I heart SleeveFace!

Me

Her

Mewsli

I really can't get enough of this, there'll be more to come!

The Random Nature...

...of surfing the net of an evening has led me to this video clip, which - because it has an Inuit boy being chased by a flying fish - I had to share with you all.

It's also an Iggy song that I've not heard before, and quite a departure from the usual Iggy stuff.

If anyone knows anymore about this, or whether the film it represents is any good, please leave comments!

Feel Good Song No.1

Feeling down? Miserable? Listen to this:

Lemonheads - "Different Drum"

Feel better? 

Also included is the original version, so you can see how much the Lemonheads have added. 

What I'm listening to right this second right now

This song came on my randomized itunes, and I just had to post it up.

"Fallin" by De La Soul and Teenage Fanclub

It's been a firm RR fave, being nominated many many times, and has maybe made a list ( I can't check, as I have to finish writing this before the song is over!)

Watch! As the Fannies fail miserably to do a hip-hop walk towards the camera
Listen! To the lovely restrained, yet hooky, backing track

Look! At all their lovely smiles!
Wonder! Why the video is all christmassy
Consider! What may have happened if the two parties had done a whole album together
Love It! Just fabby-doo - the bronx/ govan axis !
Want it?, even though the CD is long deleted? Click here!

Sunday Morning Warships Part Two

Last Sunday I posted up Sanctus from the Missa Luba here

This week, I thought I'd post the b-side "Kyrie".

And, if you like, click here to watch "Sunday Morning" by the Velvet Underground

Sage advice from one so young

This week it was scientifically proven that:

"Make a cup of tea, put a record on"

is the bestest indie rock lyric ever written.

Below is the video for the song from whence said lyric came: 

The previous holder of bestest indie rock lyric:

"Don't go fucking in the barn because the barn's on fire"

is said to be disappointed this evening.

To celebrate, here's Elastica doing Trio's "Da Da Da", possibly one of the best songs ever...

I Am A...

....Message.

Yeah, Idlewild, from way back when they first started.

Now, I just realised something about this song.

Idlewild are a Scots band.

In Scots "message" means shopping or errands, as in

"I'm just off to Tesco to pick up my messages"

or

"Did you get your messages?"

(it's still commonly used, by the way)

So, when Idlewild sing "I am a message" along with the other lyric from the song about "selling your soul", they're singing about the commodification of music and giving out to "The Man", no?

(shame they did sell out eventually - their souls died along with it possibly)

Antidote For A Soggy Thursday

Viva Voce are a band who I've been trying to support on the ol' RR in the past. They came on my mp3 player on the way home, so I thought I'd post about them

The video for "From The Devil Himself" is a rare thing - smart, funny, and totally rocking all at the same time!

Who needs originality?

The first time I heard "Dead Sound" by The Raveonettes my initial thought was "Blimey, that's Suicide. How can they so blatently rip off my favourite Suicide song?!"

After a fashion, and a few more listens (to both tunes) I decided that lifting one bit from a song and incorporating it into something new IS FAB.

Talent borrows, genius steals, in this case.

Maybe we are living in post-modern times, where all we can do is endlessly recycle the past, and is this such a bad thing?

Click here for the Raveonettes website

Sunday Morning Warships

I was lucky enough to find this on 7" recently.

It's "Sanctus" from the Missa Luba, a version of Latin Mass, sung in African style by Congolese children.

It features prominently in one of my favourite films "If..." , and I think was a hit in the 50s or 60s in the UK.

Anyway, it's very strange and haunting, and succinct, and religious, and has a mental last 20 seconds - the perfect thing for Sunday Morning.

Larry became increasingly neurotic and obscene

Nick Cave's lot are at it again, this time speculating what Lazarus may have got up to after he was brought back from the dead. Lazarus, or Larry as he's been renamed, ends up in New York ; "a soup queue, a dope fiend, a slave, in prison.."

Cave is on particularly fine form, belligerent and spitting, bring on the new album and tour!

Shame this came to late for the Biblical RR topic, it would have been a shoo-in!

There's also a very funny teaser on youtube - click here

More RR favourites Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan are back too, this time as The Gutter Twins, they've released the first fruits of their labours as a free download on myspace - which can be heard by clicking here

It's called "Idle Hands", and I've not quite made my mind up about it yet, some more listens maybe...

Through Fog And Rain I Run My Train

"Ask Me About Pittsburgh" - The Asteroid No. 4

The first thirty seconds may sound like an ice-cream van drowning, but then the acoustic and electric guitars start , and shortly after that the rolling, lolloping drums drive things off.

An evocative almost shoegazey voice comes in, singing a tale of a chance meeting with a beautiful stranger on a train, and then having to part ways. Love and loss on a small, realistic, everyday scale - "It's a real drag that you're leaving", he sings. I guess for twenty seconds here and there, we all fall in love with someone on the bus or train, the mind considers briefly what a relationship may be like with this person, and then the thought is gone, floating away to wherever thoughts go once they're over.

The breakdown at about the two minute mark is fab, echoing the refrain from the intro of the song, before coming back in, with the drums, to to an spacey arpeggio

The song begins to fade at the 3 minute mark, and a most peculiar psychedelic outtro begins, as if a completely different song has been picked up by a badly tuned radio receiving signals from a far flung planet.

Asteroid No. 4 have chosen to hide a wee pop gem inside this song, Only two and a half minutes long really, and I'm glad it has exposed itself to me.

The lyrics, "I can remember, we sat together on the train / You asked about Pittsburgh, but I'd only been there in the rain" conjure up that sort of intangible abstract far-away place, a romantic ideal - an almost dreamilke feeling.