Singles +
Wednesday, August 31st 2005
While I'm recommending tracks, there seems to be a rich vein of singles or new tracks that I'm particularly enjoying at the moment.
Kelly Clarkson's newest Since U Been Gone is a big slab of pop rock fun. No Pop Idol winner on either side of the Atlantic has released a record as good (well, Will Young may have. Nah maybe not though he did cover Tim Christensen on his last album so brownie points for that). The kind of thing that Avril Lavigne might have recorded (but not sung as well) if she hadn't started on the rubbishy ballads.
The new Franz Ferdinand 'Do You Want To' starts off fairly unimpressively and then morphs into a big pop song with a great riff and cheeky lyrics, 'well I blew him before you' indeed. Interesting to see them take such an overtly pop direction and it bodes well for the album. Wonder if this is representative? It'll be huge. Not sure I liked the video though which all seemed to be rather too ironic. They were playing at being pop stars rather than just being straight about it. At least that's what I felt on one viewing anyway.
KT Tunstall is from just up the coast in Anstruther and as such I feel I owe her some support. Which is why I got her album from the library rather than buy it. Ahem. Actually annoyingly I bought her new single 'Suddenly I See' from iTunes for 79p and then went to the library in the afternoon and found the album which cost me 60p to get out. Hmmm. Still worth the 79p though. Not sure there's much depth there but it breezes by pleasantly.
Mark Owen! Yes, that one - Take That, Celebrity Big Brother and thoroughly nice chap. Turns out he released his third album in March. Who knew. He also released a new single last week. It's called 'Believe In The Boogie' unfortunately but hey it's actually really rather fine. A big hit at #57 in the chart on Sunday. In fact there was a clip of Take That on TOTP on Sunday night and they had a wee blurb at the bottom about what Gary and Robbie were up to now and no mention of the ex-member who actually released a single that same week. Shows how much off the radar he is. Apparently he funded the album himself and the cream of the LA session crew play on it including one Roger Joseph Manning Jr. on keys!
There's a track leaked from the new Cardigans record called 'I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer'. Which is a long title. I've seen the cover of the LP and it's the cover of a pop record and not an alt-country record so the thought would be that they had moved their sound again and away from the sound of Long Gone Before Daylight. On the evidence of this song that isn't quite the case. The instrumental sound of a rock band playing together is still there but this is maybe a bit rockier than anything on the previous record. I like it and again I'm looking forward to this album.
Finally there's a new Paul McCartney album out in a couple of weeks and I have to take an interest in that. He's certainly been talking a good game in interviews giving kudos to Nigel Godrich for editing him in the studio and telling him when stuff was crap and suggesting different ways of arranging things. This must be novel for McCartney who is largely used to producing himself. Apparently he plays most of the instruments on the record himself. Jason Falkner had been involved on some of these sessions but I've heard nothing yet to indicate that anything he contributed made it onto the record.
The snippets of tracks that were played the other night as McCartney appeared on Radio 4's Front Row sounded not bad although I'm a bit worried by early reports that the songs are more freeform melodically rather than concentrating on big strong choruses. Sadly, from the songs he was playing live on the program it's clear he's lost a lot of the power from his voice, he spent the whole time straining to hit the notes. A sign of his age no doubt but sad to hear this from someone who has always had such an expressive and adaptable voice. It remains to be seen whether I listen to this more than the two listens that the last record Driving Rain was given. Maybe it's worth going back for another listen to that.
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Junior Senior - Take My Time
Wednesday, August 31st 2005
Remember these guys? Loved D-D-Don't Don't Stop The Beat. They're back with a new album in a couple of weeks at least in Denmark anyway. Fluxblog have posted a new track from it here (probably a few posts down by now) and I've got to say it's ace.
Check it out.
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Roxy Music - She Sells
Friday, August 5th 2005
I have to admire any song that melodically brings to mind simultaneously Stevie Wonder's 'Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing' and Ben Folds Five's 'Underground'.
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Ray
Friday, August 5th 2005
Watched this last night in an attempt to get some value for money on my DVD rentals this month. For all it's Oscar nominations and great reviews it's really not *that* great.
Jamie Foxx is an amazing mimic, you'd be hard pressed to fault his Ray Charles impression, but the film just wasn't emotionally engaging. Stuff happened, then some more stuff then it finished. There was no dramatic arc to hold onto, you didn't really care what happened. Mostly this is the fault of the script or I suppose the constraints of the biopic genre. It would be churlish to blame Foxx for this, though I'm not sure he's totally free from fault, it can't be easy to emotionally engage with an audience when you are playing a blind man and can't use your eyes. Just shows how important the eyes are when communicating. Still, the music is great, Charles wrote and performed many wonderful songs and was a ground breaker in his mixing of styles - country, gospel, R&B so if it exposes his music to more people then all well and good.
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Catching Up
Friday, August 5th 2005
Yes, yes I know, no updates. But it's Summer and I've been away sauntering round Denmark.
Two weeks without internet access and no withdrawal symptoms. It's great if it's there but if it's not then it turns out I'm not that bothered. Who would have thought.
Also, two weeks without any decent TV. I don't expect to turn on the television in another country and have the choice of programs be Heartbeat or Keeping Up Appearances (though the latter isn't really unexpected, it's hugely popular there). Apart from that it was endless news programmes with long reports on the Tour de France and awful American and Australian mini series which you can't help watching over the top of your book when no one's looking. Of course there may have been other fantastic Danish made programmes but I certainly didn't notice any, not when I was watching.
Lack of other media stimulation meant I was able to plough through Simon Reynolds book 'Rip It Up And Start Again:Post Punk 1978-1984'. An interesting read, more of a straight history than perhaps I expected but interesting all the same. It was pleasing that so called 'New Pop' was covered as there was lots of good music to come out of that and it was interesting to see how the bands from that time grew out of the post punk bands but I did sort of feel that certain parts of this section of the book didn't need to be there with bands covered in one paragraph and then discarded. It would have been better to tighten this section up and not try to cover all bases. It was certainly a fertile time for bands coming up with new ways of doing things, a manifesto being almost more important than what you committed to tape (which in many ways is, of course, bollocks). I had a brief period after reading the book when I was eager to hear certain of the bands mentioned that I had never heard before but that quickly passed. I just get the feeling a lot of the music was of the type it would be good to hear once for curiosities sake but after that I would never need to hear again.
I acquired a lot of films whilst over there to add to my pile of unwatched stuff, The Big Lebowski, Good Bye Lenin, The Ninth Gate and a whole bunch of films that were acquired by 'other' means - War Of The Worlds, Mr and Mrs Smith, Revenge of The Sith, Layer Cake, Sahara. Most impressively most of these have got Danish subtitles.
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