A sad week this week as I woke up on Wednesday to the news that Anita Lane had died. I'd had her & Barry Adamson's excellent version of 'These Boots Are Made For Walking' stuck in my head for the previous week, perhaps with good reason.
I was reminiscing about how in 1998 on my fateful trip to Europe where that stranger told me that Nick Cave owned a bar in Berlin, setting in motion that epic adventure, I was reading Ian Johnston's 'Bad Seed' biography and Anita seemed like such both a powerful muse and creator in her own right. And then at the end of that trip I went to London and found her 'The World's A Girl' EP, her and Nick's version of 'Je T'aime...' introducing me to the world of Serge Gainsbourg. And those Gainsbourg covers she did with Mick Harvey! Their version of 'Overseas Telegram' is my definition of gorgeous.
I quickly sought out her 'Dirty Pearl' album and then a couple years later, I was going to Canada with my band Lifestyle to play some gigs and I picked up the newly released 'Sex O'Clock' at a record shop in Buffalo, NY. We were fascinated by it. Mute is reissuing that record later this year and I was hoping to speak with Anita about it for the ETC podcast. I spent a lot of time on Twitter looking at all the lovely tributes to her and it was great to see that so many people knew of her and what a powerful force she was.
It was one such tweet that introduced me to the work of Penelope Trappes. Her new song 'Fur & Feather' is lovely.
Also on Twitter was introduced to the catchy spacey electronic sounds of wor_kspace.
And the lush dreampop of Phantom Handshakes, whose album cover for their new 'No More Summer Songs' was nice enough to inspire me to listen and I really enjoyed it.
I seem to find out about a lot of music through Twitter these days. Not a bad thing. And it was the same for the new illuminati hotties song 'MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA'. Sarah really knows how to write an energetic pop song
And speaking of energetic pop, last weekend I watched 'Josie & The Pussycats' again on my birthday and that soundtrack is so good. I really like the countdown from six in the chorus '3 Small Words'.
And I wouldn't have thought it possible to love Charly Bliss any more than I do, but reading this The Fader oral history of the film, I found out that CB covered the entire soundtrack for Halloween a couple years ago.
Guided By Voices are back with a new album, 'Earth Man Blues', which Rolling Stone called their best since 'Alien Lanes'. That's a mighty call, but after one listen there are some good tunes on there. I'm particularly fond of 'How Can A Plumb Be Perfected?'
Anton Barbeau is back with a cool video for his ace new wavey 'Across The Drama Pond'. If you don't know Anton's work, I highly recommend checking it out. Especially if you like Robyn Hitchcock, Julian Cope, XTC, or just really good pop music. He's an American English eccentric.
I kept hearing Sonny & Cher's 'The Beat Goes On' last week and then Telex covered it.
New Quicksand song, 'Inversion', that I'm digging
The Quietus ran a Pet Shop Boys 'Beyond The Hits' piece and I contributed a blurb about 'Nightlife', a tune I've always loved.
And also it was rad to see Yoko Ono tweet Bobby from The Quietus' review of the Plastic Ono Band boxset. The songs he mentions at the end are lovely.
After reading the review, I put on her 1973 'Approximately Infinite Universe' double album. Excellent stuff.
