May's playlist

Some of the many songs that have been playing over the last month...

song of the day - May 1st
The Flowerpot Men - Beat City (1986)

Like most people, I know this song from the Ferris Bueller soundtrack. It's a great big of new wave-ish pop but I don't know much about the band other than that they were from the UK

song of the day - May 2nd
Matriarch - (from Revered Unto the Ages, 2007)

Puerto Rico's Matriarch only released one album, but it's a classic: eerie death metal with genuinely operatic vocals alongside the growls and, most importantly, some great songs like this one.

song of the day - May 3rd
Neil Young - Harvest (from Harvest, 1972)

The country twang can't kill the enigmatic sorrow of this lovely song.

song of the day -  May 4th
Iron Maiden - Burning Ambition (B-side to Running Free, 1980)

The early era of Iron Maiden has its own special charm, exemplified by this great song, one of the earliest Steve Harris compositions. Far more hard rock-like than their later material and with an atmosphere that never recurred in their post-Killers work. It's definitely true that Paul Di'Anno wouldn't have been able to sing their more complex, operatic work as well as Bruce Dickinson, but the opposite is also true; great though he is, Bruce's versions of early Maiden material are never as good as Di'Anno's.

Song of the day - May 5th
Butthole Surfers - Jingle of a Dog's Collar (from Electric Larryland, 1996)

Nearly a normal pop/rock song!


song of the day - May 6th
Woods of Infinity - Rock the World (from the cassette version of Hamptjarn, 2007)

In a career full of bizarre-but-apparently-heartfelt covers, this version of a Euro-kiddy-pop anthem by Swedish act "Bubbles" is unsettlingly sincere.

song of the day - May 7th
James Taylor - Shiver Me Timbers (from Other Covers, 2009)

Predictably lovely version of the already fairly lovely song from Waits' Heart of Saturday Night

song of the day - May 8th
Iron Maiden - Revelations (from Piece of Mind, 1983)

Although by Maiden standards a quite straightforward, rock (rather than metal) song, this is exactly the sort of thing that Bruce Dickinson brought to the band; articulate, dramatic and myth/history/literature-friendly.

song of the day - May 9th
The Sterling Sisters - Country Love (from Hale, 2012)

Not my cup of tea in theory, but this album of country tinged Americana has a lovely, sepia-toned atmosphere, and nowhere more so than in this fragile semi-ballad.

song of the day - May 10th
Collectress - Whitechapel (Hat in the Ring) (from Mondegreen, 2014)

Unusual string quartet Collectress' debut album is unclassifiable and sometimes beautiful; this particular song is dramatic and filmic

song of the day - May 11th
Orange Juice - I Guess I'm Just a Little Too Sensitive (from The Orange Juice, 1984)

Just a great song, which thankfully lives up to its excellent title

song of the day - May 12th
The Mercies - Let Me Stay With You (2008)

Ebullient early-Beatles style guitar pop from one of the many Japanese girl bands playing such stuff, just a lovely song, with great drums.

song of the day - May 13th
Cyndi Lauper - Money Changes Everything (from She's So Unusual, 1983)

Semi-unusual (new wave/punk), semi normal 80s pop, at her best (as on this song) Cyndi Lauper brings together both sides of her music perfectly.

song of the day - May 14th
1349 - Singer of Strange Songs (from Beyond the Apocalypse, 2004)

1349 are dependably good but there's just something indefinably different and great about this atmospheric-yet-brutal classic.

song of the day - May 15th
Pixies - Letter to Memphis (from Trompe le Monde, 1991)

Back in inferior form now, people forget that the final Pixies album of their initial phase was far from widely acclaimed. It has lots of great songs on it though; this, with its weird dissonant guitar part is my favourite.

song of the day - May 16th
Kyary Pamyu Pamyu -  Goodbye Teacher (2014)

 

  

Slightly creepy doll-like Jpop superstar Kyaru Pamyu Pamyu's music is appropriately cartoonish, cute and unsettlingly wistful


song of the day - May 17th
Emperor - An Elegy of Icaros (from IX Equilibrium, 1999)

This great, melodramatic and gothic-sounding song is one of many in Ihsahn's discography dedicated to adversarial/rebellious icons, and one of the best.

song of the day - May 18th
Tom Waits - Danny Says (from Orphans, 2006)

Love Tom Waits though I do, I was wary of him covering perhaps my favourite Ramones song; needn't have been though. Not quite as good as the original but great anyway.

song of the day - May 19th
DeeJay Punk Roc vs Onyx - Roc-IN-It  (1999)

What happened to DeeJay Punk Roc? This piece of laidback, jazzy hip-hop with non-laidback, jazzy rap from Onyx still sounds great.
 
song of the day - May 20th
Triumph - Follow Your Heart (from Thunder Seven, 1984)

Big, stupid positivist anthem from Canada's third or fourth most famous power trio: classic.

song of the day - May 21st
Iron Maiden - Man on the Edge (from The X Factor, 1995)

Very little of what was wrong with mid-90s Iron Maiden can be attributed to Blaze Bayley really: Maiden were due a career lull, trad metal was in decline, grunge was big but the material was mostly fairly strong. This is silly in the same way that most of the band's interpretations of movies/books etc are: all part of the fun. This is of course Michael Douglas' unintentionally campy classic Falling Down and Blaze delivers it with bullish intensity.

song of the day - May 22nd
Nazareth - Telegram (from Close Enough for Rock 'n' Roll, 1976)

Just past their peak at the time, the grizzled Dunfermline rockers were audibly exhausted on Close Enough... but they still had enough spirit to make art out of their situation rather than going through the motions (the classic rock reponse).

song of the day - May 23rd
Profezia - Il Gioco del Parassita (from Oracolo Suicida, 2013)

Seems like not everyone got it, but Italian BM stalwarts Profezia brought a subtly different flavour to their take on atmospheric black metal. This haunting, powerful song is anguished in a low-key kind of way.

 
song of the day - May 24th
Demonaz - Where Gods Once Rode (from March of the Norse, 2011)

Epic, feelgood, yet grim and frostbitten metal from Immortal lyricist Demonaz; Immortal-meets-Bathory-meets-Iron Maiden; easy to like.

 
song of the day - May 25th
Moose - Polly (from ...XYZ, 1992)

Lovely low-key semi-shoegaze from one of the often-overlooked bands of the era, with a Teenage Fanclub kind of wistfulness

 
song of the day - May 26th
Ihsahn - Regen (from Das Seelenbrechen, 2013)

Still my favourite album of last year, Das Seelenbrechen still hasn't had enough recognition, maybe because it's been overshadowed by the Emperor reunion concerts. It's better than Emperor, because even when the band became almost an Ihsahn solo project it was never as daring and varied as he has since become.

 
song of the day - May 27th
The Beatles - Honey Pie (from The Beatles, 1968)

I know you aren't supposed to like Paul McCartney's cheesy music hall pastiche type songs (apart from When I'm 64) but I like all of them, and this one most of all.

 
song of the day - May 28th
Ghost Bath - Torment (from Funeral, 2014)

This beautifully melancholy atmospheric music owes something to shoegaze, black metal and post-rock and manages to be extreme, unpredictable and yet strangely comforting.

 
song of the day - May 29th
New England - Turn Out the Light (from New England, 1978)

One of the great overlooked rock bands, New England's debut is a near perfect pop/rock/AOR release, produced by none other than Kiss frontman Paul Stanley and this is one of many excellent songs therein.

 
song of the day - May 30th
Peccatum - The Moribund People (from The Moribund People EP, 2005)

"Some suffer to the point where they grow numb, others are so numb they deserve to suffer". A nice song, in some ways, but not all.

 
song of the day - May 31st
The Smiths - Well I Wonder (from Meat is Murder, 1985)

For some reason rarely mentioned in Smiths-literature, this is one of their best, most perfectly constructed songs, with Morrissey on excellent form and the use of sound effects (rain) less melodramatic than usual.

Music to Cut Grass by (Vol 2)

More grass-cutting, more music...

* The Byrds - Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There is a Season) (1965)

'A time to reap', it's practically about cutting grass! Plus it has some of the loveliest jangling Rickenbacker guitar known to man.

* The Beach Boys - Disney Girls (1957) (from Surf's Up (1971)

Bruce Johnston's achingly nostalgic song is bathed in a warm summery glow that isn't as 'outdoorsy' as more typical Beach Boys fare but has a contemplative quality perfect for the solitary pursuit of garden maintenance.

* Trini Lopez - Lalainia (from The Whole Enchilada, 1968)

A lovely, latin-tinged cover of Donovan's already quite lovely song, with typically excellent guitar playing by the sometimes cheesy crooner.

* The Doors - Love Street (from Waiting for the Sun (1968)

For every grandiose, brooding song in The Doors' discography there's a light, playful one like this.


These languid, summery tunes are all very well; but mowing is an energetic activity, so how about something to reflect the fact that, in a tiny way, one is imposing one's will on the landscape, like for instance

* Immortal - Tyrants (from Sons of Northern Darkness (2002)

Epic riff, great lyrics about being tyrants on gilded thrones: empowering :)

in a similar vein:

* Kiss - Saint and Sinner (from Creatures of the Night, 1982)

There are few things more dispiriting than the tuneless, passionless bark of Gene Simmons going through the motions. Conversely, when he is fully engaged in the material, and when (as here) it is good, he has one of the great rock voices.

* Slayer - Spill The Blood (from South of Heaven, 1988)

From the clean picking of the intro to the precision of the riffing, everything in this song is so clean and 80s that it cuts perfectly through background noise while remaining powerful and, in its morbid way, sort of uplifting.

Lightening the tone a little:

*Triumph - Follow Your Heart (from Thunder Seven, 1984)

Big, silly, feelgood motivational rock anthem by hairy Canadians.

Cutting grass isn't all mindless power though, it's the gentle winds  of spring with golden sunlight flickering through the trees;

* Tenniscoats - Baibaba Bimba (from Tan-Tan Therapy, 2007)

The wistful clarity of this simple, sad/happy tune cuts through the ambient mower-noise nicely

* Neil Young - Harvest (from Harvest, 1972)

The country twang can't kill the enigmatic sorrow of this lovely song.
* Beck - Cold Brains (from Mutations, 1998)

Inventive, slightly scruffy sounding 90s indie type stuff.

*Noctooa - Slate (from Adaptation, 2013)

A bit like Ancient VVisdom, this dark neofolk group are distinguished by some great songs and a singer whose voice reaches almost Crash Test Dummies depths of lowness. Great brooding music with an excellent blend of violin (or similar), electric and acoustic guitars.

Perhaps a bit oppressive though but the excellent drum sound on the intro to

*Throwing Muses - Counting Backwards (from The Real Ramona, 1992) should help.

A great, catchy, upbeat but enigmatic alt-rock classic.

In a similar(ish) vein

* Juliana Hatfield - Everyone Loves Me But You (from Hey Babe, 1992)

Yep, semi-cheese 90s indie but sort of sunny.

To end on a more soothing note:

* Michael Nyman - Gattaca (1997)

Shimmering atmospheric strings and piano; traditionally orchestral yet somehow futuristic. Not in any way related to grass cutting but very nice.

And the grass is done for another week or two (weather permitting)

If something's worth buying, it's worth buying twice (or thrice)

Nowadays it's fairly standard practice to not actually buy an album at all, just to download it for free. Pretty much everyone does that, with real fans also buying the albums on physical formats just to have as an actual thing. Going one better than that, though there are the albums you buy more than once. There are many reasons for this, and lame as it sounds there are now albums I have bought two or even three times, only to then save them to a computer and put them on an mp3 player. The following are some 'repeat offenders', with some background.

NAPALM DEATH - SCUM

The album
The legendary 1987 debut of UK grindcore pioneers remains a benchmark of murkily recorded, politically informed intensity.

The versions
1) Tape bought in Our Price records, Perth in (I think) 1988. Listened almost to death, there is something very right about the cassette version of Scum, not least because of the endless list of acknowledgments and thanks, which, in the pre-internet age was extremely useful in spreading the word about underground music. The almost indiscernible, bleached out band photo is fun too.

2) CD bought a few years ago for convenience. It lacks the homemade qualities of the tape and omits the sleevenotes altogether, as well as using a very wrong font for the song titles in the booklet, but it's nice to have photos of both lineups and I'm glad they used the yellow cover & not the green/blue/etc variants. Of course there's another new version out now, which I will end up buying too.

 

MORRISSEY - VIVA HATE

The Album
Morrissey's 1987 debut solo album isn't quite The Smiths, but definitely has its own charm, with guitarist Vini Reilly playing some of the most un-Johnny Marr yet  heroically un-macho guitar known to man.










The Versions:
1) Tape bought in the very early 90s, played to death
2) LP, bought some time later, second hand, partly for the sleeve, although it doesn't have the same profile portrait of Moz in the inner as the tape & CD
3) CD, bought for convenience, strangely the colour of the artwork has a more brownish hue than the LP and especially the tape, which are markedly more blue-ish







 












The Cure - Boys Don't Cry - Japanese Whispers - 17 Seconds - Faith - Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me - Pornography - Disintegration

The albums
In my last year or two of high school I think I bought pretty much Cure album to date (that is, up to Wish), mostly on tape (my preferred format at the time,  easily carried around and I didn't yet have a CD player). Most of these were later replaced by CDs for convenience and by vinyl, because it sounds better and for aesthetic reasons; which is funny in a way because some of my favourites (Faith, 17 Seconds) have extremely drab covers.

Suicidal Tendencies - How Will I Laugh Tomorrow...When I Can't Even Smile Today

The album:
Sheer genius; hardcore punks go 80s thrash but with a glum, underdog quality utterly different from pretty much all metal at the time.

The versions:
1) Tape - literally played it until it snapped
2) LP - bought years later in a fit of nostalgia - still sounds great and has (to me) one of the greatest album covers (and back covers) of the era.

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - LOADED

The album:

One of my favourite albums of all time. Vastly underrated, this may not be raw and druggy but it's GREAT. Doug Yule is often maligned, but his Lou-Reed-only-nicer voice suits the songs perfectly and the album has a great late 60s atmosphere.

The versions:
1) Tape (can't find, so no photo) - bought in the early 90s. Despite being a VU fan since high school I had somehow never heard Loaded and presumed it sucked. Heard it, it didn't, bought it.
2) 'Fully Loaded' special edition. For once, not bought for convenience, but because it has a whole alternate version of the album, plus unedited versions of the songs from the normal version, just a great reissue.

KISS - LOTS OF ALBUMS

The albums:
All of them up to Asylum

The versions:
I bought the first Kiss album on LP for 50p in a charity shop in the mid 90s, just because of the cover. I surprisingly loved the album (had never been a big Kiss fan before) and bought most of their albums on CD. Then ended up buying them all on LP: Kiss is at least 50% aesthetics. Which doesn't explain why I have two copies of Music from the Elder

NEW FAST AUTOMATIC DAFFODILS - PIGEONHOLE

The album:
Very atypical Manchester indie album, released at the height of 'baggy' but very much parallel to, rather than part of the movement. Funky, percussive and nicely produced. Nothing they did after this debut was half as idiosyncratic or good.

The formats:
1) Tape, bought (I think) just after seeing the band support The Charlatans in 1991(?), much played, then forgotten about
2) LP, came across in charity shop in early 2000s, bought in fit of nostalgia, turned out to still be good.














See also:

Iron Maiden - S/T (LP & CD)
Cranes - Wings of Joy (tape & LP)
The Smiths - every album (tape, CD, LP)
Slayer - South of Heaven (tape & CD)
The Beatles - The Beatles (White album) (tape & CD), Beatles for Sale, Revolver, Sgt Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, Abbey Road (LP & CD)
The Velvet Underground & Nico (tape & CD)
Tom Waits - Nighthawks at the Diner, Blue Valentine, Swordfishtrombones (LP & CD)
The Paul Simon Songbook (CD & LP)
Simon & Garfunkel - Sounds of Silence (CD & LP)

I hope this makes up for all the home taping that I did in the 80s

Music To Cut Grass By (Vol 1)

Springtime, and the chore of maintaining short grass begins. Listening to music while mowing improves the experience immensely but there are a few basic requirements:

* Strong melodies - even with large over-the-ear headphones the lawnmower I use makes enough of a noise that anything vague, complicated or very noisy isn't much use.

* a variety of artists/genres: mowing is monotonous enough already

* positivity! Not essential but nice, it would be a shame if the music made the chore worse

Here is the stuff that my mp3 player chose today that I didn't skip past:


Frank Zappa - Joe's Garage (from Joe's Garage, 1978)

Even though it initially sounds like the theme tune for some dodgy 70s sitcom, this is nostalgic and cheerfully cheesy in an atypical non-ironic way.

Heikki Hautala - Elävien kirjat (from Pyövelin vaatteet, 2013)

Sometimes a voice and an acoustic guitar is enough; no idea what he's singing about (it's in Finnish) but it is atmospheric as well as being forceful enough to win the aural battle with the mower.

Geto Boys - Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta (from Uncut Dope, 1992)

Just a great, tuneful piece of music. Also, without the Geto Boys I wouldn't know that gangsters took pride in not being able to run fast.

Collectress - Owl (from Mondegreen, 2014)

A lovely, strange, almost fragile piece of music by the hard-to-classify (but sometimes string quartet) experimental group

The Beach Boys - California Saga: Big Sur (from Holland, 1973)

Not the classic, early Beach Boys sunshine, but this beautiful, reflective waltz-time tune is just lovely.

Queens of the Stone Age - No One Knows (from Songs for the Deaf, 2002)

Almost-cheesy choice from their breakthrough album; big, obvious rock music - good.

Love - Live and Let Live (from Forever Changes, 1967)

This great troubled protest song somehow stays pleasant even while mentioning snot caking on pants.

Bathory - Hammerheart (from Twilight of the Gods, 1991)

Howard Shore's version of Tolkien's Song of the Lonely Mountain seems to have echoes of Quorthon's great ballad; probably just coincidence but seems appropriate.

Throwing Muses - Not Too Soon (from The Real Ramona, 1991)

Warm, sunny, lovely. Throwing Muses were always just a little bit better with Tanya Donnelly.

Nanette Scriba - The Cold Song (from Ich Bin Dran, 1989)

Breaks the mowing music rules but is invigoratingly chilly and powerful: cuts through mower noise and refreshes.

Loudon Wainwright III

Dimmu Borgir - Alt lys er svunnet hen (from Stormblåst, 1996)

I know Stian Aarstad pinched the piano intro from Magnum's Sacred Hour, but Dimmu needed it more (witness the vastly inferior rerecorded Stormblåst) and it makes a superb intro to one of many catchy, rock-ish songs from a highly underrated album.

Pixies - Havalina (from Bossanova, 1990)

The Pixies famously went 'soft' on Bossanova, but that means that there are lovely pieces of music like this one on there.

The Butthole Surfers - Jingle of a Dog's Collar (from ElectricLarryLand, 1996)

Accessible but still typically bizarre pop song by the reliably not-normal Butthole Surfers


Graveland - Prologue (from The Celtic Winter, 1994)

Yes, it breaks the rules of grass-cutting music in several ways, but this simple guitar & percussion instrumental is strangely soothing and atmospheric, even if not really sunny day music.

The snow-covered ashes of defeat: Métal Noir Québécois

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