Purchase Notes (7 CDs)

From Django last week:

  • Wilco: Being There
  • Unwound: Single History 1991-1997
  • Magoo: Vote The Pacifist Ticket Today
  • Aereogramme: Sleep And Release

From CD-WOW this week:

  • Radiohead: Hail To The Thief (I forked out £2 more for the limited edition version with special packaging. I know that’s sad sucker behaviour, but I figured I’m already forking out over £100 to go see them in Italy, and another £2 makes little difference to my sad geekness)
  • Four Tet: Rounds
  • Mogwai: Happy Songs For Happy People

Somebody please stop me.

Purty

Some music is real purty. These songs make me want to turn my face upwards and sway from side to side, kind of like a tipsy wolf baying at the moon:

  • Black Heart (Calexico). He sings “One man’s righteousness is another man’s long haul” and the high plaintive strings unfold, destiny rushing up to overwhelm you like a flash flood in the desert.
  • Don’t Worry Baby (Beach Boys). Brian Wilson, Brian Wilson, if you only knew what those soaring high falsetto notes in the verses do to me, you would take out a restraining order pronto. I just found out the song has an entire review to itself at AMG and is analysed in mindboggling musical detail elsewhere, so I will refrain from further gibbering and go try to solidify my melted innards.
  • Stephanie Says (Velvet Underground). That violin melody in the background is just indescribable. I probably shouldn’t be describing anything by (arguably) founding fathers of punk as a darling perfect little gem of a song you just want to keep close to your heart and love and cherish forever, but it really just is.

In case you were wondering, I am not drunk. These songs are just really that purty.

Dirty Drooling

This review of the re-release of Sonic Youth’s Dirty album got a lot of what I like about the album right.

It also got my salivary glands into hyperdrive with its description of all the extra goodies included in the re-release. In particular, I quote: “Then come the instrumentals. Almost an entire disc of them, in fact. Failed experiments, jams, dry run-throughs of songs that made it on to Dirty, with nary a word from Kim, Thurston or Lee. This is probably the re-issue’s main selling point. On most of their extended jams, Sonic Youth could work up a haze and mood that was positively unparalleled, and it’s fairly intriguing to have a disc where that haze is never broken by the group’s piercing vocals.”

A disc full of Sonic Youth jams, which sound catchy rather than like the mutant offspring of free jazz and a powerdrill, and no Kim vocals? I WANT.

The Path Of Least Resistance

I can only ever hold out for so long, and certainly against Django giving 10% off and free shipping for orders of $38 and above I was incapable of resistance. Witness my downfall:

  • The Decemberists: Castaways And Cutouts
  • Calla: Scavengers
  • Calla: Televise (although I wouldn’t have bought it if it wasn’t $6.99)
  • Magoo: The Soateramic Sounds Of Magoo (they didn’t stock Realist Week, their latest. Pity, because that’s the one I wanted. But after their Arts Cafe gig gobsmacked me so thoroughly I was prepared to buy anything by them.)
  • Black Heart Procession: Amore Del Tropico

And then I wandered over to CD-WOW for:

  • Calexico: Feast Of Wire
  • Prince: Greatest Hits :P

I still really really really want and will probably give in soon and buy:

  • Stephen Malkmus: Pig Lib
  • Prefuse 73: One Word Extinguisher
  • Lewis Parker: It’s All Happening Now
  • Matt Elliot: The Mess We Made

Elsewhere in music, Cry Me A River (Justin Timberlake) and Scandalous (Mis-Teeq) refuse to leave my head. Think I’ll download those.

KLF Uh Huh Uh Huh

It was 3 AM, and I’d been reading the same sentence on the page of my IT law textbook over and over again for what seemed like forever. This triggered obscure skippety synapses in the Random Useless Music Trivia part of my increasingly bored mind and I found myself typing “KLF 3 AM Eternal” into Google just for the hell of it, only to reel back in shock at the discovery that after all these years of thinking they were saying “ACtion so GROO-VEE”, they were actually apparently saying “ANcients of MU-MU”.

The Real Losers/The Project/Magoo (Arts Cafe, London)

These bands played at the Arts Cafe last Saturday. Here’s a quickie:

  • The Real Losers: competent if not exhilarating punk. Funny moments when audience members, hopefully their friends, would shout things like “Go on yer losers!” and “Fucking losers!”
  • A strummy singer guy from NYC: needs singing and guitar lessons, which I realize is quite damning criticism to give a strummy singer type of performer, but he was really no Elliot Smith.
  • The Project: electropoppyweirdrock featuring girl with disembodied voice duetting with big-haired expressionless guy. Fascinating and unusual listening even to this jaded ear.
  • Magoo: bloody amazing, I haven’t been so blown away by a band I wasn’t previously familiar with since Asian Dub Foundation three years ago taught me to like drum’n’bass. Capable of crashing walls of sound and fragile balladry with equal panache. Apparently a new album is due July 23rd, and I’m assuming they’d have played songs from it. It’s going on the wishlist.

Public Enemy (Forum, London)

I’ve seen Public Enemy live, muthafuckaaaaas……

Ahem. Sorry, I realize not everyone reading this will regard such experiences as seminal. But let me take this in steps. First, they’re PUBLIC ENEMY, MUTHAFUCKAAAAAAS! Second, back in the days when for me, buying an album, any album, was an investment of staggering financial significance, It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back was the first hip-hop album I ever bought. I know the same could be said for countless other wannabe music eclecticists who did….did..did…..did believe the hype, but let me point out that I spent these formative years in Singapore, where most Beastie Boys albums (and Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope, for crying out loud) were banned until recently. Dammit, it took real commitment for a kid like me in Singapore to become an annoying music snob. Third, it became increasingly obvious in later years that my taste in MCs seems to have been indelibly moulded by the stentorian sounds of Chuck D. To this day, there is no MC I find as compelling.

Public Enemy have still got it. By the time Nick, Benny and I had got absolutely knackered from the sheer intensity of their performance, Griff was still doing quintuple kung fu kicks across the stage, Flav was crowd-surfing, and Chuck D was still sprinting everywhere bellowing. Some bits got a little self-indulgent, like Flav promoting his new album, and going on and on and on at the end about how the war was fucked, and how we had to raise our fingers in the peace sign, and then join them to signify togetherness, and then clench our fists to signify the power of togetherness, but I guess that’s something you have to expect from a rap group which are about more than gold chains and ho’s.

Other worthy features of the evening were masterful performances from supporting acts Killa Kela and Kool Keith. Killa Kela’s gotten even better since the last time I saw him. I suppose people in the beatboxing loop would say he’s still got some way to go before he reaches the dizzy heights of Rahzel or Doug E. Fresh, but I ain’t never heard of them beatboxing speed drum’n’bass before, ‘aaaight? Also noteworthy was his rendition of Britney’s I’m A Slave 4 U complete with gasping orgasmic vocals.

So that was another ridiculously worthwhile gig for the list. I’m seeing El-P and Murs next week, and I haven’t even written about the amazingness of Magoo on Saturday. And Calla are playing at the Water Rats in May. And I’m seeing Nick Cave in June. There are many other ways in life of being a sad geek, but all this certainly works well enough for me.

Cheerleader/Corrigan (Water Rats, London)

I’d never heard of any of the bands playing at the Water Rats on Thursday night, but decided that for £4 and a jaunt just around the corner, I’d take the risk and believe Time Out, where Cheerleader were described as “Buzzcocks and Pixies-styled noise” and Corrigan as “zinging post-punk and cinematic post-rock…variously recalls Magazine, Slint, Joy Division and Shellac.”

Cheerleader put on a show that deserved a much bigger audience than the 20 or so people watching it. Good songs that were catchy but not samey, occasional Frank Black-esque screaming from the guy, strong charismatic lead vocals, and both vocalists sounded great together; in general a solidly competent performance head and shoulders above some of the crap I have found myself watching in disbelief in the past (Mull Historical Society, this means you).

Corrigan was…intriguing. I’ve never seen a band that seemed so disconnected from its lead singer. The rest of the band looked the indie-rock part, shaved heads, spiked hair, cool faded T-shirts etc. As for the lead singer, I have difficulty describing what he was like without being probably rather offensive, but if you’ve ever watched Will And Grace, picture Jack in an rock band.

None of the band ever seemed to look at each other, and completely ignored the antics of the lead singer and his attempts to commune with them. I didn’t quite see the influences of Slint or Joy Division that Time Out saw, but must admit ignorance with regard to Magazine and Shellac, who are still on my long list of Canonical Bands I Should Probably Get Around To Listening To At Some Point For The Sake Of My Own Indie Cred. All the same, the band played cohesively if non-interactively, and I mostly liked what I heard. My problem was that I didn’t think the lead singer’s vocals (kind of like Billy Corgan but without the edge) went with the band’s type of sound, which, come to think of it, would have worked well with an Ian Curtis type of voice (so maybe Time Out was right to use “post-punk” after all).

So I think what I’m left with for this band is that I won’t personally be keen on them unless they change their lead singer, but they do deserve to go on to bigger things. (If you think about it, I’m sure a lot of people watching the Smashing Pumpkins starting out could have said exactly the same thing.)

Four quid well spent.

Parentheses Before Sleeping

I was lying in bed the other night waiting to fall asleep, and the Sigur Ros () album was playing softly as it often does at these times. The first three songs of the album always seem to me to convey a sense of deep, unutterable yearning (I can see the movie soundtrack producers lining up already). A gentle tension starts to build when track 3 introduces that repeating (but not repetitive) sequence of notes on the piano; they ascend and descend over and over again, and even though the notes are always the same you get the feel of wafting slowly upwards, maybe following a loosely spiralling path, and when the piano finally comes in several octaves higher with the same sequence of notes I find myself imagining fireworks underwater, clarity found, and quiet contentment.

[Posterity music-geekness note: Strange. I was writing this, and also remembering how, at the time, my anticipation of that pivotal moment was affecting my ability to enjoy the music as it happened. This also happens with Orbital’s In Sides album, when I’m waiting for The Box Part 1 to segue into The Box Part 2.]

Spending To Save

The latest order from Django:

  • Owsley: Owsley
  • Migala: Arde
  • High Llamas: Gideon Gaye
  • Come: Near Life Experience
  • Sneakster: Pseudo Nouveau/Fifty Fifty
  • Six By Seven: The Closer You Get

Free shipping, man, free shipping! I’m spending to save.