I would describe my approach to music this past week as ‘restless’. I haven’t been able to listen to one band or style of music for very long, which has created a rather odd, disjointed play list for the week.
I started the week listening to some ‘arty’ music, namely The Knee Plays by David Byrne, musical compositions – principally for horns – written for a play by Robert Wilson in 1984. It wasn’t at all what I expected, but then again I’m coming to be continually surprised by Byrne’s eclectic output. Broadly instrumental like last year’s Big Love: Hymnal album, the brass instruments are occasionally complemented by Byrne reading in a flat, robotic monotone. From The Knee Plays I moved on to some Philip Glass violin pieces, driven by an ambition to listen to more of his works after immersing myself in his Low Symphony last week.
I stumbled upon my Inspiral Carpets album collection this past week. The Carpets, now seemingly permanently defunct, produced four albums of spiky organ-embellished indie pop that transcended the rest of the overrated ‘Madchester’ scene that sprang up in the late 1980s. Whereas at the time their quirky, pseudo-Animals type sound earned them a reputation as oddball leftfielders, with time their songs are found to have an earnestness and depth which few would have bothered to have noticed at the time. The track ‘Two Worlds Collide’ from Revenge Of The Goldfish, with its world-weary chorus of ‘What have I done with my life?’ remains my favourite Inspirals track.
I also listened to a Luke Slater DJ mix on the train home one night while frantically sending emails from my BlackBerry that had two effects – firstly, and positively, the music made me type faster and secondly, I was left feeling light-headed like I’d drunk way too much coffee.
As I write this I’m listening to One Of Our Girls (Has Gone Missing) by A.C. Marias, aka Angela Conway with production assistance from Wire’s Bruce Gilbert among others. Conway now makes films, which is a shame, as this single album from 1991 has an ethereal vocal quality while arch-sound smith Gilbert (who is, along with Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Robert Fripp entirely responsible for redefining how I listen to guitar music) adds obscure textural backdrops. I always think of the song ‘There’s A Scent Of Rain In The Air’ whenever I smell that freshness that prefaces a downpour. More on this album at my Documentary Evidence site.
Elsewhere, I watched the BBC Imagine documentary on Rufus Wainwright’s first opera which had Wainwright play a new piano song, ‘Zebulon’. Effectively a conversation after many years with an imaginary childhood friend and confidante, the track has a plangent Rufus expressing his sadness at his mother’s illness, and points to a more sorrowful sound on his next album. Rarely, I also found myself listening to Gideon Coe on 6Music, who played a Peel session by Glaxo Babies, a band I’ve never heard of. Their session version of ‘Who Killed Bruce Lee?’ is a Gang Of Four-esque number which was adorned by seemingly random, skronking, James Chance-style saxophone, an element missing from the vaguely inferior studio version. Speaking of sprawling music, I listened to Locust Abortion Technician by Butthole Surfers, one of the more challenging bands on the SSR label to emerge from the States in the 1980s.
Finally, They Might Be Giants, that quirky pop duo who scored an unlikely hit in the shape of ‘Birdhouse In Your Soul’ in 1990. Since then I’ve always had the band on my list of acts I’d like to listen to more of, though so far this has only extended to the aforementioned song, ‘Istanbul (Not Constantinople)’ and the delicate postcard pop of ‘New York City’, a love song which also lists all the major well-heeled landmarks of Manhattan. So, I was pleasantly surprised a few weekends back, watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on Playhouse Disney with my two daughters, to find that TMBG had done both the title music and the song ‘Hot Dog!’ (see video below, or for those reading this on email, click here). So, er, ostensibly for the girls, I downloaded ‘Hot Dog!’ this week and have no qualms in saying that it is a delightfully infectious little song that worms its way, like all the best kids’ songs, into your brain and refuses to budge. Not that I would, for example, listen to it on the train into work. Never. Honest.
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