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With the summer all but over, this is the third and final of my summer albums, and I promised it would be divisive.
Perhaps that was overstating it. This is just an album from my favourite band, Erasure, my fandom of said band having garnered much derision over the years. You know the sort - 'Oh, you like them? Really? Them?' or 'So you like Erasure... Are you gay?' That sort of rubbish. I've said it before, here and elsewhere, and I'll say it again. Erasure – the duo of singer Andy Bell and ex-Yazoo, ex-Depeche Mode electronic music guru Vince Clarke – are, and always will be, my favourite band. And for the record, I'm not.
The Innocents occupies a special place in my musical collection, as it was the first Erasure album I heard. I'd seen them on Going Live, loved the massive hit 'Sometimes', but was just at the cusp of starting to spend my pocket money on music; until Erasure my record buying was scattergun at best (Fat Boys? Really?). After hearing The Innocents I said with absolute conviction that they were my favourite band. When they released the follow-up, Wild!, I began collecting their back catalogue, first tentatively and then obsessively. By the time of the last single from Chorus in 1992 I owned every single and all but one limited edition release.
I'm not sure that would have happened if it wasn't for my dad coming home from work one day brandishing a tape of The Innocents a colleague had made for him. I seem to recall it was just prior to our annual Whitsun trip to Southend, and I spent the majority of that holiday on the beach listening to this on my Walkman over and over, while wearing cheap sunglasses (so I could stare at older girls in bikinis; I was 11. The most remarkable part of that is that the weather was actually good enough in May for girls to even weak bikinis). Hence why I always associate it with the warmer months.
Considering their repute as a pop band, it's not a particularly upbeat album. Songs like 'Chains Of Love', 'Weight Of The World', the Motown-esque 'Heart Of Stone' and my personal favourite 'Phantom Bride' are optimistic on the face of it but are laced with a sense of defeat, sadness and world-weariness. Only the gospel sounds of 'Yahoo!' could conceivably count as 'upbeat'. Sometime Pet Shop Boys producer Stephen Hague produced the album, which explains why the album has a less prominent electronic angle, more of an organic feel.
The album spawned three much-loved singles, the aforementioned 'Chains Of Love', plus 'Ship Of Fools' and 'A Little Respect'. The latter's defiant stance in the face of adversity was covered, improbably, by Wheatus as a teen-rock anthem.
Read more about The Innocents at my Documentary Evidence site.
So, I love Twitter. Probably a little too much, but as a music fan I think it's an incredible source of music I frankly haven't got the time to source out for myself.
Tweets from the likes of Gap My Mind and Morning After Pills (two New York-based blogs obsessed with disseminating new music) offering free mp3s have swelled my collection of miscellaneous tracks to new levels; tweets from rcrdlbl consist of multiple daily free mp3s and are always a good source of interesting new bands, plus the odd track from established bands / artists. The point is that I could just go to these sites and search endlessly; time-stretched as we all are, the regular tweets from these three sites prompt me to download things I just wouldn't get around to it, which would leave this blog to focus on my usual fall-back subjects – Interpol, Rufus Wainwright, Sonic Youth / Thurston Moore, David Byrne etc.
Ubuweb is another; their collection of Fluxus, modern / post-modern composition and Downtown experimentation keeps my intellectually inquisitive music radar sated. Daily tweets from them range from random Warhol quotes to links to 20CD compilations of early electronica.
Then there's the more interesting aspect, to me, which is bands / musicians / artists who just start following your tweets as a result of something you post - people using Twitter tend to search out people who post things that they're also interested in; you recipocate; everyone's peripheral network of followers is thus mutually swelled. This first happened early in my Twitter experience, late last year. I don't know what it was, but something I posted must have attracted the attention of the band SixtyFiveMiles, I got into a dialogue with the person responsible for updating their Twitter status, I listened to their MySpace tracks, then downloaded their debut album, Finnish Tango, which I reviewed here; further, because of the relatively easy access Twitter affords to musicians themselves, I secured a brief interview with Simon from the band, which I also posted on this blog.
The most recent occasion has been similarly rewarding. A New York musician, Ignacio Uriarte, began following my tweets and we struck up a dialogue centred around music (me saying how much I liked bands from NYC; him saying how much good music was coming out of the UK).
The five tracks he emailed me are what I would describe as anthemic alternative guitar pop. I found myself humming the strident, uplifting harmonies of 'Thugs And Thieves (You Can Have It All)' for days after the mail arrived; the urgent Brit Pop-meets-Eighties New Wave 'What It Takes', with its Beatles-y middle eight, is similarly instantly catchy, but the effect doesn't wear after a while as it does with some songs in the genre.
My personal favourite was 'Miles Away', sounding like it could have sat comfortably on The Virgins' debut album from last year; starting with some very Cars-esque spindly guitar, the subject matter – separation, mostly metaphorical – is hardly optimistic but the effect is to create a glossy, quality pop.
I only hope someone signs this talented songwriter and takes his songs to a wider audience. Meantime, navigate your browser to the links below and enjoy the songs for yourself.
Ignacio artist page
Source: MySpace / (c) Ali Tollervey
It is an increasing trend that when I go to gigs, it's the support that are often way more interesting than the band you've actually paid to see. For example, all three support acts at the recent Kings Of Leon Hyde Park stadium-histrionic extravaganza knocked socks off the Followills.
So too did Dark Horses, opening for Kasabian at Brixton Academy. A warm-up show for an upcoming V Festival slot, it is always a big thing to see a band that have become stadium monsters in a comparatively small venue. Despite the energy of the crowd, it failed to move me. Much. Well, unless you count making me move not just to the back of the standing area but all the way to back of the balcony upstairs. Yeah, I know, I'm a wuss. I'm really too old for that crushing and pushing.
Moronic crowd aside, the set failed to impress me. As bands become larger, the opportunity to surprise diminishes, unless you count a Bonham-lite vignette drum solo (replete with a gong) from the band's Leo Sayer-lookalike sticksman; or the way one of the songs suddenly tacked on Giorgio Moroder's arpeggiating bassline and Serge began singing 'I Feel Love' (it's the laziest trick in the book when a song has a 4/4 rhythm; yawn). Consequently the set was literally no different to when we saw them at Wembley last winter – nothing wrong with that per se, but I just think seeing them do it once (venue aside) was probably enough. The best track was the motorik B-side 'Julie And The Moth-Man' (here strangely mixed up with lyrics from Salt 'n Pepa's 'Push It'), just like it was last time.
Dark Horses were excellent. They arrived on-stage to a tape of one of the Hell's Angel security guards from Altamont bemoaning the crowd touching his precious Harley, while an insistent drone burned harshly underneath. After a couple of tracks I began to detect some healthy Jesus And Mary Chain references in the fuzzy, distorted vibe (I'd like to believe this translates to their studio recordings, but I suspect it won't). I couldn't fathom what the caped female lead was singing, but that also adds to the JAMC allure. Tom from Kasabian joined her for part of one song, singing some laddish 'ooh-ooh' sounds, and dancing like King Louie. She returned the favour later with Kasabian. The cape I could have done without; a bit too Florence Welch for me, but it did have the name of the band on the back, which helped in that part of the set where they haven't introduced themselves and you're wondering who they are. It also broke up the shades and leather of the five guys behind her.
Most songs were tense, edgy affairs. There was one that harnessed the throbbing muted groove of the Reid brothers doing their best Velvets / Modern Lovers thing; they played electric mandolin; a guy looking like Sid Vicious played percussion – tambourine on some tracks, while on others he smashed a drum with a (Mary) chain. (The latter point reminded me of a gig in Colchester in 1997 where Navigator and Stars Of The Lid supported Labradford; a guy in Navigator repeatedly thrashed a chain across the stage). Synth, deep bass resonance and fuzzy guitars all made Dark Horses a compelling proposition.
Dark Horses @ MySpace
Download 'Rose' / 'Rose Unconcious'
A while back I said I'd do a series of 'summer albums', the first being New Order's Technique. The début Fleet Foxes album is the second, and probably the most recent album I'd put into the hypothetical 'summer albums' playlist.
Fleet Foxes is a captivating slice of lo-fi, folksy Americana. So lo-fi in fact that there are apparently all sorts of off-timings across the record, indicating an eschewing of ProTools perfection in favour of genuine warmth and realism. (In fairness, it would take a producer, engineer or professional musician to notice this; being none of these, I'll just take Q's word for it.)
The album is brief, and sometimes when I listen to it I tune out of the individual tracks completely, just absorbing the pastoral warmth of the delicate, ethereal atmospheres it generates. Clearly then, it's not an album that I'd consider listening to when driving; but it is, I find, the ideal soundtrack to chilled-out summer Sunday family breakfasts with the kids (regrettably the only day of the week we're altogether to have breakfast), the gentle sounds from the music adequately matching the slight hangover haze from the Saturday night before whilst having a simultaneously calming influence over two ordinarily wilful children.
If I were forced to pick favourite tracks here, it would probably be as follows: 'White Winter Hymnal', whose name doesn't sound at all summery (though its verses do conclude with the words 'summer time') but which includes some beautiful, delicate and uplifting vocal harmonies; 'He Doesn't Know Why', whose emotional rises and falls are just as riveting after repeated listens, progressing, seemingly chorus-less, to a final section of almost Phil Spector-esque grandeur; finally, 'Your Protector', which has similar characteristics to the two songs above, with a strident, elegiac tone, as well as an hint of Celtic mysticism.
I find it hard to separate this album from M Night Shyamalan's The Village, since I watched that movie at around the same time as we bought this. But more than anything it just perfectly suits the slightly erratic summers we are cursed with in this country.
As for the third, and final, 'summer album' in the playlist, expect it to be divisive; then again, this is supposed to be a relatively personal blog...
