Posts tagged Oh No! Oh My!

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 and 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 and 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.