And continuing from where we left off, our great TL;DR adventure continues with five more albums.
Last time this year I was worrying about writing an annual top 10 albums list. There simply wasn’t enough albums that I felt happy about including on the list, causing several entries to appear in the final list that wouldn’t have even dreamed of making it on any other year. In other words, 2008 was disappointing.
I’m worrying slightly again, wondering what on earth to include on this list and in what order. This time however it’s for the completely opposite reason. 2009 has been a brilliant, brilliant year in music and as I choose to see which 10 make it to the Chosen Pile, I have to look at all the ones that are left outside that group and feel sad over not allowing them a chance in the spotlight as well. There’s too much good stuff to choose and rank from!
But here we go.
A quick overall word about 09. A really intriguing thing is that this could be called the year of lyrics. Now I’m a person who does love his lyrics but I’m not a huge geek – I can safely enjoy and sing along to e.g. Red Hot Chili Peppers without having to hold back tears on what Kiedis is shrieking. However, 2009 has been packed with albums where the lyrics are an integral part of the entire thing. Albums where my personal enjoyment leaped tenfold when I stopped still and listened to what was being said, albums where the lyrics are tied to a concept integral to the album’s creation, albums where the lyrics actually became one of the main focus points and one reason why I kept on playing the albums. Even albums where I didn’t fall in love with the lyrics were still made with lyrics as a focal point: concept albums and so forth.
But the music is the main focal point. And here we go, the music. First (or last?) five are here, the next presented tomorrow. There’s absolutely no reason involving ‘keeping tension’ or any other such tripe, it’s more just the fact that my entries tend to be a bit TLDR and therefore cutting it up makes it more readable.
This is the problem with grassroots bands who do not yet have a proper label (major or indie) backing: you get those moments where you begin to wonder if the band even exists anymore because there’s no stable, easy information source.
The Finnish band Prologue released their official debut release, The Stars Are Holes in the Sky EP in 2005. Two years later the Ghost Writing single followed, showing how in those two years the band had managed to add some stellar new sounds to their music. The world was preparing itself for a killer debut album and then… radio silence. The official website is down, the Myspace page has had no updates since 2007 (the last login is a few days ago but that seems to be the case with every single Myspace page so it’s not really reliable). No pieces of news, no articles in Finnish music sites, nothing. It’s like the band simply disappeared.
With good luck we’ll soon be hearing news about a debut album that the band has been preparing for all this time in perfect peace and silence, but as it is now we can’t say for sure. The old material is all we’ve got.
That old material is our treat today, its autumnal sounds wonderfully fitting the current season (even if your current habitat might not have multicolour leaves falling out of trees, covering the world in bittersweet beauty). Prologue circa The Stars Are Holes in the Sky EP owes a great deal of its sound to the classic 90’s-00’s scene of Britpop, the cuddly melodies of late-90’s Travis and the warm intimacy of Parachutes-era Coldplay being the most suiting examples. Wonderful melodies float slowly in a gentle breeze, the close atmosphere being just as important as the hooks when it comes to songwriting. The title track is the stand-out moment of the EP instantly captivating the listener into its brightly sparkling melodies and wonderful, wonderful chorus. “Serpentine” and “Is It People?” are the other shining examples of why the EP is an excellent debut release: the spacey, bedroom warmth of the sound is instantly appealing, soothing the mind and relaxing the body as the melodic hooks swivel around.
The Ghost Writing single on the other hand presented us the title track which took a little step away from the EP’s intimate feel and set its sight towards more different atmospheric routes. Rather than piano dominating the band’s sound, a hazy organ is in its place; rather than the rhythm section slowly grooving its way along and backing the melodies, it’s now up and energised, the speedy drumbeat providing a strong rhythm to the song. Most strikingly the huddled-up, private feel of the music is gone and replaced with a grand anthemic boost. When the backing vocal choir sings along in unison to the rising, massive-sounding outro, it’s like a whole different band – one that’s stepped away from the training space and ready to conquer stadiums.
And now… now we have no idea. Only time will tell if Ghost Writing will get sudden continuation and how different the band sounds then, but it’s bound to be something good.
Listen to Ghost Writing via the band’s MySpace (as well as some of the other songs)
A few weeks or so ago the melancholy Swedish guitar rockers Kent dropped a miniature bombshell in announcing that they’re about to release their eight full-length early next month, and the announcement was accompanied by the lead single. No one saw it coming, but there was much rejoical. I was one of the happy people and I was already rushing to post about it here but then a little light bulb appeared briefly over my head. Kent may have the rather affectionate nickname of “Sweden’s biggest rock band” and they’re very, very well known around the Scandinavia/Nordic area, but outside Northern Europe their exposure is… less so. Partially this is because they sing in Swedish and thus aren’t much of a huge export, and partially it’s because after two failed attempts at internationalising by making English versions of the albums the band simply gave up and stopped being fussy about it (thankfully, considering how wrong the two English albums sound). And based on a healthy amount of guess work, I’d wager that most of our regular readers (we truly thank you for your continued support and interest!) aren’t from that relatively small area.
So let’s bang out another retrospective and just find out why exactly we’re supposed to be excited about the new album.
Kent formed in 1990 under the name Coca Cola Kids, and after two more name changes as well as some line-up juggling they finally arrived to the short, simple and very well working four-letter name they work under now in 1993, and with the main line-up in tow: Joakim Berg offering both some guitaring as well as his lovely vocal work, Sami Sirviö on lead guitars, Martin Sköld on bass, and Markus Mustonen on drums, as well as Martin Roos on yet another guitar. The band records a demo, gets a record contract and in 1994 enter the studio to begin work on their debut album. And so the story begins…
(and my humblest apologies for some very bad youtubing in this article. The band’s being a tit and not only saying no to allowing their official uploads to be embedded, but the same goes to most fan videos of any good quality. So no fancy embeds, just some ordinary links)
It may strike as rather silly first, with what you glancing the start of a tl;dr article right now and expecting the sort of fawning that retrospectives tend to have, but I do not feel particularly passionate about Mansun. I wouldn’t count them among my favourite acts and my listening habits involving them revolve around the occasional phase or a mood rather than constant love. They never created a masterpiece in my opinion despite offering two very solid contenders for that title. I like them quite a bit but I don’t feel a passionate drive towards them, if you get what I’m saying.
But they were nonetheless something special and that’s something that makes them very interesting and a joy to listen to even without a driving passion. They were an extremely ambitious band as witnessed by the nature of their albums, some calling them the britpop equivalent of prog rock. They were varied; their three albums each have a completely different nature to them. Their lyrics were dense and bordering between nonsensical and obliviously sensible, a fact that the band themselves took the piss out of on the hidden track of their debut. They had big hits – their debut stayed in the UK charts for ages and even scored a #1 position – but they’re but a small footnote these days, more akin to a cult band than hitmakers – and even their hitmaking status is limited to Great Britain only, the rest of the world not much remembering them.
But they were a special band with their very own magic.
I do not claim to be a Mansun expert, but I’ll give my best shot as we travel through their small discography and hopefully spread the word around a bit.
12 Overlooked Pieces of Awesome is an article series where each month Flint hopelessly rambles about an album in his collection that he dearly loves, even when they have their flaws. Each of the albums chosen tends to be usually overlooked, or forgotten, in one way or another and thus this article series aims to give an alternative view on said albums, or simply just bring something a bit less known to the spotlight.
1 Giant Leap – 1 Giant Leap (2001)
Two men, one world.
Two electronic music wizards from the UK got an Idea. They decided to create a tribute to humanity, to mankind and to its rich splendour of countless different cultures and the sheer diversity of the planet’s population. Because they were musicians, the tribute would be one of a musical nature. So these two guys – Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman – packed their backs and started their journey. They would tour the world, meet musicians, create songs with them and invite local big names to feature on the tracks they recorded onto their trusty laptop. They also planned to shoot the whole trip and create a visual extension to their audio project. The lyrics of the project would focus on everything they learned during their travels from meeting diverse people in diverse locations yet stumbling upon simple universal truths and facts about who we are as people, what humanity really is.
This project was christened as 1 Giant Leap. A leap that would reach from one end of the world to another.
That’s all fine, dandy and cutely idealistic Flint, but what about the music?
Lawsuit was perhaps the biggest 90s band you’ve never heard of. Hailing from the cow-infested university town of Davis, California, the ten piece self-styled ska-jazz-punk-bubblegum band was perhaps too revolutionary for their time.
Third-wave ska washed over the indie scene in the early 1990s, spilling over occasionally into more commercially successful music: The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Reel Big Fish came in with this tide, among others. Lawsuit was certainly buoyed by ska’s semi-underground popularity at this time, yet they never could be cleanly pigeonholed as ska, nor any of the other genres they borrowed from. Their genre-bending sound was purely their own: bouncy and brassy, spicy power-pop so salsa you’d dip chips into it if you could possibly find a way to stop dancing. Perfectly suited for any combination of skanking, waltzing, tangoing, moshing, and/or white-boy head-bobbing.
While the recordings never fully captured the magic of their live shows, they remain as precious relics of a band that deserved far more exposure than they got. For years they consistently packed venues across California, but their unclassifiable nature made record labels shrink in fear. Perhaps if their album Emergency Third Rail Power Trip had been released in today’s climate of nichier tastes and fewer gatekeepers, Lawsuit could have wound up bigger than Coldplay. We’ll never know what might have been, but we can still enjoy the gifts they did leave us.
Their dense and quirky lyrics are a perfect match for the nasally tenor of their front man, the late Paul Sykes — sounding equal parts David Byrne and Fred Schneider — winding punful swifties into the DNA of peculiar characters and situations, familiar and stylized tidbits of everyday life.
This doctor has me on hold
His hypocritical oath, his hippopotamus house
He’s at the petting zoo tomorrow with a hyperactive child
Their craftiest and most ambitious work of wordplay comes in the album opener, “North Dakotachrome”, which embeds the names of numerous U.S. states, Canadian provinces, and other North American place names, such as how Washington, Yukon, Kansas, and Oregon find their way into
I go washing tons of clothing
And you contact me there
Can this be the ending
Or a gone berserk affair?
Merry angst infuses “The Complaint Song”, with each of the four verses lamenting a different irritant that has timelessly tormented humanity. It could easily be a dirge if it lacked the horns, bouncy rhythm, bubblegum vocals, or melody; fortunately, we are instead left with a chipper quartet of mini-rants that turns out to be far more listenable. A similar collision of perky ennui permeates “Useless Flowers”, “Stoplite”, and “Entropy”, the latter of which practically begs to be a choreographed dance number in a 1920s speakeasy.
So get somewhere that you can safely tap your toes without too much social awkwardness, give Lawsuit a good cross-examination, and judge for yourself. Most of their discography, along with some of their alumni’s various side projects, are available for free or cheap download.
MP3: Thank God You’re Doing Fine
MP3: North Dakotachrome
MP3: The Complaint Song
Download album: Emergency Third Rail Power Trip (1993)
12 Overlooked Pieces of Awesome is an article series where each month Flint hopelessly rambles about an album in his collection that he dearly loves, even when they have their flaws. Each of the albums chosen tends to be usually overlooked, or forgotten, in one way or another and thus this article series aims to give an alternative view on said albums, or simply just bring something a bit less known to the spotlight.
Peter Gabriel – Up (2002)
What can you expect from an album that was nearly ten years in the making? An album where the artist needed to take his time simply because the technology didn’t suit his needs to fulfill his vision. An album where one of the guest stars ended up actually dying during all the years between agreeing to do his part and recording it, which resulted in having to use a recording of his voice from an early live version. An album where you know that each and every one of those years was spent nitpicking each little sound, each production detail, everything. Overproduction is a phenomenon where a fairly alright song is covered in all sorts of production gimmicks and added sheen in order to make it sound better than it is. While a far rarer event than some might want to argue, it still happens. The key is in having a person who knows just what he’s doing handling the whole process.
Peter Gabriel is that sort of person. To most he’s known from the 80’s massive hit single Sledgehammer or the first singer of Genesis. After departing from Genesis due to creative differences, Gabriel’s had a slow and steady solo career that’s taken him through many guises and styles whenever he hasn’t been hopping all around the world and collaborating with regional superstars all around the world, in search for an amazing new sound to discover. After the gigantic hit album So (featuring the said Sledgehammer) Gabriel became busier and busier with his extra-curricular activities and his solo albums began growing sizeable gaps in time between one another. The man was always working on them, but because he was working on a billion other things at the same time, things simply took time. Between 1992’s somber and warm Us and his first (and seemingly only) studio album of the 00’s, 2002’s Up, Gabriel released two soundtracks and worked all around the world with countless other things. But from the very first listen of Up it’s clear that the man’s claims that he indeed did start work on its songs shortly after Us are very much true. Hell, Gabriel has also said that Up was already primarily ready around 1998 but he still took several years to apply finishing touches to it. If there’s an album that can truly claim to have the perfect sound crafted with precise touch, it’s Up.
Hosting a summer party? Need something to play on the car during the hot, sunny days? Feel like just randomly shaking your ass to the groove in your bedroom when your significant other hasn’t yet got to share a summer vacation with you? Then look no further than Finland, or if you prefer it this post. Blossoms are here for you.
Blossoms are a band from Finland who believe in the power of love, boogie and sunshine. Their music is an infectious mixture of sunshiney pop, dance-enducing disco and sexually funkaliciously grooved out rock n roll. And of course, a whole bunch of good feeling: it’s all about fun! Funky bass throbs along a steady drum beat and a guitar groove, keyboards spicing up life here and there as frontman Aki sings about love and partying with his seductively macho and charismatic voice, with wonderful female backing vocals offering a gentle support at strategic moments. Sometimes the music gets slower (though not often), sometimes you get real rockers such as the hi-energy “Get Laid” (guess the subject matter!). While their output so far has been quite small – one EP, one single and one album – what they’ve let out is essential for your summer.
The band started their career with a self-titled EP, offering four songs of such magnitude that when this little blogger heard the samples and found out that his local music store is one of the few places that stocked the EP, he was off in an instant. “One Night” chugs on with its addicting funky poppiness and guest female dueting, rolling so deliciously that you’d never guess it was the band’s first recording. With its fantastic chorus and general feel-good greatness, it stands as the band’s greatest moment so far. Well, tied with “Beach” which ends the album. Beach could also be considered the band’s most serious song, starting with a gentle peaceful pace and declarations of romance to an epic crasher ending rocker of a beast with the repeated line “we’re all gonna go someday/don’t you know that”, at the same time celebrating life and defying the short time we all get with it. The two other songs of the EP complement the two highlights well, even if never threatening to dethrone them. And because the EP is pretty much unavailable anymore, check the end of the post for a mp3 grab of the whole thing!
The main Blossoms offering however is the also self-titled album released in 2006. One Night and Beach have been transferred from the EP and both have gained slight updates, beefed up, taken even further and hitting with even greater grooves, effectively creating the definitive versions of both songs. The aforementioned Get Laid storms with a primal lust through its hilariously energetic rocking three minutes, “Love Me for a While” is the centrepiece disco epic, “Sonando de la Luz” takes a mediterranean tinge and actually manages to pull it off, while “Celebration” is moreso a Blossoms version of Andrew W.K.’s “Party Hard” rather than the Kool and the Gang song of the same name. While the album might seem terribly brief, clocking only at 32 minutes, it’s the exactly perfect length for a non-stop summery party groove.
Blossoms themselves seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth, with what their official website having been down for over a year now. This is a bit of a bugger, not only in general but because one of their very best songs – an 80’s tributing synth-funk thing – never got a studio recording. I had the chance to see the band live once and while I’m not usually the sort of person to go wow over live acts, that performance made me a Blossoms fanboy for a while. I’ve calmed down slightly now but when you get down to the suave dance moves of their music, you’ll understand the feeling.
Download Blossoms EP
MP3: Get Laid
MP3: Love Me for a While
Buy the Blossoms album from Record Shop X
12 Overlooked Pieces of Awesome is an article series where each month Flint hopelessly rambles about an album in his collection that he dearly loves, even when they have their flaws. Each of the albums chosen tends to be usually overlooked, or forgotten, in one way or another and thus this article series aims to give an alternative view on said albums, or simply just bring something a bit less known to the spotlight.
Chumbawamba – Anarchy (1994)
The problem with trying to be edgily self-destructive is that you end up throwing away your audience before they even had the chance to get to know you. Publicity stunt -like take-thats against everything and everyone, putting a just-born baby on the cover of your album, trying to subvert and bend the rules of promotion in every way possible… all characteristic things that while give you a certain personality, also brush off away people. The problem with Chumbawamba has always been that they broke into general consciousness once and once only with an almost annoyingly big way – “Tubthumping” was a gigantic hit much thanks to its insanely catchy chorus and simple lyrics about pub culture, and it’s one of the most love-it-or-hate-it kind of one-hit wonders there is. The band had already been active before that for quite a while and after Tubthumping the band pretty much decided to first rebel (2000’s WYSIWYG that devoted an entire album on taking the piss, parodying, attacking and at the same time cheekingly embracing the pop consumerist culture) and then just fade away doing their own thing for their own fun and for fans’ sake (the string of more folk-styled albums released up to this very day). And even those who do get the weird, random decision to investigate the band’s works outside Tubthumping and its parent album Tubthumper will end up hitting certain walls that make it very hard to go on further.
Like that baby cover.
1994’s Anarchy, the subject of our discussion today, is the one with the infamous baby cover. If it wasn’t for that and the band’s infamous one-hit-wonder/”those damn bastards who brought us that pub song” reputation, I’d expect it to be viewed as one of the 90’s great cult classics. It’s probably the most deliciously catchy pop album with a vicious tongue stuck permanently in its cheek that the 90’s produced.