Salı 8 May 2007, 18:37
So I made this two-CD compilation about six months ago, and have been meaning to blog about it for almost as long (what with being a staff member, I thought it was high time I had a journal entry with some actual musical content). Anyhow my atrophied little typing fingers have just about got round to posting the run-down of the first CD - so come with me, why don't you, on a journey through my musical mind…
1. Klaxons – Golden Skans
’Cause I like it, right. No need to describe what this sounds like, but it makes for a great opener with its faux-grandiose vocal layering, and it was my favourite from their live set. Plus when I made this part of the mix, I liked the fact that the album field said ‘Unreleased’. Lame-o.
2. DraculaZombieUSA – Thomas Window Paine
Last.fm discovery rockness! I think this was on Neighbour radio one dreary evening, when I was just in need of some more perky kids with a dumb name, making a glorious racket. Shiny pop music falling somewhere between Thunderbirds Are Now! and The Lovely Feathers’ territory, or maybe you’d just like to listen to it and disparage my comparisons afterwards. Full-length previews/free downloads are go. Hurrah!
3. Patrick Wolf – Accident & Emergency
Well knock me down with a feather: this was the first I heard of Mr Wolf, having purposefully avoided him previously. Having expected squeaky whimsy and weedy delivery, I was confronted with exactly the opposite – amazing pop music that needs no forced quirkiness for its sheer ingenuity to shine through. It’s not as cerebral as that sounds, either – I haven’t heard any remixes of this track, but the dancefloor is its spiritual destination.
4. Suburban Lawns – Mom and Dad and God
As someone who likes post punk and new wave in general but has a problem with connecting to it over the length of an album, getting hold of their self-titled work last year was gold. This is the kind of wackiness that is all the more amazing for sounding completely and utterly cool, melting religion, ska and nervy energy together for a perfect 1min53secs.
5. TV on the Radio – Wolf Like Me
Indie disco perfection, I still can’t get into TVotR in general but this song ruled my summer. You can do hand-claps to it! Nuff said.
6. Panthers – Theory Is Famous
An accolade to this song for having the best lyrics of the CD: “Gimme a book, and I’ll read the shit out of it.” No half-measures on this, rock music that slinks its way around but slams hard. Er, against you.
7. Passions – Emergency!
An actual dance track for the mid-section. Has a lovely lady shouting “kaboom!” and all manner of bleepy cutupness. Well-deserving of its exclamation mark – screechy, screwy and a little scary in all the right places.
8. Cutting Pink With Knives – Didi Got Fisted at the Smiths Disco
This track came to my attention first of all because it has possibly the best title ever – and second because what starts out musically unhinged, only goes more doolally. You’re doing your brain a disservice by not listening to this at least once, so I won’t bother explaining it all to you. File under: Synth; Scream; Music to Offend the Neighbours With.
9. The Ghost Frequency – Lips Stitched Tight
The come-down from CPWK, vaguely similar instrumentation for a vastly different result. Good in an unclassifiable way, this is a pretty straight-up example of what synth/electro-handclaps/a bit of emoting can do for YOU. And if that might seem a bit laboured, there’s actually a really sweet tune here which gets it top of my pops.
10. Wolf & Cub – Thousand Cuts
Pretty much a different band to whoever makes those boring lunk-rock anthems, this was the first song I heard by Wolf & Cub, prompting hopes that they were fine young men who’d always play as if each snap at their instruments burnt their hands and created that wonderful yelp and jerky delivery. Apparently they aren’t, but at least I’ve got this track.
11. Elefant – The Clown
I have many, many days in my life when I get completely sick of soulless electro and wish to live out my days listening to no other music than the likes of Elefant: this song a pretty ridiculous whirl round some candyfloss romance story, but oh! the dramatism and ah, the comfort to be had in something so completely overblown. I’d liken this stuff to Stellastarr*’s finest offerings in providing an excuse to go completely overboard with the teenage swooning.
12. Situationists – An Old Silent Movie
The kind of indie that deserves to be big: taking on the craft of songsmithery and coming up trumps, instead of bashing you over the head with misplaced pop culture references and stale attitudes (you know who you are). It’s music for people who never got confused as to what was cool: the guitars pile up in a melody crash and the vocals go “woo!” For something much better than my description, go listen to the streamable demo on their Last.fm page.
13. Pocketbooks – Cross The Line
More streamable goodness, full-length previews ahoy. And rightly so: Pocketbooks sound like the kind of polite chaps and chapesses who’d like to spread their sunny indie pop goodness for all to enjoy. This is boy-girl dialogue and lo-fi like they mean it, earning bonus London-centric points for mentioning Oyster card zones. TfL-twee.
14. Justin Timberlake – SexyBack
This seems pretty obvious now, but there still remains the fact that it’s a great, inventive pop song. And no, irony has no place in this: a song’s a song, and a song like this is just a bit too amazing for elitists.
15. Infants – Firetruk
Crazy, crazy, great. I’ve always missed Infants live but if it’s anything like I imagine then sparks fly off the stage and no eardrums in the vicinity are safe. Growled lyrics and a distort-a-thon of instrumentation in a fine dancefloor filler/destroyer? It’s what we like. I strongly advise flailing around to this.
16. Crystal Castles – Magic Spells
Actually me being a little lazy. At over six minutes it’s an epic for CC, and whilst it is good in an early, no-vox quiet-menace way, I think on reflection I could’ve used another track (especially since they seem to make a new one per week). Still, a girl can’t work too hard…
17. Blonde Redhead – Messenger (feat. David Sylvian)
Heartbreak section. Sylvian’s delivery is full of perfect longing for I don’t even know what, the instrumentation so mournful that it doesn’t matter what the lyrics may be, only that they’re there. A kind of antidote to the previous track in being so emotion-soaked you might need a minute to recover before perking up. Which brings us on to…
18. Van She – Kelly
I know so many people who dislike this song, and to them I say “you have given up on life.” Simply the most ecstatically wonderful synth-pop shimmer of a longlonglong time, and to anyone wondering whether the ’80s is played out: this isn’t the ’80s, it was 2006, and you better lose your inhibitions and start dreaming about beach volleyball and wearing super-bouncy hi-tops in order to dance this song’s justice.
19. Sepp Maier's Gloves – Ambition
The second of the tracks here that I got from the sorely-missed postpunkjunk.com (anyone know what happened there?), I know nothing of the band or the circumstance, but I do know that it does the whole ’80s goth-synth-bop thing with aplomb. I can only think that IMA Robot might be able to sound as good as this if they stopped being so damn self-conscious.
20. Chromatics – Baby
Icy cold Chromatics, so cruel. This doesn’t so much break your heart as freeze it till it shatters (a bit like Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man, should you remember). Blub.
21. Gay Against You – TeleRAD
Electric shockery! There are infectious, bleepy forces at work in this track which will not rest until you’ve lost your mind, found your dancing feet, sweated off half your weight, and become convinced you’re receiving interplanetary DANCE signals. All in one minute fifty-seven, in case you’re short for time. Extra Special Bonus Lovely: Gay Against You were one of the first on Last.fm to take advantage of free downloads, so go get their stuff.
All for now - as near to the eighty-minute mark as I can get, and as much writing about music as I can do before wondering what it's like to actually
hear something. I guess this is what this journal lark is for: go forth! And hear!