Raw Power by the stooges is an album which, no matter what volume it's played at, is always extremely loud.

Speaking in Tongues by Talking Heads is one which, no matter how loud you play it, is always quiet.

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Amazing youtube comment:

"I love songs that talk about my mentality"

Unbeatable.

shit youtube comment:

'"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
That's a way more succinct way to phrase this entire clunky song. '

On the song below. I mean what a dick.



Will post review of newsom album up in next few days, along with review of Ellie Goulding album and Alice in Wonderland film.

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BEST YOUTUBE COMMENT FOR AGES:

"just close yours eyes"

on this:

got crabs

TWO RECENT REVIEWS OF MINE.

HERE IS MY REVIEW OF THE HOT CLUB EP WHICH FACT TOOK.

AND


HERE IS MY REVIEW OF A BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE TRACK WHICH FACT ASKED ME TO DO.

If anyone can tell me what I thought of the Broken Social Scene track I'd be very pleased to know.

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So anyway here's that Hot Club review I mentioned a while ago which after sending it to 3 publications was eventually accepted by FACT, but I can't find a link to it there, perhaps it's in the paper edition.


With Days Like This as Cheap as Chewing Gum, Why Would Anyone Want to Work?


“They shoot horses, don’t they?” So Horace McCoy asked us during the depression, and so Hot Club de Paris ask us in the present, on the fourth song from their new EP. And it’s a good reference point for Hot Club; the lyrics feel like they’ve been lifted from mid-20th Century American literature, with talk of dance marathons, cops looking for guns long since thrown into the river, and a car sinking in a lake with its inhabitants tapping out a (no doubt atypical) rhythm on the window pane. ‘Dog Tired..’ and ‘Extra Time Then Sudden Death’ are the best tracks here, both fizz with images and doodling guitar lines, working in harmony to produce the most bizarrely anthemic songs you’ll hear this year. It’s exactly what you’d want from a Hot Club EP (though it’s almost as long as their albums, with fewer tracks); unusual and lyrical music about the small things in life and how, when laid out one after the other in a song, they amount to something quite extraordinary. It’s quite like Joanna Newsom in that sense, and also in the sense that both are very good. Hot Club always feel like old friends and this EP fits like a glove from the first listen.


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Also Gavin, anti-Kantian that he (sometimes) is, used me as a means to an end, and without my consent sent my Hot Chip review to a site he writes for after it was rejected by my student paper in favour of a negative review, which felt like a girl you give a lovingly crafted valentines card to ripping it up and getting off with a guy who punched her in the face instead. I imagine. Anyway, thanks to Gavin, as it turned up on google news (which I think means it was widely read?)

http://www.musicvice.com/reviews/albums/hot-chip-one-life-stand-260210

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The reason I link to it is cos they highlight the Amy Winehouse/Duffy diss. Cos this is a good comparison. Hot Chip are primarily a soul band as far as I'm concerned, and it's always been obvious to me that this is the best tag to give them. You could really hear the Destiny's Child influence in their early singles (take B-side 'The Girl in Me' as undeniable evidence for this). Crap journalists call them electro pop cos they have synths, which is like saying Black Sabbath are the same genre as Django Reinhardt as they both use guitars (there's also another link between the two which music nerds will see stand out like a sore thumb). Shit like this is what I hear in my head when I hear the term 'electro-pop', music that comes on in Topman and makes me feel alone. Hot Chip are a soul band. 'One Life Stand' is the 21st century version of Take Me to the River.

(Incidentally the review that my student paper ran with described 'We Have Love' as 'dubstep' which is just buuuuullshiiiiittt)

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Lazy Hot Chip journalism was also responsible for a lot of papers saying that 'every song on the record feels like a single', which they're only saying cos Joe said he wanted to write such an album, and simply ISN'T true, given that 3 tracks are very long and without choruses (Alley Cats, Brothers, Slush) and Thieves in the Night could never be a single, for anybody. That's half the album gone, cockles.


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Very good b-side. Remember 'let's build a home' by the white stripes? And put my best friends in whhhhhhhhhOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP





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still on a hunt for one life stand remixes...


and despite appearances this blog is NOT becoming a Hot Chip fan site, if you're worrying.






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(Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi and Django Reinhardt both have disfigured fretting hands. Sore thumb, geddit?)

There were similarities, but there were also differences.

Just noticed this Cap'n Jazz song is a haiku:

Boys kissing boys,
It's about time for me to take what's mine,
Virginia.

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There's a very nice bit in the Alan Bennett diaries where he's sitting in the park and a man comes up to him and asks if he has the time. Alan says that he does not, the man stands about for a moment with a pitying smile, and then eventually moves away. Alan sits, the realisations dawns, and calls after him "but thank you very much for asking."

I've always found this sweet and very touching, but especially today as basically the exact same thing happened to me just now.

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And today was a truly lovely day to be in the park. First properly sunny day for ages, and I pretended it was summer. Sky blue canvas shoes et al, swish ting y'know. What am I gonna do with this weather, I thought. I'll make an effort with the new Vampire Weekend album, I decided.

I wasn't that keen on Contra and didn't put much of an effort into it ever since I heard the first track 'Horchata' which just isn't a very good song. It's quite smug, too preppy, like Cliff Richard. I think Vampire Weekend are everything that I love and hate at once. I think the hipster thing is unfair and due their fans rather than the band themselves, which is a shame. But they do seem to base their image around Bennetton a bit too much. On the other hand I like that pop music has gotten back to focusing on the small details, and they remind me of the sea. If I had to choose one word to sum Vampire Weekend up it would be 'Pastel'; everything soft, delicate and beautiful.

Vampire Weekend are only really great when listened to on the beach. They sound like that classic ideal of the seaside: blocks of colour and brightness. I can only listen to Vampire Weekend when my surroundings are equally beautiful; the sea, the park, the botanical gardens, Old Aberdeen. If you listen to it in an industrial part of town or a train station its beauty seems both amplified and diminished; crushed by the ugliness but also mocking it with its own beauty.

As for the album itself, it's hard, I have no concrete feelings about it. I think that perhaps all that can be said about the album is that it's beautiful; and you don't really need anything more. Like Brideshead Revisited, perhaps it's merely ridiculous, preppy fantasy. Waugh himself hated Brideshead for its insane, frankly unbelievable beauty-as do I, in a way-he wrote it when incapacitated during the war and longing for the past and all its flavours, memory distorting reality. Actually I suppose that's another example of beauty (in this case of the past) mocking the ugliness of the present.

Sorry, that wasn't very good was it.
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I also listened to 'Kind of Blue' whilst I did the crossword and, with a juggler practising on the lawn on a dog walker on a bench throwing a ball, felt like I was in Seurat's world.

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