Honey Luvv
Gawd.. this sweet, summery, vocal-less song by newcomers Honey Luvv makes me feel so good. It makes me want to jump off my bed and run down the stairs, forgetting to put my shoes on, straight out the door, down the road, down the next road, up the hill, up, up, up, to the top of the hill where I rip off my clothes, a storm of split buttons and dragging trouserlegs, and then rock back, arms out to the side, screaming, screaming, screaming, letting it all out, letting all of my life out, an unstoppable torrent.
Monday Music – 9 April 2012
The Smooth Maria - Abandoned Town
For the foulest of moods, try the Smooth Maria’s Abandoned Town. This simple, rolling tune, with an unusual chord progression, provides the perfect pathetic fallacy and will lure your angry self in to a state of numb calm. You’ll be hypnotised be Matt Kanelos’ dry voice, and by evocative lyrics that you won’t even realise that you’re bouncing about to as the song reaches an upbeat climax by the sixth verse. Great track. Seems a shame that the band’s name sounds like some kind of pubic wax. Hey ho.
Total Warr – Pleasure is the Death of Desire
I read somewhere that this track would be a perfect addition to any summer poolside dance mix. There are a number of reasons why I won’t be adding this to my ‘summer poolside dance mix’. WHO THE HELL HAS A SUMMER POOLSIDE DANCE MIX?! Whatever. Anyway, these Parisians have got something suitably sunny-sounding, with their calypso-electro track. I know I’ll be getting down to this as I fight someone over a sun lounger; I’ll sing along with the lyrics: “I hope you die”. OR NOT.
The Russian Apartments – Queen of America
Glam-rock glo-fi from the US of A.
jj - Beautiful Life
Sounds like someone’s been on a gap year…Swedish pop duo jj once again merge lead-singer Elin Kastlander’s vocals with some trippy samples, not missing out PAN PIPES! And some kind of Incan pipe. (via Gorilla vs. Bear)
Willis Earl Beal - Monotony
Mr Earl Beal has been creating quite a stir with his latest album Acousmatic Sorcery. It’s all very rough and unpolished, a symptom of his homelessness at the time of recording. If you want something finished and shiny, you’ll be sorely disappointed, but don’t write it off because of its rawness – it’s simple, it’s soulful and it has some kind of special.
Pete Hickman & The Divers
I’m comfortably ensconced back at family HQ and full of the serenity and sanctuary that only trips back to childhood homes can deliver. There’s always something of a nostalgia trip being back here, and right now that’s being exacerbated by Pete Hickman & The Divers. The London quartet’s chalky, easy-on-the-ears rock style recalls some of my teenage loves: Pearl Jam, Bush and, later, Matchbox 20. That’s not to say they’re simply a ’90s throwback, though – there’s plenty more to them than that. But I’ll leave that to you to find out…
2:54 – You’re Early
I featured this 2:54 song recently in Friday Films, but it bears repeating: partly for its sublime stalkery-goth-trance feel, and partly because it makes me feel similarly to the below great poem by Rod McKuen, about a captured early-hours moment in a fragile relationship.
‘Stanyan Street’
You lie bent up in embryo sleep
below the painting of the blue fisherman
without a pillow.
The checkered cover kicked and tangled on the
floor
the old house creaking now
a car going by
the wind
a fire engine up the hill.
I’ve disentangled myself from you
moved silently,
groping in the dark for cigarettes,
and now three cigarettes later
still elated
still afraid
I sit across the room watching you -
the light from the street lamp coming through the
shutters
hysterical patterns flash on the wall sometimes
when a car goes by
otherwise there is no change.
Not in the way you lie curled up.
Not in the sounds that never come from you.
Not in the discontent I feel.
You’ve filled completely
this first November day
with Sausalito and sign language
canoe and coffee
ice cream and your wide eyes.
And now unable to sleep
because the day is finally going home
because your sleep has locked me out
I watch you and wonder at you.
I know your face by touch when it’s dark
I know the profile of your sleeping face
the sound of you sleeping.
Sometimes I think you were all sound
kicking free of covers
and adjusting shutters
moving about in the bathroom
taking twenty minutes of our precious time.
I know the hills
and gullys of your body
the curves
the turns.
I have total recall of you
and Stanyan Street
because I know it will be important later.
It’s quiet now.
Only the clock,
moving toward rejection tomorrow
breaks the stillness.
Cavalry
Instead I stand alone – alone, alone. So it goes in Cavalry‘s elegant, maudlin pair of songs, tunes that document emotional nosedives and treacherous women. And yet, featuring sudden outbursts and let-rip guitar sections, the London quartet’s music also feels spontaneous, warm and inventive: a drug you immediately know you’ll be hopelessly addicted to, a hug you desperately needed.
Spector – Chevy Thunder
It’s the start of a four-day weekend: the sun’s out, time stretches eternal, adventures await tonight and Hackney band Spector‘s most recent single provides a fill of broad, boombastic rock for guitar-loving guys & gals up and down the land. Yeahhhhhh….
Halo Halo split live album
Halo Halo‘s Manananggal is one of my favourite tracks of 2012 so far – so imagine my joy upon learning that the band are releasing a split live album with Colin Min Sai, recorded at Levontin7, a Tel Aviv nightspot (below are Halo Halo’s six contributions). Pretty joyous. It’s ace too: a more rustic, real setting for the trio’s chanty, throbbing Arabic-style exoti-pop stylings, and an insight into how fun they are in the flesh. Time to dust off my best Sinawi moves for their return to London.
Siquijor
Listening to Siquijor‘s Nvr Letmego is entering a timeless vacuum-world: a musical black hole in which whole evenings are lost, girlfriends forgotten, appointments missed, dinners left in ovens. It’s a land where your thoughts wonder, where your mind has free rein. The phone never rings and you don’t need the toilet. You just sit and float and dream, adrift in a fuzzy-house land more blissfully stupefying than any painkiller has ever been, retreating back to memories of those happier times. (via Don’t Die Wondering)
Foxes – White Coats
She gone done it again. Yes, Foxes has churned out yet another gem, this time a mid-tempo number giving her own spin on the 90s pop anthem. A sparse, echoing backing provides the perfect compliment to her signature chocolatey smooth voice. No one likes a sycophant, but OMG WE LOVE FOXES TOTES LOADS 4EVA XXXXXXXXXXXX.
This is MY copy of White coats (mp3) - go get your own from the Neon Gold blog.
Visions of Trees – Turn 2 U
Regular, long-time readers of SOIWT will know that Visions of Trees have always been a band associated with this blogger’s tougher times. The twopiece’s new synth-laden single, the first from a self-titled debut album, due 11 June on Something In Construction, is classic VoT stuff: elusive, sultry, betwitching, epic. It made me think of this Times paragraph from Saturday by the excellent Hannah Betts, about the person who’s only 99% right. I’ve known this feeling all too well:
“Seeing them makes your stomach flip. You catch yourself smelling their hair. The sex is brilliant – my God, it is brilliant. You can be quiet in their company, noisy, yourself. You want everything about them – even their faults. Only it’s never going to work. This is basically the love of your life and it makes no difference.”