Song Crush #1

So I'm well aware that I have become increasingly lax at posting over the past, well, year really. So I thought I'd shake things up a bit.

You know when you can't get a song out of your head for like 2-3 days, when no matter what you do you it just bounces round and round? Sometimes it's not even a whole song, just a fragment or a lyric. I think of these as song crushes. Sometimes it blossoms into something more, a deep relationship with an artist or album or producer. Sometimes you look back a few months later and can't remember why the hell you ever loved that one song SO MUCH. It doesn't have to be the newest or freshest track - sometimes it's an oldie but goldie that suddenly just feels right.

Robyn - With Every Heartbeat



I loved Robyn's last album, Body Talk Pt. 1, and can't wait for her next installments later this year. But I'd forgotten how incredible her break through single, With Every Heartbeat, produced by Kleerup, was. In many ways it's the prequel to the epic Dancing on My Own - it has the same bittersweet, love-lorn feel to it. The way the pulsating beat comes in as the lyrics shift from optimistic to realistic - 'We could keep trying/But things will never change' - my heart just breaks.

Oh those Summer Nights...

Here in London we have been blessed with a rather unusual summer - in that it's been hot, sunny and actually like a proper Summer. It's a bit of a given that certain songs sound better in the sun, but for me, hot sticky Summer nights also can add something special to songs. That late night, not a breath of air closeness that happens in the Summer requires a special kind of music - intense yet mellow, personal and heartfelt, it's music that is about desire and want that is not always entirely fulfilled. Here are a few of my choices.

Gayngs - Faded High [download left hand side of screen]
Bon Iver's Justin Vernon goes soulful R&B - who knew? 'I want your body on me...' definitely the hottest late night track around right now.

Candie Payne - I Wish I Could Have Loved You More
This Liverpudlian singer captures a real 60s Dusty Springfield-esque vibe on this song. After touring with Mark Ronson she's somewhat vanished from view - a shame as the sparse, echoing feeling to this one really captures that late night feeling of panic and guilt.

Bat For Lashes - What's A Girl To Do?
Natasha Khan combines a 'Be My Baby' style beat with creepy piano and almost whispered lyrics to create a truly eerie late night paean to desperation. Helped of course by a weird as video featuring BMXing bears.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Hey Joe
Stone cold classic.

Death Cab For Cutie - 405 (Acoustic)
A bit more upbeat than some of the other tracks here, this ticks the wistful box instead.

Fink - This Is the Thing
Probably best known for being featured in a Mastercard advert a few years back, this is classic late night anxiety: 'And the things that keep us apart keep me alive/and the things that keep me alive keep me alone'

Rolling Stones - Tumbling Dice
Bluesy Rolling Stones should ONLY be played on hot summer's nights...

Warpaint - Billie Holiday
Hailing from Los Angeles, I would imagine the ladies of Warpaint have experienced plenty of hot sticky nights - perhaps that's why their music is so perfect for night time. Billie Holliday is a cross between a spelling bee and My Guy - but somehow its dreamy, Cat Power-esque vocals make it work.

Sorry it's been so long. I'll try to post a bit more regularly!

Don't need no good advice

'List Advice That You Follow From Song Lyrics'
- (idea courtesy of Music Listography/High Fidelity)



Advice songs are tricky. You don't want to be preached at - who are these privileged rock stars telling us what to do? - but when you turn to music in moments of doubt, you look for something, for a sign of what to do with your life. Also, because of the essential nature of advice, they are very personal. One person's sage words of wisdom are another's crackpot philosophy. Here are mine, anyway.

'If you always get up late, you'll never be on time'
Broken Social Scene - Swimmers

'You must stick up for yourself son! Never mind what anybody else done.'
Yeasayer - Ambling Alp

'We've got a lot to learn from each other, we have got to stick together'
Ra Ra Riot - Oh, La

'Sometimes there's gonna be days like this, sometimes there's gonna be rain like this, sometimes you're gonna feel pain like this, sometimes you gotta work hard for it'
Amerie - Gotta Work

'Thou shalt not put musicians and recording artists on ridiculous pedestals no matter how great they are or were. The Beatles... were just a band.'
Dans Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip - Thou Shalt Always Kill

'You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need.
Rolling Stones - You Can't Always Get What You Want

(PS - Forget what I said before, I hate Glee for this)

{Photo courtesy of locket479 on flickr - there's a great story behind it, check it out!}

Dates for the diary

In the next month or so there are loads of new albums coming out by some awesome artists/bands - here are some of the most exciting ones.

MGMT's sophomore album, the somewhat presumptuously titled, Congratulations is officially out on April 13, but is currently available to stream on their website. The duo announced prior to the release that not only would there be no singles from Congratulations, but that it was considerably less commercial, veering towards the trippy, proggy side of their oeuvre, rather than the poppy stuff. That's right, Oracular Spectacular was TOO POP kids... To be fair, I don't think MGMT were ever the kind of band that expected to get as big as they did, so perhaps it's no surprise they've reacted against it - although on first listen Congratulations doesn't seem quite as fiendishly uncommercial as I expected.

I don't think I've really mentioned quite how excited I am about The National's new album, High Violet... It's out May 11th (10th in Europe!), and they've just released a preview of their new single, Bloodbuzz Ohio, available to download from the album's website.



Jamie Lidell, soul crooner/electronic maestro extraordinaire first came to my notice with his 2008 albun, Jim, a collection of soulful tracks that marked something of a progression from his earlier electronic, experimental stuff. But, judging by new single The Ring (video above), Lidell has merged the two, rather schizophrenic sides of his personality for his new album, Compass. It's out May 18th on Warp records, and features a whole host of guest artists: Beck, Feist, Feist, Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor, Daniel Rossen, and Chris Bear, Gonzales, Pat Sansome from Wilco... yeah, I know. Incredible right?

LCD Soundsystem release their third album on the same date (in the U.S. anyways - us Brits get a whole day earlier!) The as-yet-untitled L.P. is supposed to be the last from James Murphy, the DFA honcho, under the LCD Soundsystem banner, but hopefully there will be more awesomeness coming from him soon. I'm loving the new single/leak, Drunk Girls, and I have every faith that the L.P. will be as good.

{photo courtesy of babyben on flickr}

Ellie Goul-ding is Explo-ding

Number One album, Critics Choice Brit Award - it's all taking off for Ellie Goulding. Part of the Neon Gold alumni, along with Passion Pit, who is she currently supporting on their UK tour (and I saw her doing just that a couple of weeks ago), her meteoric rise to success has been pretty surprising. I'm coming to the conclusion, however, that while she's a great song-writer, the production isn't really there, in my opinion. I really didn't expect to think that, given that Fin Dow-Smith, better known as Starsmith, has produced all but one of her tracks on the album, and people I really respect have been touting him for big things this year. Yet the slew of awesome remixes really make his stuff for her look light weight.

First up is Jakwob's dubby remix of Starry-Eyed, adding some dirty dub-bass into the mix. Then Penguin Prison and Theophilius London had a shot at Starry-Eyed, making it more up-tempo, adding a bit more punch to the chorus. Probably my favourite of the lot however is Chiddy Bang's take on Under the Sheets. The Philadelphia duo have done awesome remixes of MGMT's Kids, which is currently floating around the UK chart as Opposite of Adults, as well as Sufjan Stevens and a host of other indie-tastic tunes. Their Ellie Goulding remix adds a more traditional hip hop beat into the mix with some brilliantly witty lyrics over the top. So much fun!

Let go

Perfect stuff for a lazy Sunday afternoon. All of these tracks really deserve their own posts, but this'll have to do for now.

jj - Let Go
Chilled out new single from mysterious Swedes.


The xx - VCR (Matthew Dear Remix)
More double letter band names here - Matthew Dear takes the sparse original song and fill it up with goodness

Grizzly Bear - While You Wait For the Others feat. Michael McDonald
Yup - Michael McDonald of Steely Dan doing vocal duties for Grizzly Bear! Apparently they're friends of friends with his daughter.

Cults - Go Outside
Spring is here - I can believe that when I listen to this track

Beach House - Norway
So chilled out it's practically horizontal, and the album, Teen Dream, is awesome too.

[Picture courtesy of Personal Kaleidoscope on flickr]

It takes an ocean not to break

Fever pitch levels of excitement!

New album High Violet out May 10 in the UK/May 11 in the US.

You tried to taste me

The Morning Benders are a four-piece from Berkeley, California (NOW you see why I like them!). Their first song I heard off the new album, Promises, was produced by Chris Taylor from Grizzly Bear, and I think that's immediately obvious, the start of the song sounds so similar to Two Weeks by Grizzly Bear. But Two Weeks was pretty much my favourite song of last year, so that's no bad thing. The second song, Excuses, however, is a different kettle of fish. It's on a much bigger scale, with beautiful lush orchestration mixed with percussive drumming that sounds reminiscent of another Bay Area band, The Dodos.

The Morning Benders have been around for a while though - about a year ago they released an album of covers called, rather delightfully and appropriately, The Bedroom Covers. The choice of songs to cover is revealing - He's a Rebel by the Crystals, I Won't Share You, by the Smiths, and, my favourite, Dreams, by Fleetwood Mac. It literally does sound like the band singing in your bedroom.

The Morning Benders's second album Big Echo was released on Monday on Rough Trade - you can stream a few tracks from on it on their website, and download Excuses for free from there too.

Here's a video of the Morning Benders and a lot of other people playing Excuses - spine-tinglingly good.

My golden heart beats for you

You know when you literally, physically cannot get enough of a song? You'll play it on repeat and hear it echoing around and around your brain when you're not actually listening to it. It coming on the radio produces a sigh of joy or a whoop of excitement, followed by an immediate crank to the volume.

My addiction at the moment is Paper Romance by Groove Armada. It comes from their latest album Black Light, which was released earlier this week. The album's meant to reflect a darker turn for the normally relentlessly upbeat dance band, and if Paper Romance is anything to go by, it should be awesome. Paper Romance combines dark synth stabs, an emoting chorus and a vaguely annoying bell sound like sounds just like my text alert. Its dirty and sexy and angry and joyful all at once.

Having said that, the rate I'm listening to it at the moment means I'll probably be sick of it soon!

The video's pretty sweet too:

I've seen stranger things

Local Natives continue to prove their star pedigree with this fabulous video done by La Blogotheque. I've loved their album Gorilla Manor pretty much ever since it came out - it's full of well-crafted, melodic songs with beautiful harmonies and interesting percussion. This video seems to demonstrate that its not just studio trickery that creates those harmonies either - they're bang in tune for the whole thing. Furthermore, it seems to create this perfect idea of them as some kind of wandering band of minstrels (an idea that their song Camera Talk also backs up). Beautifully shot, it even manages to make the toilets of some skanky bar look artistic. When I wrote about Local Natives before, I was chatting about I think they have a very slick production, that they're very clued up in the best way to market themselves. I think the video definitely confirms that (as a lot of the La Blogotheque ones do) but that it also makes me feel that these guys have the talent to back it up, and that they really deserve success (perhaps demonstrating just how effective their marketing is? Haha, whatever, I don't care!). After seeing Vampire Weekend at Brixton Academy do a disappointing show a couple of weeks ago, it seems a shame if Local Natives, who are possibly more talented than VW, don't make it at least as big as them.

I Felt So Stupid...

The Drums hail from New York, and specialise in a sort of wonky pop/rock that walks the light between heartbreak and light-heartedness. Let's Go Surfing combines driving guitar rhythms and jaunty whistles to come off like a modern Beach Boys (although, really, what do Brooklyn boys know about surfing?) while I Felt Stupid is a little bit more emoting. It kind of sounds to me like what a John Hughes film would sound like if it was a song - awkward, upset, funny, splattering emotions about everywhere, but in a teenage way. They'll pick themselves back up again. And I love the end of the song, with the kids playing and laughing. I do sort of get the impression, mainly from their website and the video for I Felt Stupid, that the Drums take themselves a little bit more seriously than summer teen pop songs though...

Also, it's horribly appropriate to me right now as I VERY stupidly broke my toe yesterday. Hurts like a bitch.

[Photo courtesy of Lili Vieira de Carvalho on flickr]

Waiting for that feeling to come

Last week I went to go see the new Blur documentary 'No Distance Left to Run' at Pure Groove record store, in Smithfields. It tells the story of Blur, ending with their triumphant reunion gigs at Glastonbury and Hyde Park in the Summer 2009. Blur are the sort of the band that I've always been dimly aware of - Song 2, Parklife, Country House etc. are indeed, faintly inescapable -but I've never truly loved them. I guess I was just always that little bit too young for them - I was 5 when their classic album Modern Life is Rubbish was released in 1993 - and I never really had someone leading me to them, in the same way that my Dad managed to do with the Rolling Stones, and a lot of 60s/70s music. But, I'd heard the documentary was good, I'd been meaning to check out Pure Groove, and my flatmate is a huge Blur fan, so I ended up heading down.

I have to say, to say I was pleasantly surprised would be an understatement. The film, in and of itself, first of all, is really fantastic. It uses unseen footage of interviews, gigs, everything, spliced together with their reunion tour, and contemporary interviews with the band. It's really well filmed too, the quality of the pictures are really great, with the whole film really having a tactile, smooth feel to it. But more than looking good, it's funny, clever, passionate and poignant.


Obviously, the soundtrack's good. First of all, I realised what a huge influence Blur have been on contemporary British music especially, but really just music in general. Secondly, I realised just how many Blur songs I knew without even trying - I mean, they're soundtracking the latest British Gas advert for crying out loud. They really are ubiquitous - in a good way, not in a Lady Gaga/Florence & the Machine/pop flavour of the moment way. The songs have stood the test of time, perhaps even matured over time. Furthermore, the gig footage demonstrates that live, Blur are also still relevant, engaging and entertaining (shame they have no further plans to play together!) - the spell-binding, shiver-inducing version of Tender at the end proves that if nothing else does.

Watch the trailer for 'No Distance Left to Run' here and a clip of them playing in Hyde Park here (I would embed them but you NEED to watch these in HD, full screen!!) The DVD is out to buy now.

Ich bin ein Berliner

Apologies for disappearing and failing to keep my New Year's Resolution... but I had a good reason. I've been doing a bit of travelling, seeing some friends and between that and all my studying (and study breaks) it all got a manic.

BERLIN




'Saturday night in East Berlin
We took the U-Bahn to the East Side Gallery'

Bloc Party - Kreuzberg

Hope for Haiti

Arcade Fire - Haiti

Donate now: DEC, Charity Auction, Global Giving.

The Sound of London

For those of you tune into my radio show (Pet Sounds, Tuesday 2-4pm GMT on Pulse), you will be familiar with my "Sound of London" feature, where I profile a new(ish) band from London. Despite the musical cornucopia on offer here in London town, it's not always easy to find something that I like and is radio-friendly. Having said that, over the past few weeks, I've come across some amazing people, and I thought I would share them with you here.

James Yuill
So I'm massively late coming to the party with James Yuill - I first heard about him over a year ago, but dismissed him out of hand as not really worth my time. Wow, I was wrong. I found This Sweet Love while perusing one of the many best-of lists of last year, and if I had made one, I probably would have made it. Gorgeous, relaxed, Yuill was described in the Guardian as "Nick Drake given a machine pulse by New Order". This Sweet Love is heavy on the Nick Drake - perhaps why I love it so.

Bullion
There's a lot been written about the new 'chillwave' scene, including bands like Neon Indian, Washed Out and Memory Tapes, and primarily focused on the West Coast of the States. Well, Bullion is giving it a London flavour. He first came to attention because of his mash-up/mixtape of, called Pet Sounds in the Key of Dee, where he broke apart and put together in a fresh way the whole of Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys in homage to J Dilla, resulting in a beautiful yet also slightly disquieting experience. But his new single, Say Goodbye to What, takes that deconstructionist approach and gives it something of an edge - you can dance to this shit!

Starsmith
Starsmith's name is being touted about a lot these days as the man behind Ellie Goulding, winner of the BBC Sound of 2010 award, and thus officially crowned as The Next Big Thing. He's also done a series of high profile remixes for Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. I have to be honest, I'm still a little on the fence about Starsmith and his oeuvre. Having said that, his remix of Sleepyhead with Ellie Goulding providing haunting vocals is outstanding - yet I'm wondering if that his due to Passion Pit's genius rather than Starsmith? Regardless, now Ellie's album is just about finished, he's set to work on his own stuff, and I wouldn't be surprised if it is massive/awesome.

Just a small town girl, livin' in a lonely world

Ok, so it is more than likely that this post will destroy any credibility that this blog had as a source for decent music, but I think I'm willing to take the risk. Monday saw the UK premiere of new TV show Glee, and I have to say, I am hooked. There was an excellent article in the Guardian last Saturday which explains why it's ok to watch a programme about a high school show choir, but, while it is well-written quality television, I like it because it allows me to reminisce about my school days as a musical geek, where I could genuinely believe that On my Own from Les Mis was the pinacle of creative genius. Ah, simpler days... In that spirit, here is an excerpt from the first episode of Glee, featuring a cover of the Journey classic, Don't Stop Believin'. This song has been reclaimed from the cheese annuals in an ironic way, but the nice thing about this clip is that they play it straight - it is 100% without irony, which is kind of the whole point of the show.

And I need you more than want you

You know when you get a tune stuck in your head that you simply cannot shift... but you can't quite remember it? There's just a half-hummable fraction of it echoing over and over again, just out of your grasp. Well, I've had Witchita Lineman by Glen Campbell in my head for about a year or so - the mystery was finally solved when I heard it on Lauren Laverne's excellent BBC 6 Music radio show. And now I can fully enjoy it. Pure, simple, from the heart, yet understated, this song harks from a diferent time. It's not about being knowing or ironic or cool, just expressing emotions in a direct, honest yet beautiful way. Or something like that.

{photo courtesy of SP8254}

WHITE OUT

As you may have heard, wintry weather has been in abundance here in England - and we are set for more. As such, I thought I'd kick off my New Year's Resolution by posting a refined version of my winter playlist...

Sebastien Tellier - La Ritournelle (Dan's Magic Wand Remix)
- don't the bells sound just like icicles? Just me then...

Jens Lekman - The Cold Swedish Winter
- because I'm sure the Swedes are used to this weather, but also because snuggling up with someone is the best way to spend a cold night

Elbow - Weather to Fly
- beautiful song, perfectly captures that frosty morning feeling

Mumford & Sons - Winter Winds
- bet Mumford & Sons are pleased they chose to release this single now! "Was it love or fear of the cold that led us through the night?" When temperatures are this cold, sometimes it's hard to tell...

Arcade Fire - Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
- the archtypical winter's song, trust the Canadians to know how to do it.

The Pipettes - A Winter’s Sky
- romance isn't just for the Summer you know...

Grand Archives - Sleepdriving
- snow = treacherous driving. This song is that sleepy fed-up feeling when you know you've still got a long way to go

Laura Marling - Goodbye England (Covered in Snow)
- is there a more appropriate song right now? I think not.

Bon Iver - Blood Bank
- because every winter playlist must include a Bon Iver song (it does mean "good winter" in French after all), but the lyrics of this one are particularly poignant.

Zipbedeedoodah.

{photo courtesy of voithite on flickr}

New Years Resolution No. 2...

...to write more often!!

Happy New Year!

The Walkmen - In The New Year