Listening to Miles Hunt quite a bit over the weekend. His solo debut (if you can track it down) is worth checking out – Hairy On The Inside. It was released on a New York independent label over 10 years ago but includes some great songs. Hunt rose to fame with The Wonderstuff some 20 odd years ago making at least one fine album in Never Loved Elvis and headlining Feile in 1991.
He has since shabbily reformed the band with some line-up changes and really began to take from the little credibility they had. Two albums released in the last decade were poor affairs, while they’ve also begun to re-record some The Wonderstuff’s initial albums on the cheap – recording them quickly live in studio. The first re-recording – of 1988 debut The Eight Legged Groove Machine – isn’t bad, but it’s not great either. As Hunt sang on that album, it all smells of “It’s yer Money I’m After, Baby”.
I can’t find any decent quality YouTube links of Miles’ solo material so below are some clips of him doing some Wonderstuff tunes recently in his solo guise, but first, The Wonderstuff, back in their heyday, from Feile 91.
Still have love for Be Here Now. Queued up to buy it over 12 years ago. Was mad for it then. Love this and still diggin’ the video.
Not so keen on this one. Think this tune was over-cooked due to ‘indulgences’ both work and ’social’. Great tune buried underneath it all though. Thing is fuckin seven minutes long!! Steady on boys and clock it in at four or five minutes max. I’d love Noel G to remix this record. A kind of Let It Be….Naked (hate that title!) Give some of the songs on that record their due.
Another bleedin seven minute tune here! Don’t do drugs kids! Workin in the studio and the nose candy don’t mix. Still though, another fuckin’ tune and a half here. This one might just justify the length. More so anyhow than All Around…. Love the video, Liam’s vocal and just the sheer attitude. This is when they were on top of the world. And Noel’s cheeky “fuck” muffled out just enough for the BBC and other stations not to notice – and it went to Number 1.
Think this was the third or fourth live performance of this tune. I heard them play it live for the first time in Cork about a week or so earlier. 15-years-old, necking alcopops on the way down on the train from Dublin. Magic. Prodigy and Bootleg Beatles supported.
Just can’t get enough of Vampire Weekend at the moment. Diggin’ the new album a lot. Looking forward to hearing this tune at (hopefully) a sun-soaked Glasto.
Suede are getting back together for what’s, officially, a one-off charity gig. That of course will morph into a 2010 tour and possibly Glasto. No Bernard Butler though. They made two stone-cold classic records during the Butler years. ‘Coming Up’, their first post-Butler album, wasn’t too bad at the time. Hasn’t aged well though. This tune below, Stay Together, was made in between the first two albums I think and featured on neither. One of my fave Suede tunes.
Richard Ashcroft, oh Richard why can’t you just keep The Verve ticking over?! New record from him due this year. Not really digging this tune and that guitar solo, but it’s quite politically charged – which is a good thing.
David Kitt had a pop at the Choice Music Prize this week on Jim Carroll’s (one of the organizers) blog, making some valid points about the prizes judging system. Jim simply thinks he and others are “throwing their toys from the pram”. Read here and make of it what you will (Kitt’s comment is at 106, Jim’s response at 107). Kittser didn’t get nominated this year – along with a host of other well deserving acts (certainly more so that Laura Izibor and Bell X1) – and so some will view his comments as sour grapes. His though was one of the best Irish LPs I heard last year.
Re-issued last month (as all records seem to be these days) Jason Pierce recently said that he didn’t even think about remastering or tinkering with his 1997 masterpiece, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space’ – an album he wrote following his break-up with band member Kate Radley (now married to Richard Ashcroft).
“I couldn’t think of anyway I could make it any better”, he said.
And he’s right. It’s a perfect album brimming with beauty and chaos. One minute it’s a punch to the head, the next the heart, and all done amid majestic ‘how did he do it’ arrangements. It’s genius on a par with Brian Wilson’s ‘Pet Sounds’ – that ability to take the sound in his head and place it on record. It’s also a record which probably would have had difficulty getting made today, for budget reasons. Spiritualized weren’t a particularly popular band in the years leading up to its making – even by indie standards. And yet this is a record packed with brass, strings, choirs and all the musical pieces Pierce needed to construct the aural jigsaw in his head.
There’s too many great moments to single out – the majestic opening (of which the re-issue comes with an Elvis sample, as Pierce originally intended, but which proved too costly first time around – see below) to the stomping ‘Come Together’, with those great juts of brass, and the pulsating ‘Electricity’, or the way he delivers the lyrics to ‘I Think I’m In Love’ (probably just hungry).
My favourite moments? Well ‘Broken Heart’ is one of the greatest heartache songs ever recorded – from its fantastic straight-from-the heart lyrics to the mournful, tear-jerking string arrangements through to the sublime vocal, as Pierce sings like a man desperately trying to hold it together before coming apart with the line “..and I’m crying all the time.” Tender and beautiful.
And just on ‘Tender’, Blur’s great tune perhaps owes much of a debt to Spritualized’s ‘Cool Waves’, with its vocal, lyrics and use of the London Gospel Choir preempting Damon Albarn by two years or so. To sum things up, anyone who doesn’t own this record – go buy. The special edition (as the original did) even comes in some of the best packaging you’ll see - packaged in a box designed to resemble prescription medicine, complete with “dosage advice” and a foil blister pack containing the CD. Essential stuff.
Just returned from East Asia after a fantastic two weeks away to take in a fab wedding of two friends just outside Seoul (hello Rob and Misung), followed by a trip to weird and wonderful Tokyo.
Tokyo is, of course, one of the world’s premier cities and really like no other. It’s just, well, different and hard to explain why. Sofia Coppola’s ‘Lost in Translation’, in parts, gives a good indicator of what the city is like. In terms of music, I struggle to find a tune that best equates the experience. Coppola uses My Bloody Valentine, Kevin Shields and Air to soundtrack her movie but they, for me, more sum up the isolation of her characters than the city itself. That grainy, droned-out sound that Shields is famed for just doesn’t equate with the city’s vibrancy. Tokyo’s real sound is in the continuous electronic, gaming sounds that flood the streets from it’s multitude of arcades and wacky shops, but this noise – often unbearable -only works with actually being there. The double sensation of sight and sound.
So today’s tune of the day is a mish-mash of song and video that reminds me of last week. The song – Coldplay’s Lovers in Japan. There’s the obvious reference, but I like the tempo to the song, which though rushed, is never fevered and is propelled by a really flowing and vibrant melody. And that’s what I felt about Tokyo. Big city. Busy, but never too pushy, and always pulsating in colour.
I was having a chat with some one the other day about my favourite songwriters of all-time, the guys (and gals) that I’m always returning too, and I forgot to mention Elliott Smith. I remember the first time I properly listened to Smith. For the place I was at the time, ‘X/O’ was the perfect soundtrack and I remember, in a time of mixed album releases, it was the first record in ages that I absolutely adored. Still do. And I love this song. Elliott Smith. A songwriter truly truly missed. One of the decades great losses.
Yes, he of The Strokes. Went to see Julian play on Monday night. He’s got some horrible reviews for his solo live shows, though equally he’s been afforded across the board praise for his solo debut LP. It could have gone either way. Thankfully he was very much on form. You can read my live review for State here. Obligatory Casablancas Christmas tune below.
Saddened today to hear of the death of Chris Feinstein, bassist with The Cardinals – the band most famous for appearing on four of Ryan Adams’ records.
Feinstein joined the group in 2006, and appeared on two of those records – ‘Easy Tiger’ and ‘Cardinology’. Hearing the news of course has got me spinning some Ryan Adams’ tunes today. This, from ‘Cold Roses’ (Adams’ best LP), has always been my favourite. Another traveling tune.
Lifted from ‘Tell Tale Signs’, a three-disc collection of demos and alternate versions of Dylan tunes from 1989 -2006, this is a different version of ‘Mississippi’, which appeared on Love & Theft, released around 2001.
The last 20 years has been a really strong period for Dylan, particularly the albums ‘Oh Mercy’, ‘Time Out of Mind’, ‘Love & Theft’ and ‘Modern Times’. All are amongst his best work. This is just a beautiful morning song, light of touch but heavy(ish) on subject matter. One of my all-time favourite Dylan songs, and this may be the best version. In this form, it was recorded for 1997’s Time Out of Mind, but left off as Dylan wasn’t quite happy with it. Another version finally appeared on ‘Love & Theft in 2001.
It kind of reminds me of travelling and really makes me want to head out into the Southern States, drinking and carousing and generally living the Beat lifestyle. If all goes wrong, at least doing that would be something worth lookin’ forward to. Love the lines – “Only one thing I did wrong, Stayed in Mississippi a day too long.”
Listening to Miles Hunt quite a bit over the weekend. His solo debut (if you can track it down) is worth checking out – Hairy On The Inside. It was released on a New York independent label over 10 years ago but includes some great songs. Hunt rose to fame with The Wonderstuff some 20 odd years ago making at least one fine album in Never Loved Elvis and headlining Feile in 1991.
