Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 27/07/2009

Music is littered with examples of one-off, oddball songs that shouldn’t be successful but frequently are.

One of these is ‘Hey Matthew’ by Karel Fialka. A spontaneous clean-up exercise in our home office revealed my boxes of 7” singles, including this 1987 track, purloined from my dad’s collection before I left home. What seemed to me at the time to be a wacky synthpop gem actually reveals itself with maturity to contain a surprisingly serious message on the hopes and fears of the parent (Fialka) and his son (the track’s Matthew). Dad ponders on what his son might do and be when he’s older, while son ruminates on being a part of the A-Team, a train driver, a soldier and the usual litany of childish hopes.



Also in my earphones this week was the 1990 album Bona Drag by arch mopester Morrissey. This is classic Moz, containing a number of what I consider to be his best songs – ‘Piccadilly Palare’, ‘November Spawned A Monster’ and ‘Everyday Is Like Sunday’, easily the most perfect example of the former Smiths vocalist’s oeuvre and a track that has a towering, soaring quality that belies its bleak subject matter. Lyrics don’t come more descriptive than ‘This is the seaside town they forgot to burn down.’ Having spent a day recently at Newquay I can relate.

Occasionally I find myself not knowing what to listen to and so I play a game that I like to call iPod Roulette. I simply spin the click wheel, look away, then stop. Whatever I’ve alighted on is what I’ll have to listen to. It’s a bit like the random function but more fun.

Playing this yesterday, I found myself listening to Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s Experimental Remixes, which is, as its name helpfully suggests, a collection of slightly obscure remixes of some of the New York trio’s early songs, most of which come out having a hip-hop flavour (or is that ‘flava‘?). Given the involvement of Beck, Beastie Boy Mike D and Prince Paul, I suppose one shouldn’t be terribly surprised. The Blues Explosion are fantastic exponents of a unique blend of punk, funk and purist rock ‘n roll – read my fawning review of a live performance here.

Finally, I must mention the white vinyl, signed, 7” of Moby’s latest single ‘Pale Horses’. I paid £9 for this but discovered, after a call from the credit card company, that buying this from a site without the secure padlock symbol had actually resulted in around £1000 worth of fraudulent transactions as someone snatched my card details. I’m happy to pay a bit more for a signed item, but not that much. As it happens, the credit card company of course graciously removed the fraudulent transactions, after I which I found that the site I bought this from had only charged me a fiver. Result.

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 20/07/2009

Albums listened to on the journey to Cornwall we made recently.

Florence + The Machine: Lungs

I can sum up my thoughts on this album in just one word: hype. I tend to have an aversion to anything that's critically acclaimed by all quarters as it just seems too good to be true, and Lungs - so named because Brit-award winning Florence is obsessed with them; weird - is no exception. I just can't work out what all the fuss is about.

Florence's voice is too shouty for my tastes (it reminds me of the comparatively genteel, and infinitely preferable, Beth Orton only through a megaphone) and the sporadic use of glissando harp reminds me of Enya.

The track 'Howl' and the opener 'Dog Days Are Over' are pop highlights, but I'm at best indifferent on the rest. I'll conclude using a quote from the song 'Swimming': 'Your songs remind me of swimming / But I can't swim anymore.' In other words I've tried to like this, really I have, but I can't be bothered to try any longer as it's too much like hard work.

Albert Hammond Jr.: ¿Cómo Te Llama?

I guess I could look up what this album's title means fairly easily but I can't be arsed. Instead I'll surmise instead that it means 'What do I do next now that it looks like my band, The Strokes, are on a lengthening hiatus?'

The second album from guitarist / beardmeister Hammond Jr. is a much less instant affair than his debut Yours To Keep, but it's certainly a grower. Tracks like the quiet fuzz rock of 'Rocket' or the poppy, preppy 'GfC' prove once again that Hammond Jr. is much more than the long-faced dude next to Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas.

The version I have includes four live tracks, three of which are taken from his debut and sadly point to the fact that those songs were somewhat better crafted than these. Still, in the absence of another Strokes album, this will have to suffice.

Kasabian: West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum

If I was baffled by the Albert Hammond Jr. title, I am yet more confused by the title of Kasabian's third album. I've tried really hard to detest Kasabian - anything that is likened to Oasis, a band I've always disliked, is always going to get my goat - but actually can't deny that they're excellent, and this new album abundantly confirms it.

Arguably a much more consistent affair than their second, and only the briefest traces of the instrumental excesses (also known as 'filler') from their debut remain in the track 'Swarfiga', probably the weakest song on the entire album.

I'm a big fan of this album's loud, stompy numbers - 'Where Did All The Love Go?', 'Vlad The Impaler' and the glam-influenced single 'Free'.

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 13/07/2009

The Hammersmith Apollo And I Just Don't See Eye-To-Eye

We took our girls to see The Wiggles – go on, laugh – last Saturday at the Hammersmith (aka HMV) Apollo. This is my third trip there, and each of those three visits has been marred by something unforeseen which has damn near ruined the trip.

The first time was in 2004 when we went to see Kings Of Leon for the first time. The venue was so hot that we had to leave halfway through (I wasn’t about to rip my t-shirt off like most of the other blokes – but strangely enough, not the women – were). The second time – for R.E.M. – it was snowing, so no risk whatsoever of overheating, but we never even got into the venue as we’d decided inexplicably that we couldn’t be bothered to go and see one of the biggest bands in the world in a relatively small venue and trekked over to the venue just to find myself royally fleeced, and rather concerned for my life, while exchanging the tickets for the cash equivalent of some magic beans down an alley way around the side of the venue with a tout.

This trip was arguably much more successful, in so far as we actually went this time and didn’t have to leave through heat exhaustion. However, this time we very nearly didn’t make it at all because of my complete inability to a) take into account engineering works on the Underground; and to b) judge distances between stations. We arrived at our seats just after the Antipodeans took to the stage, hot and bothered and spent longer travelling there from Canary Wharf than they were actually on stage. But the girls loved it, and my wife and I are not at all ashamed to say we did too.

For the sheer hell of it, here’s a clip of The Wiggles performing with Leo Sayer, and I can assure readers that normal service will be resumed next week.

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 06/07/2009

Nostalgia abounds this week, mostly thanks to the Glastonbury Festival which we watched from the comfort of our sofa rather than an arid field in Somerset, and principally thanks to Blur.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t really get Blur at the time. I first took an interest when Steve Lamacq played the spiky synth-punk ‘Girls And Boys’ which I bought on cassette (it came in a faux Durex box – very witty; see picture below) and felt sufficiently compelled to buy Parklife, but just couldn’t get my head around it and so I sold it to my sister. I adopted a negative stance on Brit Pop, chiefly because I was absorbing myself in techno at the time and also because I still hadn’t embraced guitar music. I was a late developer. Fast forward to university a year post-Parklife and Blur and their ilk were the requisite soundtrack to nights in the student bars and it was hard not to fall for their charms; plus, I went to Essex University in Colchester, where Blur hail from, and so it really felt like they were our local band. Happy times. Hence I found their Glastonbury show moving in an unexpected way, prompting my to reminisce about how good the first year at Essex in particular was.




Another band that prompts similar recollections on the bill at Glasto was The Prodigy. ‘Firestarter’ was released at the tail end of my first year and it just seemed to capture a mood, a feeling, that sucked in a number of us non-Prodigy fans. A typically unexpected British heat wave offered a sticky end to the academic year and ‘Firestarter’ provided a soundtrack to the euphoria of having completed our first set of exams and the prospect of a long, hot summer with not a lot to do before the second year started.

The Glastonbury performance that most impressed me, however, was not from a band from yesteryear; it wasn’t Neil Young and it certainly wasn’t The Boss. It was Franz Ferdinand, a band whose first two albums were, for a time, in heavy rotation on my iPod. However, I always thought they were lousy on stage and so avoided rushing out and buying their third album Tonight : Franz Ferdinand, in spite of how good the singles ‘Ulysses’ and ‘No You Girls’ were. Their performance on Saturday at Glastonbury was nothing short of incendiary, and laid to rest any memories of previous crappy appearances at festivals. So I went out this week and bought Tonight… and think it’s a gem. It serves to remind you that the band are the best export from Scotland since whiskey and bad teeth.