This is a nifty, bare little tune lifted from a Dublin based band called Jape and their 2008 studio album Ritual. Jape is mainly composed of one guy called Richie Egan, who in a previous life was also the bass player in an instrumental rock band called The Redneck Manifesto (are they still together?) another band I had the pleasure to see on numerous occassions at various festivals throughout Ireland these past couple of years.

The song is an emotional tribute or ode to a famous Dublin man called Phil Lynott who was the singer of the band Thin Lizzy and are probably most famous for their song Whiskey in a jar, which is a shame because they were so much more than that. Incidentally both are bass players and both lived in Crumlin, a suburb in Dublin.

Lyrically this is a beautiful song that tells the story of Egan and a couple of mates out at a gig one night in Dublin when there is a lunar eclipse and the song goes on from there when they go outside to see the eclipse whereby Egan gets all bleary eyed and poignant about Phil Lynott and pays a cheeky reference to him while looking at the moon in the lines

“And when he took the stage he owned it
and there right in sky was his half opened eye
he’s still winking at girls in the front row.”

and then his own morality kicks in at the end of the song

“and I was thinking one day I will be a dead man who plays the bass from Crumlin
and I was thinking one day I will be a dead man who plays the bass from Dublin
like Phil Phil Phil Phil Lynott”

I haven’t heard all of the new album yet but I bet you won’t find all songs sung in a similar vain as this one. You can watch a live version of it here and for those of you lucky enough to be heading to the electric picnic festival this weekend in Laois, you could do a lot worse than checking Jape out.

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In true Christopher McCandless style, Bon Iver (MySpace page) decamped to the wilderness to seek some purity. Following the breakup of his band, he moved to a log cabin in Wisconsin to write and record the album For Emma, Forever Ago, which was released late last year. This unbelievably (at times uncomfortably) personal album is a revelation, though the backstory to it has been overplayed a bit by the media.

How and ever. ‘Flume’, the opening track, is a very simple melody played on a bedraggled acoustic guitar, and sounding like something out of a confessional singer-songwriter’s album circa 1972. The lyrics remind me a little bit of Mark Hollis - lines like “Only love is all maroon, Lapping lakes like leary loons” can not really make sense to anyone other than the author. But the opening line:

I am my mother’s only one
It’s enough

are very poignant in an understated, hard to describe way. As an opening line, it gives extraordinary meaning to the song and its creator. There are references to the womb throughout the song, and you get the impression that that’s where he’d like to be. The first time I heard this song, I paid little heed to the words. But looking at the lyrics, it’s very meditative, and would stand up beside the best that Neil Young ever offered.

Bon Iver’s voice in this song is striking. He comes across as a slightly higher-pitched Skip Spence, quite similar to Neil Young but in a less child-voice way. The beautiful melody of course compliments the voice, and the lazy acoustic guitar and minimal, ethereal background all add up to an atmospheric, magical song that’s both relaxing and very thought-provoking. Here’s a really nice version of the song - if you like it, check out ‘Skinny Love’, another favourite of mine from the album.

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Following on from my previous post here, I’m continuing with my fondness for songs that tell stories from start to finish. Today’s song is a protest song taken from the Desire album by Bob Dylan and co-written by Jaccques Levy, who incidentally, co-wrote a lot of the songs with Dylan on Desire, which by the way, gets my vote as Dylan’s best album.

The context of the song is based around a US Boxer called Rubin Carter and his conviction for the murder of three guys in Paterson, New Jersey. After spending 20 years in prison and following numerous appeals Rubin Carter was finally released. There has been several books written about this topic and also a film called The Hurricane which starred Denzel Washington as Rubin Carter. I first heard of Rubin Carter years ago when I read one of the books about him, this was long before I heard the Desire album and found the story very interesting which to this day still sways opinion regarding the guilt or innocence of the man. Check out the song here .

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If you’ve seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, or if you’ve graduated secondary school in Ireland, or if you’ve ever been to Vienna, you’ll surely have heard ‘The Blue Danube‘. It’s such an ubiquitous piece of classical music that it’s featured as muzak on fairground rides, in Disney cartoons, and is effectively the unofficial national anthem of Austria. It’s also the song that got me into classical music.

I visited Vienna back in 2001, when I was inter-railing, and thought it was such a beautiful city, with lots of faded Habsburg glamour bustling side-by-side with the cosmopolitan feel of a modern German city. Vienna has been the home of much history, from Mozart, the Ruprechtskirche, the focal point of the Anschluss, the big wheel from The Third Man and Before Sunrise and the Viennese cafes that served as breeding grounds for ideas that defined much of 20th century Europe.

But, as usual, I digress. ‘The Blue Danube’ was first noticed by me when watching the famous “mothership” sequence in 2001. Only later did I realise that I’d waltzed to it at my “grad”. As I started to listen to Lyric FM, I used to plague them with requests for this lovely piece. Usually they acquiesced. Here’s the famous scene from 2001 - watch and listen.

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Every now and then I usually throw some Irish folk artists to let the artists regale the stories of old Ireland through song. For those of you that don’t know The Wolfe Tones, they are a long running traditional Irish band that continually tour the world singing their own brand of Irish folk songs which are mostly associated with ‘rebel’ songs. Taken from their album Spirit of a Nation album, this song was written by Liam Reilly but these guys have made it their own.

I generally like songs that tell stories within the lyrics from start to finish. This song tells the story of a young Irish guy heading over to an uncle in New York, like some many have done down through the years, to work during a time when emigration was high in this country but on the way over his uncle is killed as he was a cop. The song continues to tell how the lad chose to stay in New York and eventually becomes a cop himself following in his uncle’s footsteps, how at the start that he felt some home sickness, how he never really came home except to attend his father’s funeral and how he started his own family in New York. It’s a pretty poignant song that you should check out. The lyrics speak for themself.

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The Kinks deal in that type of songwriting that I like so much - winsome, nostalgic, pastoral, conservative, English. For an Irishman, that’s something to admit. Nobody does this better than Ray Davies - not Weller, not Lennon, not Bowie, not anyone. Ray Davies had it down perfect.

Taken from the album of the same name, and not to be confused with the also-excellent ‘Village Green’ from the same album, ‘Village Green Preservation Society’ is Davies’ hymn to an England that, by the late ’60’s, was forever gone. If it was ever there, outside of postcard pictures and Arthuric legends.

In very matter-of-fact and to-the-point lyrics, Davies sketches his manifesto, telling the listener what they are for and against. They are for “vaudeville”, “the George Cross”, “tudor houses” and “little shops” among other things. As sure as God is an Englishman, they’ll come down hard on “office blocks”, “skyscrapers” and, well, change of any kind.

Although Davies often poured scorn on those who “do the best things so conservatively”, it’s hard to imagine him singing this entirely tongue in cheek. He seems fairly authentic in what he wants, and the whole Village Green… album is based on a theme of rose-tinted views of Ye Olde Englande. It’s this theme, recurrent throughout the Kinks’ career, that put a stop to them becoming as worldwide as the Beatles or the Stones.

Anyway, it’s a really nice song, and strangely makes me nostalgic for about 1996, when I got into the album. I was in college, and Dublin was quite a different place then, pre-”Tiger”. As things seem to be starting to go a bit pear-shaped with the economy, I can see nostalgia-drenched tunes like this coming back in. Listen to the song on YouTube.

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Man oh man believe the hype about the tv series The Wire. These past few weeks I have read in loads of places about how good this show is. Driven by the hype I hunted down a copy of the first series to see what all the fuss was about and it lived up to all expectations - strong writing, great characters and a theme that is universally interesting makes this a winner big time. It took a few episodes to get used to who the character’s were but after that it was plain sailing.

So in honour of this show restoring my faith in television, today’s song is the theme tune to the tv show. Tom Waits needs no introduction, a true legend and the song is taken from the album Frank’s Wild Years . Dave blogged about one of his songs previously here. The song today took on greater significance when relating it to the show as it made me sit up and listen to the lyrics. For me the song is all about addiction and redemption whatever these addictions/redemptions are entirely subjective to the individuals life. There is strong references to Jesus and asking him for help to get on the righteous path and prevent the demons from entering and is, I think, very appropriate for the theme of the above said show. An example of the lyrics are:

‘If you walk with Jesus
He’s gonna save your soul
You gotta keep the devil
Way down in the hole‘

What’s interesting about the show is that most season’s they use different artists interpretation of the song as the theme tune. Artists that are featured in different season’s are The Blind Boys of Alabama, The Neville Brothers and Tom Waits himself. I can’t reccommend this show highly enough. Below is a video of Tom himself performing the song.

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Gogol Bordello is another recommendation from my sister, this ‘Gypsy-punk’ group based on the Lower East Side of New York. I’ve been to a few weddings lately, so this strikes a bit of a chord. Never been to an American wedding, but it sounds like a tame affair compared to some of the receptions I’ve attended in the past few weeks.

Our protagonist finds himself at a bland, asinine wedding somewhere in the US. Instead of the “supply that’s gonna last three days” and the “band that lights on fire”, it’s people leaving early, tame music, too much wedding cake and people “staring at the floor”.

The chorus is a wordless “Daaaa-da-da-de-da-da-da”, sounding a little bit like Joe Strummer trying to drown out the sound of someone he doesn’t want to listen to. Gogol Bordello are The Clash meets The Pogues, with a little sped-up Beirut thrown in. Fiddles and accordion do battle with the guitar, bass and drums to muster up a heavy concoction that’s as intoxicating as the vodka he’s craving.

Here’s the video to ‘American Wedding’. It captures the feeling of the song perfectly, and makes me want to go to a Russian wedding, though I’d have to pass on the marinated herring. Splurgh!

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I’ve only into Wilco these past couple of years based on a friends recommendation and I have to say that I really like these guys. They put in a powerful performance in Vicar Street towards the end of last year and I’ve no doubt they’ll do the same at this years electric picnic festival at the end of this month. The song I’ve chosen today is one of their more basic songs taken from their latest album Sky Blue Sky and was available as a free download to promote the new album in 2007.

The song itself is a straight up soft,country-rock ballad with piano acoustic and slide guitars, which in itself is a departure from the the electronic experimentation that was evident in the previous two studio albums, Dave writes about one of the songs off those albums, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot here. Lyrically the song is of a really upbeat in nature which basically tells you to be yourself, reach out when you need and enjoy life. Again the content of the lyrics are a departure for Wilco who usually sing more about broken relationships , love lost and the like.

I’m unsure whether I would listen to an entire album of songs like this from the band but the song is definitely a welcome departure, temporarily, from songs released previously - even if its only to display their broad range of musical style and taste. Check out the video of the song here

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Not sure what GSH would think of the ol’ YouTube age we now find ourselves in, but he sure would have empathised with the doom-mongering of the credit crunch. If ever there was a song to dance that worry away to, this is it.

Originally issued as a b-side (I guess GSH didn’t realise how era-defining the song was), ‘The Revolution…’ is, up there with ‘What’s Going On’ and ‘Move On Up’, one of the defining anthems for those who wanted to see change in their world.

What Heron is getting at is that sitting around waiting for the changes you want to be broadcast on the news is never gonna work. You’ve got to get out there and make these changes happen in the world. There’s no point being an ‘armchair sergeant’. He uses humour and casual putdowns (“The revolution wil not be brought to you by Xerox in four parts without commercial interruptions”, or “The revovlution will not make you look five pounds thinner”) to get across how serious he is. It works brilliantly.

Musically, it’s a great little concoction. Everyone knows I love a good bass line, and this has got a stonker. The music is chilled, groovy, all those things. There’s a bit of flute in there, and the drums aren’t trying too hard. It all comes together beautifully.

The world has changed a lot since those grim days of pre-Watergate 1970s America (of course I wouldn’t know, wasn’t even a glint in the milkman’s eye back then), but some things are strikingly similar to 1971 - “The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath”. 37 years later, Listerine are still peddling that line. Without the revolution part, of course. Here’s the song, with a cool video.

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