…one banana, two banana, three banana, four…
I like this. Very Stereolab-ish vocals with some interesting, yet not shocking, atonality in the similarly 90’s style electronic backdrop. A pleasant listen.
Btw, Mort, I went to survey the list and I’m not seeing Mega Bog on it.
I was going to add the latest album by a long running German industrial band called Oomph!, Der Wahsinns Fette Beute - aka “Fat Booty of Madness”, which is a great, great album name. I’ve enjoyed their work in the past, but they never really inspired me the way some of the other German bands I listen to do as they’ve seemed to have a less unique sound (and also their albums up to about 2004 are interspersed with songs in English, which is not generally what I’m looking for from a German band). Fat Booty of Madness is still recognizably them, but it is almost totally unlike anything else they’ve ever put out and has a huge range in its own right. I love pretty much everything on it.
…unfortunately all that Spotify has from them is a greatest hits album called Delikatessen and a 2010 album called Truth or Dare where they redid a bunch of their most popular songs in English. (It’s kind of interesting to finally be able to tell what the song’s about but it kind of diminishes the impact, in my book. Especially since sometimes their translated lyrics don’t scan.)
So if you can track down Fat Booty of Madness someplace, I highly encourage checking it out, but I’ll have to find something else for the mixtape.
Oops! Thanks. I hath dragged n’ I hath dropped. Should be there now. :)
T’is on there now, forsooth!
Ah, there we go. Wolfenstein: The New Order’s original soundtrack -is- on Spotify, and it’s pretty fantastic so I’ve added it. I don’t normally listen to videogame soundtracks, or even really register the original portions most of the time (and honestly, I mostly didn’t while actually playing W:TNO), although I might well be struck by use of licensed music, as in Saints Row or GTA. But having had it highlighted for me in a Let’s Play of the game over on SomethingAwful, I feel like it really does hold up on its own merits as well as strongly conveying the themes of the game, particularly through a number of really creepy, dark electronica tracks like Deathshead’s theme, or the music to the final boss fight, “Prototype”. Note that this is not the reimagined pop music of Nazi-dominated 1960 (you can find those here: https://soundcloud.com/neumondrecordings ), but the music you’ll hear during the game proper.
Enjoying everything so far this month. Even the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, which I was assuming I would hate, is turning out to be way more sonically interesting than I expected. Favorites are the 4AD-ist Mega Bog and weirdie Nazoranai, but everything is well above replacement-level.
Bonus love to Tree Wave who led me through a circuitous route to my next month’s obscure pick that I had never heard of till now.
You’re right, very 4AD! MB’s got exactly that kind of lush, exotic sound. Speaking of… did you ever get around to reading that retrospective by Martin Aston? I think I’ll just grab it on ebook and finally give it a read. I’m geeking out over the wonderful Marvin ereader for iPad and eager to add new books to my library.
Last weekend I was clicking around youtube and saw this John Peel clip* and then listened to O Superman many times and fell in love once again with that utterly beguiling song. Maybe it was trig writing about Uncle Charlie, or maybe it was screening Almost Famous in class, but I started feeling nostalgic for afternoons spent playing Big Science on my bedroom turntable at 16 and driving (!) into Cleveland Heights to buy more of her albums at Wax Trax. She was an early horizon-broadener.
So then I started toying with the idea of trying to bring my love for O Superman into the classroom. It has great structure and strong internal contrast (Anderson describes it as a cross between a national anthem and a weird, warped lullaby) both of which are key concepts in screenwriting.
This afternoon, I had some time to kill before class so I walked down to Other Music. And there, behind the register, an autographed vinyl copy of Big Science on display! I struck up a conversation with the clerk about the song and then he said, “She still comes in sometimes.”
I decided all this was a sign. I had to do it. So, not 20 minutes later, there I was in class screening and leading a discussion on O Superman.
And it went… horribly. Crash and burn. All I got was a sea of vague confusion and (what felt like) disinterest. Which of course made me all-the-more self-conscious and that makes me start to ramble so it only went downhill from there. I have a lot of students who really love interesting music but this group seemed, shall we say, not there yet.
Anyway, I just wanted you guys to know that I fought the good fight today and I lost BUT I REGRET NOTHING!!!
*I love in this clip when she says just thinking about how many people heard her song thanks to John Peel makes her so happy it almost makes her sad. She’s wonderful.
Nazorania is weirdie. There’s a good review of the album here which basically describes it as a really sardonic stoner jam session.
Good choices this month- I haven’t finished but I enjoyed Barn Owl and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and can only assume I’ll find much to like in the rest of the picks.
Yes, I finished it a month or so ago…for longtime fans like me and (I assume) you, it’s absolutely essential! There’s great stories and interviews and exhaustively minute backstory about record company deals and signings and cover art and intra-band squabbles that geeks care about. I mean, I read that entire 1100-page book about the history of Creation Records and found every page of it fascinating. This has similar qualities.
Somebody really needs to do a book like this about Factory now, and the trilogy of post-punk UK label histories will be complete.
i’m afraid i really took to this album. never heard of them before, but apparently came across it at just the right time to be patient. also enjoyed this:
expected not to like it due to hopping into a couple tracks and hearing what i refer to as ‘los angeles folk’ or music for the sake of being kitschy and adorable. upon return, i found i was very wrong to skim past it. really love that sax
here’s my contribution – Laura Groves - Committed Language EP. again, something small but in my queue for the past week on repeat:
Digging that Laura Grove! Never heard her before.
I’ll go with the new one by The Amazing. Something about this band really gets to me. I think it’s the drumming. The guitars and singing also have something to do with it.
I added the album Beautiful Skeletons by Gavin Clark.
I’d never heard of him, actually, although I guess I heard some of his music when I watched This Is England. Back in the day director Shane Meadows, actor/director Paddy Considine and Leisure Society frontman Nick Hemmings all sort of moved in the same circles. Meadows and Considine went on to be movie icons in the UK. Hemmings pocketed an Ivor Novello award or two, and his band is my favorite band going at the moment.
Gavin Clark remained absent. He had a substance abuse problem in younger days that seems to have devastated him, left his psyche scarred and fragile. He put a band together in the 1990s, released an album to massive critical acclaim, and saw it go nowhere. Like the guy he’s so often compared to, Nick Drake, Clark seemed to walk an odd tightrope then: particular and assured of what he was doing musically to often almost singleminded purpose…while remaining crashingly shy, feeling inferior, wondering if anything he created was particularly worthwhile.
The 2000s were a bit better for him. Meadows leaned on him more and more, using Clark’s music and having him do original scores for his films. He put together a band called Clayhill that put out a record or two. No less a light than British music eclecticists UNKLE used Clark’s voice on a number of tracks.
It’s easy to understand why. Clark’s voice does sort of ring of a Nick Drake-ish familiarity, although he’s a bit rawer, a bit darker. Perhaps Nick Drake if he’d grown up singing John Lee Hooker or (ha ha) Son House.
Director Shane Meadows was such a booster of Clark’s, that he decided to bootstrap his friend and help him launch a solo career of sorts. The idea was this: Meadows would make a documentary about Clark’s attempt to forge a career that would start with him simply playing a concert in his living room in front of a group of family and friends, and then see where things went.
Beautiful Skeletons is the concurrent release to that documentary. The first half is acoustic versions and demos of Sunhouse and Clayhill songs. (The sequence from “Hurricane” through “Black Blood” and then “Crazy on the Weekend” is harrowing and then like a gray sunrise after a terrible night.) The second half are the songs recorded for Meadows’ films, and where you can really feel like Gavin Clark was actually getting better with age. “Low are the Punches” is gorgeous. “Painted Glass” is stunning.
The documentary is called Living Room. It’s actually online to watch here. It can be tough to watch. Clark seems like an engaging fuckup, sometimes unable to get out of the way of his own self when his routine is disturbed. In the last 15 minutes, he finally performs his first living room gig in front of a dozen family and friends. His hands are trembling from fear so badly that he can barely strum his guitar. His voice cracks hoarsely. I suppose that Meadows wanted a bit of a triumphant ending for the film and its arc, so it ends with Clark two years later on stage with a full band, playing a hugely crowded outdoor show, looking far more confident and self-possessed. That’s the film’s “Searching For Sugar Man” ending.
The movie came out on February 9th. On the morning of February 16th, Clark passed away suddenly at age 46, a final cruel cut to the guy. He was working on new material with other collaborators and a proper solo album. For now, this is it. I first heard of Gavin Clark the day after he died, when Nick Hemmings posted the news and then mentioned that the song “Bermondsey Stutter” (it’s the second to last track on Beautiful Skeletons) was his favorite ever.
The last song on the last record released during Gavin Clark’s lifetime might be better. It’s a haunting, gorgeous, nakedly beautiful track called “I Dreamt Of God”, and if you were going to write your own epitaph you’d have a hard time topping this.
Not for every mood, by any means, but perfect for a cold rainy day. And goddamn. Beautiful Skeletons exists to mock Clark’s fears of his inadequacy as an artist. It’s one of the most gorgeous and haunting records I’ve heard in recent months.
(Also beware, there’s another musician named Gavin Clark who has some records up on Spotify. This is the Gavin Clark you want, and this is his only solo album. His other stuff is also available though under Sunhouse and Clayhill.)
Damn, that’s so sad. Sounds like the perfect album to soundtrack the additional 6 inches of snow that just fell atop our backyard tundra. Today Amelia said, “Remember the grass?” Barely…
P.S. All these years later, I’m still learning new words from your writing on music. Eclecticists! Huzzah!
did you post Desperate Journalist? whoever did, it nearly knocked my socks off to hear a band i thought broke up some years ago called The Organ. I had to google Desperate Journalist just to see if they shared any bandmates, but in fact, they don’t. a review of Desperate Journalist’s album compares the two front-women, though, and i’m feeling a little grateful that there’s a spiritual successor in some way to The Organ. my interst may be fueled by nostalgia, but i also love this bright gloominess that both bands exhibit, so the month is already off to an amazing start
here’s a youtube of The Organ’s single, “Brother” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GdgEXaF2sk
speaking of amazing, a cursory listen to The Amazing is already telling me that i’ll be playing it more than a few times. it’s been a while since i’ve heard indie rock that had detailed instruments and bothered to feature them, as well. side note: i don’t listen to a lot of indie rock these days
haven’t gotten too much into Gavin Clark but he sounds like the sincere Ryan Adams stuff i used to like, but without the melodrama
i had another album in mind for this month, but seeing as how soulful and inspired the current entries are (along with feeling a little sentimental myself), i’ve gone to the memory bucket and fished out something from a band i no longer like. their first album, however, i treasure quite a bit
every release beyond their 2008 debut suffers from production value, a detriment to a raw and different sound that i felt was the true voice of Frontier Ruckus. i think the prominence of a drummer to their successive albums was the biggest mistake, with no time to think between the simple vocal/string pairing. maybe the guy had vocal lessons, and maybe they got bored with slower, more introspective tracks, but i love an album that feels like it comes from a place (Bon Iver’s For Emma is one such, along with that famous Daft Punk thing) and this one has the strongest voice in the band’s discography
Frontier Ruckus - The Orion Songbook. Rosemont always haunts me, The Latter Days makes me feel like an understanding person, and Foggy Lilac Windows reminds me of fall in the midwest. i’ve written a lot more about this album than any other i’ve posted. i guess i connect with a sensation of reflecting on life from the afterlife that an album like this exhibits. it’s kind of completed its journey before the band has even begun theirs
I kind of cheated this month.
The new Father John Misty album, I Love You Honeybear, dropped last month and, just as with his last album, Fear Fun, it was great. That said, on both albums, there are a bunch of songs that I am madly in love with and a bunch of songs that are just kind of there. It occurred to me that if you dropped the songs in the latter category, what you are left with is a ten song album that is glorious and perfect in every way. These ten songs, released together as I’ve arranged them here, would likely win album of the year for me.
I did add Desperate Journalist! I hope everyone else is enjoying it.
Very, very much enjoying Gavin Clark.
Enjoying it is an understatement. I’m loving it.