grange85's Last.fm Journal

Damon & Naomi @ The Luminaire

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:55:51 +0000

Full review on A Head Full of Wishes

...Alasdair MacLean of The Clientele, added his very distinctive guitar to set closer Cruel Queen (and made me regret the laziness that kept me at home when they played the same venue last week). For the encore Damon & Naomi pulled out a track from More Sad Hits, which only seemed fair given the amount of very good press the re-release has had over here (that I’m sure contributed to the size of the crowd), they chose “Memories” and followed it with “In The Sun” (with Naomi singing, so more Playback Singers than Pierre Etoile version).

More pics on Flickr

Thu 15 Jan – Damon & Naomi, The Left Outsides, Birdengine

Sweet, free album

Tue, 9 Dec 2008 15:31:47 +0000

Just spotted that you can download The Oxfam Field Recordings Volume 1 (WR005) album for free. Sweet and gentle south-coast indiepop...for nothing...that's a bargain...

Just dug this one out #24 - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:12:24 +0000

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

I've always been most fond of the transitionary era of The Beatles and for many years have proclaimed Rubber Soul and Revolver as my two favourite albums, and that the band's pinnacle was the Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane single. The proclamation would normally have been followed by a dismissive sneer at Sgt. Pepper and pretty much all their subsequent albums. My thinking was that with Pepper they threw all their ideas and imaginings into a bloody great bucket which was then stirred and stirred into an over-rated mess that left them pretty much bereft of any pop sensibility for the rest of the band's existence. The rest of their career was spent churning out tiresome rock music (with a rare treat here and there) until they, thankfully for all of us, imploded.

Having Ian MacDonald's awesome Revolution in the Head in the toilet for a couple of months urged me to reassess that position. My opinion was so firmly entrenched that it turned out that Sgt. Pepper was the only Beatles album we hadn't bought on CD. Having acquired a digital copy I gave the album a listen for the first time in probably 10+ years.

And here I am, and nothing is tempting me to change my position. The opening track is a great opener but the unbearable run up to Fixing a Hole is a section that I have no desire to suffer ever again. She's Leaving Home is the one pop gem in amongst all that cacophonous/pretentious/smug/silly nonsense.

I never had the opportunity of hearing the album in 1967 and it may well have been stunning on first release but without that, I can hear nothing but a confused and confusing muddle that just reaffirms my position that The Beatles started their very steep downward slide with Sgt. Pepper and for me there’s no Beatles-related release worth more than a cursory listen until McCartney's first solo album

A Day in the Life is astonishing but it doesn't change my opinion of the album because it sits bolted onto the end after the reprise of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. That, and the fact that it succeeds where so much of the album fails, gives the impression that it’s not a part of Sgt. Pepper and the fact that it shares vinyl with it is merely chance.

Actually I think I'll declare that A Collection Of Beatles Oldies is my favourite Beatles album - just for contrariness, for the timing of its release and because I picked up a beautiful copy of it in a second hand shop while on holiday in Jersey in 1984 for a quid.

First posted on November 18th, 2008 by Andy on Everything's Swirling

Just dug this one out #23 - Has Been by William Shatner

Thu, 2 Oct 2008 15:53:49 +0000

OK - so this is "digging out" an album that I've actually never listened to before. Hazel has had it, I guess since release and I guess because of the Aimee Mann contribution. And of course I'd heard and enjoyed, in a cool but novelty way, Common People. But a whole album of William Shatner seemed a ridiculous thing to even contemplate - so I never did until this afternoon. I skimmed through the thousands of tracks on my portable drive and Kirk's presence overpowered me and I got a desire to listen to it.

Track one of Has Been is the aforementioned Common People and on most other days I wouldn't get beyond that. It is great, although the singing (apparantly Joe Jackson) really takes the edge off, and becuase of the contrast with Shatner's frankly beautiful delivery, possibly even exaggerates the novelty aspect of it. Today I persisted and found myself being absolutely stunned by just how good the whole album is.

Unfortunately like Common People a number of other tracks have the magic of Shatner broken by the contributions of the interlopers. I'd wanted to say that it should have been only Shatner on the album but it would have definitely been a lesser album without I Can't Get Behind That with Henry Rollins. The album really should have ended there.

So here I am, four years after everyone else discovered this album, finally realising that Mr Shatner is a treasure and that Has Been is, despite the likes of Joe Jackson and Brad Paisley hauling it back from the verge of being a classic, an album that I can't help but love.

Just dug this one out #22 - Danger in the Past by Robert Forster

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:08:06 +0000

I was late to the Go-Betweens party; no sooner had Ken exposed me to their pop beauty than they decided to split up. Grant McLennan and Robert Forster both released excellent solo albums and played London within days of each other. First up Grant played a decent and solid set and was joined by Robert for an encore (of Clouds, if memory serves), I left happy if not blown-away. Then at the Subterranea, Robert Forster and a backup band he'd apparantly picked up in Berlin, staked his claim as my favourite ex-Go-Between.

I saw him many times after both with and without Grant and eventually I finally got to see the pair of them billed as The Go-Betweens. I guess they realised what too few other people knew, that the world was a better place with The Go-Betweens in it...and is a worse place now we don't have that luxury any more. The Subterranea show was amazing, organ-drenched and sleazy, Robert swaggered, scrounged drinks from the audience and finished with an astounding version of Grant Hart's 2541 - the version he released on I Had a New York Girlfriend a couple of years later doesn't even hint at the majesty of that first time.

Danger in the Past still sounds like it always did, I could pick out songs...Baby Stones is an exceptional opener and Is That What You Call Change is a beautifully worded tirade, but picking the best from an album of greats is really too hard. None of his subsequent albums channeled his cockiness quite so eloquently and none of them really hit the mark like this one.

Just dug this one out #21 - Be Seeing You by Dr Feelgood

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 18:30:59 +0000

One such record was a 7″ single of She’s A Wind Up/Baby Jane by Dr Feelgood and, like a fair few of the records I got from the sales, it went a good many weeks unplayed. A school friend was a huge Feelgood fan and so I offered it to him because he would obviously appreciate it more. He said he would gladly take it off my hands but insisted that before I even thought about giving it away that I really ought to listen to it so I went home that afternoon and had another one of those life-changing moments - the awesome opening guitar riff just blew me away…I still have the single and treasure it.
Just dug this one out #21 -Be Seeing You by Dr Feelgood
read the full article on Everything's Swirling

Just dug this one out #20: Me & Mr Ray by Miracle Legion

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:43:58 +0000

Originally posted on Everything's Swirling

Ken turned me on to Miracle Legion and I picked up a CD of Me and Mr. Ray at an indie record shop in Epsom and over the next months filled in a collection. This is probably my favourite (actually...no...thinking about it now Surprise Surprise Surprise is much, much better) because it was the first album I'd heard and because it was just Mark and Mr Ray when we saw them that first time being supported by The Breeders.

It's another album (and this series is filling up with them) that has slipped off my radar so it was quite peculiar going back to it - it still sounded good but Mulcahy's delivery grated after a while. The songs I remembered liking first time round, Ladies From Town and If She Could Cry I felt less comfortable with than I had back then but You're the One Lee and Old and New still sounded exceptional (although the woo woo woos at the beginning of the latter had me leaning for the skip button).

Brian recorded the demos for the first album Understand in a crappy house just off the Hanger Lane Gyratory System (as it was called back then I think it might just be a "junction" or a "roundabout" now) we set up all the equipment in the damp smelling living room and while Ken and Niall pulled together the songs my task was to try and get the hang of the Tascam Portastudio, Alesis Quadraverb and a drum machine proficiently enough to get decent enough recordings onto cassette.

One long afternoon/evening session descended into farce as Niall and Ken started bickering over the intro to a song that hadn't been written - one (and I can't remember which one) of them wanted to have a spoken intro like "If She Could Cry" has ("Shall I tell you how it is?...I'll tell you how it is...) the other didn't and what started as one of them voicing a half-baked idea descended into bickering, shouting, storming-off to the kitchen, long charged silences, more storming off...

Eventually we withdrew to LA Pizza and laughed at the idea that a band could fall apart over the intro to a song that hadn't even been written. At that moment I was, as Ken would later often point out, Brian's Derek Smalls - I was the lukewarm water between them.

When Understand was finally released there was no song with a spoken intro and Niall (Nigel Tufnell?) was no longer a part of the band.

Just dug this one out #19: From Our Living Room to Yours by American Analog Set

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:10:50 +0000

Posted on Everything's Swirling - July 31st, 2008 by Andy

I loved From Our Living Room to Yours when I first got hold of it…so much so that I made a web page dedicated to The American Analog Set. In those early days of the Web that was a legitimate way of declaring love…well it was for me anyway

I remember listening on headphones to the adorable opening of Magnificent Seventies and being totally sucked in. But I stopped listening to Amanset - I kept buying the albums but stopped listening to them, I stopped updating the website and when Amanset finally called it a day it was frankly a bit of a relief. It turns out that I probably never really loved them at all - and maybe all I really, truly loved was the first 9 minutes of this album…and even that at a push…lets say the first 4 minutes…

And listening now I’m beginning to see why, I’m fond of drone and (clearly) not averse to gentle pace but something is missing, something that could pull this out of “nice” and into “gripping” something that could prevent the word B-O-R-I-N-G from popping into my head…but it keeps popping in. Maybe sometimes it almost pulls me back in but then it lets me go again and I drift away thinking of other things and not really hearing the music anymore.

Maybe it’s me, maybe I don’t have the patience and skill required to enjoy this music anymore.

Joanna Newsom & Red Krayola @ Somerset House

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:06:46 +0000

Posted on July 21st, 2008 on Everything's Swirling

Mayo Thompson of Red Krayola is a funny guy - he wandered on stage dressed like an undertaker and spent a couple of minutes trying to attach his set list to the mic stand, he eventually gave up and placed it on the floor and then reached into his pocket to get out his specs - I felt empathy given the state of my eyesight recently and it made me laugh - as did most of the set. The band was a Mayo, a drummer, a (British) singer who (mis-)read her lyrics from sheets of paper and a saxophonist who used his leg as a mute. Baffling and bizarrely brilliant.

Joanna Newsom came on stage in a(nother) silly billowing dress (I really wish she’d dress in jeans and a t-shirt because a dress like that would flatter no one). She played alone opening with Bridges & Balloons and then playing Emily, Sadie, Colleen at which point she moved from the harp to a piano where she played a few new songs (and an old one - Inflammatory Writ) before heading back to the harp for the finale Peach, Plum, Pear, Cosmia and a beautiful finish of Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie. No encore - probably too cold and maybe a bit too close to curfew but the crowd were yearning so it was a disappointment when the courtyard lights came up.

While the venue was interesting I’d have preferred to have been indoors, without the smokers, the bells, the seagulls and the cold. There was no Sawdust & Diamonds - which had been so astounding solo at the RAH - and that was a disappointment but all told it was a good show and will tide me over until she’s hopefully over with a new album soon.
Joanna Newsom & Red Krayola @ Somerset House

Just dug this one out #18: Overkill by Motorhead

Mon, 7 Jul 2008 13:02:37 +0000

Posted to Everything's Swirling on July 7th, 2008 by Andy

I've always claimed Overkill as my favourite Motorhead album, the opneing (title) track is as pure heavy metal as it's possible to be - and it's a song about listening to Motorhead and the best thing about the band is being immersed in their music so the best Motorhead song has to be about nothing more or less than that. Listening now I'd have to say this is unquestionably the greatest metal track ever...by a country mile. Knowing that the album isn't going to get better ought to be a problem but strangely isn't. The rest of the album is patchy but there's enough to maintain its top of the stack position...

Tear Ya Down is a love song - I'm not quite sure how the title reconciles, I'm guessing it must just be a euphemism for sex (as I suppose "rip you Limb From Limb" is later) and as such is unpleasantly aggressive but I love the idea that the protagonist has put effort into this relationship - "I was talking to you all night long, every line was a favourite song" and the "I'll give you supernatural powers" ending is just lovely - who knew Lemmy could be so tender?

The angry/bitter/get-out-of-my-life songs are more traditional Motorhead fare and are variable - (I Won't) Pay Your Price is pedestrian and possibly the worst track on the album (although the distasteful Damage Case is certainly the most unpleasant), whereas No Class is funny and clever and a classic - "no buddy I can't spare a dime" or "I know you ain't got the brain, to come in out of the rain". It's clear that pissing off Lemmy is not something you'd want to do.

Motorhead's albums have always been a muddle of smart, angry, other-worldly, unpleasant and childish and Overkill is an album with a decent proportion of the good bits. This and the awesome live Golden Years EP define Motorhead for me, and define the time in my life when music became more important than anything else...