Another Form of Relief

I’ve been pretty slack in my blogging for the past few days, partly because I’ve been busy with a couple of other projects, and partly because of the damn heat. I don’t react well to heat at all, so when it’s 31 degrees in here even at 11pm, I get a little thrown. Something that really isn’t help by the fact I’ve obliged to be here for work, so escape isn’t much of an option. In celebration of this, I present to you a handful of loosely thrown together, heat related songs.

MP3 Dogs Die In Hot Cars - Lounger (expired)
MP3 Brainiac - Hot Seat, Can’t Sit Down (expired)
MP3 Hot Hot Heat - Goodnight, Goodnight (expired)

TheClerisy News

We’re finally getting TheClerisy.com up and running, and a bunch of our sites have now launched. There are a few more, including a personal blog for me and the forum to be put in place over the coming days, but check out what we’ve got so far.

Which brings me to the launch of TheClerisy’s very own television blog, Taking Civics Lessons from Hookers. This is a project of a good friend of mine, Rob, and he will be filling a niche in the blog world: namely an in depth and critical blog that focuses on television.

On a more personal note, I’ll be working with another good friend Dan on a pilot for a Channel 102 show. Best of all, we’re letting our readers decide exactly which pilot we should make, from three that have been written. So head on over to Planeteleven where you can read all three and register your vote. (I don’t want to sway your vote, but ‘Statutory’ is the way to go.)

Holy crap! A festival in Kent?

I may well be heading to my first festival in august. Anyone who knows Kent will know that it’s a cultural wasteland, so I was rather shocked to discover the Electric Gardens Festival, a brand new festival near Canterbury. The sunday lineup is all about the indie rock, and while it doesn’t have the worlds greatest selection, it has The Boy Least Likely To, Brakes, Duels, Battle and a bunch of others to keep me entertained.

That’s all for now. Normal service will hopefully resume tomorrow, assuming I haven’t melted away or something in the meantime.

My descent into the scary world of electro-pop continues. A couple of years I never would have gone near anything like this, but some Postal Service and Her Space Holiday later, and I can’t get enough of it. Play Radio Play is the one man project of Daniel Hunter, a kid from Fort Worth, Texas with a great ear for what makes a good song.

Anyone familiar with The Postal Service will know what to expect here, all time-shifting backing tracks that are largely basic with heartfelt sounding lyrics over the top. The only real problem is just how heartfelt these lyrics are. Reading about Daniel Hunter, he seems to be a straitedge Christian, so hearing him sing about things he probably hasn’t experienced seems a little strange. It isn’t a big deal as the songs are really good, but it can be jarring if you need complete honesty in your music.

Best of all, he makes all of his music available for free. As he puts it on his Myspace, “I do it for fun, not for money, not for girls, simply because I like putting stupid beats together with corny lyrics and dancing like a fool in front of groups of people”. Which sounds like a pretty damn good reason for making music to me.

MP3 Play Radio Play - Jello (expired)
MP3 Play Radio Play - Juice Box, Paper Hat, and a Line of Pixie Stix (expired)
MP3 Play Radio Play - Even Fairy Tale Characters Would Be Jealous (expired)
MP3 Play Radio Play - I’m Guessing There’s A Pill For That (expired)

Play Radio Play: Website // Myspace

Welcome to the third part in our ongoing (ie until I get bored of it) feature that looks at some of my favourite songs. This evening we have a rather strange mix, but one full of awesome song goodness.

MP3 Dntel - (This Is) The Dream Of Evan And Chan (expired) (Life Is Full Of Possibilities, 2001)
Back to where the seeds for the formation of The Postal Service were sewn. Jimmy Tamborello (Dntel) drafted in Ben Gibbard for this one song on his 2001 album, and ended up recording an entire album together. It’s not hard to see why from this song though. It’s six minutes of electronic perfection, the song rising from the static at the beginning and descending into the same at the end. Gibbard’s delivery adds a wistful tone to the song, as he recites his dream. Everything there is perfect before it’s ruined by the telephone waking him up. Simple, yet very effective.

MP3 The New Pornographers - Mass Romantic (Mass Romantic, 2000)
I’m going to be honest: I didn’t think ‘Twin Cinema’ was a very good album. In fact, listening to it put me off of The New Pornographers in general for a while. Thankfully though I started appreciating ‘Mass Romantic’ and ‘Electric Version’ once more, and they are damn fine works. The title song from that first album is one of their very best, lyrically non-sensical, but sounding perfect. I guess it’s inevitable when you have so many talented people in one group that the results will be good, but I never would have expected things to be this good, particularly given that I don’t really like Neko Case very much either. I know, I know, I don’t seem to like anything.

MP3 Saves The Day - Take Our Cars Now! (expired) (I’m Sorry I’m Leaving EP, 1998)
I have a very large soft spot for Saves The Day. I’m not entirely sure why as I really dislike most heavy punk emo type things, but I tend to like most of their stuff, excluding some of their newer material. This song is from their acoustic EP, which is better than most of their more rocking albums to me. They are a perfect lyrics band to me, and it’s their music that often lets them down. This toned down version of the band allows Chris’ voice to come to the forefront, which to me is a good thing, but won’t be to the people who think he sounds like a whiny kid. Although ‘Jessie & My Whetstone’ is the more popular song from that EP, and rightly so given how good it is, ‘Take Our Cars Now!’ is often overlooked. Telling the story of recovering after a car crash, it’s suitably downbeat without becoming morbidly so. I just wish they would go down the route of this kind of song more often, although their recent re-recording of some of their older songs acoustically possibly bodes well for the future.

MP3 The Cautions - Coffee Shop Girl (The Cautions, 2001)
I know absolutely nothing about The Cautions. I wouldn’t even know they existed if not for a mislabelled mp3 on Soulseek. This song is commonly circulated as being Ozma, but one can quickly here that it sounds nothing like them. Even so, it’s still a great little power pop song all about liking the girl who works in the coffee shop. Unfortunately though, our intrepid narrator doesn’t quite have the spine to do anything about it, even though he assures us that he is building up to it (”One day soon, wait and see / I will ask her out with me”). It’s a hopeful message, but we know full well he’s probably never going to manage it. Oh wonderful cynicism.

MP3 The Fall - Touch Sensitive (expired) (The Marshall Suite, 1999)
The song that will forever be known as “the one from the Corsa ad”. At least that’s how it’ll be remembered in the UK. Which I could bitch about, but it’s how I found the song, so it would be a tad hypocritical. I’ve tried and tried since then to appreciate The Fall, but I can’t seem to do it, outside of a handful of songs. I love this one though, it’s shambolic mess somehow held together by Mark E Smith’s rambling vocals. It doesn’t seem to have any deep meaning, unless you can find some in things like “and you’re dying for a pee / so you go behind a try / and a Star Wars police vechile pulls up”.

That’s your lot for today. Join me over the weekend where I’ll be posting up a couple of really interesting bands I’ve discovered lately that will be more than worthy of your time. In the meantime, I’m going to go and bury my head in the sand and hope that the World Cup goes away. At least I’ve got free preview tickets to Thank You For Smoking to ease the pain a little.

Well today is the start of the World Cup, which means we now have an ‘exciting’ month of footballing action to look forward to. That is of course if you care for such things. Personally, it doesn’t mean a thing. It’s a few guys kicking a ball around a field for a couple of hours. I’m supposed to get excited about that? Of course if anyone enjoys that, more power to them, but it means for the next month I get to deal with even more flag waving retards, “news” that is dominated by this drivel and my own pub showing every game meaning it’s going to be populated with people who make the special class seem like intellectuals.

MP3 Belle & Sebastian - I Don’t Want To Play Football (expired)

Apparently it isn’t really feasible to stay indoors for a month either, which is something of a pity.

It’s June 8 and I’m already sick to death of ’summer’. Even if summer doesn’t actually start for another two weeks. It’s overly hot (30 degrees in here today!), people seem far too happy for their own good, and I’ve got a month of bloody football to avoid. Now don’t get me wrong, I like a pleasant day as much as the next person. Driving around with the windows down on a bright day is something I like a lot. Driving around hanging my head out of the window to avoid melting however is not. In view of that little rant, we now have some perfect ’summer music’, ironically enough.

Cincinnati, Ohio band The Minor Leagues make perfect little pop songs, which I’m fully aware is a term I throw around far too often. In my defence though, I do seem to focus on a lot of damn good pop songs. Forming in 2001, they already have four albums under their belt, and are all set to release their newest work, ‘The Pestilence Is Coming’.

That may not sound like the most joyful of titles, but they have a sound that betrays them. Their upbeat, cheerful pop recalls early Of Montreal or Beulah, or most of the Elephant 6 type bands for that matter. The title track sets the tone perfectly, ‘Different Planet’ is just ideal, with only ‘Scene It All Before’ letting this bunch down slightly. It’s certainly a good song, but a minute or so too long for it’s own good, it’s repetition starting to grate slightly before it finally ends.

MP3 The Minor Leagues - The Pestilence Is Coming
MP3 The Minor Leagues - Scene It All Before
MP3 The Minor Leagues - Different Planet

‘The Pestilence Is Coming’ will be released on June 17 on Datawaslost. More about The Minor Leagues on their website and Myspace. Join us tomorrow for my ‘celebration’ to kick off a month of ‘glorious’ World Cup excitement, as well as a bunch of other fun stuff.

So yesterday I went to see United 93, which was a far better film than I imagined. I’m not sure what I expected it from it, but it wasn’t as depressing as it could have been, nor was it flag-wavingly patriotic, my other main fear for it. In it’s place was a well thought out character study of how people deal with a crisis. It’s incredibly brutal at times, particularly the final frames, but well worth the effort.

On the other end of the entertainment scale, I saw the finale to Everwood yesterday, which has been one of my favourite shows of the past few years. The show is the biggest casulty of the WB and UPN merger, meaning there wasn’t room on the schedule for it with such classics as Seventh Heaven and America’s Top Model needing a place. It’s a shame that it ended so suddenly, and the rewrites of the finale did lead to a happy ending overload, but it was a satisfying enough conclusion to a great series.

Oh, right, we’re here for music? Today is one of the fun covers posts I’m afraid, as I’ve got a bunch of other fun site related work to get done this afternoon.

MP3 Pavement - The Killing Moon (expired) (Echo & The Bunnymen)
‘The Killing Moon’ is a defining song to both music fans of the 80s and Donnie Darko fans, and this Pavement version does it justice. Recorded at a BBC session in 1997 and released as part of the ‘Major Leagues’ EP, it keeps the abstract feel of the original while still giving it a sound that is undeniably Pavement. Malkmus’ adds his typically lethargic vocals, and somehow manages to start singing about ‘cucumbers’ and ‘cabbage’ by the end of the song.

MP3 Ryan Adams - Wonderwall (expired) (Oasis)
Take one overrated song from a pretty crappy band, put it through the Ryan Adams depression process and the result isn’t actually as bad as you would think. It’s far from perfect, the computer trickery on Adams’ voice really does the song no favours at all, yet it still manages to hold one’s attention for it’s four minutes runtime. It doesn’t seem possible, but Adams also seems able to make the song seem even more self-important than it did before. Quite a feat given how crappy the words are when you actually pay attention to them.

MP3 The Decemberists - Up The Junction (live) (expired) (Squeeze)
‘Up The Junction’ is just about the only Squeeze song that I really like, although I haven’t really explored a great deal of their back catalog. The Decemberists version keeps the fun, upbeat feel of the song, even with the pretty miserable subject matter. It also manages to suit Colin Meloy’s voice perfectly, which is pretty weird as he’s about the last person to sound working class from Clapham, but there you go.

That’s all for now folks. I’d also advise that you check out Nothing But Green Lights, the new blog from Mike, who was behind the excellent Take Your Medicine. I’ll warn you now that it’ll take a little getting used to if you have an aversion to green though.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I don’t particularly like female singer-songwriters. I don’t think there is any real reason for this. I haven’t got some dumb misogynist thing going on. I just can’t find very many that I can actually tolerate, let alone claim to actually like. Now there’s a number of female fronted bands that I like a lot. Singer-songwriters though? Not so much. I don’t think I could even name three that I like if I’m entirely honest.

As such, in the spirit of trying to rectify this somewhat, I have stumbled across one that I do really like. Ruth Theodore is from deepest, darkest Southampton and making some incredible songs. From what I can tell, she now resides in London, and has put together a permanent five piece band that includes percussion, a bunch of strings and an accordian. She also performs regularly by herself, and it’s in that style that the songs below are representitive of.

Both of these songs are just Ruth and her acoustic guitar. ‘Home’ is an incredibly fragile song, feeling as though it could break apart at any minute yet somehow never doing so. ‘Worm Food’ is a far more frantic song, with Ruth powering through the words about how life is far simpler than we make it out to be. The lyrics in both songs have the obligatory quirkiness that seems to be required these days, but without ever crossing the line into annoying territory.

MP3 Ruth Theodore - Home
MP3 Ruth Theodore - Worm Food

She will be playing in London this thursday and Farnham of all places on friday, and you can get details of both shows on her nicely simple website. For you crazy kids who need your music via News Corp, drop by her Myspace page.

Sky Larkin are one of the bands that added me on Myspace. Whenever a band does this, I always take the time to give their music a listen. When I first listened to Sky Larkin, I have to say that most of the songs they had up there didn’t really grab me. Don’t get me wrong, the material was good, it just didn’t really get me excited to hear more. This week though I noticed that they had gone back into the studio to record some new demos, and seeing as I was feeling a little bored on a sunday morning, I thought I’d give them a quick listen. I’m glad that I did though, because these new tracks are really good.

Sky Larkin are a three piece band from Leeds, and they have a hell of a lot of potential. They cite Death From About 1979, The Pixies and Sleater-Kinney amongst their influences, something you can actually hear in these songs. The guitar and bass drive through their songs with a ton of energy, and the drumming, particularly on ‘Traits and Traitors’ is about as good as it gets. It’s rare to actually find such a young band (none of them are older than 21) that already have such a finely honed sound.

MP3 Sky Larkin - Young Lungs (expired)
MP3 Sky Larkin - Keepsakes (expired)

MP3 Sky Larkin - Traits and Traitors (expired)

‘Young Lungs’ and ‘Keepsakes’ are their two newest songs, both are which are all of three days old. ‘Traits and Traitors’ is an older song that I really liked as well. Sky Larkin will be playing a show in Manchester at the end of June and a whole load of them in Leeds throughout July. As you usual, you can get more details of this and a bunch of other helpful information from their Myspace.

Photo credit: Danny North

When I wrote the first ‘Five for Friday’ post this time last week, I said I didn’t know whether or not it would be a recurring feature or not. Given how much I enjoyed it writing it though, getting to go into some detail about some of my favourite songs, I think it’s inevitable that it’s going to be, at least for a little while. As such, we now have part two in the series, where you get to read me rambling about some songs that I like, and as a reward, you get to listen to them. I think that’s how all this works anyway.

MP3 Semisonic - Closing Time (expired) (Feeling Strangely Fine, 1998)
It’s a shame that Semisonic will seemingly forever be lumbered with the “one hit wonder” tag as over the course of nearly a decade they put out several really great albums. They also hold a personal significance to me as they were the first real band I got seriously into after I purchased ‘Feeling Strangely Fine’ following some school exams when I was 16. Crazy times. Anyway, ‘Closing Time’ is probably their most definitive song, even if it isn’t their most complex. The words are pretty much self explanatory, putting across that feeling of being kicked out of a bar at the end of the night to a fantastic piece of guitar work. And the sadness from Dan Wilson’s voice when he points out that “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end” is just perfect.

MP3 The Elected - It Was Love (expired) (Sun, Sun, Sun, 2006)
I’m still not a big fan of ‘Sun, Sun, Sun’, but this song is just about my favourite of any song that The Elected have put out. If there’s one thing Blake Sennett can do well, it’s sounding melancholy while doing his best Elliott Smith impression. An entirely depressing story about two people who stay together because they know no better (”I just put up with you / Kid, I stayed because you wouldn’t leave”). I don’t know if it’s supposed to be positive or not when Blake describes this time as “It was love / Or at least the closest I got”, but it certainly doesn’t seem that way even if it’s supposed to be.

MP3 Elliott Smith - Happiness (expired) (Figure 8, 2000)
A nice segueway here from a man who sounds like Elliott Smith to Smith himself. I don’t really know what ‘Happiness’ is actually about, and it’s far too easy to shout “suicide” or “broken relationships” or whatever at it. I guess it doesn’t really matter given the song itself, and it’s certainly not hard to believe how real the emotion behind “all I want now is happiness for you and me” when Elliott is the one singing.

MP3 The Rakes - Retreat (expired) (Capture/Release, 2005)
It’s easy to proclaim that The Rakes sound like every other British band of the past couple of years, but out of the recent batch of “common people” bands, they are the one that I enjoy the most. A song about trying to strike that balance between not wasting your life but also keeping a social life, we never do really know whether the narrator decides to “retreat” or “go out for the fifth night in a row”. I’d hazard a guess that he’s heading down to the club just once more though. It’s a theme that The Rakes often return to, particularly in their awesome “Work, Work, Work (Pub, Club, Sleep)”.

MP3 Pavement - Rattled By The Rush (expired) (Wowee Zowee, 1995)
We’ll conclude with a Pavement classic today, from their often overlooked ‘Wowee Zowee’ album. If I’m honest, it was probably the last Pavement album that I learnt to enjoy, but upon doing so, I discover a whole bunch of gems, including this one. It’s probably the most accessible song on the album while still remaining as unique as most of their recordings. I’m not going to try and assign reason to it, although Malkmus has implied that it’s about marriage in interviews, which kind of fits, so I’m not going to argue with that. Thinking about it, I’m coming to the conclusion that it’s the fun of songs like this that I find lacking in Malkmus’ solo material and why it doesn’t end up doing very much for me. Kind of a random tangent I know, but it’s something to consider.

That’s all for tonight. On an entirely non-musical related note, if you get a chance to see Sarah Silverman’s Jesus Is Magic, make sure that you do. It’s just about the funniest, most offensive thing that I’ve seen in a very long time.

Last week I wrote about Takka Takka, mentioning that I only found them via Hartley Goldstein’s top 8 on Myspace. Today we’re going to continue that chain as I introduce another New York band, Wood is Good, whom I found via the top 8 of Takka Takka.

The reason they are located in their top 8 in the first place is because Wood is Good is a project of John Paul Jones, who also happens to play bass in Takka Takka. It’s like one big musical family, isn’t it? Just to add to this six degrees thing we’ve got going on, Wood is Good’s album was produced by Adam Lasus, who was also behind Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Yo La Tengo and Clem Snide. And just to make things really bizarre, the album cover art (pictured) was put together by Robert Pollard.

Of course all of this wouldn’t really mean a great deal if their music wasn’t up to much, but thankfully given the connections the band doesn’t disappoint. There isn’t a great deal I can say about them other than these are good, fun pop songs. I wish I had some great analysis for you, but I’m pretty happy with a song that I can just sit and enjoy, without having to look at it in any great depth sometimes. On a completely random note, Jones’ voice seems to have the same kind of vibe to it that James Mercer of The Shins has, but I’m not really sure what the basis of that comparison is.

MP3 Wood is Good - Salivating Season (expired)
MP3 Wood is Good - Hard Line (expired)
MP3 Wood is Good - Trapeze Bed (expired)
MP3 Wood is Good - Mr. Questions (expired)

As usual, you can find out more on the Wood is Good Myspace page. I’ll be back later on with this weeks ‘Five for Friday’, which has some damn good songs in it if I may say so myself.

Oh, and I’m impressed I got through this entire post without cracking a single joke about the name.