Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Feel good hits of the 20th July

A bonus edition, for no reason other than that I've been dipping my toe in the waters of a lot of albums for the first time recently...

1. 'Try To Sleep' - Low
2. 'High Horse' - The Jim Jones Revue
3. 'California' - EMA
4. 'Jejeune Stars' - Bright Eyes
5. 'I Don't Want Love' - The Antlers
6. 'To Ohio' - The Low Anthem
7. 'Sadness Is A Blessing' - Lykke Li
8. 'Used For Glue' - Rival Schools
9. 'Last Known Surroundings' - Explosions In The Sky
10. 'Joy Division Oven Gloves' - Half Man Half Biscuit
11. 'White Rune' - Iceage
12. 'War In Heaven' - The Raveonettes
13. 'The Needle And The Damage Done' - Neil Young
14. 'Machine Gun' - Portishead
15. 'Why Won't You Talk About It?' - The Radio Dept

Notes:

2. Burning Your House Down couldn't really come close to capturing the Revue's live impact, even with Jim Sclavunos at the helm, but it still works surprisingly well.

3. After not registering the first couple of times, this has now clicked and I've got Past Life Martyred Saints to enjoy. Muchos gracias to those of you who urged me to persist.

4. A rarity - a genuinely upbeat-sounding Bright Eyes song. Not studied the lyrics too closely, mind...

5. Burst Apart is gorgeous in its simplicity, but unsurprisingly doesn't have the sheer emotion-wracked drama of Hospice.

7. Why can't all pop music be this good? A hook-up with fellow Swedes the Raveonettes would be rather tasty...

10. Scrappy post-punk, sarcastic and absurdist wit - why hello there Half Man Half Biscuit, how the devil are you? It was a toss-up between this and 'The Trumpton Riots'.

11. Did someone say Joy Division? 'White Rune' is an unlikely, unholy and rather tremendous fusion of the Manc miserabilists and No Age.

3 comments:

skif said...

10: A song that has the line "I keep wicket for the Quakers, in my Joy Division Oven Gloves" vs a song that has the line "Chippy Minton's socialists could storm the market square". A tough call, certainly.

I was listening to 'Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral' just this week!

Ben said...

Ian: Hadn't dug that album out in ages, and it does sound rather dated and more than a bit emo...

Skif: 'Joy Division Oven Gloves' actually got me thinking about that Stewart Lee line about knowing we're all going to hell in a handcart when he discovered that Yo Sushi were selling a dish called Love Will Tear Us Apart...

skif said...

With this comment seemingly coming well after 'Oven Gloves' was originally released, this man Lee is clearly a plagiarist.

If only there was somewhere, a corner maybe, we could flag this up.