a chavvy night out in the booklet.

My CDs: 4: Arcade Fire

John — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:44:36 +0000

(Well, Wednesday flew by without my noticing: the first slip up. I blame Grand Theft Auto IV.)

The thing with CDs is, I buy them, I rip them to MP3, I look at the packaging a bit, then I put them on the shelf where they stay. A nice thing about doing these blog entries is that I return to the shelf to look. I’m not allowing myself to blog about stuff I don’t own as a physical CD.

It was a bit of a surprise to find that I didn’t have either of these Arcade Fire albums as physical CDs, so I rectified the situation by buying them.

… and now I don’t really know what to write about them, except that they’re great. It was Neon Bible I heard first. As usual on the good weeks, it’s hard to pick out highlights, but if I must, No Cars Go - anthemic without quite reaching U2/Coldplay levels of pomp. In a Glastonbury forum leading up to their Glastonbury appearance last year, someone described them as ‘just a Talking Heads clone’, so I bought some Talking Heads. Talking Heads are great - but really the only likeness is a certain ring in Wim Butler’s voice.

I heard the debut album Funeral second - backfilling my Arcade Fire experience. It’s the better album by a tiny margin, having a nice bit of continuity in the Neighbourhood #1, #2, #3, #4 series of songs, spine tingling glory in Wake Up, and a beautiful delicate denouement in In the Back Seat.

Note - I usually hate strings, but I don’t hate this by a long way.

Highly, highly recommended.

Sushiya

John — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 21:31:30 +0000

Leamington has an awful lot of pizza places. What it really needs now is:

Mexican (Chico’s doesn’t count because it’s useless)
Noodles (a Wagamama would do nicely)
~~Sushi~~

Hooray! Sushi is struck off the list, because Sushiya has opened on Holly Walk.

Debbie and I were so eager that we strode in shortly after noon, to a cheery “Irashamasai!” and an apology that they weren’t serving until one. So we killed some time around town, and made our way back, giving them a bit of extra time to prime the conveyor belt.

I don’t believe anywhere in Britain can do sushi as cheaply as the basic places in Japan, but Shogun in Birmingham does a fantastic £10 all-you-can-eat lunchtime deal.

Sushiya can’t beat that price - by quite a long way: we spent £20 each - but the standard is a lot higher. We stuck to the stuff that floated past on the belt (you can order more exotic things). In particular, I couldn’t fault the salmon or tuna nigiri, and that means they got the basics right.

So, hooray, again! Hooray! We’re definitely going back soon.

O’Reilly eBooks

John — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:14:03 +0000

Google has an informal company motto, ‘Don’t be evil’. I wonder how that’s going, when there’s pressure from governments and shareholders. Privacy advocates are already doubting.

But enough of Google. Has O’Reilly Media ever done anything evil? They always seem squeaky clean, virtuous even.

Having published PDF and HTML versions of many of their books for years, this week they announced their first batch of EPUB/Mobipocket/Kindle eBooks. Like the PDFs, they’re DRM-free, and you get updates for free.

That’s not the bit I admire. What I admire is their reason for taking so long about it:

“While we would have liked to make these ebooks available sooner, we felt it was important to first contribute to building some of the tools needed for other publishers to follow our lead, such as enhancements to the open-source DocBook XSL stylesheets, which can now generate EPUB from DocBook XML source files “

Hooray for them!

My CDs: 3: The Apples in Stereo

John — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:33:15 +0000

Sooo, number three.

My first exposure to The Apples in Stereo was on the rather wonderful compilation Heroes and Villains - in which acts like Bis, Devo and Frank Black sing their way through a Powerpuff Girls storyline. The Apples in Stereo explain how the mayor contacts the girls in Signal in the Sky.

I think I made an impulse buy of their album Velocity of Sound in some arbitrary record shop while on holiday in the States. Signal in the Sky is simple but enjoyable stuff — breathless female vocals backed by fuzzy guitars. Think Shonen Knife or maybe The Primitives. Pretty much everything on Velocity of Sound is in the same vein. If you don’t listen carefully, it can seem very samey. In fact I dismissed it after the first few listens, thinking it was a good sound, repeated to monotony.

But, for this blog entry, I’ve re-evaluated it, and it’s subtler than I gave it credit for. There are clever but breezy lyrics , and while the tempo doesn’t change much, not all the rhythms are as simple as they first appear. On occasion head-man Robert Schneider takes over on lyrics, and he does a mean John Lennon (throaty rock’n'roll version).

… and that’s my Apples in Stereo CD.

The one I should own is the more recent New Magnetic Wonder.

It’s a varied masterpiece, awash with gorgeous ELO-like vocoder harmonies, and including strange interludes in a ‘non-Pythagorean’ scale devised by Robert Schneider. I mustn’t go into detail though, because this blog is only for music I own on CD.

Next week depends on whether an Amazon order arrives in time!

My CDs: 2: Paul Anka

John — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:57:00 +0000

Last Wednesday, I told you that the credibility of the artist in this weekly alphabetical look at my CD collection would rise sharply this week, then plunge next week. Actually that was based on a mis-sorted CD shelf. Next week’s plunge was to be Bryan Adams’ Waking Up The Neighbours. Due to the mis-sorting, that plunge would have come today. However, I didn’t buy it, nor was it given to me. Debbie thinks it might be hers, but doesn’t know how it might have come into her possession. So I’m taking an executive decision to skip it.

The sticker on the front says it includes (Everything I Do) I Do It For You and Can’t Stop This Thing We Started. Bryan is shouting into a megaphone on the cover, but will have to put it down before he can play anything musical on his guitar. That’s all you or I need to know.

This week’s expected rise, actually comes next week. In fact the second artist in the list, not including Bryan Adams, is Paul Anka.

Paul Anka is on the B team of big band swing singers. Before the album Rock Swings, he was mostly famous outside swing circles for a foul mouthed rant recorded backstage, in which he is outraged that one of his band wasn’t wearing a proper shirt.

Rock Swings (2005) is Richard Cheese with a budget (you’re going to have wait a few months til we get to Richard Cheese). Anka covers ‘new’ songs - what he calls in the sleeve notes ‘the standards of the future for a large demographic of people’. Songs Paul Anka considered newfangled in 2005 include The Pet Shop Boys’ It’s a Sin from 1987 and The Cure’s Lovecats from 1983…

There’s no shortage of novelty covers in the world. What’s unusual about this album is that it is equally respectful to the songs and to the style into which they’ve been morphed. The tracks that work best - like all good covers - reveal previously undetected quality in songs you may not have appreciated before.

The standard is so high throughout that it’s hard to pick out highlights. Smells Like Teen Spirit falls a little flat, but even attempting it is worthwhile. In places the makeover is perhaps too extreme. Whistle Lovecats for me. Yes, that’s the bit I’d have whistled too. It’s not in Paul Anka’s version.

Unfortunately for me, I just not fond enough of this style of music to love the album, even though I can tell that it’s been made with love and to a high standard. I would never listen to a full album of Paul Anka performing his usual songs. As a result, I get a kick out of listening to this a couple of times: “Haha, it sounds like Sinatra, but it’s Eye of the Tiger“, but I don’t get much more from it. A few more musical jokes or gimmicks - a sneaky segue here, a borrowed countermelody there - might have added the spark I need.

Next week: very cool indie pop. At least I think so. Can you guess what it is yet?