Favourite tracks of 2011

Click the image above for a Spotify playlist featuring all of these songs. Isabel – Baxter Dury I love Baxter Dury’s album, ‘Happy Soup’ as much as I did last year’s ‘Things To Do and Make’ by Ergo Phizmiz. Dury’s vocals have a sloppy, sub-rehearsal quality, he mutters, he’s cynical and he sounds wonderful. ‘Isabel’ [...]

NaNo November 11: That went quickly

It all went in a blur. I’ll take stock about what went right and what went wrong (likely to weigh heavily on the latter), but for now I’ll take a break from writing. In the meantime, these are the albums that accompanied my 23-day flurry of novelling: Actress – Splazsh Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto [...]

My year of needless data

About five years ago I asked my friend Charley a question: If it were available to buy, how much would you pay for all of the quantifiable data about your life up to this point? The data would (presumably) include such numerical data as number of hours spent on the toilet, number of times spoken [...]

I went to ATP and all I got was this lousy tinnitus

Photo by Andrew Bowman / The Liminal All Tomorrow’s Parties’ Nightmare Before Christmas event (3-5 Dec 2010) was a terrific monster of a festival. Staying in Soviet Lynchian chalets and braving the December sleet made it all the more memorable. Growing, The Ex, Scout Niblett and Deerhoof were outstanding. Listening to the white-noise-and-wolf-howls of Keiji [...]

Favourite tracks of 2010

Near-constant Spotify usage has meant that 2010 has, for me, been more about songs than albums. Or perhaps it’s not been much of a year for LPs? Either way: here’s the unordered list (although, for the record, my favourites are Run Overdrive, Late and Mandrill). Oh, and here’s a Spotify playlist for almost all of [...]

My Heart – Deerhoof remix (Wildbirds & Peacedrums, 2009)

This track was sitting high in my list of favourite songs of 2010 (to be written up over the next month), until I realised that it was actually released late last year. I’d first heard the original Wildbirds & Peacedrums song as the soundtrack to a video at Oxford’s Modern Art Museum, in which a [...]

GetGlue is a foisting machine

In the last week or so I’ve been playing around with GetGlue, a new recommendation and social networking site that covers all media (i.e. film, TV, books, music, general topics).

Grass Widow (Grass Widow, 2009)

For the last couple of months Grass Widow has been on my list of great bands that I failed to discover during 2009, and only came across during a trawl of Top 100 lists at the end of December. After an awful lot of repeated listens I’ve promoted the album ‘Grass Widow’ to one of [...]

Lost John (Lonnie Donegan, 1956)

Lonnie Donegan’s 1956 recording of the traditional song ‘Lost John’ contains more wonderful moments than most artists manage in a whole career. Donegan was a lovably inclusive singer, treating his band and his listeners as part of the gang, as this intro to the song shows: ‘Now this here’s the story about an escaped convict [...]

Spotify playlist: 30 Year Old Man (March 2010)

I’m terribly self-indulgent. This summer I’ll turn 30, and as I’m currently feeling more positive about my life than I ever have before, this playlist celebrates all the things that I’m not. 1. 30 century man – Scott Walker 2. Mr suit – Wire 3. You’re getting old on your job – Lonnie Johnson with [...]

This too shall pass – RGM version (OK Go, 2010)

This music video is really rather wonderful. Various advertisers and filmmakers have created these Heath Robinson-esque contraptions before now (and I’m a total sucker for all of them), but this one’s especially inventive. I imagine that some people will be upset about what looks like a cut at about the 2:30 mark, but I don’t [...]

Every Plan B magazine ever, for free

In an admirable attempt to secure its status in the history of music journalism, the team behind the now-defunct Plan B magazine are offering every single back issue in pdf format, for free. You can download it here – you’ll first need to get hold of a torrent client though. Plan B was a pretty [...]

Two Weeks (Grizzly Bear, 2009)

Up until this point in this blog, I’ve tended to write about music that I unreservedly love – songs that I replay as soon as they’ve ended. ‘Two Weeks’ by Grizzly Bear falls into another category. In 2009 Grizzly Bear escaped the long shadow of Animal Collective; in the indie press there were few songs [...]

I’m Chief Kamanawanalea (We’re the Royal Macadamia Nuts) (The Turtles, 1968)

Formed in 1965 as The Crossfires from the Planet Mars, The Turtles were huge by 1967 – their biggest hit ‘Happy Together’ knocked ‘Penny Lane’ from the #1 slot in the USA. Their follow-up album, ‘The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands’, was a concept album in which the band pretended to be a [...]

The drums from Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours (Stevie Wonder, 1970)

While it’s a fantastic song all in all, for me it’s all about the drum track. It’s so unfussy, so methodical and regular, and then so satisfying when the drums break out into a quick rattle at the close of some of the vocal lines. I’ve not been able to find out for sure who [...]

The lead guitar from So Not What I Wanted (Herman Düne, 2002)

David is my favourite songwriter of the Herman Düne brothers but this song by André is an absolute beauty. There are two guitar solos in this song and both are near-identical – I’ve always assumed that the solos were by David, but I’ve had trouble finding out either way. At 02:10 André’s and Diane Cluck’s [...]

Summertime! EP (The Drums, 2009)

Although only released last year, I like to imagine Summertime! by The Drums as the soundtrack to my end-of-sixth-form summer holiday. It’s sunny, hopeful and nostalgic. Like Animal Collective, The Drums have Brian Wilson as an ancestor, but also mix in Factory Records reverb and melodies that you’d swear were hits back in the 80s. [...]

Spotify playlist: I Keep Losing Heart (Dec 2009)

Here’s a Spotify playlist that I made at the end of last year. It’s a bit of a mishmash of old 78s, distortion and cheap Beatles pastiches (come on Spotify, surely you can talk the boys around by now?). 1. I don’t want to set the world on fire – The Ink Spots 2. Welfare [...]

Girlfriend is Worse (Ex Models, 2001)

‘I lost my place / In your / Line of vision’ begins the song, the vocal line stop-starting, timing at odds with the lone staccato guitar line. Then on the second vocal phrase the rhythm guitar and drums hit, just two beats for a fleeting moment.

The first 30 seconds of Zoo Station (U2, 1991)

Fair enough, U2 are now profoundly uncool. And on relistening, much of Zoo Station isn’t nearly as special as I’d believed in 1991 – a large proportion of Bono’s lyrics are banal (‘I’m ready to duck / I’m ready to dive / I’m ready to say / I’m glad to be alive’). But the first 30 seconds are magnificent.