Chasing Cars (and 9 more)

Snow Patrol’s Chasing Cars is the most played song on UK radio of the 21st century (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-49008689.)

Meet Ria Mae

Ria is a Canadian of big voice and baffling genre – and worth keeping an eye on.

I don’t listen to radio unless it’s playing in a store or doctor office, but apparently she’s been on it in a minorish way over here. She opened for Dido in Vancouver last week and I was impressed with her voice and the character in her songwriting, and live she was more rock and roll than radio. Well chosen, Dido! She has two albums and I just wish they were less faux-RnB radio style.

I thought I’d share this here because I know we have some Beth Hart fans in the house, and there’s moments when you’d swear (I wouldn’t; altar boy, me) it was her. She also writes a lot about staring down vulnerability and looking the world straight in the eye.

Here’s my faves:  Trixi is her radio sound, and a great summer belter. And, as with Beth Hart, there’s some stunning solo acoustic takes out there, such as Me & You, worth hunting for.

(Oh and Dido was great btw. Thanks for asking. So many stadium anthems they start to all merge after a while, but a good energy show and big wow on the percussion. Hope someone tells her either don’t do White Flag or get it out of the way early; the halfhearted encore is a sorry way to end.)

 

 

Wow! Where Did The First Half Of 2019 Go?

It may be an age thing but the years seem to fly by; it’s as if it were just yesterday and we were commenting on The Festive Spill selections!

Ten Tracks : BJM Radio

B-List

Anyone here use Pandora?  No, me neither. It does seem to be the streaming service of choice in my neck of the woods, or it has been for a few jobs i’ve worked. Apparently one way to use it is to choose an artist, and it will set up a playlist stream “radio station” of the artist, influences, related artists, and influencees. So – ie. Grateful Dead Radio or White Stripes Radio.

When i manage to shanghai the tunes, my go-to choice is the Brian Jonestown Massacre Radio station. (Even I can only take an hour or so of Jack White).  BJM’s Anton Newcombe has his finger in an awful lot of pies, and so there’s plenty of 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon to make a varied stream that i can listen to for 6 hours straight without disliking a single tune. They play plenty of Bowie, Stones, Iggy, VU, Sonics, 13th Flr Elevators, etc.  Also Radiohead, Cure, Pixies, Sonic Youth, Stone Roses, Beck, and then artists like Ty Segall, Tame Impala, Thee Oh Sees, Allah-Las, the Hives, and Black Lips that show up on my playlists with some regularity, so for the most part i left these off of the lists.

To knock all of this down, i took Prof. Abahachi’s idea of an A and a B list. Tossed a bunch of tunes on the A-list (below) to get them out of the way, so i can focus on the B-list (above).

I suspect this is marmite stuff. If you already like this sort of thing, you’ll know a lot of them and might find a band or two that you don’t. If it’s not your basket of cookies, i don’t know that i’ll convince you. If you’re curious – there’s a (woefully insufficient) A-list for starters, and then a B-list.

A-List

‘Spillin’ The Beans – 2017 in sound – Week Three

Finally, time to put you all out of your misery with my third playlist of music I have enjoyed in 2017. Without further ado, well after the obligatory cute Festive image, the music will follow.

‘Spillin’ The Beans – 2017 in sound – Week Two

Hello Pop Pickers, here is my second playlist of 2017 choons. Six more tracks that I’ve heard and enjoyed in 2017.

‘Spillin’ The Beans – “Credits” by Wooter

This week, ‘Spillin’ The Beans is having a listen to an album that is planned for release in January 2018. The artist in question is Wooter, a.k.a Rowan Brind, a New York-based musician who describes himself as a multi-instrumentalist/music producer.

‘Spillin’ The Beans – “I Can Feel the Weight” by Silver Liz

Well, I have no excuses for the latest hiatus, apart from intrusive reality, but ‘Spillin’ The Beans is back again and this week I am exploring the debut album by Silver Liz, “I Can Feel The Weight“. The album was released at the end of October

‘Spillin’ The Beans – “Reuben and Coldcut” by Spiller

After a short hiatus last week, I am back again and ‘Spillin’ The Beans about the double EP “Reuben and Coldcut” by Spiller, who are an Oregon-based quartet and not an Italian DJ and producer with a famous connection to Sophie Ellis-Bextor.

‘Spillin’ The Beans – S.T.T. by Beta Days

This week, I am ‘Spillin’ The Beans on a new album by Beta Days called S.T.T. (which means Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday – an acronym for the days of the week on which the album was recorded).

‘Spillin’ The Beans – “Daybreak” by The Divisionists

This week I am ‘Spillin’ The Beans on the new album by London band The Divisionists. The album is entitled “Daybreak” and is available here on Bandcamp.

‘Spillin’ The Beans – The Big Drops

This week I am listening to some tracks by The Big Drops, a New Jersey-based act who seem to have beamed here direct from a hazy, psychedelic recreation of the 1960s, which is an entirely Good Thing as far as I am concerned.

‘Spillin’ The Beans – “Pull” by Rival Shapes

This week, ‘Spillin’ The Beans is exploring “Pull“, the new EP by Rival Shapes.

‘Spillin’ The Beans – “Vine” by Jen Gloeckner

Welcome to the second edition of ‘Spillin’ The Beans This week I am reviewing the album Vine by Jen Gloeckner, who comes from Dubuque, Iowa.

American Football – Discuss

I hadn’t intended writing about this band today, but I ran out of time with the thing I did want to write – spreading myself thin again.

American Football is another band I’ve stumbled upon recently.  I was reading Pitchfork, the online music magazine.  There is an amusing article from Feb 2016 about this band; amusing because the writer waxes lyrical about what a shame it is that they are never going to make another album, because their first and only record showed such promise.  I looked them up and was a bit confused to find 2 albums listed – they released their second album two months after the article was written, much to the surprise of the music press it seems.

When I listened to their first album from 1999 I was slightly enchanted.  The music belies the lyrics I think which are so heart-breaking and full of melancholy as they chart the difficulties in a relationship. The guitars are beautiful (I was sort of reminded of mid to late 90s Teenage Fanclub, or is that just me?), there are trumpets in places and the off kilter, swaying melodies are soporific in a calming way; yet the subject matter is quite gloomy in places.   The second album released last year continues with a similar sound and themes.  It’s almost as though they’ve had a lovely peaceful time of it for the past 17 years until something has triggered the need to vomit up and share the emotion again.

But quite honestly, I don’t know what I’m talking about here.  I’m just trying to explain my response to listening to it.  I don’t know enough about this scene or music in general to provide a more informed view I’m afraid (Wiki says it’s Emo – I curled my lips at this, hey, what do I know?), but I’m here to learn.

Yet again ‘Spillers I come to you to fill in the gaps in my musical knowledge.  What can you tell me about all this and who else should I be tracking down?

Let us never get too stuffy to dance like Big Jeff

First ‘single’ from the (We Are) Augustines new album This Is Your Life features Bristol legend Big Jeff. Rock on boys. Rock on Jeff.

A Winter List

That time of year again. Work is slow, lots of tedious photoshopping to do, needed a new mellowish playlist i could work to.  Mostly folkish, some old, some new, some blue.  More females than usual, twee alert for some strings, bit of jangle, bit of gentle groovy psychy and soulish surf pop, and a familiar stonker to wrap it up.  Because at some point it’s going to be spring and i’m going to have to get out of the house.

This is great!

 

 

Unloved – When A Woman Is Around

Punk Funk 1999-2002

In the “Fears & The Funk” post Albahooky asked about the Punk Funk revival at the turn of the last millenium so here’s my any-excuse-for-a hastily-thrown-together-playlist playlist. I was still young enough then to be out & about with dancing shoes on, and this stuff was getting caned at the indie joints (as was I). It seems it was called Dance Punk in the states and of course even the name Punk Funk is entirely misleading. Disco beat with noisy guitars and shouty (mainly) men, some cowbell, post punk rhythms, anything to do with DFA records, New York, !!! asking the Glasgow crowd for pills before they started playing, hanging out with Carlos from Interpol on the LES, The ‘Yes New York’ compilation, late period Clash, the kids throwing out their guitars and buying turntables.

A Year of Listening Scottishly – February

So that’s one sixth of the year gone already and another month of listening Scottishly behind me.

For the benefit of those of you who have not been following every post on Facebook, waiting eagerly for each successive day’s slice of Scottish pop heaven, here’s February’s list:

1 Danny Wilson Davy
2 Aztec Camera Stray
3 Twin Atlantic Brothers And Sisters
4 King Creosote You’ve No Clue Do You?
5 Idlewild Love Steals Us From Loneliness
6 Del Amitri Heard Through A Wall
7 The Blue Nile Downtown Lights
8 Altered Images Love To Stay
9 Belle & Sebastian The Boys Are Back In Town (Live)
10 Trashcan Sinatras White Horses
11 Camera Obscura Modern Girl
12 Aztec Camera Jump
13 God Help The Girl Funny Little Frog
14 Orange Juice L.O.V.E. Love
15 Teenage Fanclub Here Comes Your Man
16 Close Lobsters I Kiss The Flower In Bloom
17 Ballboy Donald In The Bushes With A Bag Of Glue
18 Franz Ferdinand Darts Of Pleasure
19 Cocteau Twins Musette And Drums
20 Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan Come Undone
21 Eurythmics There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart)
22 The Pastels Up For A Bit
23 Trashcan Sinatras Weightlifting
24 Peatbog Faeries The Naughty Step
25 Roddy Frame English Garden
26 Big Country In A Big Country
27 Mogwai This Messiah Needs Watching
28 Belle & Sebastian Fox In The Snow

I particularly enjoyed ‘covers’ week which presented me with an additional challenge and led me to the discovery of Teenage Fanclub’s excellent version of The Pixies’ Here Comes Your Man – further themed weeks are in the pipeline.

It’s certainly no struggle finding suitable material and while of course the list is inevitably going to be skewed in favour of my own 1980s, indie-pop leanings, I’ve been trying to mix it up a bit, dipping my toe into the murky waters of folk music for example, and I intend to continue to push the boundaries of my comfort zone as the year progresses. I’m grateful for any suggestions (I’m not taking requests as such – yet!) but please don’t ask for any Nazareth as a Glesga’ Kiss offends…

One thing that’s become very apparent is the dearth of suitable Scottish music dating from before the mid-to-late 1970s and it raises an interesting question. Why did the 1960s pop revolution (apparently) not take hold in Scotland? Both Glasgow and Edinburgh (and Aberdeen and Dundee for that matter) seem like perfect breeding grounds for the sort of guitar-based rhythm and blues/pop bands which sprung up in their hundreds south of the border, but I’m struggling to find anything worthy of inclusion. It’s almost as if the entire nation spent twenty years listening to what was going on elsewhere, taking it all in and quietly, secretively perfecting its pop sensibilities, before handing Edwyn Collins a guitar and a microphone and saying, ‘Go on. You know what to do…’

Of course I may be wrong and there may be some excellent 1960s/early 70s material waiting to be discovered. But that’s for another month.

Meanwhile, here are a couple of highlights from February’s posts…

Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea – A Week with Myself (Feat. Guest DJ Panthercub)

Last week I had a research paper/book chapter thing to write, so I took the week off work, set up a desk by the window in the warmest room in the house overlooking the garden, and settled down to work. For someone like me who spends most of the day out of the house, has a young family and a partner not terribly au fait with the concept of compromise (not to mention taste in music on the slightly noisy side) this opportunity to be by myself and listen to whatever the hell I wanted to all day for a week was a very rare and precious thing indeed.

Over the course of the week I listened to about 50 of my own records and despite the mental taxations of the task in hand had one of the most enjoyable weeks in a long long time.

Finding even more time to myself to put it all together to make a podcast was pretty impossible, so I enlisted Panthercub as my official selector and made a fun game of it on a rainy afternoon. It ended up completely different to what I had in mind (I was thinking more noise and less electronica), but there you go, it was out of my hands!

ALL NEW PODCAST – Enjoy!

Blimpy’s Best LPs of 2014 go up to 11 – Part four

New household member and French princess Seraphine says she only listens to old school jungle and sometime glitch-step. I don’t quite believe her silky continental sophistications as I’ve seen her secret stash of Serge Gainsbourg, rare groove and booty bass LPs.

2. “Annabel Dream Reader” – The Wytches

I’m a 90s kid through and through. Cut me and I bleed jangly indie, shoegaze and pre-major-label grunge (when it was called alt. rock). I’m pop but Sub Pop. I’m sub Sub pop Pop. Pop.

Some folk might think that the terms wretched, noisy & abrasive are negative words to describe music with. I think things went bad when the only audible influence bands took from Nirvana ended up being Nickleback, Puddle Of Mudd, Creed, et al. There are so many bands influenced by Kurt, Thurston, J Mascis whose music sounds nothing like them,  but it was Bleach or Nevermind that made them pick up a guitar.

Rarely a band dares to occupy a space made sacred by Saint Cobain over twenty years ago. Rarer still is a band with the ideas or the chops or the tunes to pull off anything worthwhile.

Filtered through a sixties freakbeat awareness, pre-nevermind rhythm section and a throat shredding south coast accent, The Wytches scream their fucking heads off in memorable pop tunes as distortion reigns supreme. From the fuzz comes transcendence. Touch me; I’m quick.

1. “Soft Friday” – Coves

Noise ridden wall of sound pop melodies fuzzy skygaze shoegaze hazy days; the (beautifully sub-40 minutes 10 tracker) Coves record has myriad sparkling & eclectic psyche pop delights that I haven’t stopped listening to since April. 

I just love it so much.

Blimpy’s Best LPs of 2014 go up to 11 – Part three

4. “United Ghosts” – United Ghosts 

Poppy hooky shoegaze with dual male/female vocals. There needs to be some sort of internet widget where this stuff gets posted straight to my door without me even hearing it first.

joint 3rd. “New Gods” – Withered Hand

Dan’s long awaited follow up to Good News (his first record which was my favourite of 2009) was a worryingly together effort with a backing cast of Scots indie royalty behind him (King Creosote, Eugene Kelly, Frightened Rabbit to mention a few). The old bumbling charm has diminished a bit, the songs are bigger and looking out rather than in. I think the album just lacked a “No Cigarettes” or “Love In The Time Of Ecstasy” and time had increased my expectations to silly levels. It’s a great record, don’t get me wrong.

joint 3rd. “St Vincent” – St Vincent

I like my pop music like I like my coffee: bonkers & unpredictable, taut & skewed, arty & twisted (never ask me to make coffee). It’s Madonna brought up on Talking Heads rather than disco. An incredible record from an incredible talent, and had I picked it up earlier in the year it may well have been higher up the list.

Blimpy’s Best LPs of 2014 go up to 11 – Part two

Mewsli finds it hard to choose too. Here’s the next three best LPs of 2014.

7. “Ganglion Reef” – Wand

I like my 60s inflected psychedelic pop music COVERED IN RIFFS AND NOISE AND MENTALISM. Thanks Wand!

8. “Sun Structures / Sun Restructured” – Temples

I like my 60s inflected psychedelic pop music incredibly authentic sounding. Thanks Temples!

This record was so 60s beat pastiche that I initially dismissed it but I’m very glad I went back to it as it’s chock full of fab songs. The remix album that is now bundled with it is the whole record taken apart by acid drenched wizards (actual wizards! Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve to be precise) in a fevered high and put back together all wonky and could well be better than the original. Excellent value for money for sure.

6. “Days Of Abandon” – The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart

The growing Pains continue. The first LP noise-twee made way for LP2’s angry teen stompbox (my fave LP of 2011) and now their third sees them getting Jen from Fear Of Men to sing half the songs in a polished 80s Smithsian fashion. Jangle and sparkle and huge pop songs – not indie pop – just POP. Fit to burst exuberance and sky grazing ballads.

Blimpy’s Best LPs of 2014 go up to 11 – Part one

End of year lists for a music geek like me are the equivalent of the “hurts in good way” duality of S&M, right ‘Spillers? Right? No, come back! Um…anyway my list goes up to 11, mainly because of the first choice.

11. “Everything Will Be Alright In The End” – Weezer

My secret weapons at “work” over the last year or so have been coffee and perky helpings of Weezer’s dumbest big rockest tunes, and their latest album was a return to form with some ridiculously huge unapologetic bangers on it  and a three part rock ‘suite” to finish the LP.

10. “Burn Your FIre For No Witness” – Angel Olsen

Angel turned out a record that stylistically was all over the place but held together by a distinct voice.

9. “God’s Dream” – Ringo Deathstarr

This was an EP really, unless you count the extra tracks that Japan got, but acted as a good signpost towards the LP I hope they make next of big-thinking-stadium-shoegaze-1992-pumpkins-rock. The dude from Swervedriver popped up, and a non-classic Pumpkin too.

8. “From Scotland With Love” – King Creosote

Specially written to soundtrack a lovely film made from archive footage of Scotland, this was prime Kenny through & through.