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There's a last.fm ruling which I hope only applies to the forums and not yr own journals... I may have had a bit to drink. Dammit, that's allowed now.

Listening to Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker which was released in fucking 2000 - nigh 10 years ago... where did that time go?

It's an old story that we still tell... but I remember where I was when I bought this album; a poor boy half way home from work, between buses, in Enfield Town, loitering in HMV and looking for inspiration. I had heard Oh My Sweet Carolina and I had heard of Whiskeytown if not heard Whiskeytown.

The CD was played many times on my old knackered CD player, bought 2nd hand from a school friend for my Christmas present in 1997 - my first CD player after years of vinyl and tapes... the CD player would always skip half way through To Be the One which made me curse the stereo and threaten it with various acts of extreme violence.

This CD never got played in company. It's an introspective affair. Bedroom listening, for your ears only. It's my Whinchmore Hill soundtrack back when I discovered country music - or Americana or whatever - and started buying Uncut magazine and playing my acoustic more than my electric.

It's a hell of an album. A 9/10 job. An old friend. The little harmonies that join and leave the vocals throughout the album anchor the sentiment and act as the earth wire to Ryan's sometimes surging lines - acts of restraint that are absent in many of his later albums.

I've learned many a song on guitar but my favourite to plat is Damn, Sam (I Love a Woman That Rains) - which is guitar heavey but the piano is the important instrument here - guitar solo works fine - except of course that anyone ever addressing a 'Sam' must be a drunk barfly piano playing and sighing...

The whole arrangement of the LP seems sparse, possibly a hangover from Whiskeytown, and the cleanliness and space frame the songs very clearly. Compare this to Strangers Almanac which is a driven album, propelled by guitar and volume, Heartbreaker is mopping up after you hit the breaks. I bought both albums around the same time and they always form a pair in my mind.

Anyway, this was 10 years ago and seeing as we face the end of a decade I thought I would reminisce - this album stuck out from a lot of others I loved - this will be in my top ten albums of the 00s I am sure.

OK, drunken stream of near conciousness over.

Hooray - it's payday! I can finally afford afford my insulin, can put the heating on again and I don't have to slum it with second rate champagne for a few weeks. And of course I can hit the record shops to buy a couple of CDs - one which I know one track off of and the other from which I might recognise something.


So;

Wild Beasts then, with Two Dancers - which starts very badly indeed; the first track is horrible and the second one is not all that much better. Track 3 is All The King's Men and this isn't bad - I'd tick that as a single. What makes it better for me is that the lead vocals are kept more or less in check and echo Tom from Editors in places. The guitar work is decent to.

From there on in things become easier and inoffensive and they really get above average with Two Dancers (i) and Two Dancers (ii) which prompt me to turn up the stereo to see if loudness will make things better (not really). I kind of want a small bit of mental somewhere

I bought this CD on the basis that it was cheapish at £8 and that I am obviously unfashionably late to this party because there's a sticker on the front gushing praise from those bastions of good musical taste; NME, The Financial Times, & The Telegraph. If they need another quote then;
"Inoffensive, rather dull 'serious' sounding indie rock which is neither wild nor bestial. More tame pet with mild angst. Can play competently and in time. 3/10" THISISALL1WORD

Seriously, who is this type of music for? What does it do? Can I get a refund?



So;

Jonquil then, with Lions - which has the track Lions on it and that is one that good ol' last.fm played me a few times and I love it dearly. Never heard anything else by this lot so the CD was still a bit of a wild card. Plus points scored by nice artwork of a moose eating a bear made of brambles/vines/thread.

I'm surprised to find that this lot are from the UK because the sound is much broader minded and just plain open than most indie released from these shores. I had em pegged as Canadians possibly because they remind me of Arcade Fire a fair bit. And there's a moose on the front cover.

The sound is also like a more pastoral Tunng with a Spring morning feel like that which freshened up the Fleet Foxes LP from last year. I should point out that this one was released some time in 2007... FF could do worse than take this lot on tour with em.

In a perfect world I will wake up on Friday morning at Glastonbury next year and watch this lot radiate good vibes across the park stage under warm June sun with a cider and a smoke and a wide smile. Great album which stumbles once with 'Babe, So Now Why No?' which plods a wee bit. But that's small complaint when set against the whole LP. Fine, fine stuff and I dare you not to fall in love with the title track - 8/10

Vote for your favourite LP cover from 2009 over at;

http://www.artvinyl.com/en/nominate/nominations.html

You can see the images over there - didn't want to go through and grab them all for here - but here's the list;

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
Baroness - Blue Record
Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
Clark - Growl's Garden
Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
Engineers - Three Fact Fader
Fanfarlo Resevoir
Fever Ray - Fever Ray
Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport
Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
Horrors - Primary Colours
Iron And Wine - Around the well
Kelpe - Microscope Contents
Manic Street Preachers - Journal For Plague Lovers
Mastodon - Crack The Skye
Pet Shop Boys - Yes
Smith Westerns - Smith Westerns
sunno))) - Monoliths And Dimensions
Teeth Of The Sea - Orphaned By The Ocean
The xx - xx
Various Artists - New Tales To Tell: A Tribute To Love And Rockets
Volcano Choir - Unmap
Wild Beasts - Two Dancers
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz
Atlas Sound - Logos
Bat for Lashes - Two Suns
Biffy Clyro - Only Revolutions
Depeche Mode - Sounds Of The Universe
Editors - In This Light And On This Evening
Flaming Lips - Embryonic
Florence & The Machine - Lungs
Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown
Jamie T - Chaka Demus
Jarvis Cocker - Further Complications
Jay Z - The Blueprint 3
La Roux - La Roux
Massive Attack - Splitting The Atom
Muse -- The Resistance
Skunk Anansie - Smashes Trashes
The Cribs - Ignore The Ignorant
The Hours - See the Light
The Mars Volta - Octahedron
The Prodigy -- Invaders Must Die
The Rakes - Klang
Thee Vicars - Back on the Streets
Weezer - Raditude
White Lies - To Lose My Life
Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs

Said it before, the Oxfam book and Music charity shops are top quality and the one on Strutton Ground, between Victoria and Westminster can be a fucking treasure trove of good music.

Today I popped in at lunch and walked away with a pile of CDs - no vinyl today though - which I will present for your delectation;


The Beatles - Revolver - I like this lot but I've never bought anything by them until now. Possibly the best album ever? Meh. maybe, maybe not - but it does have Tomorrow Never Knows and For No One on it - both 10 out of 10 tracks them are.

Tripping Daisy - My Umbrella - Tim's old band before he formed The Polyphonic Spree - I know not much about them but I did used to love Piranha.

The Heavy - How You Like Me Now? - never heard of them but there's a Joker remix on it so that should be good...

Einstellung - wings of desire - no idea but nice sleeve so bought it for that and the fact that there are shouts out to Rough Trade and Shifty Disco (I think - this is from memory) on the inlay slip.

3Ds - Hey Seuss - no idea - on the Flying Nun label so how bad can it be?

& Finally; the Best of Dance 92 - Yay! Early House and other 1992 club classics - sweeeeeeet...


So a tenner to charity is a tenner that the music industry won't get their hands on. Not to worry, they'll get theirs later in the week I'm sure... Charity shops are go!

Fri 7 Aug – The Big Chill 2009

Oh man, we had some good weather for The Big Chill this year. As ever the festival starts with wet conditions - from all accounts those hardy stall holders who had to set up on Tuesday could tell you some stories - but those of us travelling on Thursday drove through the last of the rain and into dry conditions. There was a bit of mud to be found on site; most of it around the main beer tent which can make carrying a few pints back from the bar, well, interesting.
After Thursday it was a case of slapping on the sun block and hitting the shade every once in a while. And Monday morning it's back to grey clouds and a welcome chill to the air - no one wants to get a couch back home for several hours when the sun light is slow baking you.

Apart from the weather then... oh, there were some bands and stuff... and an afternoon/evening of zombie mayhem. Few thousand people dressed up as zombies to shoot some scenes of the film 'I spit on your rave' which basically means dancing to a Toddla T DJ set and then cheering the demise of delicious humans. The zombie hordes have a new hero, risen from amongst them, and his name is Geoff (or Jeff). King of the zombies, Noel Fielding, is on hand with some stuff that was funnier then last years Boosh-meh-ness and the director or someone was on hand to get frustrated and worked up when a field full of unpaid extras might not be the easily controllable bunch that he had hoped.
First time for me dressing up as zombie - found it most excellent. More blood? Please!


I Spit On Your Rave trailer

After zombie shenanigans it's off to watch some of British Sea Power score an old film; 'Man of Aran' - which is cool but not captivating enough to stop us wandering off for more drinks and to check out some of the action of the Crap Stage - which was a rock-steady nattily suited young lad dancing to some old ska. Early morning wobbly strolls around the rest of the site and then hit the sack.

Note to self: ask tent neighbours if they are likely to turn into K-hole nightmare gibbering shit-talking shouting never sleeping bastards. The quiet camping area might beckon next year. Fuck it, I'm 30 now, 10 years back I might have been wasted enough to sleep through it. These were not the poster-boys for any legalise-ketamin for the non-equine campaign, hell no.

Mornings at the Big Chill mean one thing: Mr. Scruff's Tea Tent - quality place next to the lake where you can get a large pot of English breakfast to accompany a bacon roll and the hopes you aren't about to get some shitty hangover.
Next door to the Tea Tent is the Champagne bar, if your feeling flush then fuck it, yr on holiday, open a bottle.
Afternoon should be spent trying out a few/lot of some choice drinks; Monkey Shoulder cocktail: 'Show me the Monkey' is a bit of a winner as is the Big Chill Frisky Bison peach flavour one - pitcher = good thing.

Some Bands:

Grasscut
First on the main stage and impressive glitchy, folky, sometimes urban, electronica from these lads. Not overly loving the singing but digging the vibe. Nice.

Modeste Hughes
Madagassi Modeste is an awesome guitarist with a sweet sounding voice - one of the best things about the festival is that 'world music' - whatever that is - is represented on the main stages not stuck somewhere else on it's own. Same for unknown electronica stuff.

Ramadanman & Brackles
Dubstep players playing stuff that was reaching out to the club rather than just to the bass heads. Lots of vocal tracks that were new to me and not many scene classics - things are moving on and dubstep is spreading virus like into other styles but from what I heard of this set (by no means much more than 30 minutes of it) I'm not fussed with this direction all that much...

Wildbirds & Peacedrums
Holy crap! Awesome stuff indeed! That's a good bluesy noise from a drummer and singer/sometime tin-drum player. Lots of dancing and plenty bewitched by Mariam is looks and sounds stunning. Proper.

Shackleton
Shit - where'd everyone go? Fucking Shackleton's on man. Shackleton. He's fucking awesome. Come back! Honestly the castle stage has been deserted by the time the bass kicks off but after a short time they return. If you play bass; they will come.
Billed as 'Live' this is Sam S basically remixing and mashing his way through his back catalogue while we get some quality visuals. The bass is rattling my cage - in good ways - and all is loud and heavy. Good sound system!
Oh, the little pocket guides to who is on had him listed later that day - maybe people didn't know he was starting when he did...

Chris Cunningham
Fun for all the family with uncle Chris doing his VJ thing. All the hits from Sheena is a Parasite and Windowlicker through to the scottish bird from the PS2 adverts and naked couples repeatedly and repetitively beating several shades of shit out of each other. Is it morally cool to dance to this stuff? Answers on a postcard to the Daily Mail please marked: 'Where the cunting hell was most of Come to Daddy?'
Harsh and very welcome.

Suns of Arqa
Full props to these lot for been around for fucking ever but while I appreciate and clap and everything - it's just not my thing right now. Maybe I've not enough cider...

Helios
I would love to tell you about this lot because I remember that I loved them - it's just that I can not remember a thing about the set. Therefore I guess they were chilled and relaxing and didn't have naked dancers spontaneously combusting or slaughter a beluga whale on stage. Probably guys with laptops.

Penguin Cafe Orchestra or Music from the Penguin Café Orchestra
Advert music. Watch and listen and play guess-the-advert with yr mates. The ones in adverts sound ok. The ones that aren't in adverts sound a bit like them but not as good. Is there a correlation I wonder?

Spiritualized
Jason Pierce brings the garage gospel druggy droney noise. It's all good but not heart stoppingly wonderful like I know that they can be. Come Together sounds good but I would have liked them to take things down a few levels to Broken Heart.

Orbital
What. A. Fucking. Awesome. Set.
Completely different style since I watched them play their 'last ever show' a few years back. Tunes are reworked and mixed whereas they used to stand alone and it's a great way of delivering them to old ears in a fresh way. How much love is there for Orbital in the crowd? A whole lot.
The Box is a highlight as is Chime but - even though it's a bit naff - it's Halcyon which gets me grinning widest with it's mix up of Belinda Carlisle Heaven is a place on earth and Bon Jovi You give love a bad name.

Legends.



...Sunday stuff up here laters...

Well now, I am boxing up records in anticip...



...ation of moving house in three weeks (even though I have, as late, nowhere to go) - and I find an EP by Appliance which I stick on and it's pretty cool. A bit stereolab, a bit krautrock. It has groove, in a white boys from Devon kinda groove.

But but but but but - it's from waaaaaay back in 98 - and there's a website address on the sleeve;

http://www.virtual-pc.com/tangent/appliance/index.html

and you know that's old old old. And of course, it's dead. But there's a certain fascination that these dead band web pages hold for me - there's a charming naivety to the complicated address and a nostalgia for the days when only a handful of people you knew could get on-line anyway. 98 was after those times I suppose, but only by a few years.

In 98 Most bands were probably setting up some website somewhere as an afterthought to the whole marketing thing - they were still reliant upon postcards in CD's and vinyl sleeves which were prepaid if you were on a major - attach a stamp if the label was an indie. Postcards isn't maybe the best description... they were about 3" square white cards to fill yr address and age on and send back to the label or band who would then send you postcards and paper catalogues a few times a year.

I loved those band send-outs. Still have a few kept in boxes. I wonder when that stopped? Sometimes you would get a free flexidisk too - cheers to Cast for one of those! - A live version of one of their first songs which is in a box somewhere now awaiting the move...

Anyway - let me know any weird old websites for bands - the more complicated a name the better!

Oh, and R.I.P. geocities

First off - each year I try to record which tracks I fell in love with each year. I was meant to limit it to singles only but gave up on that sometime during 2008...

I've not done so well this year, the complete list is a lot less than the previous years, even though there's been some great stuff maybe I haven't heard it - I'm out of the indie scene & loops which was a good source of fine 7"s - less 7"s are 99p nowadays so it's less likely that I'll buy something I haven't heard before. Shame!

Anyway, in no particular order here's my top 10 so far;

Bon Iver - Woods
Joker - Digidesign
Animal Collective - My Girls
Dan Deacon - Build Voice
LD - Traumatic Times
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Zero
soy un caballo - robin
Burial & Four Tet - Wolf Cub
Skream - Trapped In A Dark Bubble
Guido - Orchestral Lab

The complete list is here; http://www.last.fm/tag/welove2009 - so please add to that if you want! What have I missed?


Edit:

+ Mount Kimbie - Maybes - which is hella good

Hooray for record stores!
Hooray for racks of unknown vinyl
and boxes of second hand 7 inches
walls plastered in promo posters
and postcard size gig adverts

Hooray for the grumpy looking bloke
who needs coffee and has been working
for 21 days straight
11am to 11pm
8 cigarette breaks a day

Hooray for the DIY Scottish lo-fi single
playing loud on the store stereo
they will soon become
your
new favourite band
and this was the first time you heard them.

Hooray for the physicality of it all
This is sex vs. online cyber-sex
Vinyl vs. the download
The wild eyed store clerk thrusting
a white label under your nose
proclaiming the second coming
"you HAVE to hear this"
vs. Amazon.com telling you
You may also like xyzzzzzzz....


The last week I've bought online and offline; boomkat, amazon, HMV, sister ray, & sounds of the universe.
Walking past sister ray I knew I had to get Black Dice - Repo and at the same time pick up the new Camera Obscura 7" and an old Joker 12" - which leads the store clerks bloke to tell me they have copies of the new 12" by him in, fresh that day. I pop back the next day to pick up the Thrill Jockey compilation LP - released to celebrate Independent Record Store Day - and a cassette tape from Rough Trade which looks ACE!
Sounds of the Universe deals Dubstep to me and Boomkat does so too. Amazon supplies cheap CDs of stuff I missed from the last few years. But Amazon is boring.

How long will record shops be with us? Cherish these years people! They may not last forever. Go shopping! Pick up something from the wall of 'recommended new releases' - ask the people who work there to recommend you some obnoxious loud punk, bass heavy dub techno, or weird anti-folk. Pick up a 50p fanzine. Hang out! Explore! Go on, its sunny outside, go shopping, go find something, go fall in love.