Log #13 - A Calexico Retrospective and a Nod to a Brilliant Music Discovery App

Tucson Roots and Americana band Calexico come out of the blue to dominate this week's listening (and a plug for the brilliant gnod music discovery website). An unplanned £1 charity shop purchase of the cover album (Garden Ruin) encouraged a retrospective taking in the celebrated Black Light, Feast of Wire, and Hot Rail albums. Garden Ruin is more mainstream than these earlier albums, sounding more like indie pop than their usual acoustic strumming and brass backed mariachi. At that price it represents a bargain addition to the collection with pleasant songs favourably commented upon by other house members, except for the heavy final track All Systems Red. Lucky Dime remains my personal favourite but I haven't nailed the famous song it reminds me of. 

My other choice for the playlist is the atmospheric Mexican flavoured instrumental Minas De Cobre (mines of copper) from Black Light. May I also recommend the recent live performance from the consistently excellent KEXP sessions series - some stripped down songs with insights from the very likeable band leader Joey Burns - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wznHyVvSvMM

I was thinking some more about the Arbouretum album - specifically thinking of other bands they sound like. Nirvana, Black Sabbath, Metallica, and Neil Young come to mind. But that doesn't quite do justice to the dirge and grunge of their wall of sound. Their guitars are even more distorted and the songs are very slow. I looked them up on the fascinating music map website (a way to discover new bands that are supposedly similar to others you like - and films and authors too via gnod.com). The selected band appears at the centre of the screen and other suggestions jostle for position around the centre (the closest being those most similar). It's a great website to play with. Below are the results for Arbouretum and surprisingly to me not many of the bands I was thinking of appear in this "music map", but many new ones to try out (which is the point of the website after all!).

Four Calendar Cafe by The Cocteau Twins is a very polished affair in comparison with last week's Treasure. Along with Heaven or Las Vegas this is one of my favourite albums by the Cocteaus, with catchy multi layered flanged guitar riffs (most evident in Summerhead) and trademark ethereal vocals that send a shiver down my spine. Think of a My Bloody Valentine wall of sound rather than Arbouretum. Hang on, I'm going to try the gnod trick on them too - it should have plenty of white space as there isn't much that sounds like these sonic pioneers.

So here are my six, for this Christmas day, Sunday, 25th December, 2016. Happy holidays and best wishes for a successful 2017.

1. Arbouretum - The Gathering
2. Calexico - Garden Ruin
3. Calexico - Black Light
4. Calexico - Hot Rail
5. Calexico - Feast of Wire
6. Cocteau Twins - Four Calendar Cafe

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Log #12 - New Treasure Uncovered

Several times in my music listening life I've heard something for the first time which sounded like nothing else I had ever heard before. This happened with Can, Neil Young, David Sylvian, Stereolab, and Boards of Canada. I also remember getting a lift back from the North of England in a friend's car one evening and once again hearing something that sounded so different and original to my ears. The band was The Cocteau Twins and the albums we listened to on that long journey were Heaven or Las Vegas and Four Calendar Cafe. Those two fantastic albums are actually more produced and polished, and perhaps more accomplished actually than the earlier Treasure featured here which has more indie rock sensibilities typical of the era (1984). Not that there is anything very much typical about the Cocteau sound with Robin Guthrie's multi layered guitar effects and Elizabeth Frazer's ghostly vocals.

The Cocteau Twins are still the best by far at the 4AD ethereal dreamscape, thanks largely to the extraordinary voice of Liz Fraser. Somehow she's found a voice that falls completely outside 'Rock' or 'Pop'.

It's what we all looked like in the 80s

1. Arbouretum - The Gathering
2. Calexico - Garden Ruin
3. Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
4. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
5. Ramsay Midwood - Shootout at the Ok Chinese Restaurant
6. Cocteau Twins - Treasure

Calexico hail from Tucson, Arizona, and their music has a sense of place with their authentic Americana and Mariachi sound. I first heard them through a tremendous instrumental featured on a free CD I picked up with an Uncut magazine. The CD entitled Sounds of the New West was responsible for introducing me to many great Americana (or Alt-Country as it was termed in 1998) artists including The Handsome Family, Will Oldham, Vic Chesnutt and Lambchop.

Probably the greatest free CD ever given away with a magazine

Garden Ruin is actually a bit more mainstream than their earlier acclaimed albums Black Light, Feast of Wire, and Hot Rail and has been criticised by some die hard fans as such, but I still like it. I've chosen Lucky Dime for the playlist which has a lovely feel good vibe which really reminds me of a classic old tune but I can't decide if this is Santana's Black Magic Woman or Evil Ways or something by the Kinks, or is it the Beatles? I hope it comes to me and if it does I'll report back here later! This track isn't really typical Calexico and I wouldn't have recognised it as them without knowing, but as such indicates the tone of this album.

With such an "art" band as Roxy Music it is very easy to overlook the music and focus on their image as I did in Log #11. However after several more plays of For Your Pleasure, which is the only one of their albums I have, I'm realising they were actually good musicians and produced some excellent and original rock music which stands up well against many of their more revered contemporaries.

Really can't say I thought much of the Bon Iver album - the first I've heard from him. Very earnest navel gazing with an annoyingly high pitched voice. Maybe it's a grower if life isn't too short. His latest is one of the Best Albums of 2016 in our local Resident Records review apparently.

The Ramsay Midwood album was a favourite of tiny local pub, The Greys, which used to play it a lot a few year's back when it was regularly hosting many Americana and Roots bands. Without being too familiar with the individual tracks as yet, they all sound indistinguishable from each other but they also say that about Neil Young so it's not necessarily a bad thing at all.

Neil Young only has one solo, but it sure is a good one.

And we'll leave it there with Arbouretum who are a reincarnation of Crazy Horse if I've ever heard one!

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Log #10 - A Steely Dan of Sonic Perfection

I remember reading once that the cover album this week was, in its time (1977), celebrated for it's amazing sound quality to such a degree that it became the "go-to" record hi-fi equipment shops would use for demo purposes. I wonder how many hi-fi shop staffers were actually aware of this dictum - it was probably an urban myth rarely put into practice on the high street.

Aja (named after a girl of that name - and although I've never noticed before there is a girl's face in the cover) is indeed a sumptuous jazz / rock / funk / R&B / fusion masterpiece with it's perfectly intertwined funky bass, smooth electric piano and drum shuffles, played by a revolving door of crack session players.

The band actually took their name from a brand of dildo featured in William Burrough's "Naked Lunch"

I had assumed the name Steely Dan was something to do with the two core players, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, but not at all, the band was named after a dildo. Eh hem. Donald Fagen's later Nightfly album was also a favourite during my university years.

1. Ketil Bjornstad and David Darling - Epigraphs
2. The Felice Brothers - The Felice Brothers
3. Traffic - John Barleycorn Must Die
4. DJ Shadow - Preemptive Strike
5. Steely  Dan - Aja
6. AC/DC - Back in Black

Ketil Bjornstad and David Darling are a pianist/cellist duo recording for the new age ECM label. The instrumental music is verging on minimalist classical of the Philip Glass (particularly his solo piano work) and Arvo Part school - very down tempo with lots of space.

The Felice Brothers are coming to a concert hall in Brighton in the new year which made me reach for my CD. It's actually a copy someone gave me without a cover so I wasn't even aware of which album it was. The music is round the campfire accordion washboard foot stomping bar room americana most similar to Wilco with a Tom Waits/Bob Dylan feel. Hear the honky tonk piano and horn on The Greatest Show on Earth.

I'm in the lobby of the motel 8
Waiting on my lovely date
Her name is Doris Day
I'm in a suit of burgundy
There's a deer-head looking at me
It's blowing my mind away
Everyone knows she's the killing kind
She keeps a 38 Smith and Wesson at her side
I put a pistol in my pants
Cause were going out to dance
Where the water drinks like cherry wine

Tell me mama, so it seems
Your son's been a bad marine
They're shipping him home tonight
Tell me mama wheres your other son
In jail with the other one?
You must'nt of raised them right
I heard your low-life husband shout
It got me to wondering what the scene was all about
He said I'm breaking my parole
Going down to Jericho
Get me that money, or I'm gonna beat it out

Oooh happy days are here!
It's the perfect summer night
And the moonlight's shining clear
Put a pistol in your purse
Cause we're going to Gettysburg
To the stand of the Greatest Show on Earth!

Is that your daughter Mr. Kissinger?
Better keep an eye on her
She been looking me up and down
Is that your woman in the coat of fur?
Better keep an eye on her
This is a ravenous part of town
I know about you and the deputy
And how they found him shot dead in a Mercury
Some say you're paid to kill
Like that mean ol' Buffalo Bill
Watch it buddy! Don't draw no gun on me!

Oooh happy days are here!
It's the perfect summer night
And the moonlight's shining clear
Put a pistol in your purse
Cause we're going to Gettysburg
To the stand of the Greatest Show on Earth!

You get the picture! Great stuff, I'm looking forward to it.

The Traffic album is a classic. Rather like Aja it's a perfect blend of multiple styles and all the remarkable for a band comprising of only three very talented musicians. I saw multi instrumentalist Steve Winwood playing at Cropredy Festival a few years ago and was blown away as he raced through Traffic, Spencer Davis Group, and Blind Faith classics, moving effortlessly from organ (with bass foot pedal) to guitar, and that voice of course too. The encore was Dear Mr. Fantasy... play us a tune!

There are some great bass lines and languid drum beats in the DJ Shadow album. The centre piece is the four part near 30 minute What Does Your Soul Look Like? His 1996 debut Entroducing album was famous for being composed (or compiled more like) entirely from cut and pasted samples. Not traditional musicianship of course but quite a skill nontheless. I saw a full band at a festival recreating that album.

AC/DC's Back in Black album was their first after the death of lead singer Bon Scott. Brian Johnson certainly proved an able replacement and has lasted the course with the band right up to this year when hearing problems (no shit Sherlock) forced him to temporarily step aside for Axl Rose. Back in Black isn't quite as good as AC/DC's landmark Highway to Hell album but has plenty of classic stadium filling rockers. There is something irresistible about the AC/DC template of single line riff, followed by 4 by 4 drum beat, followed by one note bass. It hooks into your brain.

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Log #9 - Giant Jelly Celt Fusion

A beautiful stained glass window design graces this week's log. It comes from Dreadzone's acclaimed second album, appropriately named Second Light. Of course my recent obsession with the Afro Celts led me to revisit this album from a band who were one of the highlights for me at Fairport Convention's Cropredy Festival in 2009. They have a similar afro/celtic sound, albeit a bit more upbeat and dance orientated. Little Britain is their signature tune and live favourite and my nomination for the playlist.

1. ACSS - Volume 1 Sound Magic
2. Dreadzone - Second Light
3. Orb - Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld
4. Orb - Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld (cd 2)
5. Little Feat - The Last Record Album
6. ACSS - The Source

The new album from ACSS arrived in the post (volume 1). It is indeed brilliant with the usual epic afro/celt instrumental fusions. The beats are a bit more drum and bass in places in keeping with the fashion of the day (1996). I'm continuing to enjoy the sheer variety on The Source.

Little Feat were famous for their "groove" which was simultaneously both loose and tight. They were also famous for their pop art like album covers designed by Neon Park. This is the one with the giant jelly. Lots of good funky rock tracks on here and some good ballads like Long Distance Love. Some bonus live material too on my CD that doesn't really add much and possibly even detracts a bit from the original entity.

The Orb's famous album is of course the Ultraworld double. When this came out in 1991 it was quite revolutionary with it's progressive rock like instrumentals set to dance beats. I'm playing this in revision for a gig later this week. Rather pensive about the gig for two reasons - one is it is going to be a "live" DJ set (very different to an actual band), and two will I still like the music?

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Log #8 - The Afro Celt's Latest Album Rises Elegantly Above Off Stage Troubles

Must admit I'm still loving the Afro Celts representing a real renaissance for music I've had available for some years but have rarely played. If you had told me at the start that they would be my most played band eight weeks into my musical journal I would have been very surprised.

The new album The Source is superb revealing several new epics not fully appreciated on first play. I've had it on in the car at high volume and the level of production is astounding with the multiple instrumentation crystal clear. In particular the track Child of Wonder is pretty much unlike anything I've ever heard before with spoken Scottish dialogue breaking into hypnotic African chant. Unique and invigorating. I was surprised to hear this new album is only their sixth proper album barring a few compilations and remixes. I have also learned that due to a dispute with some ex band members The Source was recorded under controversial circumstances including the usual claims and counter claims to the band name. This may also explain why the majority of their recent live performances have been constructed almost exclusively from this album. Check the setlists of your favourite bands at the excellent www.setlists.fm Suffice to say none of this dispute behind the scenes was evident at the joyous gig recently attended and reported upon in log #7. I've just ordered the much revered Volume 1 which will mean I'll only be short of Volume 2 for a full magazine house! The track Mojave continues to inspire from Volume 5. The rival faction of ACSS are also recording a new album apparently so it will be interesting to await developments.

At the opposite end of the scale for some reason I decided to give an old Motorhead album a spin. When I was a teenager Ace of Spades was the go to album from this particular power trio but I always preferred Overkill with my favourite track No Class. It's a track where their basic riffing and aggressive lyrics really hit the spot, but other than that and a few others the album is a bit samey and the clarity very muddy - really opposite to the Afro Celts.

1. Foals - What Went Down
2. The Whitest Boy Alive - Rules
3. Motorhead - Overkill
4. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - The Last Prophet
5. ACSS - Volume 5
6. ACSS - The Source

The Foals are one of the most impressive modern rock bands operating today. They have a unique rock sound with interesting percussion and rhythms and a good clear singer (the most important part of a rock band I'd say). This is their fourth and latest album. I don't have their debut but the other three including this one are consistently strong. I don't know the tracks well enough just yet to be able to individually identify them outside of the album context - except Spanish Sahara from the 2nd album.

A reentry for the superb Whitest Boy album. One to play loud and dance around the kitchen to with its infectious bass lines. I'll be getting their only other album soon but it's strangely seems to be quite hard to get hold of at a regular CD price for some reason.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's album was one of the earliest and most famous Realworld issues back in the day when "world music" was just beginning to gain prominence in the "west". There are only four tracks of a circular hypnotic and energetic groove. Hailing from Pakistan, Khan (1948 - 1997) was a proponent of Qawwali - the devotional music of Sufism.

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Log #7 - From Joy to Sadness

Lots more Afro Celt Sound System this week and a return of an old favourite remembered in the wake of Leonard Cohen's passing - John Cale, exVelvet Underground and responsible for one of the best cover versions of Cohen's Hallelujah. Was it the one used in the film Shrek? I'm not sure - the internet is divided on the subject. The cover album is from little known Japanese electronica artist Susumo Yokota.

1. Crowded House - Recurring Dream
2. John Cale - Paris 1919
3. Susumu Yokota - Sakura
4. Afro Celt Sound System - Seed
5. Afro Celt Sound System - Anatomic
6. Afro Celt Sound System - The Source

It's all been about the ACSS this week with a storming gig at our local Concorde2 venue here in Brighton. About half way through (actually unusually there was no support, and two sets, with an interval) I realised that from my vantage point standing about a dozen rows back everyone in front of me was relatively short and I had one of the best views ever at a gig. Then the band thanked a school teacher at the front for bringing his class along "to their first gig". They also explained how one of their songs Release had made it on to the official Music GCSE exam syllabus. I hope the school kids appreciated that with the band's vigorous world beats and stirring melodies this was a better gig than usual - the band were really having a good time and this was infectious for the crowd who danced as one. With all those different influences and instruments (there must have been a dozen musicians on the tiny stage) it could have been a right mess but it works.

Take a bow - ACSS on stage, Brigton, 13/11/16

I was moved to buy the new album The Source afterwards and reinserted a couple of previous CDs into the changer for a reassessment (it is lovely rediscovering music you've had on the shelf for years). The Source is excellent - a little more mellow than some of their previous releases but still covering all the celtic and afro bases. Seed and Anatomic are also superb - both a bit more song based than their earlier albums with mesmerising Irish vocals from lead singer Iarla O'Lionaird (now departed but replaced by the equally talented and equally fantastically moniked Griogair Labhruidh). All three albums are jam packed with perfectly produced epics but try Mojave from Anatomic and Where Two Rivers Meet the standout from the new album.

...and jolly nice chaps happy to meet the fans afterwards!

One final thought on bands these days. They are mostly jolly nice don't we think? They enjoy what they do and appreciate the fans. They aren't afraid to show their intellect and skill. Think of Radiohead and Coldplay, not my favourite bands but obviously educated and talented. Many years ago wasn't it all about angst and aggression? It was cool to be destructive, anti-establishment and edgy. The Rolling Stones probably started it. The attitude continued through the 70s and 80s and for a while into the early 90s too with Nirvana. But by the time Oasis came along the public had grown tired of all that rock star posturing that had been done so much better before and just thought the Gallagher brothers were prats.

I know very little about the Japanese cover artist this week – Susumo Yokota – and from a quick google search it seems very few people did. I also learn that he sadly passed away last year at the age of 54. Like the attached article says the album Sakura was a word of mouth success and I must have read about it somewhere. It is indeed a gorgeous ambient instrumental record from the Brian Eno or Aphex Twin (Selected Ambient Works series) school with Japanese flavouring and one that people always comment upon if I ever have it playing in the background. Sakura means Cherry Blossom and is also the title of an amazing classical guitar piece I used to attempt which is sadly neglected somewhat in the concert repertoire although I have heard local artist Richard Durrant play it. I couldn’t find any details on the artist behind the beautiful traditional cover art.

Sadly there were a couple more musician deaths last week – Leonard Cohen and Leon Russell. I don’t (yet) have any music by either artist although the latter particularly has been on my list since hearing him on the player in Wax Factor Records and thinking what is this cross between Dylan/Dr.John/Exile on Main Street era Stones?  Cohen’s death brought forth many replays of Hallelujah covers (a song that has become slightly overplayed like Stairway to Heaven or Imagine, but is still a great song nonetheless). One of the greatest versions is by John Cale and this made me reach for his classic Paris 1919 album which doesn't contain said song but has in the past made it into those Top 100 Albums of all time lists. Just the title engenders strong emotions of time and place, in addition to the cover showing him sitting nonchalantly in front of a sunlit window in his white suit. Evocative. Great songwriting – “You’re having tea, with Grahame Greene,” delivered in his Welsh tones (most singers lose their speaking accent when singing but not Cale). Incidentally the final track on the album Antarctica Starts Here does remind me of John Lennon's Imagine.

John Cale in Paris 1919 obviously

Lastly, albeit in slot 1, we have Crowded House. I used to play this in the car a lot. It’s feel good pop music. Not much more, nothing less. Great songwriting again and 25 years earlier they could have been The Beatles.

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Log #6 - More Than One Way to Play a Guitar

Not a classic week this week, with only one album keeping it's spot this weekend; Efterklang's Piramida. The sumptuous Efterklang have just released a new album actually (Leaves) which has been described as some sort of interactive opera which they will be performing at the Barbican, London, early next year. I've heard a couple of tracks and am wondering, although it is admirable they continue to push the envelope, if they may have over stretched their ambitions this time. However in the meantime the effortlessly graceful Piramida continues to impress. If you like this one check out Magic Chairs next, their previous album which contains most of their best known tracks.

1. Efterklang - Piramida
2. Al Di Meola - Cielo e Terra
3. Tricky - Maxinquaye
4. Curtis Mayfield - Love's Sweet Sensation
5. Soft Machine - Third
6. Boards of Canada - Geogaddi

As a keen amateur guitarist I used to listen to alot of classical repertoire as a student - John Williams, Julian Bream, Segovia, Narcisco Yepes and John Mills. I was also keenly aware of the most revered electric guitarists out there - David Gilmour, Rory Gallagher, Neil Young, Andy Latimer, Richie Blackmore (who is reforming a version of Rainbow I hear), Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix of course, although I missed the point at first and snobbily frowned upon these electric maestros for not using their little finger of their left hands (right in Jimi's case) and barring the bass strings with their thumbs (a no-no for the classically trained). In a similar fashion I also dismissed any electronic music at the time for not using real instruments and therefore not requiring skill (my favourite band as a teenager was ELO as they played proper instruments like violins - and wasn't Jeff Lynne great at the last Glastonbury?).

I was completely unaware of whole areas of guitar playing in between these two extremes of classical and rock - acoustic, flamenco, blues and jazz for instance. I remember this began to change when a friend played me a record called Friday Night in San Francisco by three legendary acoustic guitarists I had never heard of - Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia basically jamming at breakneck speed in front of a live audience. Skillful and exciting that record paved the way towards my love now for the visionary acoustic players like Tommy Emmanuel and Will Ackerman. Having said that the featured record in this list, Al Di Meola's Cielo e Terra actually sounds a bit dated now and is very reminiscent of the 80s guitar fashions of synth-guitars and Ovation electro-acoustics. It is similar to Pat Metheny's revered Offramp album which I play a lot more. I always like the cover though, reproduced above, and there is at least one stand out track in the 9-minute Traces (Of a Tear).

On the other hand Tricky's hip hop masterpiece Maxinquaye still sounds fresh and current. It came out around the time of Portishead's stunning debut album Dummy. Maxinquaye is as good.

Curtis Mayfield's album may be a compilation. It's smooth and sensual as you'd expect with several well known tunes. Mayfield's latter years were unfortunately dogged by ill health after a serious injury resulting from an on stage accident where a lighting rig fell on him.

I used to have an old cassette of Soft Machine music. I don't know what the music was but it had a lovely organic groove with organ and drums - the lack of a guitarist was interesting. Their albums are called 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc. Most of their music is instrumental which is a good thing when drummer Robert Wyatt is your vocalist. This one, Third, has lots of jazz honks and squeaks and not much groove. The rest of the family call it "car-crash" music.

I have never heard anything like Boards of Canada. Their instrumental electronica music literally sounds out of tune, but is strangely entrancing. Completely original - it is a different kind of "car-crash" music and it's brilliant.

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Log #5 - The Handsome Family - Tales of Birds and Snow

An international flavour here with Americana pioneers The Handsome Family and Euro Symphonic Pop from German/Danish band, the classy Efterklang. The African continent is represented by Baka Beyond.

1. Efterklang - Piramida,

2. The Handsome Family - Through the Trees,

3. India Arie - Song Versation,

4. Baka Beyond - Ete,

5. DJ Vadim - USSR Repertoire,

6. Jill Scott - Who is Jill Scott?

A clean sweep this week, which is sort of surprising even to myself, as I was really enjoying the new Whitest Boy Alive entry and Kings of Convenience still (but sure they will make re-entries at some point). A change is sometimes enforced somewhat prematurely by other housemates with less staying power!

Efterklang are an amazing Danish band now making some of the greatest pop music out there today. Check out some of their videos on youtube. They started out a bit more indie and experimental and over the course of half a dozen albums (this one being their most recent) have matured into the consummate band - think Coldplay but with more originality and edge. Also great live, often with an orchestra. They've come a long way since I saw them in a room above a pub in Brighton.

The Handsome Family, and in particular this album, is where it all started for me, in Americana that is. I heard Weightless Again on a sampler album - "we stopped for coffee... in the Redwood Forest" and was hooked. Superb, albeit rather disturbing and bizarre, lyrics - short stories about birds, snow and death... 

The giant of Illinois

Died from a blister on his toe

After walking all day through the first winter snow

Throwing bits of stale bread

To the last speckled doves

He never even felt his shoe full of blood

Delirious with pain, his bedroom walls began to glow

And he felt himself soaring up through falling snow

And the sky was a woman's arms

Inspiring album artwork of nature and Through the Trees is this week's cover art, and my record of the week.

I don't know anything about India Arie except she has been championed by the late great Wayne Dyer. The songs are fairly middle of the road and quite souly and funky but er hem quite middly of the roadie. Neil Young famously said his Harvest album put him in the middle of the road and afterwards he headed straight for the ditch. 

Similarly Jill Scott is pretty new to me but this album sounds very current with laid back soul grooves reminiscent of some new chilled hip hop around at the moment (this CD has some of those annoying phantom tracks inserted at the end to thwart random plays, hence has to go in slot 6 of the magazine).

Talking of laid back you can't get more laid back than DJ Vadim - his average BPMs are so slow they barely register and make DJ Shadow seem like Metallica. I haven't really got into this album yet but his more song based Soundcatcher is brilliant.

Baka Beyond are a sort of Afro-Celt fusion band. Great live and sound how you'd expect with a bit of African music (specifically drums and guitars), and some Irish fiddly bits. Their best known album is probably The Meeting Pool but this is pretty similar, probably a bit more authentic to it's roots but less groundbreaking.

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Log #4 - The Whitest Boy Alive - Odd Name / Tight Band

A couple of new entries in the magazine this week. Firstly my new Whitest Boy Alive CD arrived and it's a corker - extremely catchy pop tunes with the funkiest bass lines and the sharpest of beats. A super little band now sadly defunct after only two albums but who live on in part through The Kings of Convenience (who are apparently recording a new album). I've played this album over and over this week, and in the car too on a long journey, so there hasn't been much look in for the rest. KOC retain their place of course and continuing my acoustic/americana/nu-folk mood I've slotted Fleet Foxes into hole number 2. Not too sure about the lead singer on their album any more but the harmonies are good.

1. Bear's Den - Islands
2. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
3. Matthew E. White - Fresh Blood
4. Kings of Convenience - Riot on an Empty Street
5. Afro Celt Sound System - Further in Time
6. The Whitest Boy Alive - Dreams

Matthew E. White is a class act and Fresh Blood is an effortlessly soulful album. Bear's Den have a knack for some great tunes, lovely Crosby Nash Stills harmonies, and melancholic lyrics. I saw them at a local venue last year and for their encore they dismounted the stage and huddled unplugged in a circle in the crowd to sing an unplugged Bad Blood, the last track on the album. I highly recommend this talented young band.

Finally the Afro Celts hold on to a position largely due to plans to see them early next month. This week it is the turn of Further in Time which I think is one of their earlier albums (actually their 3rd - ed.) and features guest appearances from Peter Gabriel and Robert Plant.

Album of the week: Dreams

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Log #3 - Who's That Girl?

A few new entries in the box this week. First a word on a great young band I saw in Brighton last night. Sam Jordan and the Dead Buoys (nautical spelling deliberate after a clash with a US band of the same name). I told them afterwards they sounded like Bear's Den which they took as a compliment, hence the new entry in the player. Both bands specialise in beautiful sensitive acoustic melodies and gorgeous vocal harmonies, the right side of the Mumfords.

1. Bear's Den - Islands
2. Various - Trojan Dub 3 CD Box Set - CD no. 1
3. Matthew E. White - Fresh Blood
4. Kings of Convenience - Riot on an Empty Street
5. Wilco - Being There
6. Afro Celt Sound System - Anatomic (vol. 5)

Matthew E. White I first heard on seeing his stunning Rock and Roll is Cold video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co4krl2xge0

The Wilco album I once saw in one of those Top 50 lists. It sounds a bit dated now, and the vocal delivery is rather relentlessly depressing. I think the later Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is probably the better album. But its a double CD with alot of material so probably requires some more listening.

Cover art this week is from the lovely Kings of Convenience album. I have always been fascinated by album cover art - how a design captures an imaginary world or a grainy photo a moment in time. I love the retro feel of this cover with the brown shades, the turntable, the intellectual chess playing boys and the beautiful bookish girl with the mysterious glance. The boys are band members Erlend Øye (left) and Eirik Glambek Bøe (right). But who is that girl? Is she a model, or a real person, or possibly the guest singer Feist?

So I googled "who is the girl on the cover of riot on an empty street" and would you believe it google knew!

The following article by Clarissa Oon is reproduced from the band's website via my google search http://www.kingsofconvenience.org/strait.html :

Boe's Liv Tyler-lookalike girlfriend is on the cover of Riot On An Empty Street, the recent sophomore major-label release from him and bandmate Erlend Oye [I look forward to spinning a Whitest Boy Alive CD I've just ordered - Oye's side project - hopefully in issue #4 if it arrives in time].

Boe gazes at the camera, looking slightly grim as she and geeky bespectacled Oye eye each other suggestively. She was also with them on the cover of their 2001 breakthrough album Quiet Is The New Loud, says 28-year-old Boe, whose stubbled good looks remind one of a younger Viggo Mortensen. Speaking via a temperamental mobile-phone connection from Palermo, Italy, where the duo is playing a gig, Boe says his medical student girlfriend - whose name he mumbles and is lost in waves of static - was initially not meant to be in the picture. Recalling the day they shot the Quiet album cover four years ago back home in Bergen, Norway, psychology student and part-time musician Boe said he and Oye had been driving around getting lots of photos taken.

For the last picture of the day, we said to my girlfriend: 'Come on, you be in the picture with us to remember this day.' 

The shot ended up on the album cover 'because it reminded us of a series of paintings by Norwegian painter Munch, with one person in the foreground and a couple in the background, called Jealousy'.

The reference to Edvard Munch's paintings tells you two things about the Kings of Convenience, whose pensive acoustic harmonies and intelligently laconic lyrics earned them the label 'the thinking girl's boyband' from a Guardian reviewer: One is that Boe, who reads psychoanalyst Carl Jung's writings for work and semiotician Umberto Eco's essays for fun, thinks really deep thoughts. The other, that he and his songwriting band mate - who have been compared to a hip, latter-day version of 1960s troubadours Simon & Garfunkel - lead separate and somewhat competitive lives.

Friends of 12 years who played together in a now-defunct rock band Skog (Norwegian for 'forest'), they called themselves Kings of Convenience as a shorthand for 'the convenience of two people playing guitars together, instead of all the hassle travelling around with a big band'.

They have lived in different countries for the past six years: Boe in their rainy coastal hometown of Bergen, and Oye as a deejay in Berlin. The latter released his solo dance album Unrest early last year. Suggest that it might be more convenient for the two to live in the same country, and Boe explains, in his low gentle voice that 'my life choice and his life choice are different'.

The band is not the reason we live in different countries. The band still exists in spite of the fact that we live in different countries.

Recorded early this year over a six-month period in Bergen, with periodic visits from Oye, Riot has a more evolved sound than its predecessor album, with a few whimsical, dancy tracks amid slow, autumnal numbers. Boe says they take turns to sing lead, and argue a lot. 'We each think each one's voice is better,' he adds, followed by a rustle like a smile at the other end of the line. Still, they are committed to writing songs together, frequently exchanging ideas over the phone.

'Maybe every second month, I'll go to Berlin, or he comes to Norway.'

Sounds like a long-distance relationship. 'Exactly.'

Album of the Week: A toss up between Riot and Islands

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Log #2 - Bob Marley Lights Up and Catches Fire

I've been playing quite alot of reggae and reggae/dub recently. This culminated in seeing the reggae covers band Easy Star All Stars a couple of weeks ago - a band that plays covers of Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson, Beatles and Radiohead - check out their cover of Paranoid Android for something completely different.

The Trojan set contains a wealth of music I'm not familiar with like The Upsetters, King Tubby, Gregory Isaacs and Tommy McCook. I don't know if these versions are extra "dubbed" up or are originals (I expect the latter). I've also just got back from a mini-road trip in France where my fellow travellers were playing a lot of reggae and dub on the blue tooth.

1. Various - Trojan Dub 3 CD Box Set - CD no. 2
2. Bob Marley - Catch a Fire
3. The Doobie Brothers - The Captain and Me
4. Kings of Convenience - Riot on an Empty Street
5. War on Drugs - Lost in the Dream
6. Afro Celt Sound System - Anatomic (vol. 5)

Of course Bob Marley is much more common, but maybe not this album so much. Although considered a classic, or even his best by many, this album came earlier (1973) than the more famous hits. But more the better for it - it's much more rock than I was expecting, with guitars and organ, but with that easy groove. And what a fantastic cover with the extra thick spliff. Way to go Bob. My kids saw his son recently at a festival.

Bob Marley rolls up on Catch a Fire

Thank you to facebook junky Arthur P for The Doobie Brothers recommendation. Named as one of his two most favourite albums ever I had to hear it. It's right up my street, but I don't know if it will prove a stayer. Stand out track to date is Long Train Runnin'. Intiguing cover too. Another similar (I imagine) band we were playing a lot of in France was The Allman Brothers. I had no idea their tune Jessica was the theme tune to Top Gear. I like discovering trivia like that.

Anyway back to this list and the lovely Kings of Convenience. This was also inspired by something I was playing on my Ipod on the plane over - The Whitest Boy Alive. I think both bands have interchangable members, and they certainly sound very similar. The Kings project are more acoustic and with their vocal harmonies sound alot like Simon and Garfunkel. There is a beautiful track near the end where they are joined by a female vocalist. I think they are from Scandinavia somewhere, possibly Norway. Speaking of Scandinavia I am off to see Swedish band Goat next week, that should be interesting.

The War on Drugs record is one of the best rock albums of recent years - it was my Record of the Week in another post. It's been a go to album for a couple of years now.

I'm also seeing Afro Celts sometime soon. Can't remember this album at all - they are all very similar and indistinguishable in my experience so far. Time to familarise myself in the run up to the gig.

Record of the Week: Catch a Fire

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Log #1 - Bret Anderson is Alive and Well (and He Knows It)

Not one for mp3s and digital downloads I've always preferred my music physical and tangible. Not only for the feel and look but also I feel the art form of an album presents a sum greater than its parts. Would we have had a "Sgt. Pepper's" or "Astral Weeks" without the concept of an album?

But I can see the advantages of having an endless stream of music. Several years ago when my CD player expired I replaced it with a 6-CD magazine changer I found on ebay for around £30. Providing not an endless stream of music but a good 5 hours worth, plenty enough for a weekend. It has been one of my best ever purchases.

This weekend I was shuffling through my 6 CDs and realised my current choices were what I would consider atypical of my usual tastes. How did I get here I thought to myself? Would this be symptomatic of a permanent change in taste or were there good temporary reasons for my choices?

So here the idea of a journal of listening was born. I aim to log the 6 CDs each week with comments and thoughts, perhaps justifications and reasons, even reviews.

The 6-CD changer log #1:
Paulo Nutini-Sunny Side Up
Suede-Suede
Badly Drawn Boy-Have You Fed the Fish?
Sufjan Stevens-Carrie and Lowell
Carole King-Tapestry
Afro Celts-Seed

Mesmerising Suede front man Brett Anderson (Yui Mok/PA )

I don’t have the same out of control lifestyle that I used to have but I’m able to find these pockets of interest within everyday life.

Record of the Week: I love the Paulo Nutini, a lovely new discovery, but I was even more surprised at how much I liked previously unheard Suede when I saw them headlining the recent TTP festival here in Brighton - their debut eponymous album wins it this week. Suede contains many of their anthemic songs that were performed with enthusiastic swagger on stage with singer Bret Anderson channelling his best Bowie/Jagger.

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