Suicide are a band hailing from New York and consists of Alan Vega and Martin Rev. While not achieving much critical acclaim in the late 70’s and early 80’s, their stock has risen significantly these past few years and they no longer remain within the depths of the underground scene. You can read more about the band here.

Suicide were first brought to my attention after seeing a Bruce Springsteen acoustic show here in Dublin a few years ago in The Point. I think it was when he was on tour promoting the Devil’s and Dust album and it was the first time I had seen him sans the E street band. Anyway the reason I’m telling you this is because Bruce closed the show with a brilliant rendition of another Suicide song called Dream Baby Dream. A fan in the audience kindly pointed out to me that it was a cover of these guys and that is how I got listening to Suicide – Better late than never as they say…

The song Frankie Teardrop is taken from their first studio album, incidentally also called Suicide and is the 6th song on that album. Coming in over 10 minutes long, the song is a lot longer that what I would normally listen too but believe me it’s worth it. The song deals with a young man’s struggle to survive in a bleak world and support his wife and kid. In the end it all got too much for him and he kills his 6 month old baby and his wife before finally pulling the gun on himself.

If the above sounds disturbing and distressing to you then wait until you hear the song ! it’s the most agonising and tormented ten minute song you will ever hear. Frankly if your not prepared for it or if your alone listening to the song for the first time, it will scare the bejaysus out of you – no joke. To give you an idea of the song and how minimalist the lyrics (and the music for that matter)  is, check out the lyrics below

Pointed at the six month old in the crib
Oh Frankie
(scream)
Frankie looked at his wifeShot her
(screams)
“Oh what have I done?”
Let’s hear it for FrankieFrankie teardrop
Frankie put the gun to his head
(screams)
Frankie’s dead

What’s great about the entire album is that it was released around the time in New York and also the UK when punk was the big time in music. This album is nothing like a punk album, even the length of this song will tell you that and must have, in some way, led to the whole synthesizer explosion in popular music that occurred in the 80’s maybe not as much as kraftwerk has but it must have had some influence. I mentioned earlier that Bruce Springsteen often plays one of their songs live (song is not on this album) so he’s obviously a fan, I wonder if the song state trooper and a character called Frankie in that song has its origins in this song? Here is a video of the song

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After The Jam and The Style Council (the former the biggest band in England in their heyday, the latter an oft-misunderstood genre-hopping collective who released records to declining returns in the ’80s), Weller decided to go back to roots.

Roots for Paul Weller means the ’60s. Mining the guitar licks of The Small Faces and Traffic, and marrying it to lyrics about pastoral yearning and changing seasons (influenced strongly by Nick Drake), Weller created a career resurgence that broke the rules for aging ex-rock stars.

1993’s Wild Wood album brought Weller a whole new generation of fans, and as those fans travelled backwards (as was the style in the retro-worshipping mid-90s), they too discovered The Jam. And to a lesser extent The Style Council. Wild Wood‘’s themes of rural escape (mountains, sun, hayfields, etc.) struck a big chord with a generation raised on the ‘greed is good’ philosophy of Thatcherite England, and paved the way for the coming Britpop explosion.

‘Sunflower’, the first single off of the album, starts with a descending guitar arpeggio, which is a common theme of Weller openers. The theme is lost love and the quest to recapture what was once pure but now lost, as Weller remembers days of innocence:

I’d run my fingers through your hair,
Hair like a wheat field I’d run through

Musically, it’s a hundred light years away from the antiseptic karaoke soul that Weller was peddling in the late 80s. For a man so involved with the left wing of British politics, Weller’s music latter half of that decade was awful.

The Style Council started out promisingly, but albums like The Cost of Loving and Confessions of a Pop Group were out of step with what The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, The Smiths and other decent indie groups of the time were doing. Their last album, A Decade of Modernism, was just a collection of directionless acid house tracks with minimal involvement from Weller. The album was so bad that The Style Council were dropped by their label.

So Weller picked up the guitar again and went back to his old records for inspiration – and it shows. Everything is acoustic, organic, real. There is no synthesised drum machine, no twinkling little keyboard rinky-dink, no heavily processed guitar. Just Weller and his mates rocking out.

Whether as a reaction to the self-indulgent whingery of grunge, or as a reaction to the androgynous glam-racket stompings of Suede and their ilk, Weller’s comeback worked brilliantly, and paid off in spades. Always at his best when swimming against the tide or under some external pressure (see All Mod Cons), Weller delivered the goods.

Here’s the video to ‘Sunflower’, Weller’s soft crooning replaced by a gruff pleading voice that seems like the reminiscing of a man from the bottom of a bottle. If you like this song, check out the Wild Wood album, and also the Paul Weller solo album that came before it.

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Oklahoma born J. J. Cale is one of these artists that always fly under the radar in terms of commercial success but is, in his own right, a hugely successful artist. I remember a couple of years ago seeing a documentary about him called To Tulsa and Back which gave some insight into the man and his easy-going almost lethargic musical style. He seems to effortlessly make the guitar talk.

The song is taken from his debut album Naturally which also contains some songs worthy of a blog post on their own – Call me the breeze , Crazy Mama etc. and is a well known song to all people via Eric Clapton but maybe this, the original, version may not be. Actually Clapton made another song penned by Cale famous called Cocaine.

It’s hard to place Cale’s music into any genre as his unique style is indifferent to categorization. I guess easy listening or slow rock or laid back country would go some to way to describe his music but his style is totally his. I think we should create a new genre called Calism or neo-folk - lord knows genres and sub-genres are a dime a dozen these days anyway.

The context of the song is basically about night life and all the shenanigans involved in those early hours as the title of the song suggests.  It’s a short song, coming in just over the two minute mark (most of the songs on the album are, apart from Clyde and Crying Eyes) and starts off with a nice riff on the piano following quickly by some mellow guitar work. You won’t get a complete feel for his guitar style but you will get a good idea of it. His voice is soft and alluring and  would make me want to buy the guy a drink if I ever met him. Check out a live version of the song and if you get a chance, do yourself a favour and get hold of the album.

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On his tour of America in 1979, a brash young songwriter by the name of Declan MacManus made some unfortunate comments about James Brown and Ray Charles while out drinking. Costello’s statement that Charles was nothing but a “blind, ignorant nigger” was intended to provoke Stephen Stills’ entourage, whom Costello and bass player Bruce Thomas had encountered in a hotel bar. But when one of Stills’ crew went to the papers, and Costello displayed an abrasive attitude and unwillingness to apologise at a subsequent press conference, his Stateside career was over. Albums continued to be released, but to diminishing returns.

Seven years later, after a couple of duds, Costello returned with the King of America album. The opener, ‘Brilliant Mistake’, is a classic Costello song, albeit in a polished 1980s production. The opening lines seem to recount Costello’s ego and the pride before the fall:

“He thought he was the King of America,
Where they pour Coca-Cola just like vintage wine”

Mixed in with this reflection of past glories is the lovesickness that defines early- and mid-period Costello:

“I wish that I could push a button,
And talk in the past and not the present tense”

As usual, his lyrics are poetic and strong on turn-of-phrase. Musically, the standout instrument is acoustic guitar, which drives the song along in a way that’s very similar to Dylan’s ‘Tangled Up In Blue’. In fact ‘Brilliant Mistake’ shares a lot with Dylan’s classic, with a regretful backward glance betrayed in the need to keep looking forward. Drums, a nice bassline (always important to me) and some accordion that gives the song a C&W feeling to it.

As the song concludes, Elvis gets comfortable with a career on the margins (or ‘the ditch’, as Neil Young put it), and sums up his position:

“I was a fine idea at the time,
Now I’m a brilliant mistake”

Here’s the best video I can find of it on YouTube. Check Last.fm, or just download it.

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This little gem did the rounds on the indie music blogs for a while a few months back. I dunno whether I’ve got the album version or a demo version but either way I hope that the song remains pretty the same on the album as it’s raw and under-produced which is a good thing for this song.

The song is taken from the second solo album of Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley fame , which is also called Acid Tongue released earlier this year and describes a fairly exuberant night out on the twon involving drink, drugs and fraternizing with members of the opposite sex as the following verses describes

‘Because I’ve been down to Dixie
And dropped acid on my tongue
Tripped upon the land
Until enough was enoughI was a little bit lighter
And adventure on my sleeve
I was a little drunk
And looking for company
So I found myself a sweetheart
With the softest of hands
We were unlucky in love
But I’d do it all again’

The song has a real acoustic country feel to it and as mentioned previously, describes a night out but also then talks about redemption and giving up the debauchery and just relaxing a little more. Check out a live version of the song with Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie fame paying Jenny a visit..

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The White Stripes are one of the most consistent bands around today. Each of their albums contain at least three excellent songs, and at least that many slow burners.

Hello Operator’, ‘Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground’, ‘Fell In Love With a Girl’, ‘7 Nation Army’, ‘Hardest Button to Button’, ‘Blue Orchid’…and really, those are only the cream of the singles off of their first five albums. So I had high expectations coming into the Icky Thump album. Turns out they’ve trumped all of them.

Built over a lot of noodling, almost-out-of-control guitar set through a feedbox that would shatter glass, along with a thumping drumbeat courtesy of Meg White, the song comes straight from that late 60s/early 70s era where garage rock met the blues. Jack White is almost AC/DC-like in his pursuit of “the perfect riff”, and the riff to ‘Icky Thump’ is a stonker. Led Zeppelin themselves would have been proud.

The song is a lot more complex than their early singles, though it’s definitely a progression from the ‘Blue Orchid’ single. This time, however, the tempo changes are more noticeable, and are driven more by Jack’s guitar playing. Several times, the song slows down to draw attention to a change in the riff, while the drums underline what’s being said.

What is being said? My understanding is that the song is about the eternal US-Mexico border debate, and how a drunken, ne’er-do-well protagonist (possibly Jack White) can barrel into Mexico on a Tequila-fuelled lost weekend with relative ease, while salt of the earth, hard-working, God-fearing Mexicans can’t get a ticket in the opposite direction.

That said, the lyrics are hard to make out, and seem a bit stream-of-consciousness. But a key line here is:

White Americans, what, nothing better to do?
Why don’t you kick yourself out, you’re an immigrant too?
Who’s using who? What should we do?
Well, you can’t be a pimp and a prostitute too

As with all the best White Stripes songs, the initial focus is on the top-class guitar work and the overall sound, but the song then stands up to lyrical inquiry.

Any time the song feels like it’s about to break down under the weight of such heavy riffage, or the drums feel like they’re kiltering off, bursts of feedback and slashes of a very trebly, distorted synth come to the forefront, almost like a migraine headache. This is directly lifted from early Velvet Underground (see our post on this) and The Who, and has long been a part of The White Stripes sound, but for the first time they’ve really let rip with a single that veers between guitar-hero riffage and freakish atonality.

Here’s the video for Icky Thump, and here’s a blistering performance of the song on Jools Holland. It’s testament to this band that they can make music like this and still have it played on MTV (when they’re not showing vapid Californian reality TV shows) and on mainstream radio.

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Johnny Rotten/John Lydon is a bit of a tool, really. Isn’t he? I mean, look at this interview with Tom Snyder, and this nasty little PR junket. While he might have had a bad experience with the Sex Pistols, he’s since shown a bad habit of firing his band while at a creative peak. That said, he did have Malcolm MacLaren for a mentor. Must have been hard.

But I digress. He’s made some brilliant music, from ‘Anarchy in the UK’ and ‘No Feelings’ with the Sex Pistols, and also with Public Image Limited (known as PiL). In fact, PiL are criminally underrated, when in my opinion they put out some of the best music in the post-punk years, up there with Joy Division, Gang of Four, The Jam and whoever else.

While their first album exorcised the demon of the Pistols, via the excellent ‘Public Image’ single, second album Metal Box is an altogether darker and weirder affair. Whatever drugs these people were on at the time (large quantities of speed, LSD and heroin by all accounts), this album is brilliant. And ‘Careering’ is a definite highlight on this album.

Over a steady drumbeat and Jah Wobble’s how-can-that-go-so-low bassline, Lydon intones a tale of tragedy and ugly ambition, most likely set against the background of the Troubles in Northern Ireland:

A face is raining
Across the border
The pride of history
The same as murder

Keith Levene, one of my favourite guitar players (and a huge influence on The Edge), cuts across the rhythm section with his guitar and synth, veering from echoey guitar chops to drilling, headache-inducing noise. Over a sparse rhythm, Levene adds space like a painter works on a canvas, and creates an unique soundscape here.

Here’s a great performance of the song on The Old Grey Whistle Test: John Lydon, bulge-eyed and vigilant, fronts the only post-punk supergroup.

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The Wire provided some excellent tv for me towards the end of this year and provided a great substitute for The Soprano’s. The tv program is set in the city of Baltimore, Maryland which is the reason this song perked my interest as I had done a search for the word Baltimore in my music collection  and came up with a few songs of but I think this is the best of the bunch.

The song is taken from his sixth studio album called Little Criminals from which backed by Glenn Frey of The Eagles fame and other members of that band contribute some of the music. Before this I only knew the song Political Science by Newman and the shed load of covers that other musician’s have done of his work including Tom Jones.

This album came out in the late 70’s around the time that punk rock was taking off in a big way but this song is so different its not funny. To me it has a real 80’s feel to it but it does stand the test of time. The narrative of the song provides a great description of the city that sounds pretty depressing but then again it’s pretty much the same for any relatively large city anywhere in the world. Here’s is the second and third verse to give you a taste

‘Hard times in the city
In a hard town by the sea
Ain’t nowhere to run to
There ain’t nothin’ here for free

Hooker on the corner
Waitin’ for a train
Drunk lyin’ on the sidewalk
Sleepin’ in the rain’

Later in the song he talks about escaping from city life and moving to the country as he has had enough of the city

Get my sister Sandy
And my little brother Ray
Buy a big old wagon
Gonna haul us all awayLivin’ in the country
Where the mountain’s high
Never comin’ back here
‘Til the day I die

Overall the song is really goog from both a lyrical and musical point of view and is really worth checking out. Nina Simone also does a pretty cover of the song although I do have a hard accepting the crossover from male to female covers and vica versa. Check out the song here.

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I stumbled across this great song a couple of months ago while traversing the world of music blogs when I hit upon this music blog that’s mainly focused on Irish musicians so kudos to the blogger from keeping it local as its a great source if ur interested in what’s going on musically in this wee country.

The song is from a now defunct band called The Mary Janes which was fronted by the late Mic Christopher. Prior to visiting the weblog, I didn’t even know that Mic was even in a band. In fact I knew nothing about the man at all apart from the song ‘Hey Day’ that was made famous by a Guinness tv ad.

The song is taken from their first album Bored with their laughter - they only had one album called Sham which I’m told is excellent but i have yet to get my hands on it.  What got me was his voice which sounds completely different on this song than Hey Day it’s deep, gravelly and very forceful in it’s delivery of what is a very simple song that eulogizes on the importance of friendship and the role they play in people’s lives and how they help you through the bad times as well as the good times.

The song musically reminds me of a little of the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s, don’t ask me where I got that idea from but I just do with a catchy hook that bellows up and down throughout the song which adds to the intensity of Mic’s voice. You can check out the song here

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I watched Stanley Kubrick’s classic Paths of Glory (the 43rd best movie of all time, according to the IMDb top 250) the other night, and was thinking of a good anti-war song that could be written for the blog. Then, yesterday at lunchtime I called into the National Museum of Ireland to see “Soldiers & Chiefs: The Irish at War at Home and Abroad from 1550″, and got thinking about it again.

Now, Des has already written a post on Edwin Starr’s ‘War’, so that’s out. I was thinking Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Goin’ On’, but then I thought of another classic Kubrick film, Dr. Strangelove… (IMDb’s 25th best film of all time). Then, of course, I thought of Vera Lynn’s ‘We’ll Meet Again’.

First off, let’s talk Strangelove. I first saw this movie when I was in college, and was shocked at how Kubrick could take the Cold War, the prospect of instant world annihilation over a clash of ideologies, and make such a funny film out of it.

As the Americans file into the “War Room” and start to talk about “acceptable casualty levels”, “nuclear combat toe to toe with the Rooskies” and suchlike, you can see parallels with how George Bush Jr might have handled the whole Iraq affair. You can certainly see Rumsfeld in George S. Scott’s ‘Buck’ Turgidson character.

As the accidental global standoff reaches its conclusion (I will say no more if you haven’t seen the film, other than that it’s simultaneously hilarious and thought-provoking), we hear probably the most ironic choice of song Kubrick could come up with.

‘We’ll Meet Again’ struck a strong chord with the soldiers marching off to fight another pointless war with origins in Central Europe. As the War began to drag on into the 1940s, and especially as Hitler took the bombing campaign to the heart of Britain, many began to see the overtones of “some sunny day” as being the afterlife.

The song has been covered by Johnny Cash, The Byrds, Pete Doherty and PJ Proby, is referenced by Pink Floyd in their song ‘Vera’, and has been featured in Dennis Potter’s 1986 BBC drama The Singing Detective.

But it will always be remembered as the song that plays as the curtain falls (in all senses of the phrase) on Dr. Strangelove. [SPOILER]: Here is the ending of Dr. Strangelove with ‘We’ll Meet Again’, but if you have yet to see this amazing movie, watch this video of the song instead.

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