Song of the day

"Black Eyed Dog", by Nick Drake.

I can never listen to Nick Drake without feeling a nagging, non-specific sense of guilt. This is crazy, of course: there wasn't anything I could have done to change the course of his short life. Heck, I was ten years old when he died, had never heard of him, and anyway at that time his music hadn't even travelled very far beyond the few people who had a hand in it being recorded and released; it certainly wouldn't have reached the ears of a child in South Gippsland. (And even if it had, what would that child have made of its quiet, non-demonstrative, haunting tones?)

(In fact, my first exposure to the name "Nick Drake" came in about 1977 (or so), when I read a review of "Bryter Later" in the Australian fortnightly music paper RAM; it must have been either a reissue or, perhaps, the first Australian release. I don't remember getting any sense from the review of it being anything other than a new record. For whatever reason, lost to time now, the review stayed with me. (Thanks for that and much else besides, Anthony O'Grady.))

Nevertheless, his story permeates his music, even forty years later. Who, after all, was Nick Drake? Aside from the records, other recorded fragments, photographs, and reminiscences (and as much as I worship at the feet of Joe Boyd, I can't help suspecting that his own memories might, intentionally or otherwise, have been  twisted by decades of external hagiography), we only really have mythology.

My best guess is that, to paraphrase Brian Wilson, Nick Drake not only wasn't made for his times, he wasn't really made for any times. Living in the world, at least the world outside of his family home, seems to have been too much for him. So, if he had had during his lifetime the success that his music obviously deserved (and has posthumously attained), what then? The evidence suggests that he wouldn't have handled it. His story was destined not to have a happy ending. Perhaps the best he (we?) could have hoped for would have been three albums released to moderate acclaim and sales, followed by more of the same, to similar or reduced sales, a common enough career arc for a musician (think Ron Sexsmith; or Aimee Mann; or, maybe even, Elvis Costello). Maybe there would have been a latter-day hipster-driven revival, a la Johnny Cash or John Fahey.

But that's not what happened. Those three albums remain, they have always been with us, they have never been diluted by whatever may have happened next because nothing happened next.

Well, nothing except the Four Last Songs. They first surfaced, at least officially, on the vinyl box set "Fruit Tree", which was released in 1979 and then released again, in slightly different form, in 1986. I spent many afternoons gazing wistfully at the latter, perched, as it was, on a high shelf beside the counter at Discurio Records in the city, but, as a poor university student, I had no hope of ever being able to buy it. By then Nick Drake was a name that you saw around, but, in that pre-internet age, it wasn't easy to actually hear the music. That didn't happen for me until some time later, when I picked up a copy of the 1986 "Time of No Reply" CD compilation. So to my ears "Black Eyed Dog" sits (un)naturally as a part of the Nick Drake discography. It wasn't until later again that I learnt the real story of it, and of the other three stark, desolate, desperate pieces of music that were recorded at the same time. They are all the sound of a door closing.

"Black Eyed Dog", I think, hits hardest of all of them, harder than any other piece of music I can think of. I cannot listen to it without involuntarily shuddering. And yet I cannot not listen to it. Look, here I am doing it again. Like a rabbit in the headlights, waiting to be struck down but unable to move; mesmerised.

Song of the day

"December Ice", by The Bats.

Sneaking out under the radar, as music from New Zealand has a tendency to do, this lone song was released by The Bats on iTunes late last year with virtually no fanfare whatsoever. And yet The Bats continue to do what they have always done: make music because they can, while there is still time, and with passion and enthusiasm. Because they mean it, man. It is a song that was "left off" their last album (suggesting, wrongly, that is an inferior cast-off). "Free All The Monsters" found them mining a particularly rich vein (and, in "Simpletons", digging up one of the standout songs of their long history). And "December Ice", being in the nature of "more where that came from", is worthy of your attention. (The suggestion on the souncloud spiel that there are unreleased "space jams" from the same sessions seems too good to be true, and may well be a wind-up aimed at people like me. Thanks, fellas.)

1963 New Yorker cover of the day

Heeere, kitty kitty kitty ...

Cover artist is Andre Francois, who was responsible (it says here) for 54 New Yorker covers (that's over a year's worth!), but this was only his second. (He also did this pretty extraordinary cover for "Lord of the Flies".)

(Click for an enlargeable version. If that works.)

Snowboarder of the day

Ah, yes. Chumpy Pullin. The snowboarder so rad (or is that "gnarly"?) they named a song after him.

(Actually the song came first, but chronology is just a bourgeois construct.)

He carried the flag for Australia at the Winter Olympics. He was our gold medal hope. He crashed out in the quarter finals. He was subjected to media obloquy. Did he ask for any of it? We are so quick to put our sporting heroes up on a pedestal, and even quicker to sink the boot in when they don't live up to our inflated armchair expectations. It would be nice if commentators (amateur as well as professional) sometimes thought before they spoke/wrote, and kept in mind that there is a human being, with all of a human being's usual vulnerabilities and frailties, behind the media image.

And anyway, not that I know anything about snowboarding, but the four-man snowboard cross looks more like a crapshoot than a sporting event: how well you do seems to depend more on what happens to the person in front of you than on your own skill. Roll on 2018.

"Chumpy", by The Clean. 

Sound of the day

"Bremen Nacht", by The Fall.

No drum program ever written, or that will ever be written, can hope to emulate the sheer physicality of the thwack of the snare drum in "Bremen Nacht".

The 2:40 mark is where it really happens. But it is kind of all through it. (YouTube is probably not the best place to hear it, obviously. But what can you do? Hopefully you have your own copy of "The Frenz Experiment".)

Hypothetical mixtape: March 2013

Done in some haste. Please be gentle.

"Mind Mischief (The Field Remix)", by Tame Impala. Tame Impala take sixties psychedelia and play it through a filter of the blazing Perth summer sun. (I have never been to Perth, so I don't know if that is even true; this past summer the temperatures in Canberra seem to have been much higher. Perhaps Tame Impala should move here for maximum effect.) The Field take "minimal techno" of the Kompakt variety and leave it out in the weather for what sounds like years, until everything that caused the music to be in any way recognisable has been weathered away, leaving just the barest outline. (This may not sound like a compliment, but give him a listen and you'll see that it might be.) This ten-minute remix pitches the two of them against each other. Music is the winner.

"You Are My Destiny", by The Juan Maclean. It's been a while between drinks for our old pals The Juan Maclean. So what if this sounds like the second cousin twice removed of "Happy House"? It's a strong blood line.

"Outside Amore", by Man Tear. This is a strange one. It is naggingly familiar, but I can't for the life of me figure out why. I hate that. It's on DFA, but doesn't really sound like it. From Sweden, but doesn't really sound like that, either.

"King of Hearts (Richard X Remix Edit)", by Cassie. Clearly, Richard X still has whatever he had in the mid-00s that got me fired up about music again after so many years in the wilderness.

"Beautiful Son", by Peaking Lights. This song is equal parts mystery and beauty. That seems to be a perfect ratio. Is it too late to declare this one of the best songs of 2013?

"Entertainment (Dinosaur Jr Remix)", by Phoenix. That might be what the label says, but what it really is is Dinosaur Jr covering a Phoenix song. Which is a pretty funny thing to imagine, but in practice it is a triumph: J Mascis & Co ratchet down the pop intensity of the original, in the way that really only they, the Original Slackers, can; and in doing so they get to the heart of the song in a way that the original actually doesn't. Well, that's what I think.

"Journey From Eden", by The Steve Miller Band. You probably know The Steve Miller Band from mid-seventies radio staples "The Joker" and "Fly Like An Eagle". But sniffing around the internet reveals that they are a band with a rich history (former members included Jim Keltner, Ben Sidran and one Boz Scaggs) and no shortage of drama. This is the last long on their seventh (!) album, and their last before a serious accident, and perhaps a few moments of contemplation, saw Miller move in the direction of more immediate thrills and, at least from this vantage point, significantly more radio play. Good as those hits are, it is possible to argue that they never got better than this.

"Aegean Sea", by Abel. This turns out to be an "edit" (remember what I taught you?) of a track of Smokie's very first album, from 1975. The edit rocks. Which is not something I would usually find myself saying about Smokie. ("Alice! Alice! Who the %$#@ is Alice?")

"Up In a Puff of Smoke", by Polly Brown. Many of you will not remember this song, as it wasn't particularly successful as a single. But it is firmly imprinted on my own memory on account of its having appeared on "Whopper", a 1975 Australian Polydor "original hits original artists" compilation that I played to death. (Not to be confused with "Ripper".) Looking through the track listing today is a bit deflating, although it does have a run of highly listenable songs that cover much of its second side. (It also, I suspect, would have been my first introduction to Kraftwerk, so I owe it an enormous debt on that score.) If you had a hankering to listen to The Supremes you would probably be better off listening to The Supremes, but I have a soft spot for this song, and it brings an ever-so-gentle hint of glam rock into the mix.

"Tell Me What You See In Me", by Sandy Denny and The Strawbs. The Strawbs had so many line-up changes over the years that their Wikipedia entry contains a diagram that is so complicated that it is fathomable only by academics and superior alien life forms. Another of the long, long list of things I didn't know was that amongst the many members of The Strawbs (aside from Rick Wakeman) was Sandy Denny -- evidently for a brief period in early 1968. But not so brief that they didn't have time to record an album (in Denmark!), an album that wasn't released until 1973, by which time The Strawbs had well and truly moved on (and Sandy Denny, of course, had made a name of her own with Fairport Convention and Fotheringay). I have never heard a Sandy Denny song that I didn't immediately love, and this is no exception. They also do "Who Knows Where The Time Goes", but the Fairport version of that song is so ingrained on my consciousness that I can't really entertain any other version, even if Sandy herself is singing it.

"95c", by Valerie Lemercier. By approximately 10 seconds into this song, you will be convinced that the ghost of el records hangs over it. And you will be right: the credits reveal that el mainstay Louis Philippe appears here on the guitar. Meanwhile production duties are by the seemingly ubiquitous (at least in France) Bertrand Burgalat. It's very sweet: ye ye pop in the late 20th century.

"Idle I'm (Colorama Coloured In Remix)", by John Stammers. There's no words I can type that would in any way add to your enjoyment or understanding of this song. The download link may still be up: try it for yourself.

"The Captain of Her Heart", by Double. It may be because I am one quarter Swiss that this song hits me where I live. Ostensibly garden variety mid-80s pop, there is something slightly mysterious lurking behind its surface sheen that I find attractive. (Also, the opening couple of bars put me in mind of the underrated work Chris Abrahams did with Melanie Oxley a few years back.) Curiously, this song was mentioned in this seemingly unrelated article on Pitchfork just the other day.

"Letter of Intent (Mark McGuire Road Chief Remix)", by Ducktails. My take on it is that Mark McGuire dons his Road Chief hat whenever he wants to venture down the highway of seventies/eighties FM radio. Thus he drives what was, in its original form, a perfectly good if rudimentary fragile pop song out into the land of lush arrangements and a particular kind of tone such as you might (hope to) find over the closing credits of a particular type of American independent film. A road movie, maybe.

Recipe of the day

Take one part Gun Club:



Add one part Cocteau Twins:



And, hey presto, you get "Yellow Eyes":



Way back in the mid-1980s, I listened to a lot of Gun Club, and I also had a possibly unhealthy obsession with Cocteau Twins, in particular the "Treasure" LP. But those were two worlds that I would never have imagined might one day collide. I mean, come on. Southern gothic screech-and-wail versus ethereal English gothic? (Okay, so they had "gothic" in common, but those days who didn't?)

Hence, to say that the news that one day filtered through that Robin Guthrie would be producing what was to become the fourth Gun Club album, "Mother Juno", took me by surprise has an element of understatement to it. I had a moment of cognitive dissonance. To be honest, I wasn't even sure I was looking forward to the result; I kind of liked them both the way they were (although by 1987 I was forming the view that both of their best days may have been behind them).

The resultant album, while patchy, had high points that were higher than I could ever have imagined. "Yellow Eyes" was undoubtedly the centrepiece, and if you had taken the time to imagine what a mash-up of The Gun Club and Cocteau Twins might sound like, "Yellow Eyes" is what you would have come up with. It is uncanny. I swear that it isn't only my imagination that leads me to think that at various points Jeffrey Lee Pierce even sings like Elizabeth Fraser. (Of course, it is also possible that I have taken leave of my senses.)

And to top it all off, Blixa Bargeld, then of the Bad Seeds (another of my mid-80s obsessions), floats some unworldly guitar across the surface of the thing.

Song of the day

"New Puritan (Peel Session)", by The Fall.

(It may be that I am the sole surviving Australian subscriber to eMusic. (I keep hanging on, waiting to see if they offer me a tidy sum to get me off their books.) I mention the following on the off chance that there are others out there, stranded on this antipodean desert island.)

Occasionally real bargains can be found on eMusic. John Coltrane's European Tours box set cost me practically nothing. The Tindersticks box of Claire Denis film scores likewise. (I could once have picked up Gas's "Nah Und Fern" for not much more, but it slipped through my fingers.)

As of right now, you can pick up The Fall's "Complete Peel Sessions" for $2.99. That is not a typo. Six discs' worth of music, seven hours of Mark E Smith in your face. It's a lot less than the sixty-odd I paid for the box itself, and the booklet you can probably find scanned somewhere on the internet anyway. You should, of course, go for this with your Ears Pinned Back.

The box set as a whole is like an alternative history of The Fall. In fact, if you didn't have the albums you may well be better off with the Peel Sessions alone. The chronology was unfortunately truncated by the loss of Peel himself, but it gets you through to 2004, which ends a pretty fair run. What I find fascinating about these (also the Magazine Peel Sessions, as I'm sure I've said before) is that they capture the band in a different way from the records: in The Fall's case, live and direct, without the audio smudging and deliberate sabotage to which Smith has always been prone. This makes the records fun, of course, but often at the expense of the music, so it's nice to be able to hear what was -- is -- underneath it all one of the great rock bands, and a band that, notwithstanding its countless lineup changes, never sounded like anything but itself.

"New Puritan" a la Peel has fascinated me ever since I first heard it on the "Kicker Conspiracy" double seven-inch. Mark E Smith here is biliously spitting the words out, as if they are a cancer in his mouth that he has to get rid of. Meanwhile behind him that juggernaut of a riff rolls on, and on, and on. Seven minutes is both too much to bear and barely enough.



Bonus beats: the video for "Wings". It never gets old. Phew, rock 'n' roll.



More bonus beats: Donnie Sutherland interviews Mark E Smith and Marc Riley. Really.

Song of the day

"Green, Green Rocky Road", by Dave Van Ronk.

If you had gone to see "Inside Llewyn Davis" expecting something along the lines of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", you would have soon been somewhat perplexed. Notwithstanding its musical substructure, this is not that kind of Coen Brothers film. Rather, it's another of their somewhat abstracted time-and-place-rooted character studies, along the lines of "The Man Who Wasn't There" and "A Serious Man" (and, let's suggest, "Barton Fink" -- you could probably add "No Country For Old Men" in there, too, although it bleeds heavily into another type of Coen Brothers film entirely): character studies in which the leading character is not particularly likeable, or charismatic, or even interesting, and in which therefore the life of the film occurs in the characters and situations that the leading character walks through (or into) or bounces off. And those characters and situations, this being the Coen Brothers and all, are exceedingly rich. (Two words: John Goodman.)

The early 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene plays the role that late 1960s Jewish Minnesota played in "A Serious Man". It's a fascinating world to be sucked into, with its curious mixture of idealism, opportunism, hucksterism, patronage and abject poverty. Underneath it all is the music: "traditional" folk music circa 1960 isn't something I generally turn to for pleasure -- it seems too earnest, colourless and worthy in the light of what Bob Dylan (who "appears", inevitably, at the end of this film) was soon to do to it -- but there is a lot to enjoy about it here, not least Oscar Isaac's golden voice.

But the best part of the film for me, musically speaking, comes during the closing credits, when we get Dave Van Ronk playing and rasping his way, exquisitely, through "Green, Green Rocky Road" (a song which Oscar Isaac turns his hand to earlier in the film, as if to further cement the already fairly firm connection between the fictional Llewyn Davis and the real-life Van Ronk (the existence of this album, and the prominent appearance of a cat on its cover, are not likely to be coincidences)).

Hypothetical mixtape: February 2013

Well, aside from starting with a song called "Sunrise" and ending with a song called "Ending", this playlist, in accordance with usual practice, comes to you with absolutely no rhyme or reason. And it is a year old. 

"Sunrise", by Cherubin. Now is probably the right time to mention that, for the whole of 2013, the dj/crate digger known as Turquoise Wisdom blogged one song each weekday, and given the excellence of many of his choices you will see an unhealthy number of those songs in these playlists until we get to 2014. (I'm feeling its loss already.) (He did it as a New Year's Eve resolution, which is silly enough; that he pulled it off without faltering is just insane. We are grateful for his efforts. And his good taste.) This is one of those songs. It's from 1974, the year that just keeps on sounding better and better.

"Houses", by Elyse. What do the words "guitar by Neil Young" mean to you? To me they mean "listen up". The song itself is otherwise perfectly fine but not shout-from-the-rooftops-great hippy-trippy folk rock, typical of its vintage (1968), but it is certainly livened up by the short blasts of "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" Youngian electric-guitar splendour.

"L'Espace D'Une Fille", by Jacques Dutronc. This is like listening to Serge Gainsbourg's slightly more burnished, slightly less nicotine-stained, cousin. The echoes of this song in Serge's own "Harley Davidson", recorded and released as a single by Brigitte Bardot only a year later, are either coincidental or not. And Serge isn't saying.

"Hesitation", by Honk. The way this song starts, you think you are in for another unwanted jazz-lite-fusion outing. And that sax line does reappear throughout the song, but elsewhere it's a kind of Doobie / Alessi Brothers vocal harmony extravaganza (from 1974, as if you hadn't guessed) and the world and its hard drives have always got room for one more of those.

"The Good, The Bad and The Ugly", by Llans Thelwell and His Celestials. True story: In olden times, when my associate and I spent unhealthy amounts of time digging through piles of other people's discarded vinyl in search of Arthur Lyman, Martin Denny and Manuel records (and the elusive V Balsara), we took home more than enough Klaus Wunderlich albums to last any normal person a lifetime. (We still have them all.) The back covers of some of these records gave, tantalisingly, the track listings on other of his records, and we were particularly intrigued that one of the "Hammond Pops" series that we didn't have (No. 3, to be precise) included Klaus's take on "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly". (You can see how that would get us excited.) Thus, we were beside ourselves when, one day, "Hammond Pops 3", with its typically alluring cover photo, appeared, like a miracle, before our very eyes. It seemed too good to be true. And it was. Foolishly not checking the record itself before rushing it home, we discovered to our disappointment that someone had put a different "Hammond Pops" volume in the wrong sleeve. And so our search continues. In the meantime, it is nice to have this ska/bluebeat version to get us through the lean times.

"Love Can Run Faster", by Robert Palmer. I don't even like this. So what is it doing here? Because I have been searching for a long time for the reputed song that Robert Palmer recorded with Lee "Scratch" Perry at the Black Ark. And this is it. Musically, it is a typical Black Ark production. There is nothing wrong with that. But Palmer's white-boy soul shtick over the top of it isn't a good fit. I much prefer Perry in an all-Jamaican context and I much prefer Palmer on his album of the following year, "Clues". C'est la vie.

"Fool for a Valentine", by The Gist. Following the demise of Young Marble Giants after one (perfect) album, Stuart and Philip Moxham re-emerged as The Gist. They released one album, and it seems that Philip then went off on his own to do a number of different things, some surprising (David Thomas and the Passengers, in the company of one Richard Thompson) and some not so surprising (Weekend; a stint with Everything But the Girl), leaving Stuart as the gist of The Gist (ahem). This song, the A side of a Rough Trade single (of course), is, therefore, Stuart Moxham's baby. It is also the final Gist record. It is, too, an example of white-boy reggae done right, perhaps because its gentle lilt doesn't seek to draw too much attention to itself.

"Trees and Flowers", by Dum Dum Girls. Generally speaking, I ain't got time for cover versions of the songs that mean the most to me. "Trees and Flowers", by Strawberry Switchblade, is one of those songs. Hence, I listened to this cover through gritted teeth. I got to the end, listened again, and then again. The world didn't end. Maybe it began again. This is a very different take from the original: it is a bit like being submerged in an densely glooping sonic bath. (If that could be a good thing.) Following on from their take on The Smiths' "There is a Light That Never Goes Out", one can only conclude that Dum Dum Girls have a way with other people's songs.

"Blind Myself", by Rosemary. And so we find ourselves back in the wondrous days of do-it-yourself bands playing untameable analogue synths and rogue drum machines, a lone female vocalist shining a beam of light into the darkness. Except this song is from 2013. Incidentally, it reminds me of what I loved so much about the early Nite Jewel records.

"(Don't) Turn Me Away", by Rexy. And speaking, as we were, of Young Marble Giants, this might be what YMG would have sounded like had they used electronic instruments rather than, y'know, like, guitars and stuff. (Okay, they did use a drum machine.) This, like all of the best records, is from 1980. I wish I had known about it at the time, but better late than never I guess.

"Fingers", by Cyclopean. This is on the Spoon label, the home of your Can records. Which isn't so surprising, because, as well as Burnt Friedman, Cyclopean features Jaki Liebezeit and Irmin Schmidt, names you might know. "Fingers" is a lovely piece of music in its own right; but it also puts me in mind of a couple of things: (1) not surprisingly, the "Snake Charmer" EP, from 1983, which also featured Liebezeit along with Holger Czukay (another member of the Can axis); and (2) surprisingly, last year's album by Dawn of Midi (I am thinking in particular of the attenuated string sound -- superficially tagged as "Eastern" -- that is common to both records).

"Modern Driveway", by Luke Abbott. Come for the gorgeous chord sequences. Stay for the, um, gorgeous chord sequences. This knocks me over in a similar way to the way Caribou's "Swim" album knocks me over. I probably could have expressed that better.

"White Noise", by Disclosure. By the end of 2013 Disclosure had acquired ubiquity. But back in March, not so much. See how hip we are? (After the event ...)

"Magnifique", by Jersey Devil Social Club. AKA Morgan Geist, of whom we haven't seen so much lately. "Magnifique" was a disco burner from 1979. Is this a cover? An edit? Part of me has to know; the rest of me just wants to dance.

"Pearly Dew", by Lena Hughes. Queen of the flat top guitar, apparently. Reissued on the Tompkins Square label, so you know it's good.

"Wakin on a Pretty Day", by Kurt Vile. "Kurt Vile", it seems, is his real name. That may well be all you need to know. ("Wakin" does not have an apostrophe on the record cover. You probably don't need to know that.) This song, which stretches out over ten minutes on a laid-back yet industrious bed of electric guitars, seems to have no tickets on itself. It exists for its own sake. I don't know if I've heard a better song in a long while. 

"Ending", by Bruce Langhorne. Langhorne, I discovered when looking into who the hell he is, seems to have worked with Pete Seeger, so it's timely, if coincidental, that this list goes up in the same week that Seeger left us. This haunting piece is from the soundtrack to Peter Fonda's 1971 film "The Hired Hand", although the soundtrack seems not to have been released until the early oughts, courtesy of Blast First records (another label to which we owe so much). It would be perfect for a warm night around an open campfire, although it might scare the children.

Song of the day

"The Philosophers Trap", by Marsen Jules.

Every year around this time, a new volume in Kompakt's "Pop Ambient" series of compilation albums appears. This year's is hot off the presses (or digital simulacrum) and contains the usual mix of familiar and unfamiliar names. Most likely the track that will be of most interest to the curious is the Gas remix of a piece from the most recent album by The Field. Good (perhaps surprisingly so) as that is, though, the one that has caught my ear is "The Philosophers Trap", by Marsen Jules. There's not much to say about it other than that it is strongly evocative of the instrumental half of David Sylvian's "Gone To Earth", a place that it is always nice to visit. So this is like looking at your old holiday snaps. Maybe.

It doesn't seem to be on the internet (yet), but you can listen to a fragment of it over at Kompakt's Soundcloud page.

Song of the day

"Spring Rain", by The Go-Betweens.

So anyway, when I mentioned Jonathan Demme's "Married to the Mob" while discussing Scorsesean uses of music in film it is quite possible that what I actually had in mind was "Something Wild", Demme's previous film, and in particular its use, at a perfect moment, of the exhilarating strains of "Spring Rain". The song then was brand new, so there was also a major element of surprise in hearing it used by a Hollywood director, at a time when The Go-Betweens where critics' darlings but commercial nobodies.

I must confess, I haven't followed Demme's career beyond "Married to the Mob". But I stuck with The Go-Betweens, like glue, until the (tragic) end. Come to think of it, there is probably a Hollywood narrative arc that could be teased out of the story of The Go-Betweens. Or at least Sundance. (Any happy ending would have to be invented.)

This song came out in 1986 (as did the film). But watching this video it seems like yesterday.

*Sigh*



Bonus beats: Jonathan Demme directed this video of New Order's "Perfect Kiss". There is nothing particularly "arty" about it, but it is, in its own modest way, perfect. (It also has its own catalogue number. How Factory is that?)

Song of the day

"10538 Overture", by The Electric Light Orchestra.

So I went to see "American Hustle", the new film by David O. Russell. You have probably seen it already, or heard so much about it that you may feel you don't even need to. (You should override such feelings. You do need to.) It's easy, when watching a movie that flows along so effortlessly, to overlook the effort that is actually involved. To convincingly recreate an entire world, to make characters that are sufficiently real that you care about them, and their all-too-human weaknesses/unpredictability/inconsistencies, to construct a story that, even though it is close enough to a true story that we probably know how it ends up, nevertheless has us sitting on the edge of our seats for two-and-a-quarter hours, well, I was in awe from the very first shot. How did he do that?

I'm no film critic. But I do like to slot things into little boxes. And this one, I would process as follows: it's like a mashup between Martin Scorsese's mobsters and David Mamet's con artists. In fact, I found myself thinking one thing more than any other throughout the film: that we don't really need Scorsese any more. This film is like his greatest movies, let's say "Goodfellas", "Raging Bull", maybe "Casino", but without the Joe Pesci character, so that those of us of squeamish dispositions don't have to spend much of the film either gripping the arms of our chairs or peeking through our fingers as somebody, y'know, gets their head stuck in a vice or their eyes poked out by a sharp pencil. (Purists may thus say the film doesn't go far enough, but they still have the Man Himself.)

The other thing Scorsesean about this movie is its use of music. (See also Jonathan Demme's "Married to the Mob".) Okay, mining the seventies you could hardly go wrong, but nevertheless you probably could. They don't. (There should be an Oscar category for Best Use of "I Feel Love" in a Motion Picture. This film is a shoe-in.) Case in point: "10538 Overture" (not, as my retarded brain insists on typing, "90210 Overture"), which appears just when you needed it to, even though you didn't realise that you needed it to.

Song of the day

"Heatwave", by The Jam.

It turns out that this year's annual visit to Melbourne and Geelong has fallen during a week that seems intent on breaking all kinds of temperature records. Where we stay in Geelong has air conditioning downstairs, which of course is a blessing (and a luxury we wouldn't have had if we were at home, where 40 degrees seems to be the baseline maximum temperature at the moment), but there is nothing upstairs except a few small windows (and no insulation either) and upstairs is where we are sleeping, or, rather, trying to. If I said it was like lying in a furnace you would think I was exaggerating. You would be wrong.

There are countless versions of this Holland-Dozier-Holland song out there. This one will always be the one for me.

YouTube of the day

"Yesterday", as performed by Pan's People and Jose Feliciano.



Because what else are you going to do in Geelong on a 40-degree day but watch old episodes of The Two Ronnies?

Song of the day

"The Fate of the Human Carbine", by Peter Jefferies and Robbie Muir.

This song is the sound of cassette tapes in padded postbags being stuffed into letter boxes in country towns in the late 1980s. It is the sound of that brief moment in time when I had disposable income and no responsibilities, and before both of my parents died, the family farm vanished from beneath my feet, and the Leongatha "scene" (all four of it!) fragmented, for various necessary reasons. (It was also before Adrienne wandered into the room, so the associations are not all one way.)

It is also, of course, one aspect of the sound of Dunedin. Peter Jefferies launched his solo career* (he had previously been in a band called This Kind of Punishment with his brother Graeme, who went on to his own solo career as The Cakekitchen) with an Xpressway cassette release, "The Last Great Challenge in a Dull World", which was accompanied by a seven-inch single that he did with Robbie Muir, of which this is the B side. The two releases were repackaged as one record, for the CD era, by Ajax Records, and have now been subject to the reissue treatment again, in the same iteration. It is well worth your time, especially if you have worn out the copy of X/WAY 16 that was lovingly packaged up, addressed, and mailed to you by the incomparable Bruce Russell.

Jefferies does loud and quiet. This is him doing quiet, but with an edge.



* This statement may be debatable; he released, with Jono Lonie, a vinyl LP, with paint-splattered cover, on the Flying Nun label, called "At Swim 2 Birds" (although its connection with the Flann O'Brien novel is unclear), in 1987, of which I was lucky enough to find a copy at the long-forgotten Exposure Records, which resided somewhat incongruously on Cotham Road in Kew, during the same brief idyllic time period. Or maybe his solo career can be traced back to the single he released with Shayne (Straitjacket Fits) Carter, "Randolph's Going Home", in 1986, also on Flying Nun (although Carter got top billing there). Really, it does your head in.

Hypothetical mixtape: January 2013

So, I had my chance to -- at last -- construct a 2013 playlist while it was still 2013. Seems like I missed it. Does that make this "nostalgia"? Happy New Year everyone.

"Dans Quelques Minutes", by Les Garcons. G'day Les. No, wait a minute, it's not that kind of Les: this is genuine French post-punk, so it must be something like "The Boys". Once again, I am amazed by how resonant the various guitar sounds of that era remain. I particularly love what this song does at around the 45-second mark, and regularly thereafter. Also notable for its largely instrumental "chorus". You don't hear many of those.

"Tomorrow (DFA Remix)", by Clinic. So this is five years old (and almost sounds as if it could have been 35). I was absorbing everything that bore the stamp of "DFA" at that time, so I don't quite know how this one got away from me. It's never too late, though, and, because DFA productions are an approximation of every record you have ever owned, they never sound dated. Note in particular the unexpected Sgt Pepper strings half way through.

"After You", by Pulp. And speaking of DFA, James Murphy had his hands all over the controls of this one, the welcome but unexpected return of Pulp, the thinking introvert's Britpop combo. At this point I feel the need to mention that Jarvis Cocker is best known in our household for his performance as Petey in Wes Anderson's "Fantastic Mr Fox".

"Second Summer", by YACHT. Our third and final DFA-related track for this month. I haven't ever really been grabbed by YACHT, partly, I must admit, because of the unnecessarily in-your-face ALL CAPITALS of their name, but I quite like this; it's a bit like the best bits of Hot Chip conjoined with a singer who shares the best bits of The Juan Maclean's Nancy Whang. Well, that's what I'm hearing.

"Flutes (A JD Twitch Optimo Remix)", by Hot Chip. In another month this may not have made the cut. But it seems to fit well with those other songs up there (and the one below), it is never less than listenable, and it is a song, or a piece of music, that allows you to nod your head while at the same time, if you focus closely, being impressed by the number of twists and turns it takes while remaining, at all times, manifestly the same song.

"Gun-Shy (Lindstrom Remix)", by Grizzly Bear. So anyway, I don't know anything about Grizzly Bear. But I think I know a bit about Lindstrom (given that he appears here probably two out of every three months). And this fits neatly, albeit in a curious way, into the Lindstrom storyline. Viz., a year or so back he put out an album called "Six Cups of Rebel", which appears to have been almost universally hated by Lindstrom fans. Not quite universally: I thought its combination of "I Feel Space" energy and prog rock excess suited him perfectly, and I still listen to it almost obsessively. (Almost?) He then put out (maybe as apology, maybe it was where he was going anyway) a short album (or long EP) which was mostly hailed as a relief, or a Stunning Return to Form, but which sounded to these ears ever so slightly like a backward step. So it was refreshing to pick up on this remix, which, in its rapid-fire chord changes, should serve as a signal for the haters to return to "Six Cups of Rebel" again: it might be the key that unlocks the mystery. (That there is no mystery.) Also, to the extent that "Six Cups" drew from the lessons of Todd Rundgren (which I think we can assume from the fact that he got Saint Todd to work a remix of one of its tracks), I am sensing a bit of the old Rundgren magic lurking in here, too.

"Everything Is Embarrassing", by Sky Ferreira. This is a fine pop song, structurally and emotionally strong enough to hold up the very heavy synths that might have caused a lesser song to collapse under their weight. The ghost of Lana del Rey (or is that Laura Palmer?) might be hiding in the shadows, but that's no bad thing.

"Closer", by Tegan & Sara. Whereas this one is more in the nature of pure ear candy. Which, of course, is no bad thing; and the chorus will have you doing windmills with your arms.

"In The Wild", by Alpine. Cowbells. Spanish guitars. Piano. A sprightly gait. Some vocal work of the highest order. Pop music can be simple, but it can also be inordinately complex, and just occasionally so complex that the fun is in hearing it all fuse together like an unexpectedly successful science experiment. And look, they're from Melbourne! Bonus points!

"Sleepover", by Hospitality. A pop song can also hit you with an emotional force so overwhelming you are left curled up in the corner, whimpering.

"Belinda", by Eurythmics. It wasn't until their second album, in 1983, that Eurythmics marched into Australia, burning everything in their path (in my head I can hear Gavin Wood on "Countdown" calling them "the Eurythmics", although there was never any "the" there), but their first album, from 1981, is a fascinating listen, with some surprising names in the credits, e.g. one half of Can; Robert Gorl, from DAF. "Belinda" is more straightforward post-U2 guitar pop/rock than, say, "Never Gonna Cry Again", but it has its own charm, which is not a word I would imagine I would ever feel tempted to use in relation to Bono. (Sorry, that slipped out.)

"Any Way That You Want Me", by Evie Sands. Gold-plated 1960s pop from the "Dusty In Memphis" / "Angel of the Morning" school. (Also recorded by The Troggs.) Is it just me, or does the photo on her Discogs page look uncannily like Hope Sandoval?

"Blue Flower", by Slapp Happy. And speaking of Hope Sandoval, general ignorance and specific failure to read and/or absorb liner notes led me to believe, until putting this playlist together, that "Blue Flower" was a Mazzy Star original. Not so. Now I'm not sure if it's only conditioning that leads me to prefer the Mazzy Star version or whether the slightly plodding nature of the original, and the singer's failure to be Hope Sandoval (not her fault!), would otherwise have caused me to give it not a second glance. So what is it doing here? Don't ask me!

"Longanisse", by The Liminanas. (Typography alert: there should be a tilde above the first "n" of "Liminanas".) Serge Gainsbourg's cigarette smoke hangs heavily over this song. On the one hand, that's a pretty brave thing for a French band to do. On the other hand, why the hell not?

"Paradise", by Crystal Syphon. This purports to be a reissue of an obscure record from the late sixties, by a band who otherwise disappeared without trace. But these days, who knows? It's hard to believe that a band with the word "Crystal" in the title could have been formed other than within the most recent band-name cycle. But this certainly sounds true to the Californian dream-psych sound of those long-ago days, so I am inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt. More fool me?

"Sommarlaten", by International Harvester. Swedish psychedelic rock from 1968. The electric guitar and saxophone parts (at least I think it's a saxophone, it's really quite difficult to tell) sound like they were recorded on "vintage" (= "old") equipment set up two rooms away from where they were played, via a echo-y linoleum-covered hallway, or maybe a disused water pipe. Needless to say, I love it. (Also kudos for having named -- technically, renamed -- themselves after a tractor manufacturer.)

"Grand Ma", by Tonic. A re-edit of a Grand Funk Railroad song, with only the best bits left in. Southern guitar boogie DNA.