Week In Music & Such September 14th- 20th

The Divine Comedy's 'Absent Friends' was stuck in my head a lot earlier this week. The perfect song for these times

Heavenly's 'Modestic' has also been in my head quite a lot lately. What a great tune, especially the drive of the chorus

And Katie Dey's 'Darkness' keeps getting stuck in there too, like for weeks now

Had three, count 'em three, great musical discoveries this week!

High On Stress  - I saw the comparisons to The Replacements and early Soul Asylum and they are not wrong! Great songs. Bought the album today

Told Slant - lovely tunes, looking forward to hearing more

And Emma Tricca. Gorgeous voice, melodies, and arrangements. The last by Colorama's Carwyn Ellis, who I spoke with a few years back about Welsh music for The Quietus and met up with him in a pub in Cardiff to talk more music. Great guy. He was involved in Sarah Cracknell's last solo record too. Yesterday I spent a lot of time listening to Ms. Tricca and today I bought 'Relic' and 'St Peter'. 

I heard Emma on 'Lodge 49', which I've been loving. I was taken in by the Pynchon-esque name and was a bit hesitant after the first episode but I'm glad my friend Michelle convinced me to continue. My sort of thing, full of crazy quests. And they seem to play Broadcast an awful lot. I hope to finish the series this evening. 

Continuing on my Diana Rigg kick and luckily there's some more great stuff on YouTube.

'Theatre Of Blood' with Vincent Price

And one of her first TV roles, 'The Hot House', which is quite odd, though she's very good in it.

And my friend Rick tracked down her TV debut I believe, the 'A Very Desirable Plot' episode of 'The Sentimental Agent'. Aired on November 23, 1963, though I don't know when in relation to 'An Unearthly Child'. She's great in this also, of course.

And since re-reading John Higg's KLF book, I've been thinking about Dada a lot lately. Considering that like Dada, Young Southpaw is an appropriate reaction to a world gone mad. There's some documentaries on YouTube I've got lined up and watch Vic Reeves' one the other night

Pugwash & Neil Hannon featuring Matt Berry - What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted...

My friend Ben just alerted me to this:



Pugwash, Neil Hannon, and Matt Berry covering What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted. Lovely, isn't it? Recorded for The Shortest Night, this year's charity album from Dublin's Sound Training Centre in aid of the Dublin Simon Community. Soundcloud link here in case you can't see the YouTube clip.

Steve Harley also covered it on his 1996 Poetic Justice album.




It's funny, this song always reminds of the "what became of the man that started" section of Iron Maiden's Stranger In A Strange Land. How odd.

Theoretical Girl - I Should've Loved You More...

I'm not sure I could love this more.  Such a perfect pop song.  I once described Theoretical Girl's music as "a perfect cross between The Smiths and The Divine Comedy, with a female singer".  A tall order but one she lives up to.


I Should Have Loved You More

Had to go to Myspace to find a stream of the proper album version of this song.

It's hard not to fall in love with those descending chords, the lovely backing vocals, and the "oh-oh..." nod to Beyoncé in the middle 8.

An acoustic version:




Do check out her Soundcloud pages, lots of different versions and lovely covers, which she does for her yearly Advent calendar (more here at her blog).

Nice Bandstand Busking performance:



Another of my favourites from her Divided album, The Biggest Mistake:



Good Timing is a beautiful song (as is Seeing You Again but I can't find any versions to share, nevermind, just buy the album, if you like POP, you'll LOVE it):

Ride - Vapour Trail...

Over the weekend I came across a Ride bootleg called Meltdown and spent a lot of time thinking about just what an incredibly good record Nowhere is, words can't even describe how magnificent it is.  By no means my favourite song on the album, Vapour Trail is still one helluva Pop song.




The great Divine Comedy cover version:




And looking this up, I just found out Paula Kelley (from the Drop Nineteens) did a really good version too:

Divine Comedy covers...

The other day I discovered this version of The Divine Comedy covering The Pixies' "Gigantic":




Which led me to today finding Neil Hannon covering the Pet Shop Boys' "Being Boring":




They've always been a great covers band, rivalling even The Afghan Whigs, who I believe have probably given us the greatest covers of other people's songs.  But Mr. Hannon is such an excellent musician, he's able to play any song by ear; a highly entertaining part of the show often being his asking for people to shout out requests, though they must not be his own songs.  Catching The Divine Comedy on the Absent Friends tour in Boston, MA, at TT The Bear's, we were treated to fun takes on Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O'Mine" & Oasis' "Champagne Supernova" with an amazing version of Prince's "Purple Rain".

Here's Neil doing The Human League's "Don't You Want Me" at The Lexington in London 4/11/10 (so wish I had known about this!):




With Cathy Davey performing "I Only Have Eyes For You" at Manchester Academy 9/11/10:




There's the 3 Magnetic Fields covers from the b-sides:








Jacques Brel's "Jackie":




A lovely lo-fi take on "Moon River":




Roxy Music's "Oh Yeah":




"Life On Mars?" with Yann Tiersen:




Kraftwerk's "Radioactivity" and "The Model":






Edwyn Collins' "Untitled Melody":




MGMT's "Time To Pretend":




Sacha Distel's "The Good Life":




Randy Newman's "Lonely At The Top":




And these last two come from the bonus disc of "Bang Goes The Knighthood", recorded live in Paris at Cité De La Musique, 23/9/08.  I was at the second of these gigs, where Neil alternated between classic chanson and his own songs.  Here's him doing Jacques Dutronc's "Les Playboys".  And then one of my fondest gig memories when he went from Francoise Hardy's cover of Mina's "Se Telefonando" (one of my all-time favourite songs) "Je Changerais D'Avis" into his own "Tonight We Fly".






And there's plenty more too.