Category Archives: Records

Podcast 40 – Even Moroder Best New Music
4
Dec

Well, forty podcasts in and this is the first time I’ve actually gotten my butt in gear and produced some notes to go with this week’s Beat City new music podcast.

This is the final all-new show of 2014 but there IS one more show coming up, which will be made up entirely of suggestions from YOU! If you want to contribute a track from 2014 you think should have a wider audience, the contact me via Twitter (@BeatCityTone)

Track 1 – Bob Mould – Kid With Crooked Face

Opening track on this week’s podcast is “Kid With Crooked Face” from Husker Du founder, workaholic and top geezer Bob Mould’s new album “Beauty And Ruin”, which, while it couldn’t be accused of carving out any new musical frontiers, does the job of reinforcing the old territory remarkably well.
Check out this link to the single ¬”I Don’t Know You Any More” and in particular the hilarious conversation at the beginning between Bob and the Decemberists’ Colin Meloy.

 

 

Track 3 – Run The Jewels – Angel Duster

From the best hip-hop album of the year “Run The Jewels 2”, intelligent lyrics, and a cornucopia of influences in the music ranging from dub to electronica to the human sound effects bloke off of the Police Academy films . In the words of El-P, haters “can all run backwards through a field of dicks”, a line I haven’t yet stopped chuckling about. For the final track “Angel Duster” check out the podcast but meantime this is the opening track “Jeopardy”

So many lush influences there musically. Guess the older you get (ages of ELP and Killer Mike?) ou absorb more styles of music, at least if you’re paying attention to what’s around you, you do. Passing over some of the ludicrous lyrics (check out the track Love Again for how NOT to rap about sex)

Track 4 – The Allah-Las – Had It All

Psych-pop rather than Psych-rock, this is the opening track from the album Worship The Sun “De Vida Voz”, and it owes more than a little to Love’s “Alone Again Or …”

Track 5 – Arctic Monkeys – Snap Out Of It

Sal’s Indietastic Classic for this week from the band who have gone from strength to strength since their first word-of-mouth-via-the-internet number one record I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor. I sometimes think I under-appreciate this band. It’s easy to take them for granted but take them and maybe Arcade Fire out of the stadium band equation and the landscape looks bleak indeed.

Track 6 – Fish Tank – Friends

And still the quality proggy math rock keeps coming. It’s a good time for bands who take influences from the early 70s prog scene – Trojan Horse, Knifeworld, Islet, and more – and Kent’s Fish Tank show huge promise on the basis of this single (available to download for FREE on bandcamp)

Here’s the video.

Track 7 – Juce – 6th Floor

This music is the true successor to the mighty Culture Club, you can stick yer clean cut Jungle nonsense. Proper old school funk, is this – and they can do it live, too, I seen ’em do it. Currently opening for Basement Jaxx on tour and hopefully set for great things in 2015.

Track 8 – Nadine Shah – Stealing Cars

Nadine Shah is warm, witty and engaging and her debut album Love Your Dum And Mad, apart from having the best title of 2014 was an assured debut.

This is the lead single from the new album which is coming early in the New Year.

Track 9 – Henry’s Funeral Shoe – Grown So Angry

Two piece from Llandudno. Old school. sure, taking their influences from the original, young and hungry R’n’B version of the ‘orrible Who.

Mixing it up era-wise this song has echoes of two separate Whos. The intro is pure “My Generation”, the backing is proper balls-to-the-wall Live At Leeds

Track 10 – Tiana – Fuck Like The World Ago End

I’ve loved everything I’ve heard from the “Dancehall Duchess” this year and its between this and Alkaline’s “Throat” for my favourite song about sex this year.

Run The Jewels can take note. THIS is how you make a record about shagging.

On a similar topic this is “Pum Pum Fat” from a couple of years ago. It’s quite rude.

Track 11 – Jennifer Lawrence – The Hanging Tree

Went to see the latest Hunger Games film last week and it was brilliant, apart from ending in the middle of the book to ensure the original trilogy of books becomes a cinema tetralogy and hence maximum geek-fleecing.

There’s a superb unexpected musical interlude where Caitness (Played by Jennifer Lawrence) starts singing this song which has become a symbol of resistance to the oppressor, and the song is taken up by all the freedom fighters, and theres not a dry eye in the house. Even Sal liked it, and she doesn’t normally Hold with This Sort Of Thing. Jen-La has a fair voice on her too, at least for this kind of song.

Track 12 – Sleaford Mods – 6 Horsemen (The Brixtons)

Tiswas is possibly their most popular track but this band is currently incapable of producing anything other than pure gold, and we should all cherish it, and them.
6 Horsemen is on the podcast. This is Sleaford Mods. Watch and Smile.

Listen to the EP and the LP. And their previous work

Sleaford Mods really ARE as good as everyone says they are. Angry, intelligent, funny, political, sweary, middle-aged, working class white hip hop.

Track 13 – Giorgio Moroder – 74 Is The New 24

In 1972 this was the second record I ever bought. It sounded like it would be something the Doctor and Jo Grant would listen to in the TARDIS.

In 1977 when all the young punks were supposed to loathe this sort of disco crap, nobody could really work up anything but deep love for this

The man responsible for both of these has a new album coming out in the New Year, and the podcast contains the lead track from it. I particularly love that he has the confidence to NOT chuck the kitchen sink at it production-wise in an effort to be modern and relevant. I guess once you’ve been an innovator ,you’re not going to be so keen to blindly follow trends.

And hey, if Dave Gilmour can get away with flogging the rotten corpse of the once-great Pink Floyd, who would begrudge Moroder doing the same AND MAKING A DECENT RECORD !

The veteran producer’s association with Daft Punk has made his latest album a going concern commercially (first in 30 years?) … for now this single is sparky, brilliant pop to stand alongside his finest 70s work, although of course his days of innovation are possibly behind him – this song definitely has echoes of I Feel Love. Check it out on the podcast.

Track 14 – Psyence – Phoenix

Next up Psyence. I heard about them completely randomly and accidentally via Twitter. They tweeted to say their 1300th follower would get a free single, I followed them immediately cos I do like free stuff, who doesn’t, and they replied to say I had JUST missed out. So, I am officially Psyence’s 1301th follower on Twitter and just to show there’s no hard feelings, the single Phoenix is on the podcast this week.

Meantime, this is one of their older tracks which sounds a BIT like the Donna Summer track linked to earlier, only with guitars and feedback and stuff as well.

Track 15 – GAPS – She Bears A Flower

This is so haunting and beautiful, it just gets into your head and won’t go away, like a disturbing but sexy dream.

Track 16 – Kate Rusby – Silly Old Man

Kate Rusby has a claim to possessing THE finest living voice of folk music. Her current album “Ghost” is brilliant – this is the title track, and check out the podcast for “Silly Old Man” which is equally great.

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Martin Garrix, save us all from John Lewis
19
Nov

God bless you, Radio One listeners. God bless the UK’s pop kids. There’s a lot of bad stuff said about the younger generation. A lot of bad stuff. About how they watch too much reality TV. How they all wear hoodies and pull knives on you at the drop of a hat.

And on a personal note, it is only the stupid law of the land that prevented me from disembowelling the vile little shits who threw an egg at me on Hallowe’en evening. An egg!

To be fair the little bastard managed to secure quite a painful direct hit from across the road, so perhaps if he’s reading this he could try his luck at the local cricket club and maybe try and channel his talents more usefully.

But this pales into insignificance beside the exhilarating, life-affirming event that took place on Sunday evening.

This is the record that kept that f***ing John Lewis song off Number One. We shall come to the responsible party for that vile excuse for music presently but first get your ears round this:

Brilliant. Just brilliant. Well done to everybody who bought it. Take a bow.

Now compare it with this

link

That’s right. The link doesn’t work. There is no link. There is no way I am giving this obscenity any further publicity.

If you MUST hear it again, you will have to search the Dark Net. I’ll still be here when you get back. Go. Quickly.

When I first heard it I thought it was bad. Very bad. I thought it was an attempt to emulate the succes of Hannah Peel’s wonderful take on eighties synth-pop classic “Tainted Love”.

THAT is how to do a quiet cover version. Beautiful, jangly, understated, but with a definite disturbing edge, hence FX using it for a trailer for American Horror Story.

Hannah Peel brings something new to a great song. The most famous version is of course by Soft Cell

but the original was by Gloria Jones

The cover of “Somewhere Only We Know” is neither beautiful nor disturbing. It is insipid, wet, and depressing.

A lot of people reckon the original by Keane is similarly wet, and sure, it ain’t exactly rock’n’roll, but I have to say  I love Keane. They never claimed or tried to be cool anyway.

When I first heard the cover I thought it sounded like a bad impression of Lily Allen.

So imagine my surprise when I found out it WAS Lily Allen.

What the hell happened to the bright, sparky poptastic talent who gave us this :

Jesus, Lily. You are better than this.

This is not about selling out. If you want to make shedloads of money from John Lewis, fine.

Just seems like an odd career move to even contemplate doing a song for an ad when you’re an established artist, and a good one.

And let’s leave out the “posh kid” jibes.

Take posh kids out of the equation and for starters there would be no British guitar based music at all apart from Kasabian. (* This is not strictly true. But still. *)

And breathe. Better now. Let’s end this on a positive note. This is Lily Allen when she was fab.

And I’m not even going to mention twerking. Whatever the hell that is.

Remembrance Day
11
Nov

Remembrance Day 11th November 2013

Just a short post today as the link below kind of says it all.

There is a huge tradition of war-related songs in folk music and a lot of them are included in Mike Harding’s special Remembrance Day podcast which you can download FREE here

Some of the tracks are not easy to listen to but they all have an important tale to tell.

Never forget.

Josefin Winther, Norway’s finest
10
Aug

Josefin Winther – Rattlesnake, Islington 6th August 2013

There’s a receptive crowd at the Rattlesnake in Islington, a small venue generally home to folky and other acoustic acts.

Josefin Winther is a Norwegian musician now resident in Brixton – good choice btw, South London, as the football song goes, is indeed wonderful. Josefin Winther has released a couple of albums

Classically trained, on the cello no less, she began writing her own songs in her early teens.

She has released two albums – 2008’s “Be Proud Or Stay Out Of It” is a straight band album while on the more recent  “Raising Armies” she mixes in some quieter stuff with the rawk, to the immense benefit of the excellent lyrics.

She’s been performing around clubs in London as a solo artist, but tonight she has the full band over from Norway.

She switches the mood seamlessly between rock numbers and slow solo number, helped by her between-songs patter which is both engaging and genuinely funny.

Standout track for me is “These Good Times Are Killing Me” which incorporates wordgames that Laura Marling would be proud of with an excellent Dave Gilmour-inspired guitar solo from guitarist / musical arranger Kristian Fanavoll Tvedt.

Comparisons to PJ Harvey and Patti Smith have been made but Josefin reckons she had never heard either artist until people told her that’s who she sounded like, and I can believe this.

There’s a lot more music in the backing than Patti ever manages. And the instrumentation and arrangements are more straight-ahead classic rock than Peej,

Like most singer-songwriters, there’s clearly a huge personal slant to the lyrics, and that’s where she really scores big – echoes of Springsteen, at least to these ears. (“I ain’t crying cos baby, I don’t cry”)

Here’s one of the solo numbers, “Change Of Heart”

And a newer song, with the fantastic title of “The Shit You Pulled Before”. I wouldn’t worry about the cussword limiting airplay too much, Josefin – we live in an era where Fuck Buttons can get on the radio. It’s all good.

 

Josefin Winther’s a special talent. Check her out.

 

The Great Lost Beatles Album of 1971
1
Mar

There are many, many “what if”s to ponder in Beatles history.

What if they hadn’t sacked Pete Best in favour of Ringo?

What if Brian Epstein had been straight and therefore less able to see the potential to create the world’s first boy band?

And what if John had never met Yoko? Well, for one thing, they would never have split up when they did.

In 1970 the four Beatles were far from creatively spent. Looking back at the early 70s it seems that for the first few years after the breakup , all four members were furiously engaged in trying to out-do each other as to who could put out the best songs and sell the most records.

I’ve never subscribed to the theory that “they never reached the heights they reached together”.

It is more accurate to say “they never reached the sustained heights” – and it is my contention that the only reason for this was that they were no longer working together.

Paul would have vetoed John’s more indulgent experiments, and John would have continued to rein in the more overt examples of Paul’s whimsy. And both would have encouraged George to new heights.

Simple mathematics tells us that if the same creative team makes four albums separately, these are, on average going to be only 25% as good.

Weight the average in favour of John and Paul and against Ringo and you’d probably expect a Lennon or a McCartney album to contain 40% Fabs-quality material, George’s album would have a one in five hit-rate and anything Ringo could come up with would be a bonus.

So, suppose the Beatles had taken a year off after the release of Let It Be, gone their separate ways, but then reconvened at Studio Two, Abbey Road around mid-1971.

The resulting album could have been their best yet. They would have argued about the tracks and the order, with John finally winning the battle to finish on a political, rather than a feel-good song.

The Great Lost Beatles Album Of 1971

Side One

What Is Life (George)
Back Off Boogaloo (Ringo)
Another Day (Paul)
Wah Wah (George)
Maybe I’m Amazed (Paul)
Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey (Paul)
Instant Karma (John)

Side Two

Imagine (John)
The Back Seat Of My Car(Paul)
Give Peace A Chance (John)
It Don’t Come Easy (Ringo)
C Moon (Paul)
My Sweet Lord (George)
Working Class Hero (John)