If you’re a Smiths fan with access to Amazon UK there’s a new graphic novel about the Smiths, covering the time they were famous, due out in March. Apparently this tale required 450 pages. One wonders how many pages it will take to cover their short, brilliant years before Johnny Marr was kicked out of his own band and the group imploded shortly thereafter.
Category: Music (Page 2 of 4)
I’ve long considered’s British band Slowdive’s 1993 album Souvlaki one of the best sounds of the 1990s, with Dagger, 40 Days, Allison, Machine Gun, and When the Sun Hits five memorable tracks with a unique sound. Yet the British music press can be brutal, raising up bands one moment only to tear them down the next. The arrival of Britpop and grunge in the mid-90s doomed Slowdive, while the press fawned over bands like Blur, Oasis and Nirvana.
In 2017 Oasis is long gone, while the Gallagher brothers attempt daily to top each other in their silly feud. Nirvana is long gone, for more tragic reasons. Grunge and Britpop are relics of the past, while Slowdive is back and stronger than ever with a new studio album, 22 years after their last one, Pygmalion, released in 1995. Between Souvlaki and Pygmalion, Slowdive took an ambient turn, and while Blue Skied An’ Clear is almost a holy experience, the rest don’t measure up (at least in my opinion) to the balanced strength of Souvlaki.
After the hatred from the British music press and fading sales lost Slowdive their record contract with Creation Records, some of the members reformed as Mojave Three. However, while pleasant-sounding, it felt like their music lost of the its soul, a soul formed through a synergy among the five core members of the band. I was surprised to hear around 2014 that these five individuals started to play a few live gigs, and then excited to hear they were back in the studio to record another record. What would it sound like? Would it be along the muted ambient tones of Pygmalion, or classic pedal-driven Souvlaki, or something different altogether?
Released in May of 2017, their self-titled album, Slowdive, contains only eight songs:
- Slomo
- Star Roving
- Don’t Know Why
- Sugar for the Pill
- Everyone Knows
- No Longer Making Time
- Go Get It
- Falling Ashes
The first song I heard was Star Roving, released prior to the album. Far peppier than anything on Pygmalion, it seemed to call back to earlier days, with all five members of the band involved.
For a long time I thought No Longer Making Time was the best song on the album, but the more I listened the more I have decided that Slomo ranks as one of the best songs in many years, from any band. The bass hook, followed by Neil Halstead’s terrific guitar, the mix of vocals, and the overall feel of the song is undeniable. Sugar for the Pill might be second, then No Longer Making Time and Star Roving. For Pygmalion fans the last two songs harken back to that album.
Here is their Pitchfork session:
And their recent live performance on KEXP:
Finally, I’m beyond thrilled that I have tickets to see them live in April in Austin, along with a second generation fan. Sugar for the Pill is one of my 11-year-old son’s favorite songs. And he plays guitar.
Last weekend I took my kids to a record store. This is one of those rare dinosaurs that sells actual records, the waxy vinyl kind. My daughter had wanted a record player for Christmas, along with a few records. These are records by modern artists, some of them born after vinyl supposedly died and CDs took over, only to be superseded by digital tracks and now streaming. I own a few vinyl items, most of them bought over 30 years ago, and all transported across the Atlantic when moved from Norway to the US. I think some of them might even have been bought in Paris back in 1985 while on a school trip. They all remain in pristine condition.
This isn’t to say I haven’t been in a record store in the intervening years. There was Tower Records during college in the 1990s, though I think by then they had converted to CDs, and so the “records” in the name of the store really was misleading. Anyway, Tower Records failed a few years ago, brought down by the digital revolution. The other music stores I frequented are either gone (CD Exchange in Austin, Borders – also in Austin – a CD store in San Antonio that lasted one or two years before it folded), or are getting rid of physical music.
Now, it seems, vinyl is on the rebound. Is this a temporary fad, brought about by a spasm of nostalgia in the cultural mode? Or, will it last and see a resurgence beyond a handful of vintage locations? While vinyl remains a small percentage of the overall music purchases, it carries on, and we may even see the return of record stores in the US. In fact, that may be the only record store I’d visited in the States, and it wasn’t even a record store. I did end up with some vinyl a few years ago, when I supported a Kickstarter for the band, Stripmall Architecture, and ended up with a white vinyl copy of their record. I also have a 7″ single from the tribute album to The Smiths, but that’s about it in the last 30 years.
This record store, however, is not recent. It’s been around a few decades. I’d read about it, but in the nearly two decades I’ve lived in this town have never visited. Since my daughter expressed an interest in records, I thought to myself, why not, and so dragged them over there Saturday afternoon. It’s only a 12-minute drive, though made longer by a slow-moving postal truck that trundled along a road until finally turning into the nearby post office. The outside is inconspicuous; no one would know it was a record store. A few cars stood parked outside the building, so obviously some business was being transacted inside. People still were buying records!
Inside, a handful of people – all males – stood in front of displays of various albums. The lighting was harsh, and I got the strange impression this was one of those old-time adult book stores, but instead of certain magazines the people here perused album covers. My two kids were quite confused by the layout. Knowing my daughter’s interest might prompt her to find some records, I asked her which bands she liked, and pointed her in the right direction. The other child stayed close to me, not sure how to find anything. The records themselves were packed tightly into the bins, making it almost impossible to flip through them to read the artist and title. Space in this store was at a premium, but surely they could make it looser between the albums?
Since I wasn’t there not just on my behalf I browsed quickly, in case boredom struck and caused mutiny among the younger generation. I ended up picking out two albums – the new one by The National, in a limited “blue vinyl” release, and one by Midlake, called Antiphon. Being somewhat used to digital album prices it shocked me to pay more than twice and almost three times the cost of a digital album for something so seemingly fragile. But, like an over-priced souvenir I considered it palatable for the moment. Walking out with my two LPs and my daughters two LPs I was impressed by the weight of so much vinyl. It just seemed solid, far more so than CDs.
These days vinyl comes with coupons for digital downloads. I went for The National download first, and after entering my code in the record store web site was presented with two options: flac and mp3. I had never heard of flac, but a quick search indicated compression was better than mp3 in the sense it was lossless, and I picked flac. However, I then learned that iTunes doesn’t play flac, so I had to sheepishly return to the website and download the mp3 files. I’m not sure what to do with my flac files, at least not yet.
Next, I turned to Antiphon, by Midlake. Whereas the other album was released in 2017, Antiphon came out in 2013. Five years in the digital-vinyl age is a vast chasm of time. When I plugged in the code on the website for www.atorecords.com, I was informed that the files no longer exist in that folder, and please fill out this form. I duly filled out the form, included my email address, and by now feel quite duped, in the sense that not a single soul behind that web site will ever read my email, or if they read it, will respond with an alternate option. These days if you don’t redeem your coupon swiftly enough the digital files simply disappear into the ether, or cloud, or whatever.
I think if I buy another vinyl record it will be only for recently released records, so that I may enjoy the music on the turntable as well on the road, plugged into my fragile and soon to be obsolete musical delivery device. Also, if I keep buying more vinyl I will need to upgrade my record player. It’s seen better days, a relic of a bygone age.
An amazing six hours of one song as The National performs one song over and over.
Watch The National perform some songs from their forthcoming album.
[Update 4/8/2013] And now a quality recording of a song from the new album, Demons.
Caught BellaMaine on KEXP Live Performance Podcast. Very nice music. Reminds me a bit of The Innocence Mission.
A fascinating article at NPR (with audio) about Danish band Efterklang and how they spent nine days on the island of Spitsbergen, in an abandoned Russian mining town. The reason: to get ideas for their new album, Piramida. Aside from the good music, this is story that could be mined for a science fiction novel or novella, or any plans to send humans into outer space. Unable to bring pets with them, the workers had pictures of animals. And, the Danish band members’s biggest worry (aside from cold and loneliness)?Worrying about polar bear attacks. Though owned by Norway, the island of Spitsbergen now largely has been abandoned to the wild. As one of the band members said, “It’s a territory controlled by Norway, but it’s not really Norway.”
Good news from a great band. Four years after their last release, Scottish band Camera Obscura will release a new album later this year. 2013 Marks a good year for new releases, with music from My Bloody Valentine, Stripmall Architecture, The National, Daughter, Mew, and more.
A very dark and brooding, slow and non-electronic song from Depeche Mode, “Heaven”, out this week. Video linked at Stereogum. I think the video actually enhances the song, which doesn’t often happen.
Clip from Norwegian duo Röyksopp covering Depeche Mode’s “Ice Machine” with Susanne Sundfør on Norwegian TV show, Lydverket ( Soundworks). Strange how a song from the early 1980s sounds as fresh today, but likely this is due to the packaging via new instruments.