From "Tonight" to "This Is What She's Like"

Two songs I've just played on Chorlton FM got me thinking about their lyrics and how they are head and shoulders above so much that is out there...

Iggy Pop - Tonight

"I saw my baby, she was turning blue".

Not the happiest of starts to a song I admit, but the sentiment at the heart of the song really is quite beautiful. It's rumoured to be about someone dying of a heroin overdose but it still conveys more emotion and says more than a thousand power ballads ever could.

It's arguably the song most likely to make me cry (not really cry obviously, but...err...nearly cry) - essentially Iggy is singing words of reassurance to a loved one who is on their death bed. The last verse is the one that really gets you, where Iggy stops singing to her and starts singing about her, at which point you know here life IS through.

Actually the only song more likely to make me cry is David Bowie and Tina Turner's cover version, where they ripped the soul out of the song and left it for dead in the gutter.



Dexy's Midnight Runners - This is What She's Like
This has to be the noblest attempt to describe someone and express how you feel about them ever. Anyone can sing "I love you" without really meaning it, so often it sounds like some trite half baked lyric, but few are able to try and express how they feel and sound so sincere as in this song.

What starts out as an awkward conversation between Kevin Rowland and Billy Adams turns into, over the course of 12 minutes, Kevin trying his best to explain how he feels about the girl in his life. But he can't - all he can do is list the kind of people he hates and everything that she most definitely isn't -  you know, the usual things such as the upper classes, people who put creases in their jeans and those who use words like "super" and fabulous" all the time.

"What's she like?" Billy keeps asking.
"In time, in time" is all Kevin can reply.

In the end he resorts to a singing a wordless melody to describe her. "oh, I see - she must be something" goes Billy. "I don't speak Italian myself....but I knew a man who did" Kevin summarises. Err...quite.

It's hilarious, stunning and bang on the mark. Looking forward to more of the same on their forthcoming album.

Check Your Head

I was thinking of this album earlier today and wanted to get home to listen to it. A friend had just posted an adapted version of the album cover online (renaming the album 'check your shoes', relating to his inability to leave the house with matching footwear) and I had So What'cha Want running through my mind.. .

Then, a couple of hours later the tragic news came through that MCA had died. Now, normally when someone dies I see a handful of comments amongst my friends online paying their respects and not much else. However, in this instance my news feed was immediately flooded with friends expressing their sadness at his passing - I've never seen so many people comment on someone in such a short space of time. It shows what a huge impact the Beastie Boys had - putting out a run of hugely entertaining, eclectic and innovative albums right up to last year's Hot Sauce Committee pt 2 - that moved so many of us.

Check Your Head just shades it for me as being their finest work, where they sound for the first time like a real band - or should I say like a dozen bands, such is the range of styles and genres they mesh together. It's one of my favourite albums from the last 20 years. Pass The Mic...

Record Store Day 2012

Another year, another early morning queuing up for records. The first time I took part in Record Store Day was in 2009; I arrived at Piccadilly Records at 9:40am - twenty minutes before it opened - where we (it was a family outing then) stood outside sheepishly with another 6 or 7 people. Since then I've got there earlier and earlier each year, only to find myself further and further back in the queue. Here's the queue that greeted me on arrival this year at 6:30am (I joined the queue just before it spiralled round onto Tib Street).

So I was glad that this year Piccadilly Records decided to open at 8, to save me waiting too long outside in the rain (yes, we had about an hour of fairly relentless rain to cope with) - still, I didn't get served until 10:30, so that's still a pretty long wait. Luckily I had the company of my next door neighbour, Queen lover (the band) and all-round audiophile, Gary (on the look out for a 45rpm high quality vinyl pressing of a Fleetwood Mac album), and a couple of blokes who shared the same sort of passion for music as we did. Oh, and some free teabags courtesy of Yorkshire Tea.

So, here's this year's booty...

John Cale - Extra Playful: Transitions 12" EP
BBC Radiophonic Workshop - Out of this World LP
Richard Hawley - Leave Your Body Behind 10"
Tindersticks - Medicine 10"
Billy Bragg and Wilco - The Complete Mermaid Avenue Sessions 3xCD and DVD
Futureheads - The No. 1 Song In Heaven 7"
Mouse on Mars/Prefuse 73 - 7" split single
Arctic Monkeys - R U Mine/Electricity 7"
Graham Coxon - What'll it Take 7"
Orbital - Wonky (remixes) 7"
Field Music - Actually, Nearly 7"
Belle and Sebastien - Crash 7"

Plenty of great stuff to keep my ears busy for a while...

Good as it is, I do think it's time for a rethink with the way Record Store Day is run - I'm sure it's doing wonders for promoting and supporting independent record stores, but I'm not convinced that labels pressing such small quantities of "exclusive" releases is the right way to go, especially when it creates such a mad panic amongst fans, who will camp outside all night to try and get a copy before it ends up on Ebay for a hugely inflated price. And as for the in store prices? Well, do people really want to pay £17.99 for an Arcade Fire 12"?! I'm all for saving record stores, but not if it means fleecing the fans.

Having said all that, you can guarantee that I'll be down there next year - probably from 6am this time.

Orbital's Wonky Vinyl

Live review alert. I'm listening to this for the first time right NOW and typing this up as I listen..

So far? Well most of the reviews I read seem to be aligning this album with a return to the Green and Brown albums - can't hear it myself, I think it's wishful thinking on their part that Orbital are going back to their old school (skool?) roots.

Opening track "One Big Moment" does take us straight away into familiar Orbital territory, but it's the Orbital of In Sides or The Middle of Nowhere (a vastly underrated album) that immediately spring to mind - all shimmering melodies and crunchy beats. Yep, the next two tracks confirm I'm definitely listening to an Orbital album.

The single "New France", featuring Zola Jesus, is good but so far sounds like one of the albums weaker moments; why do people insist on releasing the tracks featuring another artist as singles, irrespective of whether they are the strongest tracks on the album? Is it just to boost sales by appealing to both sets of fans? Anyway, the song's a bit better than the next track, "Distractions", which is okay, but sounds like it's been lifted off Kraftwerk's Tour De France Soundtracks.

Oh, hang on, it's picking up again and they've got the rez filters over the top of the lovely melody of "Stingy Acid". "Beelzedub" is, apparently, their attempt at doing dubstep, not that it's that obvious - especially when it kicks into some good old drum'n'bass about 4 minutes in.

The title track is possibly the least Orbital track here, but it's still pretty good, especially the bits that sound like there's a drunk fly stuck in your speakers. And closing track "Where is it Going?" just makes me smile, in that way that Orbital tracks make you smile, knowing that everything is going to be OK.

So, yes, it sounds like the Orbital of old, but we're definitely talking a slightly beefed up In Sides Orbital, which is a very, very good thing indeed.

Welcome back lads, I've missed you.

Field Music's Plumb

This incredibly inventive album plays like a 36 minute suite over fifteen short songs. The album flows so smoothly that at times it's almost impossible to tell where one songs ends and another begins - of course this is made more difficult by each song packing in more melodies and ideas into under three minutes than most bands manage in a lifetime.

I recently - and rather crudely - described Field Music to a friend as being the missing link between The Futureheads and Fleetwood Mac, a comparison that I'm sure many will dispute, but it served it's purpose and there is some truth in those reference points, I just omitted a hundred other bands that spring to mind when listening to this album, such as Supertramp and XTC and the Beach Boys and Calexico and Foals, and...err..Marillion circa Misplaced Childhood. Oh, and Field Music too, because, despite the eclecticism that is on display here, there's something incredibly unique in this music that makes 'sounds like Field Music' a valid reference point.

The album comes on lovely 'plum' (yes, yes, very funny) coloured vinyl and sounds fantastic - as the sleevenotes say 'in order to preserve sonic fidelity, this record has been mastered using significantly less compression and limiting than most contemporary records. For your maximum listening pleasure, please turn your stereo system UP!'. Not that this will be of concern to most fans of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers (if you want to know what I mean by this, read the chapter on 'The Story of the Band That Clipped Itself to Death' in Greg Milner's superb book "Perfecting Sound Forever").

Oh, and if you buy it from Piccadilly Records in Manchester now, it comes with a lovely exclusive free 'studio sessions' 7 track CD.

Me, Dave and "Heroes"

Because it's his birthday...

Widely acknowledged as Bowie's finest moment, "Heroes" makes a pretty strong case for being my favourite song of all time; romantic, modern, ironic, iconic - it's such a remarkable piece of music. But it wasn't the studio version that I first liked, it was the pretty awesome Live Aid version from 1985.

I liked Bowie when I was younger, you know, in the way that young kids "love" bands - I liked the stuff I heard on the radio but it never went any further than that. But then his Live Aid performance changed everything, no doubt helped by Thomas Dolby on keyboards trying his best to emulate Billy Currie's synth sounds. This was "charming" Dave Bowie - not the androgynous alien of the 70s - turning one of his minor hits into a stadium anthem.

So, a few months later, and unlike the rest of the world after Live Aid who seemed intent on re-buying Queen's Greatest Hits, I decided that I had to get the Bowie album that had "Heroes" on it, which was helpfully also called "Heroes". I told one of my brothers of this exciting news, but he advised me to get Ziggy Stardust instead, as that was “a classic” album. Ignoring his advice I bought "Heroes", not being quite prepared for what the album had in store for me....

Where were all the uplifting pop songs? What about the sing-a-long choruses? Most songs on side one seemed to be immersed in an atonal wall of noise, whilst side two was mostly electronic instrumentals – like a darker take on side 2 of Kraftwerk’s Autobahn...BUT, my what songs! And what a noise! I didn't have a clue what was going on, but I liked it. Twenty six years later I'm still trying to get my head round this album - each listen feels as though I'm hearing the album for the first time, with new sounds, melodies and words jumping out. It is arguably his finest and most influential achievement...well, one of them anyway.

And who was this Eno person that kept cropping up on in my record collection? First with Ultravox! Then on a couple of Talking Heads records and U2's The Unforgettable fire and now this? I really must find out more.

People often talk about "life changing" music, by which they usually mean "a record that I really really like", but then I wonder what my life would be like now if I hadn't heard this song in 1985, or what would have happened if I'd followed my brother's advice. I'd certainly have a very different record collection.

"Replica" by Oneohtrix Point Never

So here it is, making a late run for my album of the year, the new album by Oneohtrix Point Never.

Daniel Lopatin has already, as (I presume) the "Lopatin" half of Ford and Lopatin, produced a corker this year, with "Channel Pressure", their 21st Century ode to synth-etic 80s music.

However, under his OHP moniker, he has produced a sublime album of ambient drones, analogue synths and disconnected voices.

This beautiful and at times sinister drift music takes samples from TV adverts as the starting point. Not that this is obvious at any time - there's no "Um Bongo, Um Bongo, They drink it in the Congo" on this record - it's far more subtle than that (i.e. I can't place any of the samples)

I could list all the obvious and predictable reference points in the world of ambient/electronic music for this album, and at times those references would be spot on. However, those sort of reviews often comes across as trying to show how cool the reviewer is with their esoteric tastes. So, what the hell, I'll mention a few anyway.

At times the album touches on the darker edges of classic Global Communication or Aphex Twin's Ambient Works Volume II and, during "Power of Persuasion" (not, disappointingly, a cover of the ABC lost classic) threatens to merge into the Bladerunner Soundtrack via Philip Glass. Spooky, spellbinding and rich in melody and texture, with only the occasional track producing any noticeable rhythm to prevent you from floating away forever - this album is just too engaging to sit the background like some aural wallpaper, it's one of those "every time I listen to it I hear something new" sort of albums that people sometimes talk about.

Check out the artwork too - an 1936 illustration by Virgil Finlay of a vampire looking at his reflection in the mirror, seeing the skeleton of the person he once was. Apparently

Listen to it on Spotify: Oneohtrix Point Never – Replica