Monthly Archive for November, 2009

new music mondays: matthew ryan;

Published on November 30, 2009 in music. 6 Comments Tags: , , , .

I watch my breath in the orange streetlight haze of another city winter, and wondered when this all stopped feeling like fun. It’s the smell of congealing pizza and the feel of somebody’s drunken knees kneading into the base of my spine on the last bus home. It’s clutching at the scarf at my neck or shoving my hands in pockets that are starting to spring a hole I can’t help picking at. It’s the lights reflected in the river. We’re heading north, but man, this feels like south.

There’s a muddy, claustrophobic sound to Dear Lover, the new album from this singer-songwriter I fell hard for last year. It could be the beats, or the muddy guitars. There is just too much noise for this to be the product of one man and yet, as everything layers together to create a thick, intensely personal wall of sound which throbs like the inner membrane of the brain it’s hard to imagine that it has been shared. Even the harmonies sound like bedroom echoes.

“Some Streets Lead Nowhere” is the album’s standout track. I’d heard it before, discovered by accident before I even knew there was another album on the way. Sort of like the way I discovered Matthew Ryan himself. I love you, was all that she said… Ryan’s usual throaty croak provides the perfect, honest delivery as the strings swell.

And “We Are Snowmen” sounds like the world’s lamest title but I had to put its glowing din of human wreckage on repeat: the ghostly piano, the sense of desperate loneliness. This album is full of personal moments like this, like a fragile heart trapped under museum glass that begs to be touched again.

sometimes I close my eyes and hum those songs we loved
your dress was blue and you were as bright as Christmas

A couple of listens later, I’m no more sure what I’m trying to cling onto here but I know I like it. While there are some missteps on the album – “Spark” ft. DJ Preach is a little bizarre and not what I’d expect from a Matthew Ryan record, for example – this is a gorgeous, warm record that only reveals new depths with each listen. Because the minute you create this stuff because you want to, rather than because you have to, is the minute it all goes wrong.

DOWNLOAD:Matthew Ryan – Some Streets Lead Nowhere
BUY: Dear Lover at Matthew Ryan Online

heavy like sunday: last month’s mix, november 2009;

Published on November 29, 2009 in music. 2 Comments Tags: , .
This entry is part 21 of 28 in the series monthly mix club

I left the last monthly mix of this year too late, and am too hyper to provide much clever commentary. I don’t know what’s up with me today: I woke up in far too good a mood. And I love the shit out of far too many of this month’s songs, even though pretty much all I’ve listened to for the past fortnight has been the Gaslight Anthem and Jason Isbell.

Perhaps the wind is changing again.

The Stereo Just Ate The Mixtape That You Made: last month’s mix, November 2009
1. Imogen Heap: “First Train Home”
2. Franz Nicolay: “Quiet Where I Lie”
3. The Gaslight Anthem: “Miles Davis and the Cool”
4. Blitzen Trapper: “Furr”
5. Herman Dune: “Baby Baby You’re My Baby”
6. Leona Naess: “Heavy Like Sunday”
7. Lucero: “Darken My Door”
8. The Twilight Sad: “Seven Years of Letters”
9. Company of Thieves: “Oscar Wilde” [acoustic]
10. Beerjacket: “Dancing in the Dark”
11. The Raveonettes: “My Boyfriend’s Back”
12. Frightened Rabbit: “Song Against Sex”
13. Clem Snide: “1989″
14. Tom Waits: “Time”
15. Conor Oberst and Gillian Welch: “Lua”

[ZIPPED MP3S, LEFT CLICK AND SAVE]*

*Hosted on Dropbox at the moment, as I’m having FTP problems.

Monthly Most Played is, as ever, after the jump:

Continue reading ‘heavy like sunday: last month’s mix, november 2009;’

[lyg10] between euphoria and the afterglow;

Published on November 27, 2009 in [lyg10] and a little more personal. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

September this year marks ten years since I made my first, tentative and over-sharey, foray into blogging. I hope you’ll forgive a little self-indulgence on my part, but I’d like to do something to celebrate a pretty significant milestone. I’ve hit upon the idea of publishing some selected takes from my archives – there’s a little bit of poetic license required here, as some of the proper cringeworthy teenage stuff is (thankfully) lost in the mists and pixels of cyberspace, but what I’ll publish every Friday from here until the end of the year is culled from the LiveJournal years, 2003-2006.

Don’t laugh. When Tommy Sheridan was a proper, honest-to-God politician he was a good sort, the only one who’d make time for student journalists after parliamentary debates and give them quotes for their assignments. Which they would then fail for giving too much of a socialist slant rather than a balanced viewpoint!

26th March 2004
Expediency demands that my creativity be sucked out of me and ploughed into ever-more-worthy pursuits than this record of my thoughts. While the thrill of speaking to Tommy Sheridan – a real-live-honest-to-God-politician! – in my capacity as a student journalist the other day reminded me of what I am in this for, the reality is hours spent hunched over a laptop. I fruitlessly search the Internet for a gem of worthwhile information, try to pull an argument from thin air and make up cups of coffee so strong I describe them to my flatmate Pam, with a wry smile, as “poisonous”.

That bloody Microsoft paperclip mocks my discomfort at every turn. It occurs to me now that I don’t actually remember ever being discharged from physiotherapy – I can’t just have stopped going, can I? A combination of childhood bad posture, years of heavy backpacks, a life spent latterly almost entirely in front of a computer screen and a hell of a lot of stress has fucked my back up, given me the most incredibly tense neck muscles you could possibly imagine and the delightful aftereffect of hellish migraines every couple of days if I don’t get enough sleep. The thing is, whether it’s what Ian jokingly calls ‘the Edinburgh time difference’ or something else entirely, my body’s notion of what constitutes enough sleep has changed dramaticaly since last year. I remember when I was writing my first dissertation, chatting to friends on other continents until two in the morning and then getting up at eight to catch them before they went to bed and get started on my work before the day was too old. I feel so out of my own personal loop here, and perhaps my exhaustion is a direct result of that displacement.

I don’t know. I’m trying to combat the discomfort by taking regular breaks, talking to my mum on the phone or watching the news lying on the floor and trying to keep my back straight. Fairy lights, believe it or not, are an excellent relaxation tool. Sometimes I just stare at the ceiling until my mind brings itself back into focus. I have scented candles which help too. I was using lavender incense, but I had to leave my bedroom window open for a full day afterwards before it stopped smelling like a brothel in here.

The Legacy Edition of Jeff Buckley’s Live at Sin-e is absolute genius, and has been keeping me company during some of those breaks. I turn it up loud enough to drown out Edinburgh: the roadworks, the drunken teenagers spilling out of dirty nightclubs at three o’clock in the morning and the zoo that is Block 123. With the reality of this plane of something resembling but not-quite existence all but melted away, I could almost be there and then in New York with him.

I was back home on Mothers’ Day and we sat and played some old cassette tapes; the songs of people long gone – or long grown from four-year-old me and my two-year-old brother in a tuneless rendition of “There’s No-One Quite Like Grandma”. My mother and I both welled up as we heard Grandma and Grandad duetting on an old lovesong through the static of my first-ever tape recorder, the one that ended up in the kitchen when I got the threeCDautochangerfivespeaker monstrosity my sister was relieved to discover I’d be leaving at home.

There’s something sacred about those voices kept for posterity on tape. The people behind them are gone, or changed – one a sweet-scented, curly-haired memory of mini Mars Bars, Lego and little dolls in the bathroom named after the grandchildren. The other is so much older now, but he can still hold a tune – not so long ago on a Sunday visit I asked him to sing for me, and he did.

I think that’s how you know the people you love are never really gone – their afterimages remain, a smile permanently burned on your retina or a song on the tip of your tongue. It’s Ross in the picture on my wardrobe, the one I showed Seymour when he saw me in Edinburgh and he couldn’t get over how young we looked. It’s my grandparents, still in love and harmonising on tape. And it’s Jeff Buckley, and the art that was his legacy to a world he spent so little time in.

And with that – tangential even for me – I’d better get this essay printed out and head up the hill. I have birthday presents to buy today for Very Special People, I do.

child of the noughties: it’s bound to melt your heart for good or for bad;

Published on November 26, 2009 in music. 14 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .
This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series best of the noughties

Surprisingly to nobody, in the end I couldn’t steer clear of the “best of the decade” chat that is dominating the blogosphere at the moment. Last time around, of course, there wasn’t a “blogosphere” – and I wasn’t really listening to music at all! This decade has seen my rebirth as a music fan and so, in a way, perhaps every album I call “special” or “personal” or “favourite” is could belong in this list – whatever nickname we ultimately give this decade. Personally, I’m more interested to see what trendy buzzword we come up with for the next one!

Over the next four weeks, I’m going to count down my favourite forty – one per artist – albums of the decade and, while there might not be any massive surprises, I’d be thrilled if you used this as an opportunity to pick up something you haven’t had a chance to listen to yet.

Kudos to Kate, for inspiring me with her similarly themed post on Facebook.

20. The Gaslight Anthem: Sink or Swim
2007, XOXO
The “one album per artist” rule I’ve stuck to so far on this list has its toughest test yet, as my love for the Gaslight Anthem’s two full-lengths is pretty much equal. In the end, a rougher sound and less of the musical namechecks that tend to put the naysayers (and my Googlers) off, as well as the inclusion of my favourite of their songs, swings it for their debut. Sure the singer thinks he’s Springsteen and the bassist James Dean, and the band itself isn’t exactly tearing up the rule book, but that doesn’t take away from the times good and bad their output has soundtracked over an eventful decade’s close.
If you download one track, make it: “We Came To Dance”
BUY: Sink Or Swim at Amazon.co.uk

19. Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins: Rabbit Fur Coat
2006, Rough Trade
Don’t get me wrong: I really, really like Rilo Kiley. But I loved flame-haired frontwoman Jenny Lewis’ solo debut. An incredible mix of folk, gospel and blues, augmented by lush harmonies from the Watson Twins, that did much to make Lewis a seeming permanent fixture in music blog eye candy towards the end of the decade.
If you download one track, make it: “You Are What You Love”
BUY: Rabbit Fur Coat at Amazon.co.uk

18. Thea Gilmore: Rules for Jokers
2002, Flying Sparks
Of course, the point of a retrospective like this is to turn up those gems you’d all but forgotten. Ask me to recall one album from the past life in Edinburgh that I revisit in those Friday morning historical blog posts and it would probably be this one – a CD booklet first flicked through on Kaite’s bedroom floor and a collection of seriously rockin’, seriously heartbreakin’, alt.folk from a singer-songwriter who would have been a household name by now if there had been any justice in the world.
If you download one track, make it: “This Girl Is Taking Bets”
BUY: Rules for Jokers (Special Limited Edition) at Amazon.co.uk

17. Sun Kil Moon: Ghosts of the Great Highway
2007, Caldo Verde
Everything about this record is beautiful: the artwork, the packaging and of course Mark Kozelek’s ethereal voice, a security blanket wrapping me up in a dreamworld where my heartrate slows and panic subsides. The melody here is understated, comforting and familiar.
If you download one track, make it: “Lily and Parrots”
BUY: Ghosts Of The Great Highway at Amazon.co.uk

16. Joanna Newsom: The Milk-Eyed Mender
2004, Drag City
The voice is the first thing you notice. It’s raw, childlike and probably like nothing you’ve ever heard before. You might hate it, at first, until you listen to the strange lyrics and delicate harp, scales like kittens’ feet on a piano, and decide you wouldn’t have it any other way. The music of Joanna Newsom is fresh, otherworldly and – above all – compelling.
If you download one track, make it: “Peach, Plum, Pear”
BUY: The Milk-Eyed Mender at Amazon.co.uk

15. Sleater-Kinney: The Woods
2005, Sub Pop
In many ways they were my “band of the noughties”, but with this screaming swansong Sleater-Kinney delivered a sucker punch to an industry sorely needing one. The Woods actually seemed to herald an exciting new direction for the Portland, OR trio – one that was sadly never to be. I miss them desperately.
If you download one track, make it: “Modern Girl”
BUY: The Woods at Amazon.co.uk

14. Okkervil River: Black Sheep Boy
2005, Jagjaguar
One of those bands whose career I worked backwards through: it was Okkervil River’s big-hitting recent albums that caught my attention, but this release remains their opus. A “concept album” of sorts, based around a little-known folk song and detailing the love between a girl and a monster-not-a-monster, it’s a masterly collection of beautifully crafted, lyrically complex songs.
If you download one track, make it: “Black”
BUY: Black Sheep Boy [Definitive Edition] at Amazon.co.uk

13. The Twilight Sad: Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters
2007, FatCat
I proved at the weekend that I can’t even talk about the Twilight Sad without going into some kind of a rapture over the night they changed my life, exploding into my heart as if from nothingness, loud and grinding and yet gorgeously melodic. Some things deserve to be discovered in the dark, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, so see them live if you can.
If you download one track, make it: “Cold Days From The Birdhouse”
BUY: Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters at Amazon.co.uk

12. Kathleen Edwards: Back to Me
2005, MapleMusic
I always seem to pick the boy singers; preferring, as I said once, to imagine myself as the girl sung about rather than the girl doing the singing. But then I discovered Kathleen Edwards, fell for her immediately and bought up what was at the time her entire discography in the one weekend spent trying to imitate her throaty, slightly bruised voice in my bedroom while working out the chords to “One More Song The Radio Won’t Like” on the guitar I never really learned how to play.
If you download one track, make it: “In State”
BUY: Back To Me at Amazon.co.uk

11. PJ Harvey: Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea
2003, Island
Stories From The City… might have been the last album I discovered “the old-fashioned way”: under the covers, headphones clamped in my ears and John Peel’s Festive Fifty soothing me to sleep. It was certainly the most important. Curiously less raw than both Harvey’s earlier and later work, each song a standout standalone, this album sounds as fresh on a rainy afternoon at the end of the decade as it did to a mouldable teen discovering her own musical fingerprint at its start.
If you download one track, make it: “A Place Called Home”
BUY: Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea at Amazon.co.uk

NOTE: Album title links almost always take you via my referrer page on Amazon.co.uk. I’m trying to save up for Christmas, so help a blogger out and pick up a fantastic album into the bargain!

you’re my favourite thing;

Published on November 25, 2009 in music. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Though it’s only a couple of years since this boy I’d never met accidentally found this spare copy of this album that he felt I really ought to have listened to, it’s actually 25 years since the release of the Replacements’ incredible Let It Be. While I would hope that the boy, who by this stage I can’t get rid of, will have a proper tribute to one of his favourite albums up at some point, my other favourite Minneapolis band High On Stress dropped me a line to let me know about this incredible tribute show – also celebrating the paperback release of Jim Walsh’s “All Over But The Shouting” – taking place at the city’s First Avenue on Friday night. Don’t let geography fool you – I would be all over this if I could.

Here’s a video Nick sent me of the band performing “Eyeliner Blues”, from their first album, with Slim Dunlap:

I can’t remember if I posted this before, but WORDS ACTUALLY FAIL ME.

Get down to this one if you can. You’ll have bragging rights over me for a long time.

DOWNLOAD: High On Stress – Eyeliner Blues
BUY: High On Stress – Cop Light Parade at CD Baby
BUY: The Replacements – Let It Be at Amazon.co.uk
BUY: The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting: an Oral History at Amazon.co.uk

a to z: this gurrl is taking bets;

Published on November 24, 2009 in music and photography. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .
This entry is part 20 of 25 in the series A to Z

216. This Gurrl Is Taking Bets

I’m quite proud of what I’ve come up with on this little series of pictures, so I’m going to attempt a little bit of mp3 blogging/self-portrait crossover based around a current music-related sub-project within a project. Follow that if you will, or just download the songs and tell me I’m pretty ;)

My friend Kaite used to say she had a line in this song for every one of her friends. See if you can guess which one was mine as you give it a listen.

[Behind the scenes exclusive: The chips with this Urban Decay poker set are full of lipgloss. Which would have been an amazing idea, had it not been left unopened and forgotten on my dressing table for what I suspect has been years. One of my stickier shots, certainly.]

DOWNLOAD: Thea Gilmore – This Girl Is Taking Bets
BUY: Rules for Jokers (Special Limited Edition) at Amazon.co.uk

[lyg10] hello, i’m sorry, i lost myself;

Published on November 20, 2009 in [lyg10] and a little more personal. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , .

September this year marks ten years since I made my first, tentative and over-sharey, foray into blogging. I hope you’ll forgive a little self-indulgence on my part, but I’d like to do something to celebrate a pretty significant milestone. I’ve hit upon the idea of publishing some selected takes from my archives – there’s a little bit of poetic license required here, as some of the proper cringeworthy teenage stuff is (thankfully) lost in the mists and pixels of cyberspace, but what I’ll publish every Friday from here until the end of the year is culled from the LiveJournal years, 2003-2006.

We’re coming to the end of my Napier years now, and my fluttering wings and urge to get out into the world can’t help but make me smile, with the benefit of hindsight.

15th March 2004
It’s a natural response of the human condition, once things get pressured, just to want everything to be over. As the work piles up – stupid assignments we can’t possibly do if we’re expected to attend classes as well, so we don’t attend classes because you can’t fail outright that way – we’re all beginning to lose our enthusiasm. And our patience.

I’ve always said I’d happily be a student forever, so experiencing the change within myself is as interesting when I’m playing casual observer as it is irritating living it. There’s a little bird trapped inside a nervous wreck of a body, squeaking mummy, mummy, I’m ready to go out into the world now!. Fuck this, I want an income, I want a weekend, I want an excuse to wear pinstripes, I want to be twenty-four.

And I want to stop feeling guilty that I’m wasting precious hours sleeping or cooking that could be spend on essays and shorthand practice. The voices in my head are back again, and less amusing than they’ve ever been. Even God got a lie-in on Sunday.

I had a notebook I passed around high school in the week before I left where people wrote me scrawled messages and memories and phone numbers I never used because they never really wanted me to. My old physics teacher, he who used me scoring best in both Standard Grade and Higher prelims as an excuse not to give out a prize the second year because “it wouldn’t be fair”, scribbled that he always knew I’d end up in court or jail. Today was, however, my first day in a proper courtroom, witnessing at first hand the legal system I studied for four years.

I can’t say that I didn’t feel a pang of loss as the solicitors scurried from courtroom to courtroom in their gowns with books and notes tucked under their arms, or while explaining art and part liability in hushed whispers to Susan and Lindsey at the back of the public gallery. This was the world I gave up, the forced formality of the lower workings of the mechanisms of justice, and it’s still my area of expertise when compared to the Man On The Clapham Omnibus. It’s still my thing, whether it’s Cheryl’s assignment or Seymour setting off my loud and obnoxious ringtone in the middle of an art gallery.

And I’m sure I could have been mistaken for a part of that world as I strutted the corridors in my blouse and best trousers (yes, strutted, even my own limited form of power dressing has the desired effect), had I not been wearing my Miffy backpack with its band logos and anti-war badges. Because nobody noticed the messages Susan and I were scrawling in each other’s shorthand notebooks: if all else fails we can flirt with the clerk of court for info.

A law student planning to become a journalist and a journalist with legal expertise are equally as interesting, and equally as fun, to be, and perhaps what is especially interesting is that I’ve always sided with the law where a conflict of interest has arisen and yet I’ve never seriously wanted to be anything other than a writer. I think the two professions feed off each other to a certain extent, along with politics, and certainly none of the three can exist in vacuum or be the same without the others. These same themes tend to arise in the protracted debates I have with my mother when the mood strikes us, and I was telling Susan this morning that I believe law, journalism and politics to be the three most important professions of the 21st century. I have an enormous level of contempt for the mass media, a healthy amount of cynicism for the legal system and a complete and utter distrust of all politics, but it’s a world I’m hugely proud to be a part of.

In whatever capacity. Sure, I came away from court wanting to be a lawyer again but it’ll have worn off by morning – after all, when Mari and I went to see Honey on Saturday night (fuck off, Mona Lisa Smile was sold out and we had to get out of the flat…) I could’ve sworn I wanted to be a hiphop dancer… but we’ll never speak of that again, obviously. And, following on from a discussion over lunch to the effect that we were going to chuck this all in and find rich husbands (he would adore me, because I would be like this volatile artist type and nothing he had ever known) I had all but resigned myself to baking cakes all day and babies with big, beautiful eyes and writing in the evenings. But then I realised I’d die of boredom, and remembered that small children make me almost as nervous as men who adore me do.

The best thing about court is that, whatever I end up doing (and I may be somebody’s legal secretary yet, fucked if I’m getting two degrees to earn £8,000 a year on some shitty local paper), it’ll always be there and open to the public. So, next time I have a free Monday morning and fancy seeing some guy getting sent down for contempt for showing up drunk for trial (“”Ahm huvvin’ a seizure, yer Honour!”") I can.

I doubt I’ll make it as a hiphop dancer though. I ain’t got no flow for one thing, and the music makes my ears bleed.

child of the noughties: don’t be sad;

Published on November 19, 2009 in music. 9 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .
This entry is part 2 of 4 in the series best of the noughties

Surprisingly to nobody, in the end I couldn’t steer clear of the “best of the decade” chat that is dominating the blogosphere at the moment. Last time around, of course, there wasn’t a “blogosphere” – and I wasn’t really listening to music at all! This decade has seen my rebirth as a music fan and so, in a way, perhaps every album I call “special” or “personal” or “favourite” is could belong in this list – whatever nickname we ultimately give this decade. Personally, I’m more interested to see what trendy buzzword we come up with for the next one!

Over the next four weeks, I’m going to count down my favourite forty – one per artist – albums of the decade and, while there might not be any massive surprises, I’d be thrilled if you used this as an opportunity to pick up something you haven’t had a chance to listen to yet.

Kudos to Kate, for inspiring me with her similarly themed post on Facebook.

It occurs to me that it’s a bit much for me to criticise the NMEh for their incredibly obvious list on this theme when my top two are just as predictable.

Go on. Guess.

Better that they continue to champion the albums they raved about back when I was a regular reader – and I did love both albums – than indulge in hipster hypocracy I guess. Anyway, that’s what this task is about: who doesn’t love to argue over their personal favourites?

30. Destroyer: Destroyer’s Rubies
2007, Rough Trade
Something you might not know: this project from New Pornographer Dan Bejar is the reason my monthly blog mixes exist. I fell for “Your Blood”, a track I picked up on a CD free with the much-missed Plan B magazine, just before an end of year mix it wasn’t eligible for due to release date – and the rest is history. Despite the name, Destroyer is no heavy metal spin-off side project but rather something more whimsical and complex, with vocals like the rusty, creaking door to the summer house.
If you download one track, make it: “Your Blood”
BUY: Destroyer’s Rubies at Amazon.co.uk

29. The Twilight Singers: Blackberry Belle
2004, One Little Indian
“Will you ever make a mix that doesn’t feature that Twilight Singers song?” Lainie, one of my longest term readers, chided me gently a few years ago because – for a little while – I got a little bit carried away. I came across former Afghan Whig Greg Dulli’s Twilight Singers through this one song on a mix CD my friend Stevie made for me, this gorgeous, shimmery slice of summer and ice cream and pirates. The rest of the album turned out to be just as atmospheric, haunting and beautiful.
If you download one track, make it: “Teenage Wristband”
BUY: The Twilight Singers Play Blackberry Belle at Amazon.co.uk

28. Laura Marling: Alas, I Cannot Swim
2007, EMI
Laura Marling came to my attention in 2006 through her My Manic And I EP, specifically the song “New Romantic”. “I think he knew where I was going, so he put Ryan Adams on…” she sang, and I was instantly hooked. A precocious talent, the Reading-based singer-songwriter’s debut carries a maturity far beyond her tender years, and her haunting melodies stay with you long after the album’s end.
If you download one track, make it: “Night Terror”
BUY: Alas I Cannot Swim at Amazon.co.uk

27. Tommy Stinson: Village Gorilla Head
2004, Sanctuary
So there’s a funny story about how I met the man I would ultimately plan to marry, but I wasn’t to know that that night in Edinburgh would ultimately change my life any more than I was to know that the cheeky-chappy rocker supporting Jesse Malin had been the bassist in one of the most important alternative rock bands of all time. Well, I should probably have known that second bit. Half a decade on and this album of straight-up, balls-out rock and roll is as listenable as ever.
If you download one track, make it: “Hey You”
BUY: Village Gorilla Head at Amazon.co.uk

26. Whiskeytown: Pneumonia
2003, Mercury
There was a time, what feels like a whole other life ago, that there was a song on Whiskeytown’s final album for every boy I ever thought about kissing. By the time Pneumonia saw the light of day the band’s frontman had already established himself as a solo artist, but like the rest of Whiskeytown’s output it hardly plays out like Ryan Adams’ baby. Caitlin Cary’s gorgeous harmonies tame the worst of his excesses on an album that is more alt.rock than alt.country-influenced Americana.
If you download one track, make it: “Sit and Listen To The Rain”
BUY: Pneumonia at Amazon.co.uk

25. Neko Case: Middle Cyclone
2009, ADA
An early contender for my album of this year, with Middle Cyclone Neko Case, another sometime New Pornographer, has delivered an album of stomping folk-tinged gorgeousness that’s worthy of breaking her to a wider audience. “I’m a man, man, maneater,” croons the songstress on “People Got A Lotta Nerve”, so warmly that you realise you could never resist.
If you download one track, make it: “This Tornado Loves You”
BUY: Middle Cyclone at Amazon.co.uk

24. Tom Waits: Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards
2006, Anti
I doubt even an artist of less calibre and who carries less respect than Tom Waits could be bothered with a three-disc compilation of over 30 all-new tracks: that the gravelly-voiced legend not only did so but produced one of the best collections of an already incredible career is nothing short of staggering. Each disc in this collection showcases a different aspect of Waits’ songwriting style: the cantankerous, rambling old man, the rabble-rouser, the tender, punch-drunk piano-playing barfly.
If you download one track, make it: “Long Way Home”
BUY: Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards at Amazon.co.uk

23. Herman Dune: Giant
2007, Source
I fell in love with this album hard, calling Herman Dune “the sound of plastic building blocks and eating ice lollies with mittens on and going sailing on a summer’s day”. Giant is a split personality of a record – half fairytale menacing, half childlike in its simplicity and sense of mischief.
If you download one track, make it: “I Wish That I Could See You Soon”
BUY: Giant at Amazon.co.uk

22. The Weakerthans: Left and Leaving
2007, Source
When the Weakerthans make it out of Canada they never seem to hit Glasgow, and so it is that they remain the entirety of my “bands to see live before I die” list. It’s the lyrics that grab me, as it so often is: heart-melting lyrics and John K Samson’s strange but comforting voice, still sounding like liquid mid-twenties angst in my eardrums. “Left and Leaving”, the title track from this album, was the first song of theirs I heard and I was instantly blown away by how something could be at once so beautiful and fragile and true.
If you download one track, make it: “Aside”
BUY: Left And Leaving at Amazon.co.uk

21. Amanda Palmer: Who Killed Amanda Palmer?
2008, Roadrunner
It took me a while to warm to the Dresden Dolls’ frontwoman’s first album under her own name initially, as without the cabaret theatrics of drummer Brian Viglione the songs struck me at first as too melodramatic and a little maudlin. I guess I really had to be in the mood for it before I realised that these attributes were one of its greatest strengths. The truth is, it’s hard to describe just what Amanda Palmer means to me without coming over too melodramatic and a little maudlin myself: here is a woman who is everything I aspire to be: creative and honest and shameless and funny and endearing and gorgeous, and who too is more than a little bit messed up.
If you download one track, make it: “Ampersand”
BUY: Who Killed Amanda Palmer at Amazon.co.uk

NOTE: Album title links almost always take you via my referrer page on Amazon.co.uk. I’m trying to save up for Christmas, so help a blogger out and pick up a fantastic album into the bargain!

a to z: no rock ‘n’ roll fun;

Published on November 17, 2009 in music and photography. 12 Comments Tags: , , , , .
This entry is part 19 of 25 in the series A to Z

215. You're No Rock N Roll Fun

I’m quite proud of what I’ve come up with on this little series of pictures, so I’m going to attempt a little bit of mp3 blogging/self-portrait crossover based around a current music-related sub-project within a project. Follow that if you will, or just download the songs and tell me I’m pretty ;)

Oh, band. How many ways did you change my life? But I’m really not a rockstar anymore…

Behind the scenes: Jay had been rebuilding this guitar over the previous fortnight or something with such care, yet while I was posing I knocked a string off. He was alright with it though.

DOWNLOAD: Sleater-Kinney – You’re No Rock n Roll Fun
BUY: All Hands on the Bad One at Amazon.co.uk

you can’t raise a baby on shame;

Published on November 14, 2009 in a little more personal and photography. 13 Comments Tags: , .

TWOLHA

I had never heard of To Write Love On Her Arms, a non-profit movement dedicated to hope and help for people struggling with depression, self-injury, addiction and suicide, before last night. From the movement’s vision:

You need to know that rescue is possible, that freedom is possible, that God is still in the business of redemption. We’re seeing it happen. We’re seeing lives change as people get the help they need. People sitting across from a counselor for the first time. People stepping into treatment. In desperate moments, people calling a suicide hotline. We know that the first step to recovery is the hardest to take. We want to say here that it’s worth it, that your life is worth fighting for, that it’s possible to change.

As you may be aware, this is a cause very close to my heart and to the hearts of many of the people closest to me. Because some of us write love on our arms, and some of us tattoo cold roses on our wrists. It’s all a part of the same circle. It’s our own way of not forgetting. Not that that part is ever a struggle.

For F, K, P, L and for everybody else. I may not talk about this stuff much, but it’s not because I’m ashamed.