Mick Flannery, to me, is one of the best up and coming musicians currently plying his trade in the Irish music scene. He first came to my attention a few years ago when he appeared live on Irish television performing another great song from his debut album Evening Train called ‘If I Got a Dollar’ which is a simply gorgeous song that he duets with another female musician who I don’t know. If you like bluesy folk then you will like Mick Flannery. Think a young, Irish Tom Waits and you’ll get the picture.

The song, like a lot of songs on the album revolve around relationships, love and gambling especially card playing which is the main theme of today’s song which is basically a conversation between three guys playing a card game and is sung in the same manner.I know Aaron Dillon, another Irish musician is a guest vocalist but I don’t know the other. What separates this from other songs that I have heard recently is the atmosphere that the song conjures up and the realistic conversation that friends and foes have when there is money involved in a card game. Below is the first verse of the song but I’m not really doing it justice that can only be achieved by listening to the song:

‘I put 55 dollars on this hand
Im In, Im out, not a chance
so only one of you dogs wanna dance
ah you better have some balls in those pants
give me two cards, one card, don’t look at that
trying to feel a flush up bite me in the ass
Jesus you must have lady luck up there hiding in your hat
don’t try and fuckin fool me boy we’ll see about that
It’s a hundred to play now we’ll see what you weight now
that pot is getting hotter boy we’ll see if you stay around’

The song continues in this vein as the size of the pot gets heavier and tension grows

’shut the fuck up what the fuck its got to do with you
I don’t see your money here so you don’t get to contribute
nothing to this little bet’

I got the chance to see him play in Whelan’s last year and it was a good gig even though the place was half empty. He made one funny quip as he was introducing a new song by say “This is a new song….not that you would know” - typical Cork humour. He’s playing in Whelan’s again tonight so get your asses to it. Here’s a youtube link to the song.

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I really got into Pavement when I was in my teens. Growing up in the middle of the Irish countryside, touch-me-I’m-sick bands like Nirvana or earnest, hand-on-heart-despair bands like Pearl Jam (sorry Des, I know they’re a favourite!) didn’t do an awful lot for me. My music taste focused on three groups: Sex Pistols, Velvet Underground and these boys, Pavement.

‘Cut Your Hair’ is a classic example of their ability to glue a great melody together to some sparkling wit. A commentary on the explosion of the “hair, flannel shirts and sincerity” groups that came up in the wake of grunge’s pioneers, the harmonies that open the song and come up after the choruses are inspired, like a slowed down Beach Boys on helium.

The lyrics always get me laughing, just for the surrealism. Lines like “hit me wearing muzzles”, “did you see the drummer’s hair” and (my favourite) “NO BIG HAIR!” just seem to come out of nowhere. It’s as if the band sat down to write a poppy song, but just kept getting sidelined into weird tangents that come out in the lyrics. This isn’t the only Pavement song that does that - check out ‘Silence Kit’ (or, as I always thought it was called, ‘Silent Kid’), the first song on the Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain album.

The whole Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain album is a really good listen, and their debut, Slanted & Enchanted is also recommended. Here’s the video for ‘Cut Your Hair’ - a treat in itself. “No big hair!”

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Polly Jean Harvey or PJ harvey as she is more comely known as, has been around for a while now and I have always been a big fan. A couple of years ago she was playing at the electric picnic and I was an excited little boy as I had never seen her before. Turns out she was almost an hour late for the appearance and I ended up not seeing her at all as it impacted my schedule for other bands. A big no no for me is being late for festival appearances, do it on your own time. It irked me so much that as a form of protest I refused to buy a ticket for her gig in the Olympia a month or two later - not that it made much of a difference to anyone except me. I also didn’t listen to her latest album when it first came out but I eventually buried the hatchet. Like lovers quarreling she had some making up to do with me and when I eventually listened to her latest album the making up was done.

This is the first single from her latest album ‘White Lines‘ and marks a massive departure for the queen of the post-rock genre. Nearly all the songs are softer, mellower than her previous efforts. It always takes courage for a musician to depart from their signature sound as it can either create a whole slew of new fans or cause current fans to distance themselves from the artist. One of the first things I noticed from the new album is that she actually has a lovely, sweet voice that to me, was somewhat lost on her previous guitar heavy albums.

Lyrically I’m a bit confused about what the song is about. Its could be a number of things - childbirth, dreaming, abortion or even hallucination (thats if you have ever seen fear and loathing in Las Vegas and their penchant for Ether).

‘Something inside me, unborn and unblessed, disappears in the ether, one world to the next‘

So right now, I’m taking it that she is giving birth - ‘the woman beside me is holding my hand’ while Ether is being used as the anaesthetic which is causing some mild euphoria ‘The ceiling is moving‘ and ‘conscious of nothing‘ . Musically its mainly just a keyboard accompanying PJ and its the keyboard that accentuates the feeling of helplessness throughout the song. Check out a live version of the song from Copenhagen  here

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The first single from 1988’s Daydream Nation, ‘Teen Age Riot’ is also the song that got me into Sonic Youth. Now their album-long ‘Sister Ray’-alikes don’t always do it for me, and some of their stuff is just plain turgid, but when they hit the high notes they succeed spectacularly. Given that this was the late ’80s, when synthesiser ties, Rick Astley and stock exchange crashes were all the rage, ‘Teen Age Riot’ is seriously out of step with the times.

Starting off with some low-key, ghostly guitar and Kim Gordon reciting some childlike phrases (”Say it, don’t spray it”) and generation-specific predictions (”We will fall”), the song seems to be drifting before it’s even begun.

And then Thurston Moore’s distorted guitar kicks in, and you realise why the song’s axe work (did I just say that?) is so highly rated. You’ll certainly have heard this riff before - it’s influenced Pixies, Nirvana, and God knows how many other grunge bands over the years. But here it sounds fresh, energized, and in a huge hurry. Perfect for air guitar, if you live in a trailer and own a dog named Skeeter.

The lyrics are almost a DIY lesson in how to get ‘the kids’ on your side, if you’re a band wanting to make it big. Hero adulation, “Marshall stacks”, platform shoes, “teenage leather and booze”…it’s effectively a song about how to be ‘the next big thing’. As unfashionable as this was at the time - a time when, in the US, teenage girls with big hair tearing up shopping malls with karaoke pop - it’s had a tremendous influence on all of the bands that followed from the US.

The Daydream Nation album is a good listen, and I’ve been told that Sister and Evol are worthy albums too. While a lot of Sonic Youth’s affected Velvets/13th Floor Elevators/Stooges schtick can leave me feeling cold, ‘Teen Age Riot’ is a song that will always bring a smile. Here’s the official video which, again for the ’80s, is extremely cool. Notice Mark E Smith in the middle?

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Seeing that the electric picnic festival has just finished up I thought I would mention this song today as it has some related significance to my last adventure at the picnic. As I struggled to maintain the last shreds of human decency late on friday evening this time last year at the picnic I managed to catch these guys playing, i can’t remember the stage but it wasn’t the main one. It was a struggle to get up to the front due the the large audience but I managed it just when they were starting to play this song ( it was probably the end of their set but thats how it took me to get up there). The reason I wanted to get up there badly was to hear this song as it is a kind of an anthem for my mates and I this past year or so and its also the song we played repeatedly on the journey down to the picnic.

The song itself is taken from the album Good news for people who hate bad news which is their fourth studio album. Overall I’m not too sure what to make of Modest Mouse, I guess I could take or leave the band as a whole. Having said that I’ve only have copies of their last three albums so maybe I should get the rest before giving a big thumbs up or down to them.

It’s a really uplifting song lyrically that for me just tells you whatever is going on don’t worry about it and everything will be ok. A song of optimism for those dark days . Its like when a mate pats you on the back and says it alright. Coupled with some a guitar riff and some complementary harmonies it is definitely a song you should have on your playlist to get thru those crappy days. Check out a performance of the song here. We’ll all float on ok…

By the way if anyone is interested, Mark Kozelek a while back issued an album called Tiny Cities which is an album entirely composed of Modest Mouse cover songs. I’ll be posting about Mark in the near future.

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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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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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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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One of the more popular tracks by The Dandy Warhols and taken from the fourth Dandy Warhol album ‘Welcome to the Monkey House‘. I always thought that this band doesn’t get the attention they deserve apart from the time ‘Bohemian Like You” was a single, that song was flogged to death across the airwaves. With song titles like Not if you were the last junkie on Earth, Hard on for Jesus, The Dandy Warhols Love Almost Everyone etc, they’re bound to be eclectic and intriguing even if it doesn’t interest you.

The title pretty much gives it away unless there is some hidden meaning that I’m not getting, An acknowledgement that he used to be friends with someone but they have since went their separate ways and he is completely comfortable with that as can be seen in the first verse:

‘A long time ago
We used to be friends
But I haven’t thought of you lately at all
If ever again
A greeting I send to you
Short and sweet to the soul I intend ‘

The second verse seems that the singer is contemplating the possible reasons as to why their friendship has deterioated in the first. Seems like the reasons are pretty petty and that the friendship was already gone at that stage.

‘It’s something I said
Or someone I know
Or you called me up
Maybe I wasn’t home
Now everybody needs some time
And everybody knows
The rest of it’s fine
And everybody knows.‘

The chorus is very catchy with a couple of people sharing haromonies while the music composition is tapped up a notch from the verses. It’s like the whole song is basically We’re not friends anymore and I don’t care. If your interested in listening to this song then check out a youtube video for it here . Another interesting titbit is the use of Synthesisers which I haven’t heard in other Dandy Warhol songs but then again I haven’t heard many of their albums. Apparently this is the theme tune to a tv show called Veronica Mars, the show itself better bloody do this song justice !

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The fourth song off ther seventh studio album Dust by the criminally underrated grunge band The Screaming Trees. For a couple of years in the early nineties, the grunge scene was source of all music I listened to. From bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots and to a lesser extent for me, Nirvana, all were on continous play in the CD player. This is by no means a complete list but would be the better known bands to hail from the American north west during this time. With their chequered shirts, long hair and anthemic songs, these guys blazed a trail through the music industry before evapourating. From the bands mentioned above I believe Pearl Jam remain the only band of this genre still touring and making records on a regular basis. While all the other bands are now dissolved, some former members are still active either with new bands or pursuing solo careers.

For me the album dust is the best Screaming Trees album out there and Dying Days the best song on the album. With a guest appearance by Pearl Jam guitarist Mike Mcready, your guaranteed that the guitar playing on the song is going to be above average. Mark Lanegan really gets into this song and it’s sung with real intent in a way that only Mark Lanegan can pull off. This song can be interpreted as a kind of eulogy to days that played a big part in one’s life for any reason.

For the most I think this song is a really personal one that only Lanegan and co could say exactly what the song is about but I definitely don’t think it’s anything too rosy when you hear the following lyrics

“Yes it’s too late
This life isn’t mine
Lord hear me pray
Can you ease my mind”
“All these dying days
I walk the ghost town
Used to be my city”

while the following lyrics

“All these dying days
I walk the ghost town
Used to be my city”

start the song off and is repeated on several times throughout the song with more intensity each time which is why I really like the song. One thing I miss dearly from the old grunge scene is the great guitar solo’s. There still around today but just not in the same way for me but the long hair etc is not. Anyway check out  a youtube link of the song here

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