Another Form of Relief

When you have as many excellent songs as Belle & Sebastian do, it’s easy for ones that aren’t so immediate to slip through the cracks. I tend to centre most of my B&S listening around Tigermilk and If You’re Feeling Sinister, their first two albums. There is a lot of good stuff to be found elsewhere though, particularly in their EP releases. Take Your Carriage Clock and Shove It comes from their 2001 Jonathan David EP and it’s far better than I initially gave it credit for. Sweeping orchestral arrangements, verses that build perfectly, and a pleasant, if slightly sparse, story. While it may not rank amongst their best, a solid Belle & Sebastian is far better than the best songs of most bands.

I have absolutely no idea who Dream Bitches are, and from a few quick listens to some of their other songs, I wasn’t won over. That said, I can never pass up a Belle & Sebastian cover, particularly one from the If You’re Feeling Sinister era. It doesn’t get off to a great start given it’s lacking the harmonica that really makes the original, but it’s a pretty decent effort overall. It’s a much more straight up rock song than the original, and doesn’t really go anywhere surprising, but it’s a nice contrast with the original song.

#9
Hello Saferide
‘The Quiz’

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I only discovered Hello Saferide at the end of the year so I haven’t had the chance to write a full post yet, but very few artists have grabbed my attention to the same degree in the past year. Hello Saferide is the solo project of Annika Norlin, a singer songwriter from Sweden. What appeals to me most is that each song has a ton of personality shining through. Norlin isn’t afraid to project herself entirely into her songs, leaving each one with a kind of brutal honesty. The darkness of this is countered by a ton of little knowing references and quirks that just make the whole thing seem so real. At the forefront of this is ‘The Quiz’, the first song from her recent ‘Would You Let Me Play This EP Ten Times A Day?’ EP. She’s found a guy that she gets on well with and likes (even if he has a bit too much scifi in his shelf of DVDs). She’s vulnerable though so she puts together a quiz for him, with questions that range from the mundane (”Do you talk in the middle of Seinfeld?”) to the insecure (”Do you still keep pictures of old girlfriends? / Are they prettier than me?”) to the all important (”If I’d fall / Would you pick me up?”). Kind of a far less annoying version of Alanis’ ‘21 Things I Want In A Lover’.

#8
Art Brut
‘Nag Nag Nag Nag’

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There isn’t really anything new here to the Art Brut formula, but surely that’s half the point? I had minor fears about new material not being a patch on the first album because the novelty would wear off, but despite it’s similarities, ‘Nag Nag Nag Nag’ works just as well for me as the old stuff. The whole thing can be seen as the story of ‘My Little Brother’ after the guy grows up, although I have no idea if that was intentional. Anyway, the Art Brut style remains the same as it was before: driving guitars, random bursts of energy and a witty song about a music dork delivered in Eddie Argos’ usual half-talking, half-shouting, half-singing (yes, I’m aware that’s three halves) style.

#7
4 or 5 Magicians
‘Forever On The Edge’

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“4 or 5 Magicians are a four piece, led by Dan Ormsby, who did pretty much everything on their recorded songs, and takes charge of vocals and guitar duty when the band play live. The most obvious thing in Ormsby is that he has based his style on an influence not often seen in British bands: Stephen Malkmus. ‘Forever On The Edge’ has “slacker anthem” written all over it. A brash, honest song about wasting one’s life and almost depending on becoming famous to be successful (”I’m wasting my time in this band / Pinning all my hopes on getting signed / Well it could happen / Some idiot might sign us”). It’s this kind of witty, self-aware writing that first drew me to the band, and that they have the sound to back it up is even better.” - originally posted July 18.

#6
Belle & Sebastian
‘Funny Little Frog’

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By far the best song on ‘The Life Pursuit’ and one of the finest that Belle & Sebastian have put out in years. The usual B&S staples are here, as well as a couple of new things like a piano, which they really don’t utilise anywhere near enough. Murdoch really throws himself into the vocals too, giving one of his strongest performances since ‘Your Cover’s Blown’. It’s either the official theme song for stalking or a love letter to the Virgin Mary depending on how you listen, bringing just over three minutes of perfection.

#5
Voxtrot
‘The Start of Something’

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I know this technically was released in 2005, but the ‘Raised By Wolves’ EP it’s taken from didn’t get released in the UK until 2006, so I’m going to go with that excuse. Anyway, if you’ve read more than a handful of music blog in your lifetime you’re probably aware of who they are and who they sound like. This one sounds rather like The Smiths, and it’s incredibly good, particularly given that I don’t like The Smiths very much. I’m not entirely sure what it all means, as it seems to change focus an awful lot, but it’s full of wonderful imagery that’s delivered beautifully. If a full album next year doesn’t make them explode into the limelight Death Cab style, I’ll be very surprised.

#4
Kate Nash
‘The Nicest Thing’

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“‘The Nicest Thing’ is up there with the best new songs that I have heard this year. It’s her most stripped down effort, just a sparse acoustic guitar and her voice, which helps an awful lot. This allows her voice, which manages to be both mournful and grounded at the same time, to become the centrepiece of the song. There is also a wonderful knack for random conversational lyrics here (”I wish that you needed me / I wish that you knew when I said two sugars, actually I meant three”). Granted the production is pretty awful here, with the vocals becoming distorted in the louder parts, but even through that the strength of this song shines through. If it were to be cleaned up a little in a studio, it could be amazing.” - originally posted June 15.

#3
The Young Republic
‘Girl From The Northern States’

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The Young Republic are an eight piece (I’m sure there used to be nine though) indie folk pop band from Boston. If you’ve ever been through this blog before, you will have read me rambling about them on a fairly regular basis, so I’ll spare you here. Despite finding it very early on in the year, ‘Girl From The Northern States’ is still one of my most regularly played songs. It’s a gentle, melancholy tale of lost love that sounds more cheerful than it really has any right to. Combine this with a delightful orchestral background and you’ve got what is, for me, an almost perfect pop song.

#2
The Light Footwork
‘The Art of Everyday Communication Part 1′

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The Light Footwork were the perfect example of why I started this blog in the first place. Pushing a band as good them onto unsuspecting readers is what makes this whole thing so worthwhile. A lot of songs come and go, but there are some that grab you immediately and never let go. ‘The Art of Everyday Communication Part 1′ is one of those. It starts off interestingly enough and then jumps up a gear a little way in, morphing into an entirely different song. Constantly time shifting and styles and pitch perfect male-female vocals make for an always surprising but constantly enjoyable listen.

#1
Los Campesinos!
‘You! Me! Dancing!’

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“Los Campesinos! are a seven-piece from Cardiff who have seemingly already mastered how to make the perfect pop song. Best of all, they manage to bring a glockenspiel to the proceedings. Standout song ‘You! Me! Dancing!’ is just sheer joy from start to finish, it’s six and a half minute runtime actually feeling like half that. Jangly guitars combined with harmonising combined with witty, gleeful lyrics, and you’ve got a winning combination.” - originally posted July 4.

I wrote that six months ago and I’ve only grown to love this band even more in the time since. During which I’ve posted more songs from them, including fun things like a Pavement cover and other songs have turned up on the net. I saw them live back in September and will be doing so again in March. When I (and a number of other blogs) first wrote about them, they had around 600 friends on Myspace. They now have over 3000. At that time, they had no label and just a four track demo. They are now signed to Wichita and will be releasing their debut double a-side single in the new year. It cost me £3 to see them last time. It’s going to cost £6.50 this time. What I’m getting at here is that Los Campesinos! have been by far the biggest success story of 2006. Few bands arrive so fully formed and garner so much attention so quickly. I can think of nowhere more deserving though. 2007 should be a hell of a year for them, and us.

—

Well that’s my favourite nine songs of the year. It turned into a little bit of a slog toward the end, but I’m pleased with how it all turned out in the end. This brings to an end any kind of organised posting structure until this kind of time last year. This will probably be the last thing that I post in 2006, so I’ll wish you all a happy calender change now. This year has been a hell of a lot of fun for me, and this blog has been a big part of that. So thanks to everybody that stopped by, even if it was just to grab the songs. I’ve got a lot of great music to write about in the early days of 2007, so come on back and let me share the good music with you.

Okay, so I realise that 49 songs is a pretty random number. I don’t entirely know why I chose it. It’s just that 50 seemed rather generic to me. I also know that the ordering on a lot of these songs is slightly absurd. Isn’t #36 really better than #37? I honestly couldn’t tell you as my opinion probably changes from day to day. So take the numbering with a pinch of salt. It’s a rough guide, nothing more. I should also point out that I limited any band to having no more than two songs each in the 49. So much as I would have loved to filled this with Voxtrot, Young Republic or Light Footwork songs, I had to use a little self restraint. So now you know some of my methodology, enjoy the next ten songs.

#39
The Mountain Goats
‘Woke Up New’

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“This isn’t the John Darnielle that we heard on the last two records. The song tells the story of getting used to being alone after the big breakup and uses wonderfully real examples of getting used to being alone (”the first time I made coffee for just myself, I made too much of it”). It all essentially comes down to a refrain of “oh, what will I do without you?”. It isn’t an angry question though, just accepting that this is how things are now.” - originally posted June 17.

#38
Cansei De Ser Sexy
‘This Month, Day 10′

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Probably the most cheerful sounding break-up song of the past year. CSS seem to be about an image just as much as the music, and when it sounds/looks this good, who really cares? There’s nothing overly complex in the arrangements here, just a lot of synth and some rather bored sounding vocals. All of which makes it a hell of a lot of funny, even when the lead singer is belting out lines like “if someday we get to meet again / In a car crash, plane wreck or terrorist attack / Or maybe next thursday night / Don’t bother saying hi”.

#37
National Heroes
‘Riot Vans / CS Cans’

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A glorious assault on the “chav” culture that seems to have almost consumed the UK. I only discovered National Heroes toward the end of the year and don’t know a great deal about them, but they have obviously been listening to a lot of the great British bands. A storming snapshot of modern Britain, covering such lovely topics as teen pregnancy (”Teenage drugs and pregnant mums / Birth control is non-existant”) to the wonderful street racers you encounter on the roads each day (”Boy racers cruising in their financed 205s / Keep touching 90 down the A1205″) all leading to the simple refrain that it’s just “a sign of the times”. Assuming they get noticed, they could be the next big thing for British music in 2007.

#36
Belle & Sebastian
‘Sukie In The Graveyard’

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Even though most seem to love it, ‘The Life Pursuit’ really doesn’t do very much for me. It’s a reasonable enough album with some solid singles, but on the whole it leaves me pretty cold. I guess I fall into the simplistic early Belle & Sebastian camp rather than the things they come up with now. Oh well, it still has those solid singles, and ‘Sukie In The Graveyard’ is one of them. One of the things I really don’t like about new Belle & Sebastian is how Murdoch constantly plays around with different styles of delivery. Ironically, ‘Sukie’ is one of the songs where he does this, pitching the song with a heavily accented, rapid delivery, and yet it works for it perfectly. The song sounds cheerful enough until you actually listen the words, where it becomes a rather dark tale of a girl kicked out of her house who ends up posing nude to make ends meet. Not that she seems to care of course. Oh Belle & Sebastian, and your wonderful shades of grey.

#35
Royal Treatment Plant
‘You Don’t Need Me’

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Royal Treatment Plant are a band that I went from hating to really liking within the course of a month. I really disliked them when I saw them live in September, but I got their CD in the mail a few days later and I really liked it. I’m not sure what didn’t click the first time around, but it was this song that largely won me over. It’s full of driving guitars and some fantastic passive-agressive vocals sung with an urgency that doesn’t often seem to crop up from female fronted British bands.

#34
Play Radio Play
‘Juice Box, Paper Hat and a Line of Pixie Stix’

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If there’s one thing this kid needs, it’s an editor. Which may sound like a harsh way to open, but it’s rather true. Play Radio Play is a 17 year old from Texas who makes simple electronic songs on his computer. A lot of them are pretty awful. But some of the good ones are really good. ‘Juice Box’ is one of them. It’s all pretty whimsical, about escaping from life to a fantasy world where you’re in control, but the delivery and arrangement prove that there is talent here to make Postal Service like electro-pop perfection. He’s just been signed to Island, so hopefully with a little guidance he’ll be able to reign in some of the eccentric elements of his music and come up with something stunning.

#33
Sparrow House
‘When I Am Gone’

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Sparrow House is the solo project of Jared Van Fleet, who is a member of the fantastic Voxtrot. The sound of Sparrow House is nothing like that of Voxtrot though. ‘When I Am Gone’ is from his debut EP, ‘Falls’, and is a stunning folk effort that comes across as a latter day Iron & Wine. A gentle, twanging guitar eases up through the song, while Van Fleet sings his heartbreaking lament over the top. It’s almost enough to wonder exactly what we’d be hearing from this guy if he wasn’t a member of Voxtrot. Almost.

#32
Absentee
‘Something To Bang’

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“This is a band that describes their sound as “Leonard Cohen singing from the trouser backed up with a mix of incompetence and occasional surprise”. So I started to listen to ‘Something To Bang’. It all started normally enough, all garage band guitars and bassline, and then, forty five seconds in, the vocal kicks in. That’s the point where I discovered they really weren’t kidding with the Leonard Cohen thing. Lead singer Dan does have a voice that evokes Cohen, and more importantly, a voice that isn’t usually found in indie rock. Indie rock is often made up of those who can’t really sing but really want to rock out, and the music will disguise that well. The people with the stronger voices seem to go on and do other things. This isn’t exactly a perfect rule, but it fits quite a lot of the time. I guess my point here is that there’s a voice here that you don’t commonly hear. The closest contemporary comparison I can think of is David Berman, and that’s certainly not a bad thing. As the song progresses, more musical flourishes enter. There are keyboards in here, sneaky little riffs and a bunch of other fun stuff. All of this results in an indie-country-rock type sound that you don’t often hear coming from bands on this side of the Atlantic.” - originally posted June 24.

#31
The Bright Lights
‘Closed on Monday’

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I discovered The Bright Lights entirely by accident when they headlined a Beeches gig that I’d been invited too. Unfortunately I had to leave before their set was over, but a quick rummage around the internet later showed they had a hell of a lot of talent. The songs aren’t all that bold, but by god they are catchy, with the kind of urgent vocal delivery that makes them come to an end seemingly far too quickly. ‘Closed on Monday’ is by far their best effort, a fantastic piece of guitar pop. They are due to release a single (their first I think) in March, so hopefully 2007 will be the year that things start happen for them.

#30
Oh No! Oh My!
‘I Have No Sister’

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Handclaps! Electronica! Non-sensical lyrics! What’s not to love about Oh No! Oh My!? Their whole album is full of delightful little gems but it’s ‘I Have No Sister’ that stands out the most to me. A gleeful song about feeling better by being with someone, even if it means suggesting that they both “ride bikes into the sea”. The whole thing is darker lyrically than it sounds musically, and things like “if I die then at least you’ll die too” really should be rather morbid, but somehow it manages to seem forever gleeful.

You should know how it works by now. Ten more tomorrow, ten more Friday and the final nine on Saturday.

What is it about Scottish bands that they all have to do at least one (usually multiple) spoken word songs? I enjoy a good spoken word song, but most tend to be pretty awful or gimmicky. It only seems to be the Scottish bands that can actually get away with such a thing and I don’t have the slightest idea why. Is it something about the accent that makes it appealing? All of the ones included in this post feature thick accents, but there has to be more to it than that. Most bands don’t even tend to try this kind of song, yet Scottish bands all seem to give it a go.

Anyway, this all came about after I discovered Ballboy, and by discover, I mean read about them on another music blog. All of their songs were interesting and I’m happy to have found another band that I like, but it was ‘I Hate Scotland’ that appealed to me the most. It’s not actually a song about hating Scotland, more a moan about settling in our lives. It’s not a particularly complex song, just Gordon McIntyre’s “guy in the pub” words over a fairly repetitive backing track. Yet somehow, it still manages to be fantastic.

MP3 Ballboy - I Hate Scotland (expired)

Please find some more examples of this type of song below. Arab Strap painfully discovering a partner’s infidelity, Belle & Sebastian travelling to Mars and My Latest Novel being kind of non-sensical, but in a fun kind of way.

MP3 Arab Strap - Love Detective (expired)
MP3 Belle & Sebastian - A Space Boy Dream (expired)
MP3 My Latest Novel - The Job Mr. Kurtz Done (expired)

Anyone have more examples of this kind of song?

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.

Thanks to me being a little out of it over the past week (constant painkillers = fun!), I’ve been pretty lazy in my blogging. This means that I haven’t posted about some awesome new band or whatever in over a week now, which is pretty awful. I assure you that this will be rectified in the near future, but for tonight I’d like to present you with Another Form of Relief’s fourth mixtape, entitled ‘Let’s Get Literary!’.

The theme of this one is pretty simple. It’s a collection of songs that have some literary theme, either through their words, their subject matter or in a couple of cases, their titles. It’s not the tightest collection ever put together, but it’s kind of fun, particularly for dorky music listeners like myself who get a kick out of references to authors and books and the such. Best of all, there’s not a Thom Yorke song in sight.

MP3 Belle & Sebastian - Wrapped Up In Books (expired)
Not really a literary song in it’s own right, but how could you have a mixtape of this nature and not include some Belle & Sebastian, particularly when they have an awesome little song called ‘Wrapped Up In Books’? Belle & Sebastian songs always come across as being closer to prose in their lyrics than most pop songs anyway, so I’m happy to let them slide in here, and it does set a wonderful tone for the songs that follow.

MP3 The Pop Project - House Of Books (expired)
The Pop Project are a band from Michigan that I discovered thanks to Bethanne at Clever Titles Are So Last Summer (two shout outs in two posts.. terrible) writing about them. They have a nice, cheerful sound that works perfectly, assuming you don’t mind a little sunshine in your music from time to time. The song is all about living inside a fictional world made out of your books or something. Not that it really matters when it’s this much fun.

MP3 Ryan Adams - Sylvia Plath (expired)
Well you can always rely on Ryan Adams to bring the mood down, can’t you? ‘Sylvia Plath’ is a great song, but by god it’s depressing. The melancholy vocals, the restrained piano, and the general miserable subject matter of wanting someone who is depressed to the point of suicide. That said, Ryan Adams is far better when he’s in this kind of a state than he is when trying to rock, so I’m not going to complain too much.

MP3 Modest Mouse - Bukowski (expired)
One of my favourite Modest Mouse songs, although it isn’t particularly about Bukowski other than the narrator singing about how his life is turning into something out of a Bukowski novel. The song itself is pretty much entirely a slight against the fundamentalist view of what God is supposed to be (”If God takes life, he’s an Indian giver / .. / God, who’d wanna be such an asshole?”). I’m a fan of any song that tries to challenge beliefs or offer up something controversial, and being a proud rider on the Heathen Bus makes me appreciate this all the more. Take away the content though and it’s still a mighty catchy song.

MP3 MC Lars - Ahab (expired)
MP3 MC Lars - Mr. Raven (expired)
A couple of literary adaptations offered up by MC Lars. Being an English major, he seems to enjoy working a lot of literary content into his work. There’s a third song like this called ‘Rapbeth’ but it’s pretty awful. ‘Ahab’ is an awful lot of fun, telling the story of ‘Moby Dick’ from Ahab’s point of view, somehow managing to work in a Supergrass sample for the chorus. ‘Mr. Raven’ does much the same thing for Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’. It also has to be the most stacked pop culture namecheck song ever, managing to work in Paris Hilton, Bob Dylan, Michael Moore, the Fugees, Fred Durst and Nietzsche all into the same song, as well as a fun Vanilla Ice parody. All this and it still manages to retain the story of ‘The Raven’ relatively well.

MP3 Holiday With Maggie - A Girl Like You (expired)
So we enter a little section on relationship songs that somehow connect to literature. Holiday With Maggie are a band that I keep meaning to write about, but never seem to get around to thanks to not really liking their newer material. This song though is from a time when they still sounded like 60s pop crossed with Weezer, and thus is rather excellent. The literary link is tenuous, pretty much just the guy first saw the girl in the library reading. It’s enough for me though, even if half of these are just very poor excuses to get a bunch of good songs in one post.

MP3 Rhett Miller - Our Love (expired)
I know a lot of people find Rhett Miller to be a little too middle of the road for their liking, and I’m one of them on the most part. I like a handful of his songs though, and this is one of them. The choruses are pretty cheesy, but the verses make up for them, with nice little stories about the unrequited love of both Richard Wagner (I originally wrote Robert..) and Franz Kafka. The upbeat style of the song masks the misery in the words (”Kafka in his letters to his lover Milena was alive / But he was waiting for a love that never would arrive”) very well. It’s just a shame that the depth in the choruses couldn’t get beyond the repetition of “our love”.

MP3 Pants Yell! - My Boyfriend Writes Plays (expired)
The point where the relationship with a writer falls apart. The narrator is getting bored of his relationship with his playwright boyfriend (”It’s some sense of purpose for you / Fuck your stories, I’m leaving, it’s true / All your prose and one act songs / Were never meant for me”) and keeps promising to leave. Whether this is an idle threat or not, we’ll never know, that ambiguity adding to the song. I also have a great love for any band that can use the word “fuck” with such seriousness while still sounding so twee. It’s not an easy move to pull off.

MP3 Camera Obscura - Books Written For Girls (expired)
A song from back when Camera Obscura didn’t solely make upbeat 60s pop numbers. Actually, that might be a bit harsh, I haven’t really listened to ‘Let’s Get Out Of This Country’ enough yet. ‘Books Written For Girls’ is a melancholy piece about the end of a relationship between seemingly two very quirky people (”Give me marks out of ten for the clothes that I wear / .. / He reads books written for girls / Prides himself on being a man of the world”). There is always a certain sadness in Traceyanne’s voice whatever the song is, but something like this just brings it out even further.

MP3 Belle & Sebastian - Le Pastie De La Bourgeoisie (expired)
And so we come full circle and end with one of the finest Belle & Sebastian songs. A fun song about a slightly nerdy girl who doesn’t really fit in with everyone and so takes refuge in the worlds of Salinger and Kerouac as a means of a escape. Which may be slightly weird worlds to want to take refuge in, but I guess they would be pretty interesting. Oh how I wish B&S still made songs like this one.

I hope you enjoy at least some of the songs here. I had a lot of fun putting it together anyway. Now I just need to come up with an idea for our next mixtape type thing. They seem to be appearing every two or three weeks at the moment, which is quite a good rate I think. We’ll be getting back to more regular posting following this one seeing as I’m feeling a fair bit better than I have been over the past week, so be sure to keep checking back to actually see some new content!

So today I’m entirely exhausted because this is the third day in a row where I’ve had less than five hours sleep. I can do this every now and then but it gets a bit much by day three. Why did I get up so early today? So the nice man from the RAC could come and replace my car windscreen and charge me a mere £200 for the privilege. My car has had a small crack in the windscreen since I got it three months ago and I finally decided to get it fixed.

I like my car a lot. Well that’s not entirely true. I like having a car a lot. The car itself isn’t of any great consequence. If I’m honest, I actually liked my old car (Nissan Almera) more than my current one (Daewoo Matiz). I drive a hell of a lot, largely for no particular reason. There’s a fun hypocrisy with my environmental views threre, but we won’t go into that. Sure, the Matiz doesn’t leak, has only done around 20,000 miles, and it has a speedometer that actually works, which should make it far superior to the Almera. I liked that car though. It was a better drive, it was bigger and it could accelerate up hills, something the Matiz and it’s 0.8 engine is sorely lacking.

There’s no particular point to all of this. I’m not looking for another car, nor do I really have the ability to change it even if I were. This is just a lazy way for me to write something without having any new content, and a way of having a little variation beyond “this band is so awesome”. Which I know I write far too much. Anyways, this is an mp3 blog, so we need something relevant to the situation. What better than Belle & Sebastian then? I think I post too much Belle & Sebastian actually, but this is the one song that fits this perfectly.

MP3 Belle & Sebastian - I Love My Car (expired)

Today is also the birthday of fellow Another Form of Relief contributor, Simon, so here is a lame mp3 to fit that event too! That said, it’s actually a really good song, and I’m not even that big of a Clem Snide fan.

MP3 Clem Snide - Happy Birthday (expired)

I realise this post has next to no value whatsoever, but this is the best you get at the moment. I’m not writing a personal blog at the moment, so the random pointless posts like this end up here with a vaguely relevant mp3 at the moment. I’ll be back to pimping a band of the moment later on tonight.

It’s one of my days where I’m feeling incredibly lazy so you know what that means: a post loaded with cover versions!

MP3 Belle & Sebastian - Whiskey In The Jar (expired) (Thin Lizzy)
Some may consider this to be close to blasphemy. Others will think that it’s awesome. I’m in the latter camp, largely because I love what Belle & Sebastian can do with just about anything, and also because I don’t really like the older versions of this song all that much. I can appreciate it, but I don’t particularly like it. It’s not the kind of thing that suits B&S particularly well, and I could never imagine an original B&S song sounding anything even remotely like this, but that does help make it all the more enjoyable. One of the best things about covers is when a band can take a song that doesn’t suit them in the least and make it work for them, and that’s what we have here.

MP3 Trip Shakespeare - Dead Set On Destruction (expired) (Husker Du)
I’m a huge fan of Trip Shakespeare, and honestly believe they were one of the greatest bands that never became huge. For those unaware of their brilliance, Trip Shakespeare were an experimental-pop-rock band from Minneapolis who put out a number of albums in the late 80s and early 90s before being dropped by their label and splitting up. Their members went on to form Semisonic, The Flops, and a bunch of other solo releases. While all of these were also good, nothing ever came close to the material Trip Shakespeare were putting out. In fact, I might actually do a full post on them in the near future. Anyways, this is a cover of a Husker Du song, but I can’t tell you how it compares to the original as I don’t really know it. I’m only a casual Husker Du listener, so don’t really know anything about this song other than this song is pretty rocking, which works well enough for me.

MP3 Ben Folds - In Between Days (expired) (The Cure)
We can’t have a covers post without an entry from Mr Folds, can we? Ben Folds’ cover of The Cure’s ‘In Between Days’ is carried out perfectly, in that if I didn’t already know that this was a cover, I wouldn’t question for a second that it was an original Folds song. He takes an already excellent song and makes it his own. It’s an energetic, pounding piano tour de force that suits Folds so well.

MP3 Of Montreal - Know Your Onion! (expired) (The Shins)
Oh how these “cool” indie bands like to cover each other. It’s certainly not a bad thing, although if I’m honest, this isn’t the greatest example of it. Of Montreal and The Shins are both great bands, but this cover lacks something. I’m not sure what it is, maybe it’s how close it stays to the original. I kind of expect Of Montreal to do something daring or make it more manic or something else to give it something of a hook, but this is a pretty by the numbers cover. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still very good, but could have done with that little extra to make it unique.

And that’s it for today. I’ve noticed quite an upsurge in traffic today, which is pretty cool. So a big hello to all of the new readers I seem to have picked up in the past 24 hours, and I hope you enjoy what you find here. I guess this is it for today, although there’s a certain irony that these “lazy” posts seem to end up taking longer to put together than the regular ones. Oh, and before I go, I’d just like to share this: Last night I ordered just what might be the greatest t-shirt ever created - The Communist Party. You get where the title came from now? Communists.. Cold War.. duck and cover.. cover songs.. I’m far too dorky for my own good at times.

It seems kind of silly to come to such conclusions, but Belle & Sebastian just might be my favourite band ever. A cursory glance at my Lastfm page proves I have played them more than anyone else, and nearly twice as much as my beloved Rilo Kiley, who come in a distant second.

Yet despite all of this I was incredibly late to the Belle & Sebastian party. I first heard them a long time ago, when, if I’m not mistaken, they picked up a Brit award. Yes, this was long enough ago that I actually watched the Brit awards. Anyways, they won a couple of awards and the parts of songs that I heard there sounded awful. And that was it. I’d dismissed them as boring crap and never gave them any more thought. That was until hearing I’m A Cuckoo blasting out of 6 Music. Of course I had no idea who it was, I just knew that I loved it. I was slightly taken aback to discover that it was the “boring crap” band, but it did encourage me to explore more of their material and I haven’t looked back since. I certainly wouldn’t label them as boring crap now, even if I still dislike a number of their albums (Arab Strap, Fold Your Hands..).

2003’s ‘Dear Catastrophe Waitress’ was the first album that Belle & Sebastian actually released singles for. Sure, they had singles for, but each was it’s own unique EP, containing nothing you’d find on any of their albums. You’ll find these collected together in the awesome ‘Push Barman To Open Old Wounds’ compilation. Still, singles meant b-sides, and a bunch of songs a lot of people may not have been lucky enough to hear.

(from Step Into My Office, Baby)
MP3 Belle & Sebastian - Love On The March (expired)
MP3 Belle & Sebastian - Desperation Made A Fool Of Me (expired)

We start off with two songs that perfectly represent the transition that Belle & Sebastian have gone through over the years. Love On The March is of the modern B&S variety, a cheerful, slightly retro number that wouldn’t feel out of place on either of their past two albums. Desperation Made A Fool Of Me on the other hand, is a throwback to the classic sound, and proves to be the best song on the single. Stuart Murdoch captures world weary with a hint of optimism perfectly, and that is what this song is. It’s the kind of misery with a smile tone that has unfortunately been missing from the modern sound.

(from I’m A Cuckoo)
MP3 Belle & Sebastian - Stop, Look And Listen (expired)
MP3 Belle & Sebastian - (I Believe In) Travellin’ Light (expired)

Stop, Look And Listen is seven minutes long, and sounds like one of the happiest things you’ll ever hear. Look a little underneath though, and the song is so much darker. I love songs that are like this (you might have noticed by now), and this is no exception. I’m not such a fan of the guitar part at the end, but the rest of the song is rewarding enough to make up for it. The second song, (I Believe In) Travellin’ Light is a Stevie song rather than a Stuart one, but don’t let that put you off. I generally find his songs to be the weakest on the albums, and that is the case here, but it’s still pretty darn good.

(from Books)
MP3 Belle & Sebastian - Your Cover’s Blown (expired)
MP3 Belle & Sebastian - Your Secrets (expired)

Your Cover’s Blown is one of my absolute favourite Belle & Sebastian songs. It beggars belief that it wasn’t deemed album worthy as it really is among their best material. NME even dubbed it the ‘indie Bohemian Rhapsody’. That may not be the greatest of comparison, but the constant time changes and Murdoch’s variations in singing styles do turn it into quite the epic. Your Secrets isn’t the most complex song B&S have put out, but it’s just too damn cheerful to dislike. And really, who can argue with anyone who calls themselves a doozer in all seriousness?

I know that there is a love them or hate them thing with Belle & Sebastian on the most part, but if I can’t make you at least appreciate them with the variety of this lot, there really isn’t any hope. Their newest album, ‘The Life Pursuit’ didn’t click with me at first, but now I’m gradually finding myself liking nearly every song on there. Their latest single from it, ‘The Blues Are Still Blue’ will be released on April 3.

In site related news, updates will be a tad slower over the upcoming days as we carry out a switch to a vastly superior server. This will hopefully decrease the amount of downtime we’ve been experiencing and work out far better all round for everyone.