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Another musical extravaganza!
Oct. 3rd, 2005 12:10 am
Boredom and a desire to share has driven me to repeat my MP3 experiment. A few songs that I adore, like, or just plain find weird enough to be amusing.
First up is Kirsty MacColl, who people have probably heard me talk about before. Spectacularly underrated, she always flirted with fame, had a few minor hits, worked with the Pogues, Billy Bragg, REM, Morrisey and many more until her tragic early death.
Autumngirlsoup is one of the tracks off her last, Cuban tinged, album, although this track is plainer than others, leaving the vocal to soar over London in the very way described in the song. I adore it, mellow, sad, even erotic in parts, despite the almost coarsely obvious metaphor.
Next up – Belle & Sebastian – A Scottish band who produced their first album as their final project at college, this thirteen or so strong group manage to combine sublime lyrics, 60s tinged melodies and just generally feel good tunes and sublime falsetto. Possibly an acquired taste, but I can't get enough of them. Losing It is one of their more obvious feel good songs, a joyful ballad about bad coffee and lesbianism.
Beloved of English football fans, Tom Hark by the Piranhas is one of those melodies that will wrap itself around your mind and refuse to let go. A one hit wonder from this Two-Tone Ska band, this anti-war song earns a place on the list merely by being the tune whistled by the squaddies in "Dog Soldiers".
Ash are the same age as me, but rather than going to work in a hotel to pay their summer bills, they went off and played the Glastonbury Festival. They haven't looked back since. Girl From Mars is one of their hits as they hit the peak of their fame, but there's been many more high points since. Driving rock, good old fashioned guitar driven pop tunes, Ash have stuck around and still rock hard. Other songs to look out for – Burn Baby Burn or their title song for the movie A Life Less Ordinary.
Ah, what to say of Ian Dury? Too old for punk, to raw for pop, Ian Dury was an artist, teacher, polio victim (that left him crippled), lyricist extraordinaire, actor and all round renaissance man. Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, Sex and Drugs and Rock n Roll or Reasons To Be Cheerful (Part III) would have secured his fame, but he went on to produce some equally joyous work, including the superlative Spasticus Autisticus. ("I'm Spasticus!") Cacka Boom, taken from his last album before his death from cancer, is mellow, fun, bubby, unmistakably Ian.
I know nothing about this band. All I know is that Oxygen by JJ72 is a sublime, searing choral number that sounds like Placebo would sound if they wrote musicals. This is pop rock new wave, whatever, at its finest. Incredibly uplifting.
Now a tune that's got stuck on my playlist and refuses to let go. Anton Karas' Third Man Theme was the perfect soundtrack to a superlative Orson Wells movie and the zither has rarely sounded better. Okay, it's NEVER sounded better. This is the theme that all movie soundtracks should measure themselves against.
Finally, just out of weirdness, The Langley School's Music Project. Imagine, if you wll, the kids who sang the "we don't need no education" bit in Pink Floyd's Another Brick In the Wall. Now Imagine they decided to go form a band on their own and do Beach Boys covers. The result? The weirdness that is You're So Good To Me.
