7"s 2516-2520

 I'm firing up the record player to write about some 7"s from my own collection this week, rather than stealing from my parents again. These 5 singles all come from the back of the alphabetised box, where band names start with numbers rather than letters. That's right, I'm doing The 1975 again... sorry to the thousands of other artists in my collection. Note, I've written about almost all of these songs already in previous entries so check back through for my previous thoughts.

2516. Fallingforyou 🔵
The first thing I want to say about this is that The 1975 have a very distinctive and recognisable style to their artwork, particularly in the early days. This sleeve has their trademark shining white box glowing against a dark background, in this case a roadside garden with trees obscuring one side. It's an image they still project in some form when they play this song live. Fallingforyou comes from the band's 2013 IV EP but this single was released in 2015, probably for the annual London independent record label market that Dirty Hit Records go to with exclusive goodies (I bought this from the band's webstore). It's pressed on clear vinyl which I notice is yellowing despite being kept in a box out of the sunlight.

The song itself is a slow love song with a languid, droning synth, subdued vocals and drums that pulse like a heartbeat. It's simple, heartfelt and dreamy with lyrics like the chorus "and on this night, and in this light (which is etched into the centre of the vinyl) I think I'm falling for you". Even the big passionate moment, "I don't wanna be your friend, I want to kiss your neck", which sounds massive when a whole arena is yelling it back at the stage, sounds almost peaceful on the recording, low down in the mix as if recorded from a distance to keep things hushed. It's just 2 verses and 2 choruses but it delivers romance, hope, peace. Sometimes the mood isn't right for it - you need silence, preferably darkness, and some calm and concentration to devote to it - but when conditions are right, it's hard to beat. 

b/w Haunt//Bed 🟢
The b-side comes from the same EP and is a bit more complicated, with electronic loops, duplicated vocals and less straight-forward lyrics which speak of death, mental illness, and the scene of a car accident described almost cinematically in abstract images. The chorus repeats "I'm not scared" to a series of looped beats and simple synth melodies, the layers eventually melting together one at a time to create one big discordant sound at the end. Where Fallingforyou is all about the words, Haunt//Bed is about the music. Songs like this one are a starting point from which you can trace a line to the grander experiments with synthesised dance and ambient sounds on their more recent albums.

2517 - A Change Of Heart 🔵
Released as a limited-edition single to tie in with a Q Magazine cover about 2016's 'i like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it', this is a piece of single-sided clear vinyl which feels like a wasted opportunity to me. The sleeve is very minimalist too, with the band's logo embossed in white on white card. I'd have put UGH! on the b-side since it already had a music video but didn't get the full single treatment; even an etching on the back would have been better than nothing at all. I've written about the song already - a catty, sarcastic break-up song, slow-paced with some of the band's best synth melodies and most biting lyrics. 

2518. Milk 🔵
Another record fair special pressing, this time on milk-bottle white vinyl. Milk is a 2016 pressing of an EP hidden track from 2012 that became a fan favourite live, which I guess is why it was chosen to be issued as a 7". I've written about Milk already and it plays on both sides of this single - again, I'm sure they could have thought of something to put on the b-side. As I said previously, its a fun little song so I can cope with the déja-vu of playing it twice in a row. The Rothko quote etched into the centre is cool, if a little pretentious, but then what are The 1975 if not pretentious?

2519 - Loving Someone 💜
The rainbow sleeve really winds me up - as I said when I wrote about Loving Someone last time, there is one line that you could argue alludes to gay rights in this state-of-the-nation song but was co-opted (more by the band/label than by the fans, I think) as an LGBT anthem. The rainbow capitalism of hoodies with this sleeve printed on the front doesn't sit well with me and makes the lyric about "celebrities lacking in integrity" a bit ironic (I know the band have donated money to LGBT charities which is great but some of their moves feel like missteps). Taking the song as a whole, it's a great exploration of the world's problems pre-Br*xit and Tr*mp - it's so easy to forget that things weren't perfect prior to 2016 - and I love the poem in the middle.

b/w Somebody Else 🔵
Again, I covered this break-up anthem before - it's the sincere brother to A Change Of Heart's wit. The full album version is on here rather than the shorter radio edit, which I would have thought they'd have picked as a 'single'. For some reason, Somebody Else became one of the band's biggest songs, the teen movie soundtrack pick. It's far from my favourite song of theirs (not that there's anything wrong with it but there are at least 20 that I love more) but I guess the lyrics chimed in with 2016's teens more than the ones about fame and cocaine addiction or post-natal depression. 

2520 - Give Yourself A Try 💜
I've gushed about this song twice already and I swear this is the last appearance it makes in my collection so I won't mention it again, but I love this song. The artwork breaks with tradition, switching out the monochrome box for technicolour cubes which match the frenetic energy of both songs on this record. I think this single was another Q Magazine exclusive but they did it right this time with a double a-side - this song about the private and personal, and the other about the public and political.

AA. Love It If We Made It 💜 

Matty Healy left social media in 2020 after trying to make this song into his statement about race and Black Lives Matter in the same way that he made Loving Someone about LGBT issues (i.e. it has one line about suffocating the black man) and people didn't stand for it. I think that says something positive about the progression of society. As a result, this song stands up better than Loving Someone, but I don't know if I can cope with a next instalment about cancel culture and coronavirus. 

Aside from the last single, the band aren't great at picking my favourite songs to commit to 7" vinyl, but since all of their songs are good, I can live with that. Aesthetically I prefer the style of the earlier singles but there's still much to love about what they've been putting out more recently. 

Green Day present Generation Punk

 This week's pick is a CD that came free with the NME in June 2005 to coincide with Green Day's huge shows at the Milton Keynes Bowl that summer. It comprises 14 tracks apparently chosen by the band to represent the best of punk rock, past and present. This might be my favourite ever magazine freebie based on the amount of great music it introduced me to and I still play it on occasion. Lets dive in. 

1. My Chemical Romance - Give 'Em Hell, Kid 🔵
What an intro - it races in like a motorcycle going at twice the speed limit. This would have been one of the first MCR songs I heard, as this came out a couple of weeks before I bought their album Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge. It's a really exciting song with its relentless pace, guitars which are almost heavy-metal-sounding, the effects on Gerard Way's voice... This is the shape of punk to come and it sounds amazing. 

2. The Distillers - Drain The Blood 🔵
Brody Dalle is so cool and I love the combination of her voice with the buzzsaw guitar part. Drain The Blood is dripping with attitude - if this song was a person you would cross the street when you saw it coming towards you. I love this mood for a great punk record and it has a cool false ending too.

3. Generation X - Kiss Me Deadly 🔵
Here we have Billy Idol before he went to Hollywood. The clean guitar and vocal for the first verse, then the drums and distortion midway through verse 2, means this is a bit different from some of the identikit 70s punk that I've written about in the past. The lyrics paint a scene of young love, loitering, experimenting and fighting - it's really evocative and you can see how their storytelling influenced the likes of Jesus Of Suburbia. This song keeps building until it passes the 4 minute mark, where it slowly comes to an end again. The whole thing feels a lot like sitting on the night bus watching the scenes outside and the other passengers on your way home. 

4. Operation Ivy - Knowledge 🎀
A Cali punk classic that Green Day covered on their first album and have been playing live ever since. It's a fast and furious ode to the pressure of being asked to pick a career in your teens, with yelled lyrics including the iconic chorus "all I know is that I don't know nothing". I love everything about this song, it's one of my favourite punk tracks and I'm glad Green Day put it on this compilation so I could hear the original version alongside their slowed-down cover.

5. AFI - The Days Of The Phoenix 🎀
I wasn't bothered about this song when I first heard it, but in the years that have followed it has become one of the first that spring to mind when I consider the contenders for my favourite song of all time. I love everything about The Days Of The Phoenix - the iconic guitar riff and bassline, Davey Havok's goth-influenced vocals, the massive singalong chorus... it's perfect. The spoken word interlude where Davey purrs about his dream of 'teenage death boys... teenage death girls...' might be my favourite bit, but honestly it's hard to choose. The lyrics are a recollection of going to punk shows at the Phoenix Theater - moshpits, punk kids - a dream of a place from Davey's youth that's now long gone. It gives me similar flashbacks to the magical underground world of the rock club I frequented in my early teens which sometimes played AFI for me on request. I love this song so much that when I saw the band play it live in 2017 I shed a single tear of joy. 

6. Iggy & The Stooges - I Got A Right 🔵
The original punk. This sounds riotous despite it sounding like it was recorded in a tiny box. Iggy growls and screams the lyrics as if he's rolling around in broken glass (as he was known to do on stage from time to time). The song opens with a big messy chord and ends with The Stooges individually deciding to stop playing, as if they got bored and decided not to give the song a proper finish. The attitude of songs like St. Jimmy on American Idiot hold a mirror up to the likes of Iggy. 

7. MC5 - The American Ruse 🔵
Next up, another set of punk pioneers. This has a 60s groove and speaks of the hippy struggle - protest, the draft, the overall shitness of living in the USA. In other words, it's American Idiot; the American Ruse, not the American Dream. Still, it's a far out song with a hip guitar solo and it's cool to hear something in this style that has the punk attitude. 

8. Alkaline Trio - Back To Hell 💜
We come bang up to date - for 2005, anyway - with a cut from the contemporary Alkaline Trio album, Crimson. I wrote about them on the Kerrang Best Of 2005 entry and these aren't the only 2 magazine CDs I have with songs from this album, so I think Alkaline Trio's label were doing a big push to shift units (it's a great album though, I will get to it at some point). The drums are the focal point on this, so fast and chaotic, and like MCR the song hits you with a punch. It has a massive chorus paired with the band's trademark dark lyrics: references to pills, hell, sin, ash, bugs... you name it. Again it comes in under 3 minutes, a non-stop, heart-racing punk jam. Maybe one of their best songs, in my opinion. 

9. Deftones - Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away) 💜
One of the less obviously punk tracks, this is like a metal band discovering shoegaze, with oppressive droning guitars and Chino Moreno's drawn-out vocals. It sounds like driving through a really heavy storm, the wall of sound washing over you like sheets of torrential rain. Be Quiet And Drive is one of my go-to songs if I want to listen to something heavy; it ticks all of my boxes, despite being another of the songs that I didn't 'get' when I first got this CD as a 12 year old. I've seen Deftones live twice - once at a festival with MCR where my main memory is being at the edge of a muddy moshpit and trying not to fall in, and the other time I listened to them from the floor at the back of a room, recovering emotionally from the AFI set I mentioned above. 

10. Dead Kennedys - California Uber Alles 🔵
Time for some politics. The intro to this song has a sinister surf-rock vibe before Jello Biafra begins his tirade, comparing the Californian governor to the Nazi regime. The whole thing sounds really evil and frightening, as if that one Beach Boy who knew Charles Manson got the rest of the band into Satanism. Again, the influence on American Idiot is clear, both musically in that the riff sounds like the melody to Extraordinary Girl, and lyrically - Green Day cover similar subject matter on the b-side Governator. 

11. Filter - Captain Bligh 🔵
This is pretty good, considering Filter are, I think, one of those post-grunge US alt-rock radio bands that I usually find pretty lame. The mix of layered guitar parts, pounding drums and dark lyrics keep up that relentless pace set by MCR and Alk3, and the chorus slows things down and gets more Deftonesy. In the second half of the song we get an electronic breakdown, a funk guitar solo, acoustic guitar, drum machine and piano fade out, which is a lot of elements to throw in and some work better than others. Again there are shades of Green Day's 9-minute epics from this era but Green Day do it much better.

12. Flamin' Groovies - Golden Clouds 🟢
We get one big messy chord to introduce this - the same as the Stooges used earlier, but I think this probably came first. I don't know anything else about the Flamin' Groovies aside from this song in this context but both the band name and harmonies are big clues to it being from the 60s. It's psychedelia mixed with a bit of a country twang and I can imagine hippies getting down to it at a Happening. I don't think it sounds really 'punk' aside from that intro but it's a groovy song and I quite like it.

13. Stiff Little Fingers - Tin Soldiers 🟢
After an almost entirely American compilation (I think Generation X are the sole British contribution), we draw to a close with an Irish punk classic courtesy of Stiff Little Fingers. They're political, like Green Day and some of the others here, but they're not singing about far-off wars in Iraq or Vietnam - their trouble is on their home turf. It has an army march rhythm with a chanted chorus and lyrics about young men giving up their youth to fight in a war they don't believe in. It would be better (and I'd probably have rated it blue rather than green) if the outro wasn't so long - clocking in at 2 minutes, it's longer than some of the other songs last in their entirety. Even still, it's a great political statement of a punk record.

14. Green Day - Letterbomb 🔵
The Kathleen Hanna 'nobody likes you' taunt that introduces this song is a tease, conjuring thoughts of the riot grrrl song that could and should have taken pride of place in this compilation (I think Brody Dalle of the Distillers is the only woman represented in these 14 bands). We end with an album cut from American Idiot with lots of punk hallmarks - urgency, political lyrics, huge drums all getting a look in. I always saw this as being tacked on to the end, a sort of encore after all of the other songs, but after thinking about how the last 13 numbers influenced American Idiot, it is actually good to hear Green Day at the end rather than opening with them. It's really hard for me to give a review of songs like Letterbomb because American Idiot has been part of my life for so long and I know every note of it inside out - it feels like it's as much a part of me as my fingers and toes. 

For a free CD, the quality of this compilation is outstanding. Almost every song contained here still features in my playlists - some were immediate favourites, some have grown on me over the years, some acted as a gateway to discovering new scenes and bands who have become some of my most cherished. Until now, it hadn't dawned on me how much it functioned as a map to understanding where American Idiot came from too - that album changed my life and there are so many clues here to some of the less obvious influences that helped to make it. I also hadn't realised how many of the acts were American - it's a punk compilation without the Clash, the Pistols, the Ramones, the Buzzcocks... I think England has this impression that they invented and perfected punk with a token few US acts - a myth perpetuated by the NME - and here we have an alternate history which argues punk didn't explode from nothing in 1976 and die a couple of years later. I have a lot to thank Green Day and the NME for. 

7"s 1266-1270

 I'm covering some 7"s again this week and taking another trip back to the mid 80s. It's a mix of songs I know and songs I don't but I've at least heard of each of these artists, including one that I promised a few entries ago...

1266. Dead Or Alive - Something In My House 🔵
This sleeve is a goth masterpiece. It's got smoke, candles, crosses, and Pete Burns smouldering in an over-the-shoulder pose. The single opens with the roar of thunder before a hi-NRG gay disco banger cuts in. The combination of dance beat with campy goth lyrics about being haunted by an old flame feels like an innovative combination. I really want to go out and dance to this, it's a lot of fun. I hadn't heard it before but I plan to listen to it again. 

b/w Hit That Button 🟢
Another big dance tune, not as catchy as the a-side but if you want big energetic dance-pop, it does the job. It has a sax solo that might or might not be synthetic, I can't tell. Pete Burns' gothic homosexual (threatening) style made Dead Or Alive so unique and it's a shame he was taken from us too soon - RIP Pete. 

1267. The Smiths - Shoplifters Of The World Unite 🔵
Following their tradition of putting 50s and 60s (white) stars on the record sleeves, here we have a portrait of Elvis on the cover of this Smiths single. This must have confused older folks looking for new Elvis reissues. I can't make a connection between him and this song but it is the typical Smiths look. We crash straight into the verse, with Morrissey advocating shoplifting (not a riot, Smiths fans are much too soft for anything revolutionary). As far as Smiths songs go, I think this one is pretty average with no particularly special moments in either the lyrics or the accompanying music. Still, even when they're average, The Smiths are still good, and thankfully this is pretty light on terrible Morrissey opinions.

b/w Half A Person 🔵
Lyrically, I much prefer this song to Shoplifters, but musically it kind of wanders along without producing much excitement. I suppose Marr, Rourke and Joyce aren't doing anything exciting here in order to let the words shine and there are a few in here that I really like: "if you have 5 seconds to spare then I'll tell you the story of my life - sixteen, clumsy and shy, I went to London and I checked myself in at the YWCA" is my favourite but I also like "she said in the days when you were hopelessly poor, I just liked you more" which is paraphrased in the song My Sex by Elastica (along with another Smiths line from Reel Around The Fountain). Death to Morrissey but this is well-written. A more exciting Johnny Marr guitar part would elevate it though.

1268. Spear Of Destiny - Strangers In Our Town 🟢
Until now, Spear Of Destiny have just been a name to me with no sound attached. I associate them with goth but the sleeve looks a bit Red Wedge with its woodblock industrial town landscape across the front. Immediately I was surprised by the cowbell's tropical rhythm but layered over the top we have sweeping goth guitar chords, pounding goth drums and snarled goth lyrics, so I guess my initial assumption was correct. I can't tell whether it's about immigration and race as the title suggests, and if it is, I can't figure out their stance. They don't sound happy but surely you don't get goth-pop hits in lefty sleeves in 1987 with a song that's pro-xenophobia? Do you?! Politics aside though, it makes fine indie disco music.

b/w Somewhere Out There 🟡
The b-side is a clean guitar ballad, maybe an acoustic version, which I think is about God? I'm not sure about Christian goth, just like I'm not sure about Anti-immigrant goth. Like The Smiths' b-side the song is just a vehicle to convey the lyrics; unfortunately in this case the lyrics aren't that good. 

1269. Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - Fire 🔵
I was promised Springsteen last time I did a 7" review but missed him so here he is now to make up for it. He looks good on the cover but the composite of 2 photos is a bit weird, as if they couldn't pick one so settled for using both and ended up making less impact instead of more. I know Fire but only from the Glee cover which I expect is quite different to the original. This single is a live version and his crowd sounds much livelier than the Dire Straits crowd I wrote about a few weeks ago. The combination of bass, hi-hat and Bruce's hushed vocal is very sexy. In fact, the whole lyric and delivery of this song is very hot, which is a new side to Bruce for me - I'm used to him being big and anthemic whereas this is intimate and seductive. The song stays reasonably calm the whole way through; I wonder whether a big push would have made it better but maybe that would just sound clichéd. He did include a long pause in the middle which was an exciting touch for a live track.

b/w For You (Live) 🟢
I'm not sure why it's specified that this is live and not Fire, when they both come from the same live compilation album, but it is what it is. For You is more upbeat and traditionally Springsteen with the piano playing high notes, the saxophone and his storytelling lyrical style. It suffers a little in that it sounds like some of his biggest hits but it's not quite as good as them, but it's still a decent song.

1270. Ben E King - Stand By Me 💜
A classic record, dressed up in an 80s sleeve. There's a Levi's 501 logo on the front and a man in jeans looking over his shoulder, echoing Pete Burns' pose from the Dead Or Alive sleeve, but this time in a traditionally handsome, classic rock-n-roll style. Confusingly, the sleeve is all about jeans in the front, but promoting the movie 'Stand By Me' on the back - the song was on the film soundtrack, the advert, and celebrating its 25th anniversary all at the same time. All combined, it's full of symbols of rock-n-roll nostalgia, the same kind of looking back that The Smiths are aiming at with Elvis on their sleeve.

As for the song, what can you say about something this iconic? Led by the bass and King's soulful voice, it's so understated and simple. Even when the violins and the choir come in, it still feels intimate, as if it was being played to you on a porch under a starry night sky. The bass line remains steady throughout, the little riff keeping the pace and floating away to a fade-out at the end. Stand By Me is one of the greatest ever love songs.

b/w The Coasters - Yakety Yak 🔵
These two songs couldn't be more different - they're from the same era but this one is a fast doo-wop hit with loud sax and walking bass. The lyrics, about a teenager forced to do chores before they can go out dancing, are a lot of fun and the bass voice performing the "don't talk back" response of the parents is a great gimmick. It's great rebellious teenage good-time music and it's amazing that both this and Stand By Me were written by Leiber and Stoller since they're like night and day. 

Not a bad batch of singles here - 4 out of 5 will make it onto my playlists (in fact, 2 were already on there). Dead Or Alive was the biggest surprise but hearing Bruce's version of Fire was cool too, and you can't go wrong with Stand By Me. 

A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships - The 1975

 I wrote about 'I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it' a while ago and now it's time to cover The 1975 again. This time it's the follow-up, 2018's A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships'. I've already made it clear that The 1975 are one of my favourite bands and although I didn't immediately fall in love with this album, it has ended up being as beloved as the ones that came before. I definitely spent a lot of time getting excited about it, following the slow drip of singles between June 1st and the album's eventual release on November 30th, which I think caused my initial disappointment - they put out all of the most accessible songs in the build-up to the album so the first time I listened to it, I was looking for more hits and what I got was something else. That said, I quickly learned to love it and saw them about half a dozen times when they toured it. I own the album on CD, cassette and vinyl, and for reviewing purposes I chose to spin the record, seen below with the ABIIOR-era memorabilia that still hangs next to my turntable. 

1. The 1975 🟢
The album opens very softly with Matty playing the piano and feeling his way in to the familiar intro piece. It's different to the first two albums, less formal, and feels less like a song than ever. My attachment to it is as a live show opener, lyrics projected on screen with an arena joining in with every word, including the (JUMP) backing vocal, and laughing at the sudden atonal chord midway through. It doesn't make sense outside of the context of album/show opener but I don't suppose it needs to.

2. Give Yourself A Try 💜
I've written lovingly about Give Yourself A Try already so I won't go into detail again but it makes me so happy. I'm writing almost exactly 3 years to the day since it debuted and I'm not bored of it yet. It's a rush of sugary pop punk joy, a perfect way to kick off the album. In the context of ABIIOR it introduces us to Matty Healy's mental state in 2018 - he's still a bit neurotic and his brain is bouncing from one thing to another in quick succession, but we have optimism and wisdom shining through alongside the drug references and self-deprecation. 

3. TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME 💜

The closest The 1975 have come to a straightforward modern pop song, TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME has a tropical house beat and vocoder-drenched delivery, the sort of thing you expect to hear on a Drake album, not from an "indie band". It's one of my favourite songs of theirs, another that I've never gotten bored of no matter how many times I've played it. It's catchy and simple and colourful, I can't help but stop and dance whenever I hear it, counting along with my fingers to the 'one time, two times, three times, four times' chorus. It's a perfect pop song about cheating on your girlfriend in the digital age (as the album title suggests, digital life is a theme of this album). 

4. How To Draw/Petrichor 🔵

This is a song of two parts, a George Daniel instrumental masterpiece in the vein of the title track of the last album. How To Draw was a b-side of that album that has been transformed from a little piano ballad into a big orchestral/electronic collision. After a tender moment of reflection where it feels like the song is over, the piano gives way to a dance beat. The band describe the Petrichor half of the piece as the sound of the radio when you're driving at night as a teenager and I think they've captured that mood really well. I love the short, heavily-processed vocal part that appears at the end before the dance beat fades out and the piece closes with piano chords. It's a journey, this song, and I like going on it. Unfortunately it didn't play so well live, but there was one show on the tour where a fight broke out in the seats and Matty broke it up by yelling at them through the vocoder - an iconic moment.

5. Love It If We Made It 💜
A calm intro to build up to Matty spitting out a list of everything that was in the news between 2016-18. The song is the sequel to Loving Someone that became a critical favourite rather than a cult one - Matty covers immigration, the Trump presidency, climate change, celebrity, racism... It's a time capsule of cultural horror with the hopeful chorus "I'd love it if we made it" to break up the relentless staccato beat and barrage of references, the aural equivalent of doom-scrolling. 3 years on, do I think we've made it? America changed presidents so maybe a little, but there's a still a lot of work to do. 

6. Be My Mistake 🟢
In sharp contrast to Love It If We Made It, we move on to a little acoustic ballad, something intimate rather than world-spanning. This song features the hallmark of the modern 1975 sound that I like least - the ever-present tinkle of piano keys that don't seem to have any relation to the song itself, as if Matty is playing the song to you while someone else is noodling away to themselves in the background. I don't hate this song, in fact it's perfectly pleasant, but there are a few lyrics in it that I find horrible: "the smell of your hair reminds me of her feet", "you do make me hard, but she makes me weak"... I could do without those. 

7. Sincerity Is Scary 🔵
Something jazzy next; a song with a trumpet part. Matty performs this live while on a treadmill so I associate this song with walking and his movements. The lyrics are mostly better here than the last song but that line about putting off conceiving isn't for me. Sincerity Is Scary is a sort of break-up song, a realisation that two people aren't compatible, but he's swapped the bitchy sarcasm of A Change Of Heart for an attempt at sincerity. I like the spoken bit at the end where Matty calls another girl a 'sket', the most Northern English insult that I can think of. 

8. I Like America And America Likes Me 🎀
This, for me, is the highlight of the album. The way the beat bounces and Matty desperately throws out the lines as if performing an exorcism on himself, again through the vocoder effect. It plays like a stream-of-consciousness ramble, dancing vaguely around the concepts of youth and the future and fear. It sounds urgent and panicked and those are often my favourite The 1975 songs (see also: The Ballad Of Me And My Brain). 

9. The Man Who Married A Robot / Love Theme 🔵
Here we have a combination of ambient piano with Siri narrating a story over the top. It's a vaguely sinister monologue about a life lived online, filled with jarring descriptions of things we perceive as normal, like the description of food delivery apps as "he would get him cooked animals" or online gaming as "playing games with children at home with their parents". Then there's the more worrying parts, like that the internet would "always, always agree with him. This was the man's favourite". Giving the tale to a virtual assistant is a more effective way to tell this story than simply having Matty sing about it - taking out the human bias makes the whole thing so much sadder. 
The instrumental part used to be played in the arena for 10 minutes before the band came on stage so I find it hard to separate it from the feelings of anticipation and the jostling for position in the crowd. If you can ignore that though, it's a nice soothing sound after I Like America.

10. Inside Your Mind 💜
This is the most underrated song on the album - I've never seen them play it live and it rarely gets talked about. Big, deliberate piano chords and drums provide a crisp contrast to the noodling heard earlier and Matty croons the lyrics without layers of effects. The lack of synthy experimentation lends this the air of a traditional pop song and as a result, it stands out. Lyrically it's about opening your girlfriend's skull to read her thoughts about you, which is less traditional, but I love it as a concept. The vocal line is delivered in a calm and measured way while delivering borderline psychotic lyrics like "maybe I will wait until you're fast asleep, dreaming things I have the right to see. Maybe you are dreaming that you're in love with me, the only option left is look and see inside your mind". There's something about this song, maybe the clarity of the sound, that reminds me of dusk on a crisp Autumn-Winter day in the city centre, the twinkling of Christmas lights in the windows of shops that are beginning to close for the day and the promise of a cosy evening ahead. It's one of my favourites. 

11. It's Not Living (If It's Not With You) 💜
It's Not Living is the most traditional the 1975 song on the album, in that it's a big 80s-influenced pop song. It has a huge catchy chorus with dark themes (the 'you' is heroin). I love the guitar part, the vocal harmonies, the brightness that masks the horror - it's one of the first songs I would play to someone who loves classic pop music but hasn't heard The 1975 yet. And of course, it has one of their most meme-able moments in "selling petrol". 

12. Surrounded By Heads And Bodies 🟢
Again with the acoustic guitar punctuated by random bits of noise, as if there's someone tuning up the other instruments in the studio while Matty lays this track down. I prefer Surrounded By Heads And Bodies to Be My Mistake; it's apparently an ode to a friend made in rehab rather than a romance. The bass and muted drums are a nice touch when they come in midway through. Again it's a decent song and I like hearing it, it just doesn't shine as much as the others.

13. Mine 🔵
The second jazzy song now, which opens with what sounds like a wood instrument trying and failing to get in tune - probably the worst sound on the album aside from those cringey lyrics. Soon enough though we get some luscious piano and a love song that sounds like something out of an old Hollywood musical. There's a little modernity - "I fight crime online sometimes", not wanting to get married - but it's the most classic and easy-listening they've ever sounded. It's very sweet. 

14. I Couldn't Be More In Love 🔵
The bass and synthetic keys in this sound so 90s power ballad. I don't know the name for this keyboard sound - could it be emulating an organ? - but go listen and you'll know exactly what I mean. Matty can't sing like Céline Dion or Michael Bolton but this song still works, from the earnest lyrics to the guitar solo. It's retro, but in a totally different way to Mine. One thing that's noticeable here and elsewhere on the album is Matty's softness - he sings a lot of the songs in a timid, vulnerable soft voice now, compared to the confident and at times incomprehensible indie boy yodel of the first album. 

15. I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes) 🔵
A poignant closing number that has shades of Busted - it's bordering on boyband, if boybands did big ballads about coping with suicidal thoughts. Again, it's soft, but it soars with strings and big drums and acoustic guitar chords. I think it's a good choice of final track for the album. It ends with a little string coda to close the curtain on A Brief Inquiry..., an interval between it and its sister album, 2020's Notes On A Conditional Form. 

A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is worthy of its Best Album BRIT and Mercury Prize nomination. The 1975 always drew on lots of genre influences but here they're more diverse than ever - there's pop punk, top 40, piano ballads, dance beats, easy listening, jazz, 80s and 90s sounds... if you can't find something you like, then you probably don't like popular music. The biggest flaw is the background noodling that floats around a few of the songs but overall, it's a great listen that says a lot about the personal and political landscape of 2018. 

Canterbury - Heavy In The Day

 There are some albums in my collection that are timeless, purchased in one phase in my life but never removed from rotation. Others, like today's selection, remain forever linked to one point in time, conjuring memories of the age I was when I discovered it. Heavy In The Day by Canterbury is part of the fabric of 2012 for me; it's an album I listened to a lot at that point which slowly fell out of rotation as bands like them split up and I moved on. I saw Canterbury a total of 9 times between 2011 and 2013, first supporting The Blackout and then at their own tiny headline club shows. My memories of them are fond so I hope the album gives me that same fuzzy feeling. 

1. Heavy In The Day 🟢
A fade-in intro opens up to a mid-tempo number with lush vocal harmonies. Vocal duties in Canterbury were shared by the guitarist and bassist, Blink-182 style, so there are gorgeous moments throughout the album. Even as the title track this is an unlikely opener, all atmosphere and expanse like the clifftop landscape of the artwork - it's a sign that even though Canterbury spent most of their time supporting pop punk bands, there's more depth to their sound.

2. Something Better 🔵
A heavier, more raucous song kicks things off properly.  I can feel the crush of bodies in the pit when I hear this, the pounding drums and gang vocals give it an urgency that feels like clinging to the barrier while fans push to the front. There's something about the hugeness of the chords and vocal sounds that is reminiscent of the Spector Wall of Sound production - I'm sure Canterbury were fans of that American 1960s sound and it shows here despite the genre differences.

3. More Than Know 🔵
There are 4 songs on Heavy In The Day that I knew prior to the album's release, via a mix of seeing them live in late 2011-early 2012 and pre-album single releases. These songs are all sequenced together on the album and this is the first of them. Again the sound is huge and it has great melodies and backing vocals working together. Canterbury were really talented and underrated constructors of songs which shows here and also in their previous album which I find especially interesting lyrically. More Than Know is short and sweet, a slightly aggressive little package with a tiny guitar solo just to prove that they could do that sort of thing if they wanted.

4. Gloria 💜
Of all the songs on this album, Gloria is the song I remember most vividly from the band's live set; I looked forward to hearing it every time I saw them.  A subdued verse opens to a massive gorgeous chorus that I remember the crowds singing back to them; it's a beautiful love song that would have sounded perfect in huge arenas if they'd gotten the chance to play there. I played this song a lot at the time and it has big sentimental value to me, which might be why I rate it higher than the rest of the album, but I think it still holds up to my adult ears too. 

 5. Ready Yet? 🔵
One of the lyrical themes of Heavy In The Day is commentary on their lives as a band - making industry contacts, keeping up momentum, the task of writing an album, the boredom of hours and hours of travelling and hanging around... Ready Yet? illustrates that with lyrics about mistrust and having nothing to do, juxtaposing lyrics about waiting around with a short, fast-paced melody. It's effective not just as a hype song in a support band set but also in putting us into their shoes. Case in point, this album came out in summer 2012 but the video for Gloria, above, was released in early 2010, which shows how much struggle and work it was for them to fund and make this album.

6. Calm Down 🔵
This song opens with a super catchy bassline and then a really crisp clear vocal, made extra impactful by the absence of that wall of sound production. Again I have strong memories of live shows when I hear this; I want to be yelling the chorus in a packed venue. It has a long middle 8 section which kind of loses momentum for me but I can't deny the feeling of excitement and nostalgia I get from the big chorus.

7. Wrapped In Rainbows 🟢
The keyboard intro to this is another clue to their 60s influences - it's a little psychedelic, every-so-slightly Doorsy. Wrapped In Rainbows is another sweet love song, this time with a marching beat that opens into a big, heavy chorus. I think it would be more effective if it was one verse shorter but it's a nice song nonetheless.

8. She's A Flame 🔵
A proper ballad next, acoustic and soft-spoken. She's A Flame is another highlight of the album for me, I think it's really pretty and while they're good at the big rock songs, I like that they show off this side of themselves too. The chorus lyric is probably my favourite on the album: "where did you find me? Was I asleep? I was having that dream everything fell at my feet. You were there, you fell the same like you always do". A lot of their softer songs still bring in that big wave of sound at the choruses and in this case they hold out right up until the last chorus which makes for an effective contrast. 

9. Saviour 🔵
The screech of feedback takes us in to a faster song. I think this was a single and deservedly so, it's the sort of thing I would have wanted to hear on Kerrang Radio. It returns to that struggling-artist lyrical theme with lines about 'losing pounds' and 'wasting the day', set to a groovy rhythm and great lead and backing vocals. We get a proper guitar solo this time to add to the angst but this would have worked equally well as a mainstream-radio pop song. 

10. Drive. Ride. Drive. 🔵
Drive. Ride. Drive. sounds like a whole heap of different My Chemical Romance songs rolled into one - it has the guitar sound and 'na na na' intro of something from Danger Days mixed with the pace of a song like Give 'Em Hell Kid, so it ought to have been huge at this point in time. There's so much energy here that if you were to drive to this, you'd be at risk of breaking the speed limit. I think the problem for Canterbury, which shouldn't be a problem, was that they could do fast-paced rock songs like this but they also wrote the sort of gorgeous ballads that were better suited to indie radio. In the decade or so since, we've been a lot more open to crossover in our music but 2012 was the tail-end of the era where rock kids liked rock music and pop kids were put off it - I wonder whether things would have been different for them if they'd just come along a couple of years later.

11. Garden Grows 🟢
I forgot about this song, which is a shame as the guitar part is so good! Again it has a retro vibe but applied to a modern rock context. I think the flaw here is that they do 2 verses before going into the chorus which makes it less memorable. When they finally let loose on the chorus proper, it sounds huge, but it's just a little bit too late. The song has a real end-of-album sound - it's expansive with one of those big messy outros where everyone is going all out (for too long). It closes with a riff that I wanted to recognise as a motif calling back to earlier in the album but I wasn't able to pinpoint what it was. Mostly the song makes me feel a bit sad that they didn't get to be more successful.

12. Seen It All 🟢
Following that big end-of-album outro, the actual last track is slow and atmospheric with strings and soft harmonies. Mood-wise, it's not unlike a Radiohead song; it's floaty and restrained, returning to the mood that the title track hinted at which isn't really replicated anywhere in the middle. There's a big crescendo 3 minutes in which was a make or break moment for the song, and I think they just manage to get away with it although it leads into an instrumental part. The final chorus mixes ethereal vocals with that wall of sound production again which borders on shoegaze. Both Garden Grows and Seen It All are a bit of a change of pace from the short, sharp rock songs earlier in the album - I suspect that as they wrote it over a couple of years, their sound was developing faster than they were able to release music so there's a mix of new slower stuff and live favourites.

Heavy In The Day is an album I hadn't sat down and played through for years but I definitely still think that it's a good collection of songs even if it's not perfect. I feel that Canterbury are the lost heroes of the early-2010s British rock scene - they had real songwriting prowess which should have brought them fame, but instead they're a time capsule, a footnote in the nostalgic recollections of emo teens of the time. They deserve better and I hope the members are doing well, wherever they are now. 

Music Review: 7"s #817-820

 This week we're complying with the wishes of Marty McFly and going back to 1985.  This week's selections are all from the very middle of the 80s and 3 out of 4 were big hits that I'm already familiar with.  
Sidenote - I usually write about 5 singles at a time but #816 turned out to be a 12" single - I'm On Fire/Born In The USA by Bruce Springsteen - which is stored away in a box of 12" records that didn't interest me enough to keep within reach, so today there will only be 4.  The Boss will get his day eventually as the Born In The USA album is on my shelf so I'll cover both songs at some point. 

#817 - The Coward Brothers - The People's Limousine 🟢
I've never heard of The Coward Brothers so I had no idea what to expect from this single.  The sleeve doesn't give away much either; it's striking but plain (and sticky... it has left-over sticker residue stuck to the front).  Best-case scenario: some old-school dance/hip-hop.  Worst case: novelty.  My best guess, however, was that it was going to be country-leaning and I was right about that.  It's got that snare beat that sounds like a train coming down the tracks, clean guitar and bass sounds, and a classic verse-chorus structure with back-up vocals joining each chorus.  It's very American sounding but rather than the classic Southern twang to the vocals, they're more New Wave influenced which adds a modern twist.  I don't listen to much country but this isn't bad.

b/w They'll Never Take Her Love From Me 🟢
We have a slower-paced ballad on the b-side which again follows a typical country sound and structure with its two-note bassline and harmonising vocals.  I found myself swaying along to this and picturing it being performed on stage in a big barn with tables set up, occupied by people in checked shirts and cowboy hats.  It's a sad song about the 'her' in the title choosing someone else, but it's still a pleasant sound to listen to. 

#818 - Sister Sledge - Frankie 🟡
It's universally accepted that this song is bad so there's two possible reasons why my dad has it in his collection: either it was bought during his 'buy a copy of every number 1' phase (somehow this was top of the charts for 4 weeks) or someone bought it for him because he shares a name with the titular character.  The single is in a very 80s pink and blue sleeve which gives it a tacky girly look.  I think they're aiming for a throwback to the classic girl group sound and look but it has horribly cheesy 80s drum machines.  They even echo the "down, down" backing vocal from Leader Of The Pack, but this is not The Shangri-Las.  Nile Rodgers produced the record which ought to be a good sign but this is not his best work - it's really flat-sounding, the opposite of Spector's Wall Of Sound production.  The chorus repeats the phrase "Frankie, do you remember me?" but I have already forgotten the tune. 

b/w Hold Out Poppy 🟠
More 80s drum machines, accompanied by what I presume is Rodgers playing the bassline.  This sounds like it wants to be gay club dance music but it's all rhythm and no top line so it feels unfinished.  The group vocal gives this big Bananarama energy, which itself is not a compliment, but this is somehow worse because at least Stock Aitken Waterman would have made a convincing hi-NRG single out of this.  It almost gets a pass but it really grinds my gears how the Americans pronounce "hold out Paah-pay" at the end of almost every line. 

#819 - Dire Straits - Money For Nothing 🟡
This is one of those songs that you always hear on TV shows about the 80s because it references MTV and the consumerism of the era. The sleeve features a boxy, square CRT TV which was probably modern in 1985 and to be fair, it looks effective on the cover.  On the back there's dates for a massive 2 month UK/Euro tour listed.  I can't imagine a band touring the UK for a whole month now, can you?  They included 2 dates in Deeside and 2 in Shepton Mallet (I don't even know where those places are), 7 nights in London and 3 in Edinburgh (Edinburgh! Not Glasgow! What a concept!).  I just checked Setlist.fm to see the venue size and they weren't arenas, which is fair, but this was less than 6 months after 11 nights at Wembley, breaking in the middle for Live Aid.  The dates on the back of the sleeve include 3 weeks without a day off which is also mad and I'm calling the 1985 union to have a word.
Anyway, Money For Nothing.  I've always found Dire Straits pretentious with long songs, but this is their attempt to do mainstream rock.  After a mélange of 80s drums, the way that the riff cuts through sounds so good - definitely well-produced.  I get their point about Yuppiedom being distasteful but I think their use of the f-slur throughout the second verse is just as gross.  The song is decently catchy but I don't think it's anything special and it's remembered because of its political commentary rather than for the music itself.

b/w Love Over Gold (Live) 🟡
One thing I know about Dire Straits from my parents owning some of their LPs is that the live album they put out only has 2-3 songs to a side which means their songs are far too long; The Ramones could get through 10 songs in that time.  For that reason, I wasn't looking forward to this but they've kept it to a reasonable single length here.  A live b-side is probably a smart move when they're promoting a tour too but it's very clear what kind of act they are even with a short song.  Knopfler feels like a reluctant vocalist - he's half mumbling and I get the impression that he just wanted to play his guitar and produce but the band needed someone to step up and be the singer.  It leads to a combination between musicianliness and Bob Dylan's tuneless delivery; Prog Dylan, if you will.  Aside from a lot of whistling towards the end, there's no crowd noise on the live recording which makes the motivation for this recording obvious; they're selling competence, not entertainment. I pity the boring fuckers who wanted to see this for 11 nights at Wembley. 

#820 - Billy Idol - White Wedding Part 1 & 2 (Shot Gun Mix) 🟢
As we all know, Billy Idol is sexy, so I'm immediately sold on the sleeve which features him dressed in leather and chains, midway between a pout and a sneer.  I'm also a big fan of his logo which appears prominently on the front and back.  White Wedding, like Money For Nothing, makes for relevant incidental music so it's reasonably common to hear this accompanying any wedding-themed TV moments.  It's made up of hard rock drums and guitars with a subdued vocal, which he keeps reined in until the 2nd chorus.  You can tell he's an old punk with rock-n-roll influences by the way he sings with a curled lip.  Even after he lets rip on the "it's a nice day to... START AGAIN" chorus, there's still a feeling that we're building up to something which remains unresolved at the point where he's yelling his way through the closing fade-out.  I was looking forward to this song but this mix is too restrained to make for an effective 7" pop single. 

b/w Mega Idol Mix - Flesh For Fantasy/Hot In The City 🟡
The metal guitar with electronic drums which opens this sounds ahead of its time but then they add a staccato funk guitar part which is horrid.  It's a megamix so I expected it to be full of excitement but instead the intro part repeated for far too long before Idol's voice comes in singing the chorus. "We want Flesh! For Fantasy!" is such an evocative lyric that it's criminal of them to wait so long to drop it in and then use it so little.  The 'mix' that the title eludes to isn't much of a mix at all; rather than fade naturally it switches abruptly to an entirely different-sounding song which again sticks with an instrumental for so long that it loses any excitement it might have held.  The trademark feature of a Billy Idol record is his trash-glam voice which is underused on both halves of this mix.  My impression here is that he's trying to break new ground in the heavy rock/punk genre by finding a way to adapt it to the 12" club mix style that electronic music was doing so well, but unfortunately he's not got it right here.

I'm a bit disappointed not to have uncovered any gems this week - who knew that Billy Idol could be so boring?! - but at least this was an eclectic group of singles.  On to the next one.

Music Review: #172 - Summer 2016

 Staying in similar territory to last week, where I wrote about January 2015, but my life felt quite different by Summer '16.  By this point I was established in my job and overall pretty happy with how things were going.  Will my music taste reflect that?  Let's see...

1. Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Born To Run 🎀
Hearing this song kick in gives me an instant rush of pleasure.  It's Springsteen's classic sped up and sounding even more triumphant than the original.  It's a little tongue-in-cheek, being sung by an obviously gay frontman, but the way that the instrumentation gallops along like a machine makes me want to take off on the adventure that the song promises.  It's bold and powerful, and in my eyes, the superior version of Born To Run.  In 2016 I fell in love with the first Frankie Goes To Hollywood album and this song still thrills me - a strong start.

2. The Last Shadow Puppets - Miracle Aligner 💜
I've said it before but Alex Turner doing his Euro-crooner thing just makes me melt.  This sounds like it should soundtrack a movie set on the Riviera; it's lush and palatial and sun-soaked, the smell of suntan lotion and expensive perfume mixed with sea air.  I love the hushed vocal and retro guitar sounds.  Do I understand what the lyrics are about?  No, I've never taken the time to think about it - I don't think I need to. 

3. The 1975 - Sex (Acoustic) 🔵
The 1975 were my favourite band of 2016 and I was still in my 'honeymoon phase' in the summer.  This version of the song sounds so, so different to the one on the album with its capoed arpeggios and Matty singing the lyrics in that barely-comprehensible indie boy accent with an added layer of melancholy.  With the addition of a synthesised string part played long chords to underpin the whole thing, it turns a big emo song into a reflective ballad.  Sex was the first The 1975 song I loved and the acoustic version puts a different spin on it that's no less beautiful. 

4. Cocteau Twins - Cherry-Coloured Funk 💜
We are now entering a dream world.  Where Matty was barely-compehensible, Elizabeth Fraser is entirely incomprehensible in the way that she sings - it might be English but it's impossible to tell, and it's like being in another universe.  That shoegazey guitar part is hypnotic, like being taken by the gentle waves on a calm sea.  Cocteau Twins are one of the greatest bands ever to come out of Scotland; their beauty is unsurpassed.

5. One Direction - Temporary Fix 🔵
Boybands aren't usually my thing and I was never a 'Directioner' but Spotify offered me this and it's quite edgy and sexual, especially if their audience is supposed to be young girls.  It has the sort of rock drums and suggestive vocals that wouldn't sound out of place on an album of the era by someone like All Time Low.  It sounds like a Harry Styles number, the sort of thing that would fit in on his first album, so I was surprised to find that Niall wrote it with some other pop songwriters and that it wasn't an outtake from an indie band that they sold to 1D.

6. Jefferson Airplane - Somebody To Love 🔵
A 60s psychedelic classic.  I think Grace Slick is so cool - I read her autobiography last year and she described how she and her boyfriend started a band with another couple just because she wasn't sure what she wanted to do with her life, saw some friends doing well with their band, and thought it looked like a fun job.  I always find it interesting when people talk about choosing music as a career rather than claiming it was some sort of 'calling'.  I'm glad she picked this career because she has such a commanding, powerful voice.  This is my favourite song of theirs; it makes me want to dance and perfectly encapsulates what I imagine it was like to be young during the Summer Of Love.

7. The 1975 - Milk 🔵
Milk is a hidden track turned fan favourite, a rowdy little emo-pop song about drugs which I love to hear live.  They always play it really fast and it's a short song with just two verses and choruses so it's a perfect burst of energy midway through the set.  The combination of simple riff, quiet verses and wild chorus are magic.

8. Cocteau Twins - Pearly Dewdrops' Drops 💜
Some more Cocteau magic.  This song sounds like the sun coming out to chase away an April shower.  The component parts of waltz rhythm, toy piano twinkles, washes of guitar and dreamy vocals combine to create something soothing and uplifting.  It's lovely. 🥰

9. Purity Ring - Begin Again 🔵
This has that 2010s echoey EDM production which I don't love, but I fell for this song because her voice is so, so pretty.  The chorus, and in particular the way she sings 'oh darling', hooked me in.  I think the style is starting to sound really dated; it's got that dubstep build up and drop with keys and heavy beat, but with an indie pop song welded on top.  It's too delicate, vocally, for the club, but too traditional in its EDM elements to be a cool indie record.  I rate it highly for the singer and not the backing. 

10. Nicole Dollanganger - Nebraska 🔵
I've written a couple of times already about Nicole's lyrical style and themes and this song is typical of that.  She plays a simple two-chord guitar part which matches the sweetness of her voice, and pairs that with a lyric about a boy who kills his girlfriend's parents before taking her off on a killing spree which ends only with his execution.  I always assumed it was fictional - a Bonnie & Clyde for the mass-shooter generation - but upon looking it up I've discovered it's the true story of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate in 1958.  Nicole closes the song with "and sometimes I feel we're heading down the same road" which is a chilling ending; no longer just a ballad about the past but now a cautionary tale to entertain her own lover.

11. Blood Diamonds ft. Grimes - Phone Sex 🔵
Opening with synth steel drums (one of my favourite instruments), this would be a fairly conventional dance song if it weren't for the inclusion of Grimes.  She sings in her usual fragile femme voice and adds some unusual sounds into the mix to keep this interesting.  The end result is something more ethereal than the dance music which was in the charts and therefore it hasn't dated as much and still sounds fresh.

12. The 1975 - The City (Acoustic) 🔵
This is called an acoustic version but it's entirely synth-based - it's just a sparse and slowed-down arrangement of the song.  Matty is singing in his melancholy boy voice again as opposed to the knowing smile that The City is usually performed with.  It's atmospheric and a different take on the song which is pretty but doesn't rival the album version.

13. Édith Piaf - Milord 🔵
I've written about Milord already so I won't go into depth again, but it really stands out here.  Following on from the synthesisers and slow acoustindie, the intro to Milord sounds light-hearted and quaint.  I think Piaf works better for me in the context of a playlist than as part of an album - she really shines in contrast to the modern shiny pop.  Milord is a real romp of a song that is brought down by its inclusion on a 12" of ballads. 

14. Cults - Go Outside 🔵
Hearing this song during a pandemic makes me really sulky.  The xylophone part which opens this song and then runs through it is a really cute motif, almost like a jingle.  The song has a 70s rhythm mixed with modern vocal production and I think it's pretty but a bit sad - I think the lyric is about trying to convince a depressed partner to get up and join you outside, and eventually giving up?  Either way, it makes for nice advertising music.

15. Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot - Bonnie & Clyde 🔵
That weird animalistic/yodelling noise at the end of every line is very annoying, but it's something to cling to when you don't speak French so can't use the lyrics to work your way through the song.  I don't know what the couple are saying but have always presumed they're playing the couple and telling their story (running the lyrics through a translator has proved that theory to be correct).  It's a nice ballad, they sound a little bored which adds to the mood of doomed lovers.  The other weird thing for me is hearing them repeat the couple's names, which are American, in a French language song.  I do think it's cool to hear icons portraying icons though.

16. FKA Twigs - In Time 🔵
If I was to pick my favourite modern-day singer it might be FKA Twigs.  I think her voice is perfect, the way she sings in her very English accent with such fragility which is combined with heavy-handed beats and world music influences - it's a fascinating sound with so much going on.  I love that she grew up adoring punk stars like Poly Styrene and Anabella Lwin but didn't go in that direction, she just took what she needed from them attitude-wise and built something modern.  Musically it does sound like the mid-10s which is receding in the rear-view mirror now, but her voice is timeless. 

17. Amy Winehouse - Tears Dry On Their Own 🟢
Like Twigs, Amy is another timeless talent.  This sounds classic due to the retro production and old-school jazz sound of her voice.  Tears Dry On Their Own is a decent Amy Winehouse song but it's not one of my favourites; it's very loose so I find it hard to hold on to this one and really live in it.  

18. Édith Piaf - Padam, Padam 🟢
Again, I covered this when I wrote about The World Of Piaf.  This plays an interesting contrast with Amy Winehouse as they're both mid-century sounds but where Amy is loose and jazzy, Édith is controlled and powerful. 

19. Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls 🔵
A very different mood, from a vintage orchestra with passionate vocals to cold synthpop and disinterested spoken lyrics.  I love the sound of West End Girls, it's somehow both detached and soulful.  "Sometimes you're better off dead, there's a gun in your hand and it's pointing at your head" is one hell of an opening line.  The synth choral and brass instrumental part is very dated now and another verse would have been preferable to this break.  I'm taken in by the way Neil Tennant almost raps this song - I'm not saying it's hip hop but it has political spoken words set to a repetitive beat with sampling throughout...

20. Milk Teeth - Swear Jar 🔵
A rare pop punk number for 2016, with a slow vocals-and-chords intro opening up to the full band for the second verse.  It's the third of the trio of songs on this disc about young people running off and getting into trouble but there's no murder in this one, just second thoughts; it reminds me of the TV show The End Of The F**king World.  It has that last-song-on-the-album contemplative feeling to it and I wish there was one more verse as I'd like to have heard more of it.

21. The Crystals - He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss) 🔵
The bass intro to this song is instantly recognisable.  I am in two minds over whether to refer to this as a 'love song', it's obviously incredibly sad and a lot of people say that it shouldn't exist at all as it glorifies domestic violence but I think it's healthy to have this sort of perspective out there.  Subject matter aside, it's a decent sounding 60s girl group song performed by a group of professionals, it just isn't as uplifting as Then He Kissed Me.

22. Death Spells - Why Is Love So Disastrous? 🟢
What an unsettling intro this has - a sort of horror movie spoken word sample.  By 2016 I was moving away from hardcore music but the sound of these frantic drums makes me long for a packed venue with a wall of death and everyone throwing themselves around.  It ends with a fade-out which sounds wrong, like it's a sample and not the full song (I think it might be faded out before the DJ starts talking).  It's not the best of its genre but not bad. 

Looking back at this list, I'm not sure why I was so obsessed with songs about escapism and violence at this point in time... I think it's coincidental as I don't remember purposefully looking for that sort of thing, although I suppose I was seeing Robbers by The 1975 and its allusions to Bonnie & Clyde and True Romance and all of that.  Unlike Winter 2015, when I was listening to mostly chart pop, this is a mixture of alternative music and old stuff.  The music which was going for a modern sound now sounds very much like a product of its time, whereas the songs taking influence from past movements have survived better.  Not a bad mix overall - nothing that I'd be averse to hearing again - but most of it fits the "good songs that I'm happy to hear but not favourites" category.  

Music Review: #147 - January 2015

 This week, a monthly mix CD from when I still made monthly mix CDs.  I wrote about the latter part of 2015 in a recent entry and, without giving too much away, I think the musical selections here will be quite different.  I turned 22 in January 2015 and was in the middle of my post-Uni unemployment phase.  The highlight of the month was a trip to Glasgow to see Die Antwoord and that's about all I remember from this point in history.

1. Die Antwoord - Fok Julle Naaiers 🔵
This group were my obsession at this time; I found their weirdness so intriguing.  I don't choose to listen to them any more and there are a lot of their songs that I would skip past immediately but this is is one of their better songs.  It's a traditional rap song for them - Yolandi sings the chorus and Ninja raps the verses, which I still know all the words to.  What makes it unusual is their South African accents and language (the title roughly translates to 'fuck you all').  I still think this is quite good. 

2. Heathers The Musical - Dead Girl Walking 💜
As I said previously when reviewing Big Fun, Heathers is one of my favourite movies of all time.  I was excited when it was turned into a musical, of which this song is the highlight.  The lyrics are so funny - this is Veronica Sawyer's big number, performed at the point where she has a fall-out with Heather Chandler and goes to visit the mysterious bad boy JD.  It's interesting as it gives Veronica some agency as she enters into this dangerous and doomed relationship; arguably, the only time she's in control and my main problem with the song is how weak and submissive JD sounds which is out of character for him.  Barrett Wilbert Weed puts in a hell of a performance as Veronica and helps this to become a perfect singing-in-the-shower showtune.  Best lyrics: "Sorry, but I really had to wake you... see, I've decided I must ride you 'til I break you" and "you know the drill, I'm hot and pissed and on the pill"

3. Kids In Glass Houses - Peace 🔵

The Welsh band split up a few months prior to me putting this together and this song comes from their final album.  It's a great rock song with a big singalong chorus.  They were talented songwriters and Aled Phillips was an outstanding singer.  Peace includes one chorus that has gang vocals and handclaps which is really effective, and there's even a cheesy boyband-style key change at the end.  It's very uplifting and I still get pleasure from hearing it.

4. Die Antwoord - Cookie Thumper! 🔵
The second track of theirs and this one is a Yolandi solo number.  Her high voice and South African/English hybrid dialect is a novelty that worked well for them for about three albums and then got stale but this was probably my favourite song of theirs at this point.  The electronic backing track sounds like an alarm going off in a top secret government lab from a movie, and paired with her risqué image and lyrics the whole thing sounds dangerous.  The chorus and breakdown are super catchy even though I only understand about half of the lyrics.  Objectively this song is tacky and bad taste but I think a little of that is good for you. 

5. The Prodigy - No Good (Start The Dance) 💜
I had a slight interest in 90s dance music at this point and No Good (Start The Dance) was possibly my favourite of the heavier dance songs.  This is The Prodigy before they became a dance/rock crossover group so I didn't know this song at all before.  It's really intense with its fast drums and industrial sound palette.  The vocal is just the same 2 lines looped throughout and her voice, which is a sped up sample, matches the urgency of the music.  The song sounds the way that strobe lights make me feel in a club; the two combined must be an experience.  This is probably my favourite tune of theirs, I just love the persistence of it - it doesn't let up at all during its six minutes, to the point where it's almost tiring to listen to all the way through. 

6. Kids In Glass Houses - Drive 🔵
Drive is the other highlight of the final KIGH album.  It has a darker atmosphere - this and Peace are like yin and yang.  It's just as anthemic as Peace but it's sexier and I can't help but associate it with the film of the same name; my visual is all night-time and neon signs.  It's driven by the rhythm which is unrelenting. 

7. The Shangri-Las - Leader Of The Pack 🎀
A CLASSIC.  The iconic Q&A intro, a vocal dripping with teenage dramatic despair, the motorcycle sound effects!  It's so well constructed, a whole dramatic story told in a little pop song.  The tale of the girl, forced to break up with her misunderstood rebel boyfriend, who is killed when he crashes his bike grieving their relationship, takes place over three short verses and a couple of spoken word intervals and the whole trio play their roles to perfection.  From an era where pop songs were seen as disposable and ephemeral, and following the trend for 'tasteless' 'splatter platters', this is actually a work of art.

8. 2 Unlimited - Let The Beat Control Your Body 🔵
I referred to The Prodigy as heavier dance music and this is the other kind - the cheesy, poppy Eurodance.  They're not that different though; both have the trademark pounding beat and repetitive lyrics, although 2 Unlimited go for verses and choruses rather than the same line on loop.  It's helped along, or let down by (depending on your perspective), the Euroness of the vocal.  You can tell by the lyrics and his accent in particular that English is not 2 Unlimited's first language.  It's a fun, catchy-as-hell dance tune but arguably would be better without his cliché rapped verses. 

9. Culture Beat - Anything 🟢
A very atmospheric intro that doesn't sound like a dancefloor filler, before becoming more cheesy rap-verse ESL Eurodance.  The mp3 I downloaded for this mix is really quiet which totally ruins the mood.  This is no Mr Vain but it's OK with a decent chorus and hook to dance to.  My enjoyment is definitely hampered by the audio quality which isn't Culture Beat's fault but after the last song, it lacks punch.

10. Descendents - Suburban Home 💜
It's punk time!  I feel like a bit of a poser for only knowing this one song of theirs, knowing how influential they were, but I'm afraid this is the extent of my relationship with them.  Suburban Home is a biting, sarcastic bit of satire about settling down to a middle class suburban life.  It's very much alt kid 101 stuff, but it's done really well.  The icing on the cake is the lobotomised voice with which he states "I want to be stereotyped... I want to be classified" at the start and end. 

11. Rebekah Del Rio - Llorando (Crying) 🔵

This is the Spanish-language acapella cover of Roy Orbison's Crying that is performed in the theatre scene of Mulholland Drive.  The big, empty room echo on the recording just adds to the haunting quality of the song.  It's really beautiful and emotive - I don't speak Spanish so Del Rio's intonation is all I have to tell the story of the song and I feel like I understand it completely.  I must rewatch Mulholland Drive soon.

12. Dawn Penn - You Don't Love Me 💜
Reggae isn't one of my preferred genres but every now and then I come across a song in that style that I adore, and this is one of them.  The version I downloaded is the 1967 original and not the 1994 re-recording that became a chart hit in the UK (which isn't as good).  The vocal sounds like it's being beamed in from another time and put on top of the music.  I adore her languid delivery in contrast with the staccato guitar part.  I don't know anything else about Dawn Penn or the context of this record aside from it being recorded twice but I think it sounds incredible.  

13. Melanie Martinez - Toxic (Cestladore Remix) 🔵
I'm not a huge fan of Melanie Martinez's "little girl but she's on pills" aesthetic, or even really her cover of Toxic from The Voice, but I find this remix irresistible.  It loops the chorus from her jazzy cover of Britney's song over and over with minimal chillwavey backing music.  That makes it sounds very of its time but there's something about the way her voice is processed with the stuttering that bewitched me.

14. Die Antwoord - Wat Pomp 🟡
I think this is early Die Antwoord and it's not a song of theirs that I would still choose to listen to.  Yolandi and Ninja both have some decent bars on it, and there's also a third guy who I think is called Jack Sparrow? [Correction, it's Jack Parow, which is basically the same.]  Anyway, he isn't bad either.  The worst thing is Ninja's comedy Japanese accent but even without it, I don't feel like I need to hear this song again. 

15. Against Me! - True Trans Soul Rebel (Acoustic) 🔵
First off, I need to say that Laura Jane Grace is a legend and I have so much respect for her as a prominent trans person who puts out records like this.  There's so much pain in this recording with its references to suicide and the misery associated with coming to terms with the difficulties of making your trans identity public.  It's a really beautiful song that sounds like it was cathartic to release.  I knew this acoustic version before I found out there was a full band recording, which is also great, but there's something about the rawness of this performance.

16. Mickey & Sylvia - Love Is Strange 🔵
I hadn't seen Dirty Dancing when I discovered this song so my associations with it have very little to do with Baby and whatever his name is.  I like the way that Mickey & Sylvia sound together and the way they drag out some of the words in the verses.  The guitar part is just as important as the vocals here and contributes to it being a great little song.  Something about the recording sounds really small, like the couple and their guitar player are crammed into the corner of a tiny room to perform.  Of course, the Q&A section is the best bit.

17. Jonathan Richman - I'm Straight 🔵
Jonathan Richman tries to convince us that he's straight (as in, clean, not heterosexual) but he sounds either really sick or totally fucked up in this almost-spoken performance.  It plays like the ill-advised neurotic voicemail left late at night on an ex's answering machine, a stream of consciousness ramble of someone who's been up getting high for too many days in a row.  The repetition of "I'm straight" and "I'm not stoned" only add to the denial.  There's some good bass guitar and trademark gang vocal work from the Modern Lovers too. 

18. Linda Scott - I've Told Every Little Star 🎀
Here's the other stand-out musical number from Mulholland Drive, which I guess I must have watched in January 2015.  I was obsessed with this song for a while - it's sugary sweet and romantic and I can't help but smile when it comes on.  It's simple, just a cute song about having a crush, but I adore it. 

19. Nicole Dollanganger - Creek Blues 🎀
On its surface, this could be another cute love song, given Nicole Dollanganger's high, fragile voice, but anyone who knows her music will know better.  This song was my introduction to her and I didn't like it at first but found myself needing to hear it again.  She puts a couple of simple chords together with the vocal line about the psychotic boyfriend figure who is present in so many of her lyrics.  I love the juxtaposition she plays with - that broken doll voice who sounds so sweet until you realise she's singing about how her boyfriend's hobbies are playing with guns and going into the woods to kill things for fun.  She's carved out a creepy-cute niche for herself which I find fascinating.

20. Mr President - Coco Jamboo 🔵
Something totally different from the last song - we're back to the Eurodance.  I don't have this elsewhere in my collection but it's ultra familiar to me, like it unlocks something from my childhood brain.  It has massive primary school disco/late 90s birthday party energy.  I don't know what the song is about at all, which usually means that the lyrics are not innocent but the adult references are veiled enough to make it acceptable for kids.  Alternatively, and this is the answer my internet searching is drawing me to, it's another case where the writers didn't speak great English so just threw something together.  It's really catchy, total guilty pleasure music but I would definitely get down to this if it was played at an office party.  

21. The Cure - Love Will Tear Us Apart 🟢
One set of spooky post-punk forefathers covering another.  The Cure are legendary and this is one of the greatest songs ever written but this cover falls flat.  It sounds like they're not committed to it at all, probably recorded for a radio thing where they were asked to perform a cover as it sounds like the sort of portable equivalent of drums that bands whip out for this sort of thing.  Nothing that The Cure do is bad but I can't help feeling like this could have been something special if they had put in the effort. 

Looking back this is a solid month, probably because I had nothing to do except sit at my laptop watching films and discovering new tunes.  The inclusions of Nicole Dollanganger and Melanie Martinez in particular point to this being part of my 8tracks period (a music streaming site that's sadly missed since it relies on copyright-free YouTube videos now instead of user uploads), which is where I found a lot of songs and artists I came to love.  There are definitely worse monthly mixes to come.