This goes with that (antipodean edition)

The second album by Grinderman is, to my ears, far more satisfying than the first. The perceived intention behind the first album was to locate the precise nature of the change in direction forced upon the Bad Seeds by the departure of Mick Harvey. The brilliance of that plan was borne out by the success of "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!!", the resultant Seeds record. Thus, in a sense, Grinderman's purpose had been served. And yet Nick Cave, restless old soul that he is, has opted to pick up his guitar for a second time (cue sound of actual musicians the world over gritting their teeth) and, possibly feeling liberated by the fact the Grinderman was no longer a (side) project with a specific job to do, gathered the hirsute rabble together for another album of late-middle-aged sexual angst and disparate shards of noise. Yeah, I like it. (Some people prefer the Bad Seeds. Some liken Grinderman more to the heady days of the Birthday Party. I don't agree with that, but right now I don't see that a stated preference for one aspect of Cave's persona over another serves any useful purpose. It's a bit like (well, not really, but bear with me) Graham Greene, who wrote serious novels and interspersed them with what he called "entertainments": at the end of the day they're all Graham Greene novels.)

Listening to "Palaces of Montezuma", though, I was struck by one thing in particular: musically it is a dead ringer for, albeit slightly more mellow (you heard that right) than, "Theme From 'Mad Flies, Mad Flies'", by the Laughing Clowns. It is so close, in fact, that you half expect those exhilarating Laughing Clowns horns to burst in on cue and disrupt the proceedings and/or take them to a higher plane.

[Sorry, this appears to be the best available on YT. You might have to listen a little more closely than with the studio original but I hope the point is still made.]

It is as if some of the Ed Kuepper magic rubbed off on Cave during Ed's recent(ish) stint as guitarist-for-hire with the Bad Seeds (and, as you know, there are few internal organs I would not have been prepared to part with in return for the chance to see that set-up in action, but, alas, 'twas not to be), and seeped into this song, perhaps by osmosis (or perhaps by design). So what you get is something like two Australian classics rolled up into one neat-o package.

Three songs

One:

"Calamity Song", by The Decemberists.



This is perhaps the least representative song on their new album, and it doesn't include what, for me, is the record's main drawcard, viz., the backing vocals of Gillian Welch. What it does have is Peter Buck on guitar, and, for all of the band's protestations that they weren't going for an REM sound as much as a "Peter Buck" sound, this song carries REM's DNA right down to its bootstraps. The vocal phrasing has more than a fleeting nod to Michael Stipe. The song itself is straight out of the "Fables of the Reconstruction" playbook. And it carries the listener along with the same sense of sweeping exhilaration that REM, once upon a time, did like nobody else (think "Driver 8").

Two:

"Biking Up The Strand", by Peter Baumann. (Click to play; right click to download.)

If I were ever to do another radio show (I won't), this would be the opening track each week. At least, until I got sick of it. Which isn't likely to happen any time soon. A lost gem of (although not really "of") the post-punk era.

Three:

"Limit To Your Love", by James Blake.



It's difficult to know what to make of the self-titled debut album by James Blake. It has been the centre of such a media shitstorm in the UK, and a lightning rod for so many divergent (and vehement) opinions, that it is probably going to take a while to assess it on its own terms. (It seems from this distance like half of London wants to put him on a pedestal and the other half wants to tear him limb from limb.) And it's true that releasing this song, a cover of the much-loved Feist original (from the thinking person's mother's-day present of 2008), as a teaser for the album was always going to be an accident waiting to happen, whether Blake knew it (unleashing his inner McLaren, perhaps) or not (the latter being more likely, I suspect).

It seems to me that the album is being subjected to much more weight than it was ever intended to carry. When you consider how different the album is from the EPs that preceded it, and how different the EPs were from each other, the picture is that of an exceptionally talented young artist trying on different clothes in an effort to figure out which ones suit him best, and this album is merely the most recent of those changes of clothing.

I deliberately avoided hearing the song until I could listen to it in the context of the album, but, even so, "Limit To Your Love", which sits literally and figuratively at the centre of the record, burns so bright that it sucks all of the air out of everything around it. (When the dub(step) drops, you realise you are witnessing something special.) It will take some time for it to find its place, but time is something that this album has on its side.

Song of the day

"The Great X-1", by The Informatics.

(Click to play. Right click to download.) (Somebody please let me know if this works. I am experimenting with something.)

With synth wave, cold wave, minimal wave or whatever wave being one of the flavours of 2010/11, it is worth remembering that Australia had a very strong synth-band contingent back around the start of the 80s.

Imagine: the small bar at an inner-city pub. The band: a shocking sight. No drums. No guitars. A couple of people on synths and a programmed drum machine. Guys in the band: extremely thin with severely fringed haircuts. Girls: black skirts and stockings, maybe with a horizontally striped t-shirt. Black and red perhaps. Quite possibly somebody up the front wiggling around and bashing a Syndrum (tm) to the second and fourth beats. As Phil Oakey sang, these are the things that dreams are made of.

This song is a good example of what this country was capable of. In fleeting moments it gets a bit proto-Kids In The Kitchen, but those moments soon pass. I think they were from Melbourne but I might be wrong. Biographical information is hard to come by.

You can also listen here, while looking at a typical early-80s post-industrial-type picture:

Song of the day

"Sticky Music", by Sandii & The Sunsetz.



Some things just stick in your mind.

Surprisingly, this was something of a hit in Australia. Surprisingly not because it isn't a very catchy song (it is), but because Japanese acts (I think it's fair to say; no research undertaken) tend not to do well here. Which is our loss, considering that they are at least the equals of anyone else in the world in so many genres of music, from psychedelic freak-outs to reggae to doom metal to noise to the sheer genius that is j-pop. In some ways it is a crying shame that Japan is not a part of Eurovision. Except that it would end up winning every year, thus spoiling everybody else's fun.

Haruomi Hosono (YMO) wrote the music for, and produced, this song. Curiously, there is a strong David Sylvian connection with Sandii & The Sunsetz. I had no idea. I love the internet.

YouTubes of the day

Comic Relief edition.


In which Noel Fielding channels his inner Kate Bush:





and Adrian Edmondson portrays the dying swan (with some help from another familiar face):

Commercial Zone

Get these while they're hot.

Always check the asterisk.

Found in the New Yorker, early 1961.

Click to enlarge.

Ain't no sunshine when she's gone

Yesterday we said goodbye to Ella, the little black St Kilda street cat who has been with us almost forever. She has been an integral part of our family for all of the boys' lives, and well before that, and we will miss her. We were lucky to have her around for so long, I suppose, but just now that's not how we are feeling.

YouTube of the day

"United Provinces of India", by Cornershop.



You may have thought that Cornershop released "Brimful of Asha" back in 1996 and then stopped. You would be wrong. They have released two albums and several singles since then, all of them excellent. They might have raised a middle finger to the music industry, but that's not the same thing. This clip would appear to be a track from their forthcoming album and is as infectious and uplifting as ever.

Deleted Scenes

Longstanding readers will be aware that I have, from time to time, replayed on the pages of this blog mundane and uneventful episodes from what might at a stretch be called my life and times. The following unconnected snippets represent the scenes that presently lie on the cutting-room floor, perhaps one day to be retrieved and turned into their own little short film, perhaps not. I suggest you either take them or leave them.

Playing with my Melbourne cousins at my uncles Jack and Charlie's farm, and going a bit further down the steep, pine-planted embankment above the creek than we had intended. Looking behind us in the direction we had come from, it seemed an impossibly steep climb back up. We convinced ourselves that we were going to die, and one of my cousins kept saying that this must have been what God had planned for us, as if she believed it (or wanted to trick me into saying it). We survived.

Being allowed to go, without adult supervision, with my three older cousins (on my mum's side) to Charlie Brown's Beach (although I have never been quite sure if it is known by that name by anybody other than my immediate family), and my cousins letting me go out with them until the water was over my head. I have never felt any more special in my entire life than I did at that very moment.

Saturday nights at my Melbourne cousins' house, sitting in the central corner of their "modular" lounge suite, watching the VFL footy replay, and a bit later the Tattslotto draw, and observing, slack-jawed, at the way the entire family would compete against each other, at high volume, to guess which numbered ball would roll out next. On rare occasions I would get to stay up to watch some of the Penthouse Club with Mike Williamson and Mary Hardy, which I could never do at home. My mum had a venomous hatred towards Mary Hardy. Venomous hatred was not mum's style. I thought Mary Hardy must have been the most evil person in the world.

Buying my first cassette recorder, at Retravision in Dandenong (at the time, my second-favourite shop in the world, after Tim the Toyman at Chadstone), and discovering that if you recorded something that was in stereo the recording that you made would itself be in stereo. You can believe that this changed my life. It was as if somebody had told me that their mother was the South Gippsland Lego Lady and they could get me any Lego set I wanted. (Actually David Williams did tell me that; and of course I fell for it. Oh the bitter disappointment.)

Having nothing but candle light at home after a storm had (inevitably) put the power out. If the power went out I was in trouble if I tried to read, but playing cards was okay.

Being taken to the beach at Venus Bay by my aunt and uncle, wearing my good school shoes, being warned by my aunt not to get my shoes wet, and then, after a while, finding myself playing in the shallows with my shoes on. My shoes, of course, were sopping wet by then, and my aunt was having a pink fit. Things happen when you are a kid where, no matter how hard you try, the thing you weren't allowed to do, you do. And you get in trouble. And in a way it isn't really fair that you got in trouble, because you didn't do it on purpose, it just kind of happened.

I only have two memories of my time at the old house, where we lived until I was four. The old house had been built by a farmer, during the Depression, with whatever materials were to hand. It had then been moved, twice, before finishing up on top of the hill. It was not in any sense fancy, but as a toddler you don't notice these things. (Well, I might have two other memories, but I can't be sure that they are real memories because, unusually for my family, both of them exist in photographs.) The first of my two actual memories is of having a bad dream, where my stuffed-toy golliwog came to life and started saying bad and threatening things to me. (My rational adult self says this must have been a dream. My small child self would call my rational adult self a liar.) The second is of my Melbourne cousins coming to the house, and the oldest of them getting out a piano accordion, which looked like a fascinating and harmless collection of buttons and other stuff, but which, when she made a sound come out of it, without warning and very loudly, sent me running, crying, to my parents' bedroom. I still have a "thing" about accordions.

Kicking a soccer ball around the yard with my friend Weary. He was Manchester United and I was Leeds United. How the two of us had any idea of who, or what, Manchester United and Leeds United were, I will never know.

Being at my uncles' farm, with a different set of Melbourne cousins, all boys this time, and being the victim of a cruel but harmless prank. They took me for a walk after dark over towards the hayshed out past the old dairy, the hayshed where we often built forts and conducted full-scale wars, oblivious to any risk of the fragile edifice of piled-up bales of hay collapsing in on top of us. They distracted me briefly, and suggested I might like to walk in a particular direction. Like the fool I always was, I did what they asked me, and walked straight into an electrified fence. The humiliating thing was not walking into the fence, and subsequently jumping back in shock, to the tune of their teenage laughter. The humiliating thing was that I knew like the back of my hand the layout of the paddocks and fencing over there, but with the darkness, and the excitement of being asked outside, after dark (and being allowed to go!), with my cousins, I forgot everything I knew.

This next one was related to me many years later by my mother, who didn't usually tell me very much about things that had happened, but must have been carrying this around with her for so long that she couldn't bear to keep the truth from me any longer. What she told me was that the white kitten we brought back from Bateman's Bay when I was five years old didn't just "go away for a long walk", as she had said to me at the time; in fact, being deaf, as many white kittens are, it had been run over by our sharefarmer. I was kind of glad she eventually told me the truth. For what seemed like years after it had happened, I would often find myself gazing forlornly at the hills in the distance, wondering when that little kitten would come back home.

This goes with that (sleight return)

"Hark, The Herald Angels Sing", a Peel Session recording by The Fall, and "Pretend We're Dead", by L7. Strange bedfellows indeed, but there it is.

YouTube of the day

Hugh Laurie captures something here. I'm not sure entirely what. But I do remember enjoying this immensely when I saw it, presumably on "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" although the YouTube uploader suggests otherwise. Maybe he performed it twice.

YouTubes of the day

A couple of White Stripes clips in order to wave them farewell.





The White Stripes had an almost classical trajectory for a rock band. They appeared as if from out of nowhere with a string of releases bursting with unconstrained excitement and potential, followed those with an album where it all came together brilliantly, followed that with a certified Classic Rock Album ("Elephant"), followed that with one that was not quite so good but that was good enough that it allowed contrarians to argue that it was actually better than said Classic Rock Album, followed that, after a long pause, with an album that, for a while, you were able to convince yourself was not a drop-off in quality but which you knew, deep down, really was. Then a long silence. Then the announcement. If you put it on a graph it would be a kind of Quality Bell Curve.

Thanks guys.

And, just to finish off, a song where, in our family, we like to imagine Animal from the Muppets wandering into the studio every so often. You will hear what we mean.

Song of the day

"Map Ref. 41ºN 93ºW", by Wire.





I always assumed those coordinates would put me somewhere in the UK. In fact, it is a road south-east of Des Moines, Iowa. Which suggests that they may have just made it up. But that is Wire in a nutshell: confounding our expectations since 1977.


Oh, and did I mention that this is one of my favourite songs ever?

Song of the day

"I Heard You Say", by Vivian Girls.



What I said earlier about twenty-odd-year-old records by Look Blue Go Purple never sounding as of-the-moment as they do now? Case in point number 2,851.

YouTube of the day

It's nice to see Ian Curtis with a smile on his face, yeah?

Song(s) of the day

First, we have the song that samples the other song: "Lord Knows Best", by Dirty Beaches.



Then we have the song that is being sampled: "Voila", by Francoise Hardy.


Francoise Hardy - Voila from Know Phase on Vimeo.


Which do you prefer? I have heard the Dirty Beaches track criticised on the basis that the person doing the criticising would rather be listening to Francoise Hardy. And while that's a sentiment I can generally endorse, there is something genuinely haunting and unsettling about "Lord Knows Best" which one doesn't come across much these days, that voice is in the rich tradition of Lee Hazlewood, Johnny Cash and Stephin Merritt, and the piano sample is put to good use.

I think I prefer them both, actually.

Song of the day

"What A Pleasure", by Beach Fossils.

Despite having a name that would appear to have been created by the ACME 2010 Brooklyn Band Name Generator (TM), Beach Fossils have consistently stood out from their lo-fi brethren, mostly on account of a crispness of tone, a nimbleness of playing and a classiness of melody.

"What A Pleasure" is the title track from a forthcoming eight-song "EP" (eight songs, 23 minutes; that's how we like it). It also, it seems to us, happens to be far and away the best song on it. You can listen to it here (and download the next-best song on the EP while you're at it).

Not YouTube of the day

"Rosary", by Marissa Nadler.


Marissa Nadler "Rosary" from Patrick Fraser on Vimeo.


Something about this video makes me think of Sofia Coppola. Maybe it's just the way that not much is happening, but it happens (or doesn't happen) very elegantly.

Song of the day

With the news of the death of composer John Barry, today's song of the day can only be his majestic theme music from "Midnight Cowboy".



Again, this one is better without the visuals. Close your eyes and drift away.

A Tale of Two Cities

1. Melbourne:



2. Sydney:



Each song, I think, captures something of the essence of its preferred location. Both are capable of reducing me to tears. Which, in the case of John Kennedy, is weird, because I have never in my life been to the Coles New World (or equivalent) in Newtown. Interesting, at this distance, how much it sounds like Aztec Camera. Paul Kelly, meanwhile, he's just quality. With a capital Q.

Duck photograph of the day

There's nothing I like more than pictures of ducks. (Except pictures of cows.) Here's a good one, which I pilfered from this page.

YouTube of the day

Some classic Madness to get your day off to a nutty start.

Black coats, flying saxophone players and, um, baggy trousers.

Song of the day

"King of the Mountain", by Kate Bush.



I finally figured out who it is that I have been flashing on whenever I hear this song: it's John Martyn!

Which is perhaps not so absurd really, if you think about it. (Then again, I am the person who hears Captain Beefheart in Joanna Newsom.)

I have been listening to this, of course, in the wake of the potentially exciting news that Kate "might" be releasing some music in 2011.

Be still my beating heart.

Song of the day

"Cold Irons Bound", by Tom Verlaine and the Million Dollar Bashers.



If you bring to mind Tom Verlaine's voice circa "Marquee Moon", and imagine what that voice would sound like if it tried to do an impersonation of Mark Lanegan, you will have some idea of what Verlaine sounds like on this song. Which is not a bad thing -- far from it, in fact -- but isn't entirely what I was expecting.

This is, of course, a Dylan song. The length is in its favour, as it is given time to percolate, slowly, malevolently, hauntingly. And Verlaine's guitar has all the room it needs to breathe.

Song of the day

"1 Thing", by Amerie.

You can watch an official-seeming video here. Sorry it looks a bit too "Video Hits", but you can just shut your eyes and listen.

I have written about this song before. It remains one of my favourite pop songs of recent years. It appears, in a curious context, in Sofia Coppola's new film, "Somewhere". Probably the easiest decision Sofia Coppola could have made, given her unchosen status as daughter of Hollywood royalty, would have been to have nothing whatsoever to do with the making of movies. That she did not make that decision, and has given us, now, four feature films, at least three of which (I'm not sure yet about "Marie Antoinette") are nothing short of wonderful, is a modern miracle.

A few words about Then Play Long

There are, to state the obvious, a lot of "great" albums out there. And, in our sleek and modern world of interconnectedness, it would be hard to find a record for which there is not at least one vocal online booster out there somewhere. As someone who has always had a tendency to believe everything he reads, I find this somewhat alarming: What, you mean I have to listen to [record x by band y] as well?

Yes, I understand that people have different tastes, and it is true that there are certain types of music where no matter how far somebody pushes open the door, I am not about to walk through it. But whenever I read that something is a "great record", my brain files this away in an ever-expanding "save for later" corner, along with millions of other similarly tiny snippets of information, where it lies dormant until the day that I come across that record at a garage sale or in a bargain bin, at which time a light will come on, and I will find myself agonising over whether I "need" to buy it. (The logical end-point of this is a sensation of having to buy everything in the shop: and, yes, I have been there.)

The ready availability, somewhere, of a downloadable copy of pretty much everything ever committed to tape doesn't really help; it just has the potential to create a hopelessly unmanageable backlog of unlistened-to music, clogging up hard-drive space and crippling monthly download limits. People like me have never had it so good, and yet, like Charlie Brown, I have this nagging feeling that *sigh* I miss the old days.

I recently borrowed from the local library a book called something like "1,001 Albums To Hear Before You Die". You have probably seen it. It is roughly the size and weight of a concrete paving stone. What it does is, well, you can probably figure that out from the title.

The book is a useful aid to chronology, which, as is so often the case when (my) memory is involved, can be confusing. (So much great music appeared in the years 1978 to 1981, for example, that, even having (a) lived through it and (b) worked my way through Simon Reynolds's post-punk primer, I can never confidently say which record came out before which other record.) And I cannot deny that it is always gratifying to find someone writing (in a book!) in glowing terms about one or other cornerstone of my own life's listening.

On the other hand, it is a very "rock" book: guitar heroes are all over it; "progressive rock" and metal dominate the early seventies; the "canon", it seems, has spoken. It is a trainspotter's paradise: tick all the boxes, turn all the pages, complete the set. The writing is, frankly, appalling. If there is a "rock" cliche that can be trotted out, it will be trotted out. Quite possibly more than once.

To be fair, one narrow column of text for a "classic" album doesn't give much scope for scholarly analysis or personal reflection. Hence, of either of those things there is none.

Indeed, nothing in this book, beyond the simple fact of its inclusion, would cause anybody to actually want to listen to any of these albums. This is in marked contrast to Marcello Carlin's ongoing and very admirable project "Then Play Long", in which, for the past three years, he has been writing at length, one at a time and in sequence, about every UK Number One album, and doing so in such a way that he manages to find justification or purpose for even the least promising of entries (this would appear to be a challenge -- the charts care everything for sales figures and nothing for artistic merit -- but it is a challenge that he, like probably very few other human beings alive, is perfectly suited for) so that you actually do want to give each one of them at least one spin. His questions seem to be the right ones: What is it about this record, or its times, that caused it to get to Number One? What can we learn from the record itself, and its status when it first appeared, about both those times and our own? Why was it this record, and not that one over there, that made it to the top?

The answers can be surprising. One of the longest, and most fascinating, entries to date is the one on that most perplexing of albums, Bob Dylan's "Self Portrait" (a record that leaves one scratching one's head in wonder that it ever got anywhere near the charts, let alone all the way to the top). Elsewhere, he provides a very enlightening explanation of The Beatles' "Let It Be", an album the existence of and circumstances surrounding which I have never entirely understood. (He makes a very interesting point, here, about the uses of the Internet and whether "Let It Be" would ever have been officially released if it -- the Internet -- had been around then.) Heck, he even manages to write something fresh and interesting about "Stairway To Heaven".

Many of the records I turn to the most can be found in "1,001 Records" (I am, I guess, as much a slave to the idea of "canon" as the next obsessive), few in "Then Play Long". (Although, as we move into the seventies, more than I was expecting.) But it is fascinating to see what got to Number One, to dwell upon an alternative listening history from my own, and to be drawn to records I would not otherwise have given a second (or, in a couple of cases, first) thought. "Then Play Long" is the kind of project that the Internet was made for, and it is to be hoped that when he gets to the end of it (which, unless the charts themselves are consigned to history, he never will, but let's not go there) the entire thing can be adapted for a book. It might not weigh as much as "1,001 Records", but it will be infinitely more fun and insightful. Long may it play.

Song of the day

"Albatross", by Public Image Ltd.



I don't know how it would go as a hangover cure, but for clearing away the cobwebs from a fuzzy morning brain I can think of no better item. Wobble's bass is like aural wasabi, while Levene's guitar is like the knife in Philip Pullman's "The Subtle Knife" only more so. Lydon almost doesn't add anything to the song, but on the other hand without Lydon it would be nothing.

RIP Trish Keenan

Woke up this morning to the rotten news that Trish Keenan, of Broadcast, has died. Apparently from pneumonia (who dies from pneumonia in 2011?). It is often thought that Stereolab and Broadcast had much in common. Now they have one more thing: they have both lost core members to non-rock'n'roll-related deaths.

I cannot really express how sad this news makes me feel, nor how much Broadcast have meant to me. I first heard them back in 1996, when Bart gave me a copy of their Wurlitzer Jukebox single "Accidentals / We've Got Time". I have been with them ever since; every album bought and paid for. (They were way too special for internet downloads.) In fact, their first album (actually a collection of singles), "Work And Non Work", was the last new record I bought on vinyl, on account of its cover being so tactile and lovely in its 12" iteration. That was when we were still living in Alma Road. Much later, I managed to convince an employee of Red Eye, in Sydney, to sell me a copy of "HaHa Sound" a couple of days before it was supposed to be put on the shelves.

As the years went on, and the band reduced in size to its ultimate core of two, and the music became more strikingly avant-experimental (their last album, a collaboration with Ghost Box's The Focus Group, was Wire magazine's album of the year in 2009) they never lost sight of the pop side of the equation.

I am so very, very sorry. I don't know what else to say.

Here is a wonderful example of the Broadcast sound:

The one that got away

In these early days of 2011 my ears have fallen upon a record that, had I been aware of it before the end of 2010, would have been at least a strong contender for Record of the Year (which I awarded, in case you missed it and/or have the slightest interest in what I might think, to "Swim", by Caribou, although in doing so I still feel bad for a slew of other, basically equally worthy, albums, by Espers, Tindersticks, Spoon, Midlake, Joanna Newsom, Lindstrom and Christabelle, LCD Soundsystem and Darkstar, to name only those that come immediately to mind).

The record of which I speak is "Dagger Paths", by Forest Swords. And no, a couple of weeks ago I hadn't heard of it, either.

Here is a record that carries with it some of the lo-fi production aesthetic so beloved of much of the Class of 2010, but in this case it comes across more as a necessary byproduct of the circumstances of its creation than as a lifestyle choice or affectation.

It is perhaps most distinctive, musically, in its deployment of some of the most striking post-punk guitar-and-bass stylings I have heard since the end of that (very) particular era. (I am reminded, most specifically, of the Cure that was responsible for "Seventeen Seconds" and "Faith".)

(You would also have to say that at some level the maker of this record is worshipping at the church of Joy Division, but there is no harm in being a follower of that benign and (mostly) benevolent deity.)

A smattering of dub appears, at just the right moments. (Dubstep itself might be lurking in this record's many shadows, but never quite reveals itself.)

Like Burial, it evokes a rain-soaked 6am, but not so much the streets of London as some place where people do not generally gather together: not necessarily a place of rural isolation, but somewhere unfamiliar, desolate, unforgiving.

I am also reminded, at different times and for varying, possibly random, reasons, of: the more astringent end of the classic mid-80s Flying Nun stable, mostly those FN records bearing somewhere the name "Jefferies"; 4AD releases from the same period, in particular a band that I don't get reminded of very often, This Mortal Coil; and two other singular albums: "The Return of The Durutti Column", and Virginia Astley's "From Gardens Where We Felt Secure".

All of which may provide sign posts or markers of the direction you are heading in, but they won't give you any real sense of what you will find when you get there. Because "there" is a record that may well be impossible to do justice to in words. It is all the work of one guy. He lives in The Wirrall, a fact that seems to be of some importance for the sound and mood of the record, but means absolutely nothing to those of us residing in an entirely different hemisphere. The record comprises six songs over 35 minutes. It is evidently considered by its creator (yes, he does have a name, but it somehow feels wrong to attach something as direct, and mundane, as a "name" to something so personal) to be an EP, but it holds together as an unbroken, perfectly sequenced suite of songs and deserves to be considered as an "album", whatever that word might mean today.

I think what I like most about this record is its unassuming nature. It never tries to force the issue, or to get in your face. On the other hand, it isn't really background music. There is too much at stake for that. I also like that it doesn't really attach itself to any particular genre, musical style, time or place (much like the Durutti Column and Virginia Astley records mentioned above). And I get a real sense that the person behind the record understands about playing to your strengths and downplaying any weaknesses you may have. The temptation, when making a record on your own, must be to leave nothing out, to make yourself sound like a band. (This is also why most blogs don't read as well as most "paid" writing: we are our own worst editors.)

Forest Swords isn't like that. The guitar is clearly a strength: it is not that we get a lot of it, more that it is given the space to breathe, the room to stretch out. Drums, conversely (and interestingly for a very much rhythmically based record), are noticeable for what they don't say (they don't actually appear until half way through the first song, but you have to be listening for them to notice that). They are used, instead, as part of the texture of fabric of the song, or as a kind of tribal pulse. Also, he has the confidence to hold back, to make a virtue of understatement and to give a sense of the slow drift of time (think, possibly, of a slightly darker version of side two of Brian Eno's "Before And After Science").

But what I like most about this record is that I can't get the blasted thing out of my head, and when your head is as full of songs as mine is that's no small feat.

Here, to allow you to make some sense of the above, is the last song on the record.

Daft Punk is playing at our house

I suppose I must be the ten millionth person to have thought of doing this. I couldn't even find matching helmets. FAIL.

Song of the day

"Maze", by Actress.



From Wire magazine's album of the year. I don't know that I would go that far. But then, it is an album that, for the most part, is speaking in a language I do not really understand.

The first couple of minutes might well be the end credits of an Italian horror film from the 1970s.

A slightly longer, and somehow preferable, version exists as a single b-side and can also be found here.

YouTubes of the day

Two by the incomparable Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66.

First:



Of course you know this one. Note in particular the beautifully rolled RRRRRs of Eartha Kitt (rocking the introduction) and the, uh, smooth moves of the shaker/tambourine player. Also, those earrings: you could do some serious damage with those.

Then:



I thought we had a reasonably solid grasp of Sergio's body of work, but we had no idea that he had tackled "Wichita Lineman". Not demolished and rebuilt a la his take on "My Favourite Things", but very nice nonetheless.

Bargain of the day

Attention shoppers. If you are a subscriber to eMusic you might be interested to know that they presently have available on their site, mistake or otherwise, the audio component of John Foxx's "The Complete Cathedral Oceans" (that's three CDs' worth) for $US5.99. That's money well spent, in my book.

Okay, if you were a Foxxaholic you would probably shell out for the physical (fetish) object with its attendant DVD and hardcover book or whatever, but really it's all about the music (isn't it?), and most of us would be very happy with this version, especially given that it has been ripped at a bit-rate that is high enough that I can no longer tell the difference.

Song of the day

"Baker Street", by Gerry Rafferty. Well, it couldn't be anything else, could it? So long, old chap.

Ghosts

If you have ever listened to either of Japan's albums "Tin Drum" or "Gentlemen Take Polaroids", you will instantly recall the distinctive sound of Mick Karn's bass playing. I don't believe anyone has ever played the instrument in quite the same way and I suspect that nobody ever will. RIP.

This, perhaps, the exemplar:

Song of the day

"Corona", by Calexico.



We seem to be having a Calexico holiday. Which is somewhat ironic, seeing as Calexico evoke hot, arid, dry, all things which, unusually, Canberra has not been (so far) this summer. Maybe we are over-compensating.

I think this might be my favourite Calexico song (even though, or perhaps because, it was first a Minutemen song, from their mighty "Double Nickels On The Dime" double-album).

La cerveza, as they say, mas fina.

YouTube of the day

You have to marvel at the seemingly boundless vistas of human ingenuity. If we can do this, maybe we can overcome climate change.

(Link via Inger. Thanks, buddy.)

Cameo of the day

The members of Daft Punk (not that you could tell behind those helmets), in "Tron: Legacy". Not content with putting together a really powerful soundtrack (reminiscent in parts, although I could be making this up, of a number of the quieter pieces on YMO's "Technodelic"), the boys make an appearance in the nightclub scene, up in the booth spinning tracks as all hell breaks out on the floor.

The film? If you are, or have ever been, a thirteen-year-old boy, you will love it. It is presently challenging "Star Wars" for supremacy, according to our own resident taste maker.

Word of the day

"Skillage". Noun. Meaning: a large quantity of awesomeness. As in, "I am possessed of maximum skillage". First appeared: late 2010, at our house. Possibly.

Song of the day

"25 or 6 to 4", by Chicago. Large parts of this, if you marginally tweaked the production and removed the classily streamlined vocals, could be slotted, unnoticed, into Spoon's "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga". No, I never thought I would write those words, either. And you would also have to removed the guitar solo, which is a bit too, uh, fancy. And no, I have no idea what the title is all about.

Song of the day

"Walk Out To Winter", by Aztec Camera. Manages to rise above its trademark eighties sheen by the simple fact of it being an excellent pop song. Can it really be that hard?

Gratuitous song-title-related remark: here in the Nation's Capital today we are not walking out to winter. The temperature has cracked the thirty-degree mark before 10.30 and is only going up. Happy new year.

The Dust Blows Forward And The Dust Blows Back

Let me see now. Where was I. Ah, yes. Captain Beefheart.

"Tropical Hot Dog Night" is the one Beefheart song that even our boys can recognise. It exists on an endless playlist of 2,000-odd songs, of every hue, that I put on whenever I get a chance. (Which is not often.) It is a timeless kind of song, as are most of Beefheart's, in the sense that they exist outside of any particularly recognisable era. It is the thing that made him great, and that even Tom Waits, who tries as hard as anybody to position himself outside of the world in which he lives, can't quite manage in quite the same way.

What is interesting to me is how many virtual column inches have been filled with the Captain since his death, surely in no kind of proportion to how often people actually listen to his music. Take me, for example. "Trout Mask Replica" has been a fixture of my record collection for twenty-odd years, and it is easily one of my most cherished vinyl artyfacts, and yet it has sat on the turntable relatively little over that time. (In terms of playability, I have to say that I lean towards "Safe As Milk" and "Clear Spot". They lack the towering, over-stretching ambition of "TMR", but you can hum along to them.)

As usual, Sasha Frere-Jones writes some of the best words about Beefheart's legacy. And Reynolds gives good YouTube.

Sun's going down, like a big bald head

The last two instalments in Eno's "Seven Sessions on a Milk Sea" album-promo series are now up, here and here. Whilst I am not going to be as quick as others to write off the new album, I am troubled by the fact that I am troubled by it. It starts off well, but my early impression is that the wheels fall off about one-third of the way through. I might be missing the point. (I didn't like "The Drop" much, either, except for the final, sublime track.) I intend to come back to it many times with a view to adjusting my score.

Meanwhile these clips demonstrate a sense of vitality, of the joy of music making, that doesn't really come through in the finished album. Says me, as of now.

The Filmworks Haiku Series Kicks Its Last

Mercifully, these will be the final two entries.

"Filmworks XXII: The Last Supper".

Liturgical Zorn:

Not what I was expecting;

Beautifully done.

"Filmworks XXIII: el General".

I just love it when

Marc Ribot does his Spanish

Moriccone thing.

Next up in The Zorn Report: the three-quarter-time report from his 2010 record-a-month marathon.

Song of the day

"Circumspect Penelope", by Look Blue Go Purple. If you ask me, LBGP have never sounded as good, or as contemporary, as they do right now. Let the revival begin!

Song of the day

"Lucy Brown", by Black Mountain. A song that demonstrates yet another strand in the musical fabric of this immensely talented band. This time, there is a strong glam / RAK Records element, which takes it away from their usual hard rock template, while the lyrics, about how it's such a drag when your "mom" finds your "stash", suggest the song would have been right at home on the soundtrack to one of the earlier Richard Linklater films.

And it's on a Sub Pop Singles Club seven-inch, yeah? Just like the good old days.

No Hassle

Am I the only person on this planet who actually likes Robyn's "Dancehall Queen"? Heck, every time she gets written about on the Internet even now, months after this particular song first appeared, the writer seems to go out of his or her way to diss this song. It's so unfair. Anyway, it now has a video. Watch it here. (Possibly not safe for, y'know, work. Okay, seriously not.)

The master's hand

Click here and here to view the fourth and fifth instalments in Eno's "Seven Sessions on a Milk Sea" project. Just do it. It makes so much more sense when his shiny dome is visibly present.

Filmworks haiku series: mobile edition

"Filmworks XXI: Belle de Nature and The New Rijksmuseum":

Two soundtracks in one.
One: A Marc Ribot showcase.
Two goes for baroque.

(Is there any rule against starting two lines with the same word?)

Teenage Radio Star

I wrote a thousand words about the death by suicide of James Freud. But it was all about me, and the bad feelings I continued to harbour in relation to what I perceived to be his takeover of my beloved Models, and why I now realise I was wrong and misguided to have those feelings. But then I read it back, and I imagined it sitting on the Internet, exposed to the public and to the possibility (however faint) that it might be read by Freud's family, and I imagined that they would not be impressed by some pathetic whining bag of misery wallowing in self-pity on the occasion of their own grief. And so I junked it.

Instead, I just want to say this: when Sean Kelly invited James Freud to join the Models, in 1982, Freud had already shown his hand in terms of shooting for pop stardom. Kelly, himself no shrinking violet, knew what he was leading the Models into, and seemingly made no effort to stop it. The Models, James Freud version, were not for me. "Barbados" and "Out Of Mind, Out Of Sight" are both, it still pains me to say, horrible songs. But that was their choice, and plenty of good, right-thinking people like those songs, and the betrayal I felt might have just as easily been directed at persons other than James Freud.

And this: no matter what else he might have done, or been responsible for, or struggled through, or carried the can for, James Freud deserves a place in the annals for "I Wanna Be Your Baby", one of the few truly great Melbourne punk-era singles, by his early band the Teenage Radio Stars.

Song of the day: totally insane edition

"Vikram Vikram", by Kamal Hassan and Illaiyaraaja. This is why I spend half my waking hours scouring the internet for music. (Memo to my employer: this is not, in fact, true.) I can almost guarantee that you have never heard anything like it in your life. And yet elements of it are very familiar: everything from Tom Tom Club to Bob James to Giorgio Moroder to (I swear) Tha Dogg's "Drop It Like It's Hot".

You owe it to yourself to click your way over to the estimable XXJFG and download the damn thing, while it's still up. Even if you only listen to it once. Which you won't.

Song of the day

"Eanie Meany", by Jim Noir. Every year I put together a mix CD as a part of Adrienne's birthday present. This song is an early favourite from the 2010 edition. It's easy to see why, I think. Enjoy.

Get free stuff

No, it's not a trap to lure you into mortal peril. It's just versions of four Black Tambourine songs that weren't on the compilation. Scrap that "just". Get them here. Now.

Tick, tick, tick.

What? Are you still here?

Song of the day

"Search and Destroy", by The Stooges. A Monday-morning head-cleaner. The musical equivalent of a big chunk of wasabi.

YouTube of the day

This is the film clip for the greatest song ever made.

I have an idea that I watched this on late-night TV many years ago but I don't remember most of it.

Everybody looks so young. Sigh.

Not YouTube of the day

"Seven Sessions on a Milk Sea", by Brian Eno et al, the third instalment thereof. This one strongly harking back to the original "Music For Films". In a good way. I find it interesting to watch such impersonal music being put together by the hands of humans. The guitar atmospherics especially.

Song of the day

"Four Hours In Washington", by M. Ward. If Ward had called this song "Seven Hours In Tullamarine", it would have very neatly encapsulated what happened to us last Monday.

Having travelled to Melbourne for the weekend in order not to miss Adrienne's dad's 80th-birthday Yarra River boat ride, we dutifully arrived at Tullamarine at 3pm on Monday for the return leg, leaving at 4.10 and arriving in Canberra at 5.15pm, in time for bath night, dinner, and The Goodies at 8.05 on ABC2.

Or so we thought.

We checked in, made our way through the elaborate and officious security apparatus at Terminal 4, and into the rudimentary departure "lounge" (accurately described by a work colleague as the "departure compound") of Tiger Airways to await our flight. Presently, we were called to the departure gate. Where we waited. And waited. And waited. Until a voice over the intercom said: "Due to operational reasons [sic], flight number whatever has been delayed. The new departure time is 5.15pm, with a boarding time of 4.45."

So we took ourselves and our bags (and Adrienne's sister from London, who was coming to stay with us for a couple of nights) and colonised a few empty seats, breaking the boredom with a cup of coffee and a flick through a few magazines at the newsagents.

It wasn't long before 4.45 arrived. Some time after that, because of "operational reasons" (maybe, or maybe not, the same ones), the departure time was moved to 7.15. At that point one of our boys, perhaps not the one we would have expected, burst into tears. Murmurs went through the crowd, and a curious camaraderie developed. Fleeting but strong friendships were made. The renowned Australian sense of humour came to the fore: "Of course there is nobody from Tiger that you can talk to; you have to pay extra for that." [Explanation for overseas readers: Tiger is a rock-bottom budget airline. It has planes, a bit of terminal space, a few pilots, and not much more. Pretty much everything, except your seat on the plane, that you would expect to get with another airline, you have to pay extra for.]

Jules got friendly with a family from the south coast, who had bought, from the newsagents, a Bakugan toy, and started using it as the ball in an impromptu departure-lounge soccer game. Interestingly, and in a good advertisement for the Bakugan company, the thing survived a jolly good kicking intact.

Meal vouchers were handed out, reducing by roughly one quarter the airline's profit on each ticket. The food, of course, was overpriced crap, but it was the only food we had. (We discovered, too late, that the south coast crew had ordered in pizza.)

In due course we were revisited by Mrs Operational Reasons, who informed us that our flight was delayed until 10pm and we could, if we wanted, get a full refund on our tickets or agree to be moved to the 4.15pm flight the following day and be put up at an airport hotel for the night (thus plunging Tiger's return on the tickets into the red, one would imagine).

At this point, poor Stanley started to get a little bit stressed out, on account of having two non-negotiable full days of work ahead of him, and staring at the possibility of heading back to Geelong until the next available evening or early-morning flight (with another airline, obviously) and meanwhile working from the Melbourne office of his employer (which he could have done but in three-day-old clothes). Poor Stanley doesn't like being thrust out of his comfort zone. In addition, the 12-year-old, who has autism, and who is on considerable quantities of medication (which we had now run out of) and a restricted diet (ditto), also needed to be considered. (We have played the autism card before when travelling, but this time it wasn't going to work, obviously, because there was nobody to play it to.)

Meanwhile the rumour mill was saying that if enough people pulled out they would cancel the flight anyway, assuming there was actually a plane coming, in which case we would all be stuffed.

Our decision was to stick it out. We tried to get blankets and pillows for the boys, but of course there weren't any, even for those prepared to pay extra for them. I ended up reading most of a Philip Pullman book to the boys to help pass the time. Fortunately he is always very readable. Second meal vouchers were handed out. (How much money was Tiger actually going to lose in order to get us home?) This time we sensibly exchanged them for bottles of water, and ice creams all round (to hell with the restricted diet).

Gradually we were able to piece together, in a reasonably believable fashion, that there was a plane for us, it was coming from Brisbane, and when it had flown us to Canberra it would be flying some poor buggers from Canberra back to Melbourne on what was supposed to be a 7.15 pm flight.

Around 10.30 pm, I noticed some people who could conceivably have been disembarking passengers walking past a couple of glass doors some distance from where I was sitting. Fifteen minutes later, we were again called to the boarding gate (at which point cheers went up around the departure lounge), and some time later we were let through into a covered walkway, where we stood, in the chill night air, for some 10 or 15 minutes more. At this point the 12-year-old became convinced that we were never going to get home, and that, even if we did, our suitcase would surely not be coming.

Eventually they let us onto the plane. The pilot helpfully and comprehensively explained the reason behind all this messing about: "We had some issues this morning." Thanks for that.

We arrived in Canberra at 12.35 am. (Our suitcase arrived, too.) There is not much happening at Canberra airport at that time of the day. If we had had trouble getting our car out of the car park I don't know what we would have done. But all was well. (Six days later we are all still recovering, though.)

During the course of the week, and of course we have been relating this story quite a bit, it has emerged that pretty much everybody who has flown Tiger has a similar story to tell. It seems as if the date and time of your flight is, as they say, "indicative only". They will get you where you want to go, but when they will get you there is something you will find out when it happens. The other thing we have discovered is the large number of people who have flown with Tiger once only, and will not be doing so again. I suspect you might be able to include us in that category.

Not YouTube of the day

More of the Brian Eno project I posted a couple of days ago. I have a feeling this one actually comes first. I don't think that it makes a whole lot of difference.

YouTube of the day

Cute animals edition. Awwww.

Not YouTube of the day

Brian Eno and pals: Seven Sessions on a Milk Sea.

I'm thinking this is more interesting than anything on the album. It does sound a bit "busy", though. It will be interesting to see/hear where they take it.

Song of the day

"Silver Rider", by Robert Plant. And speaking of things that remind me of Ed Kuepper, there's this. Again, we are talking here of long, resonant, ringing guitar notes, teasing at a melody without ever quite spelling it out. (I have recently been expanding the Ed Kuepper Shrine at our house, so I may be more sensitive to comparisons than usual. Nevertheless, at moments like this I am inclined to think that Kuepper is as much a part of the guitar pantheon as Fahey, Thompson, Ribot and Page. Or should be.)

The new album, "Band of Joy", is the only Robert Plant I have heard that is not Led Zeppelin. And I have to say it isn't half bad. He even gets in a little of the ol' Zep yelp towards the end. Happy days.

Song of the day

"William Tell Overture", by Spike Jones. Musical comedy doesn't necessarily date terribly well. Here is an example. The best way to describe this is "quaint". (There are other ways.)

It was played every Melbourne Cup day on the local ABC radio station. Maybe it still is. It was one of the highlights of my year, along with Christmas Day and the Melbourne Show. I had no idea what it was called or who it was by. I only knew it as the Beetlebaum song. It took the Internet no more than a couple of minutes to reveal the truth.

Apologies for the lack of activity around here. There's a whole lotta workin' goin' on.

Song of the day

"Reagan Speaks For Himself", by Doug Kahn. Not a "song", really, just a collection of Ronald Reagan's own words cut up and put back together to bizarre effect. If Reagan didn't say these things, you can at least imagine him having done so. From opening cans of poison meat to breaking the backbone of America. I have been hunting high and low for this for many years; it first appeared as a flexidisc in an early issue of Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly's Raw magazine. The difficulty was I had no idea what it was called or who it was by. Somebody mentioned it the other day in something I was reading and *bingo*. At the time of writing it is available for download here. Those of you old enough to remember those times should do yourselves a favour.

My dream was to own a complete set of Raw. I start at number 8 and there weren't too many after that. (Oh, I also have the compilation of parts of the first three issues.) I am too scared to look on eBay because I have a feeling they remain as out of reach as they were when I used to see them sitting on a high shelf behind the counter in a book / comic shop (name lost to history) on Swanston Street. (I don't think it was an early location of Minotaur but I suppose I could be wrong. Happened before.)

Song of the day

"Another Girl, Another Planet", by The Only Ones. While we're on the subject of guitar solos: they don't get much better than this.

Song of the day

"Time", by Pink Floyd. I have been giving "Dark Side Of The Moon" a good old thrashing lately. For many years I had something of a love/hate relationship with it: as an aspiring young antisocial post-punk nihilist (in my own mind) I was against it and everything it stood for. The problem was that by then its spell had well and truly been cast: I had been listening to it for a long time and had fallen in love with it. So I avoided the issue by just not playing it.

I have always been obsessed with the moment in this song, around the 4.30 mark (4.05 in the live clip I have linked to), where the guitar solo changes; it remains a guitar solo, but it spins on the head of a pin and becomes something else entirely. Without blinking an eye or missing a beat. I still don't know how they did that.

Album of the year: there has been a late challenge

It looks like I spoke too soon.

"Grinderman 2". In which Nick Cave and his band of hairy brothers continue to blur the line between Grinderman and the post-Mick Harvey Bad Seeds. The point of first Grinderman album, as it seems to me, and as I think I have said before, was not in what it was, but in what it led to: a rejuvenated Seeds on "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!" But now, with Grinderman not so much a case of shaking the comfortable old sack to see what comes out as a legitimate musical project with its own history and, perhaps, defined parameters, the distinction, if there still is one, between Grinderman and Seeds is, as the lawyers would say, a fine one Okay, so perhaps Grinderman are a bit more feral, and certainly more rough around the edges, than (at least recent) Bad Seeds have tended to be, but the common purpose, the "bleed", if you like, between the two Grinderman albums and "Lazarus" is such that by now you can just as easily reach for Grinderman as for the Bad Seeds for your essential Nick Cave fix. (There are moments on this album when you wouldn't necessarily know which one you had picked up.) Album of the year? I don't suppose so, but in another year it coulda been a contender.

"Le Noise", by Neil Young. Two words come to mind when I listen to this record: "Ed Kuepper". One man, one guitar, and the mother of all effects pedals. At a couple of points during the course of the record I could swear that he was going to start singing "When I First Came To This Land". Listen to the start of "Someone's Gonna Rescue You" with your eyes closed. Make up your own mind. (I think the particular Kuepper record I have in mind is the live album "With A Knapsack On My Back".) Young's vocal register is a fraction higher, but there isn't a lot in it. You couldn't really say the child is the father of the man, because they are both no longer spring chickens, but you know what I mean. Or maybe you don't. Daniel Lanois cops a lot of shit, but come on: "Time Out Of Mind". "Apollo: Atmospheres And Soundtracks". "Yellow Moon". That Emmylou Harris album. And now this remarkable beast. What's a guy gotta do? Seriously. Album of the year? It might be, if only I could get the chance to play it at the volume it deserves to be played at.

"Belle And Sebastian Write About Love", by, well, duh. It's been a long wait. It's another good B&S album. We really are spoiled, aren't we, when we can even entertain a discussion about the relative merits of this album versus that album or whatever. Just enjoy it. That's what it's for. Album of the year? Yes, of course, if I was in (yet another) cardigan phase of my life. So, no. Or at least, not today. (Irrelevant aside: note the coincidental titles of these two, not dissimilar, records, also bearing in mind that both appeared after a lengthy hiatus suggesting we would never be blessed with them -- "Belle And Sebastian Write About Love". "Bart And Friends Make You Blush". See what they did there?)

"North", by Darkstar. It continues to amaze me how much raw emotion can be worked from the sounds made by machines. The Human League. Kraftwerk. Telefon Tel Aviv. Junior Boys. Air (although their palette is broader). And now Darkstar. Some records, and I'm not talking lyrics here, I'm talking sounds, or combinations of words and sounds maybe, have a certain, well, I don't even know what you would call it -- a "quality"; an "X factor" -- that hits me like a punch in the stomach. If "North" doesn't have that effect on you, I can imagine it might leave you seriously underwhelmed, because its surface alone, in the context of what it is going to be, inevitably, compared with (Hyperdub long players, of which there have been few, in particular; the future of dubstep, in general), may well, as your stockbroker might say, surprise on the downside. (In which case I feel sad for you, but I understand.) Me? I have a feeling that this record will be with me for a long, long time. Album of the year? I think it might have been, if only I had enough time to take it in, to absorb its lessons, to live in it. And you can't do that in a couple of months.

Song of the day

"Out Of Tune", by Real Estate. And, surprise surprise, here it is. The fact that it starts off like a lost Marine Girls song, and is able to totally avoid the disappointment that would usually be felt around these parts when it turns out to be something else entirely, speaks volumes for how good this song is. And it is. The two-guitar thing I was talking about before? Right here.

Song of the day

"Walking About", by Venom P. Stinger. A full-throated roar from beyond the gates of Hell. Well, Melbourne. Featuring a couple of guys you might recognise.

Song of the day

"Younger Than Yesterday", by Real Estate. I have been listening to this band quite a bit lately. I like the cut of their jib. Or is that "gib". Mostly the vocals sound like they bought their microphone from the same dodgy shipment that seems to have finished up in the hands of most of today's Brooklyn bands. But it's the guitars that stand out. They get a kind of two-guitar interplay thing going. I'm not saying we are in the realm of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd, or even Red Symons and Bongo Starr, at least not yet, but there is a real chemistry here, and the thing they do they do just right. And when they do it, I'm theirs.

I have their self-titled album, bought and paid for. They have a new single, "Out Of Tune", which could end up on these pages any day now. But this song is from the "Reality" EP, which came out either before or after their album. (I have chronology issues.) It stretches out over four and a half minutes. It has a very likeable twang to it, and just the faintest hint of a drawl. (Although in truth they are about as "country" as Galaxie 500.) There are moments when I am reminded of The Gun Club. I wish I had more opportunities to say those words.

Addiction of the week

This site.

Just one more click ...

Just one more click ...

Just ...

One ...

More ...

Clzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Another Filmworks Haiku

John Zorn, "Filmworks XX: Sholem Aleichem":

"If you like this sort
Of thing then this is the sort
Of thing you will like"

(A bit pathetic, really -- the haiku -- but it keeps us motoring through them. Not too many more now. This one has our friends the Masada String Trio, backing some accordion and harp. You know how I feel about the accordion.)

Song of the day

"The Pearl", by Espers. In which, in a somewhat unexpected turn of events, side two of Brian Eno's "Before And After Science" is reinterpreted through the filter of Joe Boyd's production work circa 1969. It even has some Robert Fripp-style infinite-guitar-loop shenanigans. And to complete the picture, the title of the song is also the title of one of Eno's most highly regarded albums.

Espers: Eno fanboys (and girls)? Just a hunch.

Song of the day

"Why Cant [sic] We Live Together", by Sade. (There is no apostrophe on the back cover or inside the gatefold, but mercifully one appears on the label.)

Once every couple of months the YMCA Auxiliary holds a garage sale in and around what looks like an old scout hall near the playground at Yarralumla. There are a few shelves of dusty boxes of dusty vinyl taking up most of one room. I usually have time to get through only a couple of boxes before Carl has ransacked the boxes of old McDonalds toys and such, usually managing to enhance one of his many incomplete sets, and is ready to leave. (We seem to have roughly ten McDonalds toys for each time we have visited that godforsaken place. I suppose it keeps them out of landfill.)

Thus, even though there seems to be very limited turnover of records from one year to the next, I often manage to uncover something that induces a smile. Today, that something was a seemingly unplayed copy of the first Sade album. I was transported back to 1984, the second year of the fabled Nicholson Street shared household. My 1984, musically, was a mixed bag. The first Jesus and Mary Chain album. Talking Heads' "Speaking In Tongues". David Sylvian's "Words With The Shaman", with Jon Hassell. (Also Hassell's own "Dream Theory In Malaya".) Eno's "Apollo". The Michael Brook and Brian Eno album (which I never could get intom although not for want of trying). U F@cking 2's "Unforgettable Fire" (purely on account of Eno's involvement -- see the pattern here?). "Porcupine", by Echo & The Bunnymen. The Smiths. The first two REM albums. The Dream Syndicate's second album, "Medicine Show". Weekend's "La Variete". "Einstein On The Beach". And Sade. What she was doing in there I could never have explained (I may well have had the hots for her, based solely on her singing voice), and when, a couple of years later, I had dived headlong into an unruly diet of Einsturzende Neubauten, Foetus, Sonic Youth and the like there was really no room for her silky smooth tones. (Funnily enough, it was a comment I read somewhere by Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo about Sade, possibly ironic but also possibly not, that got me thinking that I may have been wrong.)

Of course, Canberra's glorious spring weather is the perfect listening environment for something this perfect. It might be slightly ersatz "soul", but you can't fake quality, and quality is all over this record. According to SFJ, writing in the New Yorker, she and her band are still going, and going strong, 26 years later. She sells, like, more records internationally than anybody, and yet you never hear anything about her. Sounds like a good business model.

All I really wanted to say, though, is, and this may sound to some like sacrilege: there is really not much between her version of Timmy Thomas's "Why Can't We Live Together" (apostrophe rightly reinstated) and Massive Attack's cover of "Be Thankful For What You Got". Which, before you start your hate mail, is not intended in the least as a slight to Massive Attack.

Song of the day

"Get Behind Me", by Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan. In which the absence of any kind of recognisable verse-chorus-verse structure, the unchanging rolling and tumbling blues and general ramshackle anybody-can-do-it skiffle-billy playing, and the singular nature of Lanegan's post-adenoidal growling/gurgling, lead to the conclusion that if this had been inadvertently included as the lead-off track on any of Dylan's post-"Time Out Of Mind" albums, not too many people would have even noticed. (The fleeting appearances of Isobel Campbell, peering around the corner from time to time from the edge of the frame, might give the game away to the attentive listener.)

The Filmworks Haiku Series Continues

John Zorn, "Filmworks XIX: The Rain Horse".

(This one's a bit lame. I would also just like to say that this is one of my favourites in the series. It is a fine and very lyrical example of small-ensemble playing.)

There is nothing quite
Like a well-recorded and
Well-played piano.

YouTube of the day

Here.

I can't believe I haven't seen this before. It somehow conveys the pure essence of Yo La Tengo.

If you listen attentively, you will also notice that "Sugarcube" is a fine song, in anybody's language.

Album of the year?

They said it couldn't be done. I said "Phooey".

They said it was too early. I said "No, no, no". Oh, wait, that was Amy Winehouse.

Up until now, I had assumed that the race for that bogus but necessary title, album of the year, would be a two-horse affair between Espers' "III" and "The Courage of Others", by Midlake. They are both albums that reward, no, demand, repeated listening. Although I am totally into the Midlake at the moment (it was wrong of me to say that it doesn't have a "Roscoe"; it may actually have two or three), I suspect that it is the Espers record that may turn out to be the more lastingly "significant" of the two.

As we turn into the back straight of 2010, however, a third horse, which has been slowly creeping through the field, its vision obscured by the other contenders, has suddenly broken into a gallop and overtaken them all. That record is "Swim", by Caribou.

It has taken me some time to get past the fact that "Swim" isn't "Andorra" part two. It has none (or very little) of the luscious pastoral electro/acoustic psychedelia of that album. My early impression was that this quality hadn't actually been replaced by anything at all in particular, and thus I struggled to find a way in. But piece by piece I found myself being drawn to it, and now I'm in the kind of phase that I don't get into all that often these days, where this is frequently the only record I want to listen to. A similar thing happened last year with the Junior Boys' "Begone Dull Care", and so it was surprising, but also perhaps inevitable, that Mr Greenspan's (no, not that one) name turns up on the credits for "Swim". There is a similar attention to detail in the two albums, a sense that each individual sound has been given a serious amount of care and attention, and tweaked until, like the littlest bear's porridge, it is Just Right. You wouldn't want this quality in everything you listen to, but when it works it's more than a bit special.)

"Swim" may not be a terribly "immediate" or "direct" album, but, like "Andorra", it turns out to be totally psychedelic in its own way, and is almost overstuffed with wonderful passages, sounds and ideas. I still find it impossible to imagine that Caribou's songs are constructed, essentially, out of bits of other people's records: they seem too organic for that. Ah, the mysteries of the creative process. I suspect if I were a musician I would be even more in awe of this record than I am.

"Album of the year", then? What about Joanna Newsom, I hear you cry. Tracey Thorn. Real Estate. Tunng. Numerous African reissues. Tindersticks. The Magnetic Fields. The Fall. (It's been a long, long time since I would have seriously considered nominating a Fall album as the best record released during a particular year, but there is none of the usual best-record-since-whatever over-egging about "Your Future Our Clutter", it's a genuinely urgent, intense, compelling marvel.) Woods. Emeralds. Jeremy Jay. Tame Impala. "Total 11". jj. Ellen Allien. The Books. Julian Lynch. Lindstrom and Christabelle. Max Richter. A few others that I have no doubt forgotten to mention. And what about the unknown albums still to be released in 2010? (Not forgetting, either, the other two records mentioned earlier.) And that's without even acknowledging the existence of the elephant in all of our living rooms. [Hey, wait, James Murphy might be a big bloke, but he's not *that* big -- Ed.]

But this is where I sit, or "swim", for now.

Version therapy

*Yawn*. Another Lee "Scratch" Perry release. How many thousand must there be now? New. Old. Repackaged. Dubious. Authentic. Troubling. We have had them all.

If I am being honest, my own preference is for the cavernous depths and endless spatial vistas conjured by the likes of King Tubby (and, leaping into the present, the almost palpable echo chamber created by Rhythm & Sound -- not even Jamaican) to the bizarre sound effects, scatological ravings and cow noises so often tossed off by Perry.

But you can't deny Perry's power and influence, and I do swear by "Arkology". And original seventies releases such as "Super Ape" and "Blackboard Jungle Dub". And numerous albums with his name on them somewhere, such as "Party Time", by The Heptones, and "War Ina Babylon", by Max Romeo. And countless Black Ark singles.

And so here we are in 2010 and Pressure Sounds, the venerable reggae reissue and archival label, gives us twenty more Perry dubs, packaged together under the title "Sound System Scratch". If I understand the back story properly, they are all culled from a collection of one-off dub plates never before heard outside of the Jamaican sound systems of the seventies.

I first caught the dub bug in about 1979, the tail end of the period documented on this disc, when I started listening to what was then 2JJ, which ran a "spiritual" program of a Sunday evening. (If churches played music like this they would have a few more parishioners.) There wasn't much scope for acquiring Jamaican records in Fish Creek, so with the reinvention of 2JJ as 2JJJ this music was lost to me until the reggae reissue boom (which ran in a curious parallel with the lounge music boom) of the 1990s.

Hence there are many people, I am thinking in particular of the Murray Nashes of the world (he being the only person I have ever met who actually had a lot of this stuff on original, ganja-soaked vinyl), who are much better educated about this kind of thing than I am, but I think it's fair to say that I have dived a reasonable distance below the aqueous surface of seventies dub. And I am very pleasantly surprised to be able to say that (1) I don't recall ever having heard any of these particular tracks before and (2) they are all first rate. First rate, I tell you.

Many of the basic rhythm tracks will be familiar to regular listeners. "Big Neck Cut", for example, comes from a track known to me as "Dreadlocks In Moonlight", which appears on "Arkology", and which itself is a close relative of Junior Murvin's "Police and Thieves", and the approximately twenty thousand "versions" that song has begotten. (Or is that "begat"? Begorrah!) This version, though, has Perry's own vocals replaced by some lovely female chorusing. "Lama Lava Mix One", the longest track here at five and a half minutes, is not a million miles away from "Onward Christian Soldiers" (and features the smooth tones of Augustus Pablo's melodica). "The Rightful Organiser" comes from what I think is a Pablo track, but I can't quite put a finger on it. (It's one of the relatively few times that Perry puts himself into the mix, and on this occasion it works well, probably because it's the exception rather than the rule.) And so on.

Much of the disc is resolutely lo-fi, which perhaps confirms the putative nature of the source material. Perry's ego and tiresome self-promoting is put aside and his considerable talents are applied, instead, in the service of figuring out just how far "out" this music could go while still being recognisable as "music". The opening track, "Dub Plate Pressure", at times approximates metal sheets of white noise. And there is not a fake cow noise to be heard.

All in all, this is solid gold Lee "Scratch" Perry from start to finish. As such, it qualifies as perfect Friday afternoon listening around these parts.

Song of the day

"My Love", by Paul McCartney & Wings. When I was nine years old, and I only knew this as a song on the radio, I thought that it was the greatest song I had ever heard. It extracted from me emotions I never knew I had.

In 2010, it tells me two other things: first, how much of McCartney there must be in "Abbey Road"; and second, that when McCartney gets it right, it can't be gotten any more right.