Today’s song was the second single from the album Cripple Crow by that strange folkster known as Devendra Banhart. I had the pleasure of seeing the guy at the village a few months back and it was decent/good live gig. The place was completely packed and at one stage some guy from the audience was given the opportunity to sing one of his songs while Devandra et al were on a break. Apparently this is the norm at Banhart gigs so kudos to him for that.

The entire album contains 23 songs some good and some not so good but overall the album is definitely worth a listen. In this song I think Devendra sings about pressures of being a relatively famous musician and the problems it brings in terms of time, expectation and demands. For other folk it can mean exactly the same thing whereby friends, family, co-workers etc, want and expect things from when u feel your not in a position to deliever or else you just couldn’t be arsed hence you want to go back to that place where there was no responsibility and feel just like a child again. Lyrically there are reference’s to child activity throughout the song e.g.

‘And I need you to sit me on your lap
And I need you to make me take my nap
Could you first pull out a book and
Read me some of that
Cause I need you to make me take my nap‘

and

‘And I need you to help me blow my nose
And I need you to help me count my toes
And I need you to help me put on my clothes
And I need you to hide it when it shows‘

All of this is done in Devendra’s own indomitable style, anyway check out a video of the song here

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Another band that were sibling-recommended, Fujiya & Miyagi are absolutely class. They’ve got a really controlled funk style, where the drums, bass and lead guitar are consciously holding back, giving a really tight, almost aggressive feel to the song, while still coming across as quite laid-back.

Transparent Things, the album that ‘Collarbone’ is taken from, is an album that I’m getting to like more and more. Lead singer David Best whispers like a vaguely threatening Ian Brown (who’s threatening enough himself!), and uses repetition to get the point across, like all the best lyrics.

Rumour has it that this group met while substitutes for a football team - now that’s a great way to start a band. They’ve got a great way with influences too - think the Stone Roses trying to play like a ‘krautrock’ band.

Anyway, enough of my dithering, let’s get to the meat of the post - the song itself. Here’s the excellent excellent footie-themed video for ‘Collarbone’. Check out the bassline. If you like it, have a listen to ‘In One Ear & Out The Other’ and ‘Ankle Injuries’, two great tunes from F&M.

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For those of you that don’t know Tubeway Army was an alias that Gary Numan used in the late 70’s before embarking on a successful solo career as, well, Gary Numan (b.t.w another stage name). A few years ago I decided to check him out at the electric picnic festival but only based on two songs of his that are by far his most popular songs - Are Friends Electric and Cars. As these songs epitomise the whole 80’s snyth pop era. What suprised me about his live performance was how heavy his music was, real hard rock at times. I was expecting keyboards, synthesiser’s etc but found gibson’s instead and he was brilliant.

This song features some very heavy use of synthesiser’s which reach some very high notes and backed up by your normal drum and bass digest. To be honest I haven’t a clue what the song is about except that he’s talking about friends or so called friends which I believe are ‘robots’ judging by the song title. Here’s a live version of the song that was performed on the Old Grey Whistle Test music show. By the way the spoken word in the song reminds me a little of Mark E. Smith….

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The Guardian recently had a free supplement on a great songwriter each day for a week, and Alex Turner, lead singer of Arctic Monkeys, was featured on the final day. No doubt this was greeted with howls of derision, but I think he’s a great lyricist. He does slice-of-young-English-life vignettes better than anyone since Paul Weller, and has a great ear for a melody.

‘Brianstorm’ was the first single off of Favourite Worst Nightmare, the Monkeys’ “difficult” second album. It starts off hot and heavy (the drummer took boxing training to build the upper-body strength), with a guitar riff not a million miles removed from the Pulp Fiction theme.

The lyrics poke fun at a ‘pick-up artist’ who gets the girls going and gets the lads fuming (“Some want to kiss, some want to kick you”), and who’s got a whole schtick that’s based on fashion (“t-shirt and ties combination”) and technique (“your renditions and jokes”). We all know one.

The drums let off in parts, but only to build up to the next climax. It’s an exciting listen, and a refreshing change from the usual indie single in that it’s not afraid to be loud and ballsy. Here’s the video - if you like the Arctic Monkeys, check out their first album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. Personal fave tunes include ‘A Certain Romance’, ‘Red Light Indicates Doors are Secure’, and ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’. But none of them beats ‘Brianstorm’.

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I wanted to write about the song at the begining of the summer but was holding off for the summer to truly kick with great weather, BBQ’s and beer gardens but sadly it never really came at all so I’m to write about it now in the hope that it will bring some enjoyment (and not depression) when the weather is god damn awful. I’ve given up on ever again seeing a week of sunshine here…

Taken from Derry’s finest The Undertones and their first album aptly named, The Undertones, and clocks in typical punk/post punk fashion at a measly 1.43 minutes. Don’t let the relative shortness of the song deter you from this upbeat, enjoyable ditty (which is not typical of punk / post punk bands).

The context of the song is basically an ode to beaches and girls in skimpy clothes which is what most guys look forward to in the summer. I particularily like the first verse which goes something like

‘Oh baby baby what can I do
You know you drive me crazy when I’m looking at you
The summer’s really here and it’s time to come out
Time to discover what fun is about‘

The second and third verses are repeated and create images of lying on the beach looking at girls
that have a bit of colour instead of the pasty Irishness that is evident the rest of the year.

‘Keep looking for the girls with their faces all tanned
Lying on the beaches all covered in sand
Stretching out their long legs lying in the sun
They know they’re beautiful they’re having fun‘

God I need a holiday !!

Anyway you can watch the song here

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For some reason, this song makes me think of Lawrence of Arabia. It’s the kind of music that would be played on a film like that, with long pan shots of hundreds of Arab soldiers on camelback.

But I digress. ‘Bolero’ is one of my favourite pieces of classical music. It sounds like a Viking raid, or as the soundtrack to a battle in Crimea in the 19th century. It plunders, it blunders, it insists, it has no real quiet bits (I only ever listen to the finale), and I love it. There you go, unashamaedly commercial. It’s one of the most popular classical pieces ever.

The repetitive nature of Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ has been criticised, but that is really the charm of the piece - it doesn’t try too hard, and it aims to be bombastic, written as it is for a large orchestra. Ravel himself was fairly critical of ‘Bolero’, but he was fairly hard on anything he wrote.

‘Bolero’ has been used in so many different ad campaigns, and was used by Torvill & Dean for their 1984 Winter Olympics performance. Of course, it’s been featured in quite a few movies as well. But personally, the movie with the best use of the piece is in the 1977 movie Allegro non Troppo, where it is used as a march of evolution.

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The song today is taken from Depeche Mode’s classic albumViolator. It’s strange but everytime I go on a short european break you nearly always end up hearing these guys on the loud speaker’s in pubs, restaurants etc, not that I’m complaining but it’s just a curious observation. There are many songs you write about from the band - Personal Jesus, Just Can’t Get Enough, Enjoy the Silence etc but this song really stands out for me. Many thoughts can be drived from the lyrical content from drugs, spirituality, relationships but for it means cleansing yourself from something you do want….

There is no traditional verse / chorus /melody in the song and the band totally let’s the lyrics speak for themselves as the music (especially the drums) play second fiddle. There is really not much to say about the song as the words pretty much speak for themselves. Some sample’s are

”The cleanest I’ve been
An end to the tears
And the in-between years
And the troubles I’ve seen’

or

‘Now that I’m clean
You know what I mean
I’ve broken my fall
Put an end to it all
I’ve changed my routine
Now I’m clean’

It’s a deeply sincere, open and honest song arranged brilliantly and really worth checking out here if you get a chance.

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My sister got me into Joanna Newsom, an elfish little creature who plays chamber-style harpischord in songs that go on for over 10 minutes, and sings like an excitable child on helium. If you don’t think that this is your ‘bag’, well it really is an acquired taste, and I’ve seen people run the gamut of emotions from bemusement to horror while listening to her songs. But I like Joanna Newsom, and that’s all that matters.

The unpronouncable Ys (think it’s like the ‘eas’ in ‘yeast’) album was rightly acclaimed as one of the albums of 2006. There are only five songs on the album, but they are each epic compositions, and they each tell a complex story.

‘Monkey & Bear’ is my favourite song on Ys. It seems to be a meditation on freedom (“They’ve left the gate open wide”), money (“We’ve got to eat something, and earn our keep”) and the nature of destructive relationships. In escaping from the circus, the monkey and bear have only a limited freedom, as they roam “the borders of the land that man has girded”.

The monkey asks the bear to keep up the circus act, so that they can earn enough money to escape to “the open country, a-steeped in milk and honey”. To the bear, this initially seems reasonable, but eventually, Animal Farm-style, he comes to realise that the monkey is just as exploitative as the circus master had been.

The rest of the song is very open to interpretation - does the bear get revenge on the monkey? Are the last few verses about the bear throwing off its circus costume, or is it about something more…astral?

The whole song is underpinned by Newsom’s harp-playing and some flute dancing around the melody. Some of the lines are double-tracked. There is no drumbeat, no bass, and initially on listening you’d think there was very little structure apart from the “Dance darlin’” refrain. Yet I was hooked when I first heard it, and it’s one of my favourite songs (and albums) of the last few years. Here’s an incredible live performance of the song.

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The song today comes from one of the pioneers of the indie movement Yo La tengo and taken from one of their more recent albums And Then Nothing Turns Itself Inside Out . These guys have been around since the mid-eighties and show no sign of slowing up just yet. If you have never heard of Yo La Tengo or have not heard any of their music then I reccommend this song as a starting point. The song itself describes how you feel sometimes when you see or met a person that you really like and the awkward tension these situations cause as can be seen by the lyrics in the first verse:

‘I remember a summer’s day
I remember walking up to you
I remember my face turned red
And I remember staring at my feet
I remember before we met
I remember sitting next to you
And I remember pretending I wasn’t looking’

Continuing on from this the chorus sees the person try and resolve the situation in his own mind accepting only the briefest of moments with the person they have fallen in love with if it means that they get to spend some time in their company.

‘ So we’ll try and try
Even if it lasts an hour
With all our might
We’ll try and make it ours
Cause we’re on our way
We’re on our way to fall in love’

The chorus really sums up love beautifully in that it is always unique and completely dependant on the two people involved. The final verse deal is a more personal description of how the husband and wife that make up Yo La Tengo first saw each other play music. The real quality of the song is lo-fi theme with soft vocals over a simple heavy bass and brush drum that epitomises much of Yo La Tengo’s work at this time. Check out the song here with some strange edited video.

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My auntie bought me White Light/White Heat for me when I was 15 or 16. I’d gotten into the Velvet Underground through the Oliver Stone’s movie The Doors, and had worn out what’s known as ‘the banana album’. White Light/White Heat is a lot more abrasive, nowhere more so than on this slab of howling feedback and blistering guitar. This is my favourite guitar solo ever, full stop.

To call this song a cacophony doesn’t do it any justice at all. The guitar really does go wild. Whereas The Velvet Underground & Nico showcased some controversial songs (’Heroin’, ‘Venus in Furs’), White Light/White Heat ups the ante music-wise, especially on this song and the 17-minute closer ‘Sister Ray’. Never has musical dissonance and belligerence sounded so melodic.

The lyrics are fairly throwaway by Lou Reed’s standards, as he imagines a “long gone” (dead?) girl calling his name. But really it’s the two guitar solos that grab you. In fact, the guitar work at the start of the song is also top-class, with a sound like a see-saw that could do with some oil.

Guitar solo #1 comes just after Reed sings “Then I felt my mind split open”, and it really does tear a hole in the listener’s head. The drums and rhythm guitar just smash along in the background, while Reed seems to be attacking his guitar with a saw or something while feedback wails in and out. There’s no real chord progression, it could almost be a modal guitar solo, if it wasn’t so freakish.

Solo #2 starts with feedback, and just keeps going on and on. This is the solo that’s often referred to as the best in guitar, yet it’s nothing like what you’d hear Clapton or any of those journeymen play. It’s still as fresh today as it was back then. Reed holds the same note, bending it for several seconds and letting feedback seep in, before going back to attacking notes ferociously. This is the studio version of the song, with a very strange video of a bird pecking itself.

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