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.

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 29/06/09

I've always resisted buying a USB turntable as a matter of principal. Sure, I fully accepted that having one would make recording vinyl easier, but I have a really high-spec turntable already and I was always concerned that a USB deck wouldn't compare, quality-wise. So it was a surprise even to myself that when a colleague offered me her ION system for £45 I barely hesitated before agreeing to purchase it from her.

I have lots of vinyl, but never listen to records anymore. I hardly even listen to CDs either since MP3 players came along. But would I sell my physical collection if I made a back-up on my iPod? Never. I've wiped my iPod by accident once and am still loading stuff back on over a year later. Nevertheless, in adherence to a decluttering initiative my wife commenced a few years ago I stuck some old records in a spare record bag and agreed to flog them, as painful as it may have felt, on eBay. A couple of years have passed and I've yet to part with a single one. My excuse was that I still liked the songs but wasn't especially bothered about keeping the actual records, so I needed to back them up somehow. It's not especially difficult to do this, but when your turntable lives under your bed and you don't have a lot of time, well, it doesn't take much to make you not bother.

Within fifteen minutes of setting up the ION turntable however I was already onto my first recording – the Third Version EP by sometime Beastie Boy keyboard player Money Mark. The EP includes the emotional soul vocals of 'Sometimes You Gotta Make It Alone' (listen here) and the kazoo-led funk of 'The Grade' (kind of like a Sesame Street tune from the seventies – listen here), both of which I think I heard him perform at All Tomorrow's Parties in 2004. If you like hip-hop beats and organ grooves, Money Mark is your man. This was the first record from the bag of vinyl that I'd intended to sell, but have I tried to sell it on eBay now that it's backed up? Nope. Instead I've contacted a record shop on Berwick Street in Soho in an attempt to get rid of the lot in one go.

I've been on a bit of an Eighties tip over the past couple of weeks. Some would say I've been stuck in the Eighties musically since the Eighties. There are a few reasons for my latest renaissance for the Day-Glo decade. One was buying The Virgins album (see last week – I won't attempt to rehash my praise for that excellent band / album yet again) which has almost legitimised my affections for the music of twenty-five years ago. Another was the song 'Annie I'm Not Your Daddy' by Kid Creole & The Coconuts (such a good song – I will not apologise), played toward the end of the Island Records documentary I wrote about the previous week.

The final reason was the album Fore! by Huey Lewis & The News. I bought this – on LP! How retro? – in the closing-down sale at my local Zavvi and thanks to the USB turntable finally got to listen to it. This band take me right back to school discos, 'dancing' to the song 'Power Of Love' from the Back To The Future soundtrack. It is what it is – a brash, stadium-friendly pop-rock album which now sounds woefully dated. Nevertheless, the tracks 'Jacob's Ladder', 'Stuck With You' (such a soppy tune, but I love it) and the conformity anthem 'Hip To Be Square' are all excellent. Check out just how Eighties this album is with this photo from the sleeve below.

As this is a music blog, I guess I should say something about Michael Jackson. I've never liked his music and considered him hugely overrated, but that wasn't what I was going to say. I will say this: just before Christmas, 1987, when I was just eleven years old and in my final year at primary school, we had a Christmas party in our classroom. Our teacher encouraged us to bring in tapes to provide the music, and the only one I had then was Human Racing by Nik Kershaw; everyone but me thought it was rubbish (it's not and I still love it).

The first girl I ever had a crush on brought in Bad and I remember dancing with her to the songs on that album. Consequently, whenever I hear anything from that album it reminds me of what it's like to think you're in love as a kid. Whilst I will never consider myself a Michael Jackson fan, I'm grateful to him and his music for that one, very specific and beautiful innocent memory from my youth.

Audio Journal : 22/06/2009

In the last week I think I've bought or received more new CDs than during the whole of the rest of 2009. This, I should stress, is not 'new music' as generally I can't keep up that these days. I don't listen to radio, I don't read music magazines and instead rely on my wife, who does both of those things. Anything new I've got into over the past two years has generally been because of her recommendation.

One of the new bands she's been buying songs by is The Virgins, whose debut album has been in heavy rotation on my iPod ever since she bought it last week. The Virgins are a New York four-piece making upbeat Eighties-esque New Wave rock that's undeniably retro by way of influence, but quintessentially modern - and New York - in its sound. Listen for yourself at their MySpace page. If it was possible to wear out songs on an iPod like you could with vinyl records, my copy would be wrecked now after the past week's worth of play. I implore you to check them out.

Another thing filling my earphones over the past seven days was Trees Outside The Academy by Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore; I know I'm becoming something of an unashamed SY bore, but Moore's 2007 album confounds expectations and is quite beguiling. Anything anyone in that band produces is always excellent anyway, but this was much softer than expected.

As with SY, I know I have prattled on about David Byrne here far more than is objective, but I bought his Big Love: Hymnal album last week on a rare splurge at Rough Trade East and thought it was quite beautiful too. The album contains instrumental songs crafted for the soundtrack to the US series Big Love which has something to do with Mormons, but all I know is that the songs here are uplifting and 'spiritual' I guess.

I've somehow managed to squeeze in a couple of listens to the album Strange Weirdos, a selection of songs by Loudon Wainwright III used in or inspired by the (surprisingly mature) Judd Apatow comedy Knocked Up. I'm gradually working my way around the Wainwright family, starting with Rufus - still far and away the best singer in the music business today - and now his father. Ordinarily Loudon's folksy songs may not be everyone's cup of tea - I'm still getting used to them myself - but these tracks are highly accessible and quietly moving. The cover of Peter Blegvad's 'Daughter' gets me every time; appropriate given that it was a Father's Day gift.

Finally, I attempted to visit the exhibition of Moby's inchoate drawings at the Neu Gallery last week, but got thoroughly lost in the East End. My soundtrack for the experience was White Light / White Heat by The Velvet Underground. It just seemed to lend itself to the surroundings.

Audio Journal : 15/06/2009

I’m writing this from a hotel room in Canary Wharf, listening to my wife’s iPod on a Bose Wave system (I’ve been nagging on about getting one of these for years, a plea which has, to date, fallen on deaf ears). We’re off to see Kings of Leon at the O2, just a short distance across the water from where I’m sitting, but a complex series of DLR trains and water taxis will likely be employed just to get us there. As much as I’m looking forward to seeing the band this evening, I know already just how good they’re going to be, and so don’t really feel the need to write to write anything about them.

Last night we watched Keep On Running, the BBC Four documentary charting the fiftieth anniversary of Island Records, a label which I’ve never particularly rated or considered as anything other than purveyors of that high-brow, purist rock music that people of a certain age think to be the best sort of music ever made. Watching the documentary didn’t particularly change my mind, though I did think Chris Blackwell came across as a thoroughly nice bloke, and the space and time afforded to the artists clearly created benefited the outputs.

Nevertheless, I’m not a fan of much of the label’s purportedly classic roster, beyond King Crimson’s In The Court Of The Crimson King, Roxy Music’s eponymously-titled album, the occasional U2 album, The Orb, Brian Eno… Actually, perhaps I like more of the artists than I previously thought. In that case, Pulp circa ‘Disco 2000’ as well for good measure just for the memories those songs evoke of the tail end of my first year at university.

Then there’s PJ Harvey. I first listened to PJ as a guest vocalist on Nick Cave’s ‘Henry Lee’, then picked up her New York-referencing 2000 album Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea, principally because of the involvement of Cave’s (red) right hand man, Mick (no relation) Harvey. We don’t listen to a lot of women singers in our house as my wife has always had something of an aversion but that seems to have changed of late. We bought PJ’s other classic album, To Bring You My Love recently and it’s rarely been off the car stereo since.

The other thing we’ve both been listening to of late are the first and third albums of Rough Trade band The Veils which my wife bought from iTunes after the same Rough Trade documentary which inspired me a few weeks back. I know nothing about them beyond a cursory glance at a Wikipedia entry, and the first album doesn’t do anything for me. However, the third, Sun Gangs, is a much more complete affair, vocalist Finn Andrews’ voice landing somewhere between Rufus Wainwright and Jeff Buckley. Key tracks to check out are the opener, ’Sit Down By The Fire’, ’It Hits Deeper’ and my personal favourite ’The Letter’.